Snake oil

The Wild West was notorious for its snake oil salesmen, who rode into town with a wagon of elixirs and used their smooth sales patter to convince the ignorant and gullible that these concoctions, including "snake oil", would fix every malady.

Oh, how we laugh at their naivety!

Yet today, sadly, we see practices that are not much different - and just as many people falling for the con.

Earlier on today I visited Southampton. The reason for the visit was simple - to take part in the 1023 protest. The essence of this is simple: Boots, a huge chain of pharmacies in the UK, sells homeopathic medicine which it knows has no therapeutic (ie medical) benefit. Gullible people buy this in the hope that it may cure them. Indeed, when I bought some, it was in the aisle marked "Medicine".

This is extremely disappointing. Boots is an otherwise respectable and respected chain of pharmacies. As far as I can tell, in their role of dispensing scientifically-proven medicine, they do an excellent job. Yet they persist in also purveying products which are little different from witchcraft. We scorn the late South African minister who claimed you could cure HIV with beetroot, but homeopathic remedies are no different. With no proven benefit, they offer false hope to the ill. The superintendent pharmacist at Boots has admitted "I have no evidence ... they they are efficacious" - in simple English he means he has no evidence that they work.

So, we did a test.

23 of us (by coincidence) took part in the 10:23 campaign this morning outside Boots in Southampton. We all massively "overdosed" on homeopathic medicine, swallowing a bottle of pills, as did hundreds (thousands?) of others all over the world. As I write this, three hours later, I'm feeling fine.

It's deeply disappointing that a company as reputable as Boots should promote such bogus treatments.

Media Flash And now it's been Youtubed

Oh, God

My most wonderful university lecturer, Pat Terry, instilled rigour into his students and I think this has helped me throughout my life. Because he made me think through things, I speak with confidence when I am sure am right, which is not often. I also listen more carefully to others, although Pat can't take all the credit because the current Mrs Haffey has helped there.

So, with a degree in science, what makes me believe in God?

First, let's eliminate one thing that people often say to encourage belief in God.

Blaming misfortune on a lack of piety is a good place to start. "Your pet died because you are a bad person." So did Mother Theresa's pet. Was she bad, too?

I am afraid that I am sceptical about people who claim to know what God wants.

So why the belief in God?

I was driving along listening to BBC Radio4 in the car the other day and I heard a discussion of cavemen paintings and their subtlety. This led me to think about cavemen looking at the stars at night - the same stars we see - and wondering about the Meaning of Life. And these are the same Big Questions that face us today. What is life about? And for the purpose of this blog entry, where did it come from?

One thing we know for sure: you can't create or destroy matter. You can change matter into energy and vice versa, but that's about it. So we have this unbelievably large universe with no explanation about where it came from.

How big is "unbelievably big"?

The universe is about 10²⁸ times as big as you or me. That's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times as big, based on our mass. By one of these astonishing coincidences that pop up from time to time, you and I have almost 10²⁸atoms in us. Whether we want to explore Outer Space or Inner Space, we have the same amount of work to do.

So where did it come from?

A trivial answer is the Big Bang. But who or what made the Big Bang and the vast number of physical laws that emerged from it? Here science can't help. Something started it (or possibly there is an infinity of Big Bangs followed by Big Crunches) but where did it all come from? And how come it all works with just the Four Fundamental Forces of Nature to orchestrate it?

In the absence of a better alternative, I choose to believe that God was responsible. I happen to think that the Bible provides a reasonable description of God, but I haven't read other religious texts. It seems to me to be impossibly unlikely that this glorious universe, with relativity, quantum physics, evolution, double choc chip cookies, colour, classics, compassion and uncountable other wonders could be an accident.

And so, logically I infer that there is a God.

It's a FACT - using legal media is a PITA

You may have heard that it snowed recently here.

As a result of being snowed in, after a while I started to become stir crazy. So I broke out one of my Christmas presents, a DVD, and sat down to watch it, at which stage a red mist of rage descended.

