Homoeopathy: Science and Technology Committee Recommendations.

This morning I’ve written to my MP in support of the recent findings, regarding homoeopathy, of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.

Thought it might be interesting to make this one public and see where we go.

Dear Vera Baird QC,

I am writing to express my support for the recent House of Commons Science and Technology Committee findings regarding the efficacy of homoeopathy and, in particular, its recommendation that “The government should stop allowing the funding of homoeopathy on the [National Health Service].”

House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Report.

Given that homoeopathic practices have not faced Double-Blind placebo-Controlled Randomised Trial, and that practitioners continually refuse to participate in such (actually extremely fair) testing — and also given that the pseudoscience behind their claims has no actual scientific basis (and is extremely preposterous, to say the least) — I find the very idea of continued government funding of such quackery highly lamentable.

From the above-mentioned report (page 46):

“157. By providing homeopathy on the NHS and allowing MHRA licensing of products which subsequently appear on pharmacy shelves, the Government runs the risk of endorsing homeopathy as an efficacious system of medicine. To maintain patient trust, choice and safety, the Government should not endorse the use of placebo treatments, including homeopathy. Homeopathy should not be funded on the NHS and the MHRA should stop licensing homeopathic products.”

Yours sincerely,

Gary William Murning.

A sample chapter of If I Never can be read here.

To buy your copy of If I Never, please click here.

© 2010 Gary William Murning (except for quotations.)

Abstain from… Texting.

Apparently, it’s Lent, again. That time of year I look forward because, they tell me, it’s a time when Christians give up things (although, I heard a priest on the radio just the other day insist that it’s also about taking up “better” things… sounded suspiciously like spin to me, but what do I know?) The idea of giving up something because it is part of some sort of religious festival doesn’t really appeal to me, naturally, my being an atheist — but it can be rather entertaining watching from my unabstemious (if there is such a word) vantage point.

Especially when presented with the ridiculous prospect of Bishops in Rome calling on Christians to give up mobile telephones and texting!

Of course, I’m sure we’ve all at one time (!) been annoyed by people using their mobile phones at the most inappropriate times. But the very notion that a tool for communication should be “given up” for a Christian holiday, or for any other reason, for that matter, strikes me as quite simply absurd.

As a priest points out in the video clip, he can use a text message to give advice to his parishioners. He sees the value. It isn’t a replacement for other forms of social interaction, it’s merely another way of keeping in touch, communicating, sharing, laughing, crying, arguing, debating — and, yes, sharing crude jokes, of course. It isn’t something that needs to be given up by most of us. My mobile phone is with me almost constantly. Data flows back and forth in numerous forms — telephone calls, text messages, emails, Twitter messages and so on — and my life isn’t tainted by it but, rather, enriched.

It’s all too easy to condemn communication because it involves a relatively new and speedily developing technology, because “the kids” are obsessed by it. But talking, whatever form it takes, is about sharing — about giving and receiving, learning (sometimes) and, quite often, growing.

It’s about the promulgation of myth and, also, the undermining of it. It’s one of the things that makes us human, and just because we’ve found a new way of doing it, it doesn’t make it bad.

If you really want to give up something worthwhile for Lent, I have a suggestion… but I’ll keep it to myself, because you’ve probably already guessed what it is, anyway. 😉

© 2009 Gary William Murning

Not Exactly Visionary.

Sometimes people disappoint me. Not just in the every day ways we expect, but in that gut-thumping way that makes you consider finding a shack on a remote mountain somewhere and playing the Jew’s harp for sixty or seventy years.

This came close to happening today. There I was feeling rather pleased with myself because I’d returned to work on the outlines for As Morning Shows the Day and, quite suddenly, the RSS hub on my phone delivered an interesting (I assumed) tech article, with sci-fi like grace, out of the ether and into my sweaty paws.

“Ten sci-fi devices that could soon be in your hands.“

How appropriate, I thought, marvelling at the synchronicity, and started reading…

The piece starts off quite promisingly — throwing super-vision and invisibility into the pot right from the get go. Brilliant, I thought, in thirty years time I’ll be able to look through brick walls without anyone seeing me! A Utopia for voyeurs! The possibilities are endless, if a little tedious after a minute or two.

Next came hands-free healing. I didn’t even bother reading this one. I’ve always thought that the laying on of hands was potentially quite enjoyable, so I couldn’t really see the point — plus I was already beginning to sense that Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation systems were inevitably going to be followed by rather less innovative innovations, at least as far as this article was concerned.

And sure enough, disappointment followed disappointment. The sheer lack of imagination (Jet packs, my other car is a spaceship, smell-o-vision) reminded me of the school compositions I used to write when I was eight.

