Rectorial Elections

None of you are probably interested in this but I just spent over an hour tolerating George Galloway’s opinions and I’m determined to make sure it wasn’t in vain.

So here’s the background to the story. Stuart mentioned ages and ages ago at a pub night that George Galloway is a creationist, mentioning vaguely an article written by Johann Hari, writer for The Independent. Now George Galloway is standing for the position of Rector at the University, so I checked it out, made sure for myself the allegation had been made, and mentioned it briefly whilst commenting on the Student Newspaper website (that link), which consequently got published in the paper copy the next week.

Anywho during the pub night tonight, one of our members Alex got a phonecall saying that Galloway was over in Frankenstein’s. Turns out he was just showing his face at a Debating Union event on sex tourism, but we approached him outside whilst he was having a smoke just before the event. After Stuart saluted his strength, his courage and his indefatigability, I shook his hand and asked him whether the allegation that he’s a creationist is true or not. He looked me straight in the eye and denied it, saying he’s not a creationist and he’s never been a creationist. I told him I’d read a transcript of a radio show he’d presented and he said that it was not a transcript. I began to wonder if Johann Hari had been lying, since I had nothing but his word to go on. Stuart then asked him to repeat on a recorder what he’d just said, and he said something along the lines of “I believe evolution to be a scientific fact. But I also believe that, since God created everything, he also created evolution.”

Well I wasn’t really satisfied, so I decided to check for myself. I correlated the date of Hari’s accusation with Galloway’s radio shows, which are handily archived on his website, and decided that if he said it, it would’ve been on the 1st December [Edit: 2007]. So I put in my headphones and listened to the show instead of going to bed and forgetting about it like most people probably would have. 56 minutes in, an atheist calls up (one of the themes of the show was ‘militant atheism’) and says that if God did create us, evolution isn’t the best way to do it because it involves so much death and destruction. George Galloway then said this, which I’ve taken from Hari’s original allegation linked above, but I checked against the recording and is correct. You have the details, you can listen for yourself:

“I was looking at my little six month old baby today beginning to take his first steps crawling across the hall of the Methodist Central Hall today, and it doesn’t look like an accident to me. He doesn’t look like an accident of evolutionary chance to me. I’m not really prepared to believe that from the bottom-dwelling slugs of the pond came the voice of Pavarotti. I’m not really prepared to believe that Albert Einstein and a spider are really the same thing, that they just took a different evolutionary path.”

The lying get. He’s not getting my vote (not that he would’ve anyway).

Fantastic Contraption

I’ve been introduced to an online physics based game called Fantastic Contraption. The object of the game is to build a machine to get a pink object into an area, traversing various obstacles on the way. The levels get more and more difficult as you go on and it’s rather addictive. If you go on Youtube you can see how complicated people have made their machines. Here’s a couple of my designs I’m particularly proud of.

Homeopathy 6

Just a quick one before I head out.

Those following the Homeopathy series may remember that the clinic we’re objecting to is at the office of the Edinburgh University Settlement. This is an independent charity linked to the University through which graduates can volunteer in various ways. The homeopath at the clinic is a history graduate. Recently I’ve been emailing EUSA President Adam Ramsay, who appears to be sympathetic to our cause, over who best to contact at the University about this. He, along with everyone else it would appear, didn’t know what the links between the two are, but the best person to ask would be the University secretary. He then emailed me again and advised me that, since the Settlement is a totally separate organisation, it would be best to campaign directly against them, because any complaint to the University is likely to be a waste of time.

So, let’s just recap a little. We have an organisation which has been granted a privileged position on campus (it couldn’t be any more privileged, the office is within the union building), and is seen as a member of the university community (hence their inclusion in the Wellbeing Fair). This organisation is now promoting irrationality at our educational institution, and it seems they don’t answer to anyone! Brilliant!

There must be some link somewhere, else how would they have got the office right there? There are banks which hire premises on the other side of the building but I’m sure this is different. I think the key thing to do is to find out who agreed to have a homeopathic clinic at the Settlement. This person may be able to do something.

Homeopathy 5

Today was the day of the Wellbeing Fair, where the homeopaths at the Edinburgh University Settlement had set up a stall alongside a reflexologist and all the other health foods companies and stuff like that. Over the weekend a made a load of flyers (for some reason WordPress won’t upload Publisher files, I see what I can do to get them up) on homeopathy, informing people just how diluted the remedies are, which I’ve found to be a good way of dissuading people who believed in it before. They also mentioned how homeopaths theorise that it works (energy signals, succussion etc), and links to further information on the subject, including some studies.

I also sent an email to Naomi Hunter and Adam Ramsay (EUSA VP Societies and Activities and President, respectively), which I didn’t intend to be rude, but upon reading back this morning it did seem a tad over the mark towards the end. Anyway Adam replied to me by email that he agreed with me about it being a con, but that the University Settlement is part of the university community and it would be unfair to ban them. I disagree but I think that’s less of an issue to take up with EUSA and more with the University. Naomi spoke to me in person and said “everyone’s got different tastes” (I don’t really think it’s a matter of taste) but she also didn’t have a problem with me flyering the fair and even offered me a stall of my own! I politely declined because I had class at various points throughout the day, but it was good to get a response.

