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.)

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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.