A complete waste of time. Good science badly applied…. Feeling unreasonably let down, I flicked through my phone looking for something else to read.

And then the lesson hit me. The writer of the article probably didn’t intend it, but suddenly I saw a point where previously there had been none:

Without a powerful imagination, science and technological development is seriously limited. Science and creativity are interdependent. Not exactly a highly original observation, I know, but one of which it’s always good to be reminded.

So be scientific. Demand rigour and evidence. But every once in a while follow Richard Feynman’s lead and paint a picture or play the bongos.

And don’t ever invent a jet pack! It’s so 1974.

© 2009 Gary William Murning

Virgin: Getting Its Finger Out?

It would seem that Virgin Media — UK supplier of broadband, telephone services (landline and cellphone) and cable television — is finally getting its finger out and beginning the process of providing a better, more competitive package of services.

‘Speaking at the launch of Virgin’s 50Mbps broadband service [yesterday], Berkett [Virgin Media chief executive] said that four linear high definition channels would join the digital cable lineup “over the next three months”.

‘Berkett said that “getting access to HD was problematic” because a platform operator and broadcaster – alluding to Sky – had “locked HD away for a period of time”. He said that the situation “has changed over the last 18 months” and that “a lot of non-platform providers” now have content to offer in high definition.’

Today it has also been announced that their 10Mb and 20Mb broadband services will be migrated over to its new DOCSIS 3 platform.

‘The new version of DOCSIS – the specification for data over cable – permits channels to be “bonded” to allow more efficient use of the available spectrum. Virgin has built the new version 3 infrastructure for its new 50Mbps service, launched yesterday, but will migrate its mid and high tier customers to the platform.

‘Chief technology officer Howard Watson likened the move to “adding lanes to the M25″ and then ensuring that all Virgin Media customers could benefit from the new capacity. The original DOCSIS 1 network will be retained for the entry tier 2Mbps service.

‘”In time, the upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 means Virgin Media will be able to handle more than three times the data currently handled by the cable network,” the company said.’

With the rumoured possibility of the rolling out of an ISPTV television platform in the not too distant/distant future, could it be possible that they may actually be working at establishing themselves as a real competitor to Sky?

It doesn’t seem all that is feasible. But we can hope, right?

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Princess Leia in Your Living Room.

According to academics at Aberdeen University a “3D television system which would display holographic images floating in mid air – reminiscent of a famous scene from Star Wars – could be a reality in households within the next decade“.

Always excited by technological developments of this kind, I, naturally, immediately started playing with the possibilities. For example, imagine how much more entertaining it would have been watching a holographic representation of John Sergeant on Strictly Come Dancing! The National Geographic channels would spring to life in a whole new way. Lions would disembowel zebras on your living room carpet and gorillas would groom the family labrador. In the summer, the rain during the Wimbledon tennis championships would seem all the more rainy — and then there’s those dodgy pay-per-view channels that I never ever subscribe to (honest.) The possibilities are endless.

And then something else occurred to me. Wait a minute, I thought as the Virgin Media van pulled up outside, I have enough trouble with my relatively ordinary V+ box as it is!

Conclusion: I’m only interested in this technology if Virgin Media has nothing at all to do with it! 🙂

© 2008 Gary William Murning

A World without Email.

Today we heard that, because of possible problems caused by transparency laws and security issues, Barack Obama — a textbook “functioning techie” — may have to go cold turkey, giving up emails in general and quite possibly his BlackBerry.

Now, however much some people might want me to be, I am not the president elect of the United States of America. I do not have to juggle a hundred things at once or ensure that I am briefed on everything from the name of the Queen of England’s favourite corgi to which button to press if someone annoys me a bit. Difficult decisions are not mine to make, or if they are the only lives that depend on it are purely fictional. Granted, I have many people — friends and acquaintances — that I like to keep up with, and, of course, many, many subjects interest me. Nonetheless it is fairly safe to say that the benefits that Barack Obama probably sees from using his BlackBerry/emailing/etc quite possibly far outweigh the benefits that I experience.

But I would not wish to give up the benefits I do receive from these wonderful (yes, I said wonderful!) technological developments — in the name of transparency or anything else (well, yes, all right, maybe personal security would persuade me, but you know what I mean.)

It seems quite bizarre that Obama will possibly be the first US president to have a laptop on his desk. Apart from Bill Clinton, of course, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. Yes, there are the inevitable dangers from hackers and so on and so forth. But surely that’s like telling the president he can’t eat pretzels because he might choke. Like that’s going to happen, right?