Picture this: I have settled into a comfortable armchair, drink in hand. The DVD is spinning up and I am ready to relax and enjoy watching this movie. Then, out of the blue, some advertisement for an organisation called FACT pops up. I really don't want an advertisement at that point so I push the Fast Forward and Skips buttons but nothing happens. Somehow the unholy alliance between DVD player manufacturers and DVD manufacturers has led to this advertisement being the one mandatory piece of viewing on the entire DVD. I can skip the whole movie if I wish, but I can't skip the FACT advertisement.

So what is this advertisement for FACT? FACT is the self-righteous Federation Against Copyright Theft. Not everyone is a fan. I know I am not. Every time I want to watch my own, legal, DVD these illegitimate children of their parents steal a minute of my time and force me to watch this blasted ad. It's not even a convenient amount of time: too short to make a cup of coffee or take a comfort break. And it's on every legal DVD.

This is utterly bizarre when you think about it. What other industry does its best to annoy its legitimate customers?

I have no illegal DVDs or CDs in my house but if anything is likely to drive me to buy some it would be the promise that there would be no infuriating FACT advertisement on the DVD.

FACT is a right royal PITA.

In his Master's Steps He Trod

We stopped off in the UK 17 years ago on our way to America and we liked it so much we stayed. The people are friendly, the countryside pretty and the weather ... not as bad as we had been led to believe.

Until now.

The third Big Freeze in 12 months, the biggest of the three, set in two days ago. Normally if we have an inch of snow in a year it's a lot. On Tuesday evening we had 9 inches. I think we have two snow ploughs in England so we are snowed in for the duration.

But my wife and I are made of Stern Stuff so at 7 o'clock on Wednesday morning we left home in moon boots to walk to the railway station. For completeness I should emphasise we were also wearing a good deal of other clothes. The snow came up to our calves and I have to say it is at the very least disconcerting walking through snow that deep.

Actually it's bloody difficult.

You don't really know how far to put down each foot and then when you pick it up you have to raise it above the level of the snow to move on to the next step. I realised then why good King Wenleslas's page stepped in his footprints: not so much for the warmth as the fact that it's a lot easier. Colleen and I struggled manfully on (in her case womanfully), taking turns leading, until eventually we gave up, exhausted, at the top of the drive.

That's where I took the photograph of the neighbour's house, cars and rubbish bin. Due to the previous big freeze, our bin-collections are way behind. Indeed, one of our binmen broke his wrist sliding on ice about a week ago. We're clearly going to end up way behind in collections for the rest of the month.

We trudged to the supermarket a few hours later and this was a big mistake. It made my wife feel guilty that she had not made it to the train earlier so the following day we did walk through the compacted snow to the station. Colleen got on the train which broke down 3 miles up the track. There was some kind of electrical fault which meant it not only broke down but had no heating. After a while they managed to get the train going and she arrived at the office an hour late, only to find the office almost completely empty. Not wanting to get delayed on the way home in the dark, she left the office early only to find many trains had been cancelled, so she waited 90 minutes on the cold Waterloo Station platform before one did arise. Travel time, 6 hours: office time, 5.

In the mean time, I had decided to be a good citizen and try digging out our street.

I must have been mad. I don't have a snow shovel, just a garden one so after 30 minutes of effort I had managed to clear about 5 square yards. Mind you, they were perfectly cleared because after I had shovelled off the snow I used the yard broom to sweep away the traces. I did some calculations and reckoned that if my younger son and I spelled each other and did 6 hours a day we would have a small but sufficient channel in the road cleared after 3 days, which given we're not expecting a thaw for a week would be pretty good.

Then some guy came by driving one of these things. "Over here!" called my neighbour.

These are very good at moving snow and in three minutes he had reduced the covering of snow from 9" to about 1/2". He had also obliterated my hard work. Under my breath I thanked and cursed him simultaneously.

The only problem is that the treads of his tyres have crushed the small remaining bits of snow into snice and getting rid of that last 1/2" is ... not easy. I tried brushing vigorously with the yard brush and chipping away with the shovel and got about 4 yards done before I gave up.

My dearly beloved has just put a bowl of hot porridge on the table, so I will retreat to that and contemplate the future.