Generally speaking I was fairly pleased. Not all that many people came to the Fair, and many of those who did skipped straight past the homeopathy stall to others with more freebies. Of those that did peruse their materials, I made sure they also got one of my flyers so they weren’t just reading propaganda, like I was originally. One of Stuart’s friends, Max, was running the self defence society’s stall right next to the homeopathy one, so I got a load of flyers on that table and stood around handing flyers to anyone who walked through that section, which wasn’t too many. I still have loads left, but they’re easily reused, especially if we’re going to take this up further with the University.

What surprised me most was the attitudes of other people I spoke with throughout the day. An acquaintance of mine in the Christian Union asked what I was up to today, and when I told her, she didn’t see the problem with homeopathy. What amazed me most is that she’s a medical student! She said that all medicines go through stages of skepticism before they’re proven, and it’s clear to her that homeopathy works. I didn’t get chance to reply, but the way I see it they’ve already tried to prove it and failed, so it’s not like it works and just hasn’t been tested. If they somehow prove it does work, I very much doubt that it works in the way they say it does. I spoke to her flatmate later in the day and she said they’d had a similar conversation the previous night with some of their vet friends. Apparently they were skeptics, but they did a unit on acupuncture on horses or something.

Plenty of other people have expressed the opinion that if they’re benefitting from the placebo, we shouldn’t intervene, but I have a problem with lying to people to make use of the placebo, particularly in such a mumbo-jumboish way, as I’ve posted previously. One thing my acquaintance did say is that it works on eczema, and that’s not the placebo effect. I’ve had a quick look online and there doesn’t seem to have been much research or dialogue on that issue. So, thing’s I’d like to see more of are alternative medicine and placebo usage on animals, on very young children and on eczema. If you know anything about that, or where I can find some more information, let me know.

Homeopathy 4

It appears the homeopaths at the University are on the warpath. We got back to University this week and the EUSA Vice President Society and Activities (a paid sabbatical position at the student union elected by the student body), Naomi Hunter, sent out an email welcoming us all back and informing us all about the things going on in the coming weeks. It all looked fine until I came across this little gem:

“If you are feeling a wee bit sluggish after the New Year festivities,
get yourself over our very first Wellbeing Fair! There will be lots of
freebies, advice, makeovers, hair consultations, reflexology,
homeopathy, massage, good food and smoothies. The fairs take place on
Monday 19th January, 11-3 Potterrow Dome, and Tuesday 20th January,
12-2 in KB House.”

Now I was initially in two minds about this development. On the one hand, they appear to be promoting homeopathy and reflexology. On the other, they’re putting them next to hair consultations and makeovers as a feelgood kind of thing, which is essentially what it is. Maybe this shows that EUSA know it doesn’t really work… So although I wasn’t particularly happy, I thought a protest about it was a bit out of order.

Anyway I’ve changed my mind. I was speaking to Stuart about it today at the Refresher’s Fair and he made the very good point that regardless of whether EUSA know it doesn’t work, or that it’s right next to a hair and makeover stand, they are lending a platform for homeopaths and reflexologists to peddle their nonsense. The homeopaths aren’t going to make out that it’s a load of rubbish and that they’re only doing it to make people feel better, are they? More likely they’ll be saying “come in next time you’re feeling a bit unwell, I might be able to cure that cold…” or something similar. The Fair is a way for them to clamber into the student consciousness, why else would they do it? That is undoubtedly a bad thing. I’m not trying to suggest that they’re going to rip students off, but as I’ve previously posted I have more objections to homeopathy than that.

So I think a disappointed letter to EUSA and handing a few leaflets out at the Fair itself is in order. More on this (and perhaps other alternative medicines) in later posts.

Climate change denial

I’ve just been watching Top Gear, the one where they manage to reach the North Pole in a car. Seeing as the car was running on fumes when they got there, I’ve no idea how they got back, but on the whole it was pretty good. Except for the last 10 seconds.

Clarkson’s voiceover says the following: “They said we’d never get to the Pole because of the damage the car had already done to the ice cap. Perhaps then that’s what we’ve proved most of all. Really. The inconvenient truth is that it doesn’t appear to have even scratched the surface.”

What in hell is he basing that conclusion on? The fact that he drove a car over it? Is that it, seriously?! No figures on the melting ice caps, or on global water levels, just the fact that it’s still there and it can support a 3 ton truck means climate change isn’t happening and the ice caps are just fine and dandy. Talk about making the evidence fit in with the conclusion… The statement was totally irrelevant to the rest of the show too. Up until then it had been “look at this wonderful machine that’s making things so much easier”. This is one of the things I hate about Jeremy Clarkson, it’s the totally nonchalant attitude he broadcasts on national television, particularly towards climate change and humanity’s influence on it (but also on things like speeding and, during this episode, drink driving), an attitude which I’m sure has been adopted by some of his viewers.

I can sort of understand some people not caring about the environment, not being motivated to do anything about it, but to deny global warming is even taking place is a step too far. The majority of evidence shows that it has increased dramatically since the industrial revolution, and the evidence and research which opposes it is far too often funded by those in whose interest it is to deny it; the oil companies, the car manufacturers, the airlines.

What’s more, it is an issue of such fundamental importance! If we do nothing, the world could become uninhabitable, our species and many others could well die out. It’s amazing how people consider finding a cure for cancer more important than solving the problem of climate change, but in reality which is the bigger threat? Even if humanity isn’t a major cause of climate change, surely it is in our best interests to try and reduce its effects! So I’m not sure how to handle this. Should climate change denial be on the same kind of level as Holocaust denial? Certainly the consequences of each are of similar threat levels, one just appears more immediate than the other.

New Year

Oh yeah, happy New Year and all that…