The world we live in is increasingly influenced by the electronic media. TV, Internet, email, weblogs, Twitter, Facebook — something new pops up every day (and, no, that’s not a reference to porn sites.) Let the president have his YouTube, Instant Messenger or whatever the hell else he wants, I say. I’d far rather have a tech-savvy US President who understands the world he lives in than a bumbling, technophobic idiot.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Embracing The E-Book?

As many of you will already know, I’m fond of technology — especially technology that enables me to do things I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. The Internet was a real groundbreaking development for me — enabling me to interact and work in a whole new, liberating way. Voice recognition software, although I fell out with it for a while, now allows me to get through vast amounts of work in a fraction of the time it would otherwise have taken. As well as the laptop before me, I also have a PDA and smart phone within reach, and another PDA in the drawer a few feet away. I have in total four different devices which have hard drives, and all of them get used (for storing TV programmes, movies, music, photos — all the usual stuff.) Something new comes on the market that I feel I might benefit from in some tangible way (I don’t believe in wasting money — especially money I haven’t got!), I get it when I can afford it.

One aspect of technological development that I have not as yet embraced, however, is the e-book. I’ve had hand-held devices for many years and was aware of Project Gutenberg from the time of its inception. I’ve tried various formats, and I have to say it will probably be a very long time before I give up traditional books — hardback or paperback.

Why? Well, this is the point where most traditionalists will trot out the standard response of “reading from a screen is harder on the eyes”, but that argument doesn’t really hold water any more. E-book readers are now available which convincingly reproduce the effect of ink on paper. Far better on the eyes and comparable to the real thing. So that isn’t it — for me, at least. No, my reasons for preferring traditional books centre around the tactile experience of reading — the individual feel and look of each book, the smell of ink on paper, the texture of the page, all of it. Fill your e-book reader with e-books and each and every one of them will look the same when you come to read them. By this I mean the e-book reader will not look any different, no artwork on the cover, no crinkled pages, no pencilled notes in the margin, just data on a device that you could all too easily mistake for someone else’s.

But of course, the content is what matters, isn’t it? If the book’s good, you’ll forget about how you’re reading it, right? I wish I could say that that was true, but in my experience it simply isn’t. A few years ago, I tried reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula on a PDA and, yes, it worked well enough but… I just couldn’t help feeling that I was missing out on something. It seemed somehow too clinical, too removed. The PDA kept me at a distance, it seemed. Getting beyond it and into the story seemed much, much harder than I had previously expected.

So for the foreseeable future I’ll be sticking to books — the old, tried and tested kind. At least until they come up with an e-book reader which replicates the individuality of each book to such a degree that it is indistinguishable from a real book.

A Week Is a Long Time.

It’s been an interesting week in the blogosphere for me. My stats are steadily climbing and this week has seen me reach (with one day left) another weekly high. The comments I’m receiving are, as always, extremely helpful and encouraging (not to mention entertaining!)

This aside, as I mentioned in a previous post, I was interviewed this week by The Pakistani Spectator — a large, multi-author Pakistani blog that aims to “foster peace, progress and harmony with passion.” The interview was a fascinating and enjoyable experience. Nowhere near as daunting as I had expected (it was my first interview of this kind.) I replied to their questions and thought that would be that.

How wrong can you be?

I heard back from them fairly quickly asking me if I would be interested in writing for them. I considered this a huge compliment but I wasn’t quite sure how my work would fit in on a site where the articles were rather Pakistan-centric. I therefore asked a few questions before committing and got the answers I would have hoped for. I was assured I could write “with liberty” and so gladly accepted the kind invitation.

I’m now, officially, a writer for The Pakistani Spectator. In order to ease myself into it and test the water, my first piece was a repost of my Where the Buck Stops post from earlier in the week. So far, on The Pakistani Spectator, it’s had 3,838 views and is receiving very encouraging comments.

Time will of course tell, but I think it’s going to be an extremely interesting and educational experience.

Where the Buck Stops.

I’m getting just a little bit tired of the current assault on social networking sites by people who, frankly, should know better. Questions regarding who bears the brunt of the responsibility when it comes to protecting children on these sites still all too often miss the point.

For example, today I read this article in which a guy called Tom Ilube from the identity firm Garlik states:

“Busy parents can’t be expected to monitor their children’s activities all the time. What are Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and the others doing to help?”

Wrong, Tom. They can be expected to monitor their children’s activities all the time — not necessarily directly, admittedly, but via a proxy, whether it be monitoring software or an appointed in loco parentis adult. Busy parents are still parents. Ultimately, responsibility for the safety of their children lies with them. It isn’t enough to argue that some parents are technologically illiterate, or that children now access the Internet using many devices, such as mobile phones. These are 21st-century parenting problems that have to be addressed, either by talking to the child, building understanding and trust or, where that doesn’t work, monitoring and, if necessary, restricting.

Yes, social networking sites have a role to play in child safety/protection. And from what I have seen over the past eleven years or so, they are doing a better job than they ever have before. But the bottom line is that parents have to (and, increasingly, are) take complete responsibility where the protection of their children is concerned. If your child uses Facebook or MySpace, ask to see their friends. Discuss the pros and cons. Make them aware of the dangers.

Whatever you do, don’t be too busy — and don’t rely upon Facebook and MySpace to babysit your children. However good their intentions, however much money they throw at the problem, it will still be an imperfect system. Bear that in mind and take the proactive, involved approach that I’m sure most of you (if not all) already have.

A Sign of the Times?

Now, I’m not in any way ashamed to admit that one of my favourite online newspapers is the Times. Yes, I read others, comparing details and noting bias, but I find this site nice and accessible, easy to navigate with a fairly decent standard of reporting. But recently I’ve noticed a trend that… well, it doesn’t exactly worry me. It amuses me, more than anything.

To cut to the chase, I’ve started to notice that the quality of articles presented by their various columnists are becoming increasingly superficial, badly written and, yes, in certain circumstances utterly pointless.

So I wasn’t surprised when I read this piece by one-time editor Simon Jenkins.

Try as I might, I just couldn’t see his point. His stance seemed to be, almost, one of either/or — technology versus “real life”. It is a naive and, frankly, badly informed point of view that seems to miss entirely that whilst people do (obviously) enjoy real-life interaction, this doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t an equally valid demand for technology that enables them to bridge massive distances and interact with people they wouldn’t otherwise have met. Technology is a part of the real-life of which he speaks, to the point where many of us no longer make such pointless distinctions. A number of his readers seem to agree with him (you’ll notice that I didn’t!), completely missing the point that they were sitting before their computers and replying to his article in a form more immediate than most of us would have at one time dreamed possible. They also, as he did, seemed to miss the fact that the article appears on an Internet website.

At the beginning of the article he states:

“Last week hundreds of young people queued overnight to watch Andrew Murray play a game of tennis. Tickets were reportedly changing hands for £2,000. Yet the game could be watched on any television or computer screen, in the comfort of home, pub or work-place.”

There are a couple of obvious points here. One of his main arguments seems to be that “live” is where the money is, these days. He even, rather oddly, uses reality TV as a proof for this. So, let’s look at one point at a time.

Firstly, hundreds of young people were paying (or their rich parents were, at least) up to £2,000 for Wimbledon tickets. Pretty impressive, right? Wrong. What he doesn’t mention is that in excess of twelve million people watched the match live on television (in the UK alone), with more watching over the Internet, listening to the radio etc. So where is the money? Bearing in mind that every one of those 12 million people (this is just the UK viewers, don’t forget), would need television sets, a digital decoder of some kind, and were probably chatting with their mates on their phones whilst they watched — if you wanted to make real money, long-term, which would you rather invest in? The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Association, or technology firms? I know where I’d put my money (if I had any!)

The second point is, of course, that not everyone can attend live events — either because they find it too expensive, too far from where they live or simply because old age or disability makes it difficult for them to attend. This is where, in my opinion, technology comes into its own. It is becoming increasingly egalitarian. Without it, frankly, I would not be able to write the novels I write today. The availability of information, the constant reduction in the price of technology (which companies can do whilst still making a profit because so many units are being turned over), all this and more means that I can more easily do the things I need and want to do. It has not replaced any aspect of my life. Technology has never set out to do that. It merely enhances the lives we already lead.

His final paragraph is so banal I was tempted to write to the Queen to ask her to withdraw his knighthood.

“The money is now being made in supplying a public craving not for technology but for human experience. It lies in flesh and blood. Live is live.”

Human experience? We are making money not from technology, but from human experience? Is there a difference? I’d argue that there isn’t. Technology is becoming so enmeshed with our everyday experience (our everyday human experience) that people like Simon Jenkins just don’t see it. How does he think these live events of which he speaks are organised? What of the amazing light shows that take place at these “live” concerts? Are they achieved by lining up hundreds of people, handing them torches of different colours and instructing them “to wave them about a bit”? No. The complex logistics of putting on such shows and events require masses of technology.

His argument is tantamount to a straw man. Call me stupid (that’s rhetorical, incidentally!), but I consider writing this piece using my nifty voice recognition software on my wonderful Acer laptop, as much a flesh and blood experience as heading out onto the moors and breathing in lots of lovely fresh air. Each has its place. There is no battle, financial or philosophical, except in the minds of those unable to see what is right before their eyes:

A computer screen. Just one element of human experience — and one that many of us can profit by, in many, many ways.