Book Review - Dis Information

In Dis Information, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki dispels many of the myths that are held as common knowledge. Has Hollywood taught you that bodies explode in a vacuum, that bodies get thrown back by a bullet's impact, or that the Titanic ran into an iceberg because its captain was trying to break a record? Then you've been misled, and Dr Karl can set you straight. Have you ever wondered why cats purr or whether you really shouldn't drink alcohol while you're on antibiotics? Dr Karl not only knows the answers to those questions but will share them with you, along with the answers to quite a few other questions you've never thought to ask, and the real facts behind myths you've never thought to question.

Gorilla Walking on Two Legs

A video of my great-grandad's cousin on my mother's side walking around on two legs.



Isn't he awesome?

Showing off, as usual, of course.

Book Review - Living Dolls

Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism is a fascinating read revealing that, despite the many advances feminism has helped women achieve, there still exists, lurking behind the facade of female sexual empowerment, the very real presence of sexism.

Natasha Walter makes the case that some women may be unknowingly stepping women's equality back a pace or two by overly buying into the narrow stereotypes being presented to them by men and, sadly, by other women as well.

I very much enjoyed the book. Full of personal anecdotes and interviews with various women in all situations, the book doesn't take the holier-than-thou attitude I'm always afraid of encountering whenever I read on the subject of feminism. Instead, Natasha shows that society is, whether consciously or not, pressuring women and men both to conform to some sort of impossible and more dangerously, a restricting ideal, rather than being free to be or do whatever they can be.

Yours,
Charles

Book Review - When God Speaks for Himself

When God Speaks for Himself, by Mark Tier and George Forrai, is a compilation of passages from the bible that contradict one another, or don't make sense, or are plain disgusting and immoral, and yet are the word and commands of God. The idea behind the book is a good one. Many adherents of Christianity haven't read the bible at all, and those who have have often read only portions or been read portions of the bible by their reverend or priest or pastor. Often, too often, these chosen passages from the bible are the nice ones, the ones that fit into the 'God is just a really nice, laid back guy' idea that most people start off with. Obviously any god they follow, being decent people themselves, would also have to worthy of their admiration. So this book aims to remind people of all the horrific, crazy and, dare I say, evil, parts of the bible that show God for what he really is, someone who makes any human dictator or mass murderer look like a kid messing around at playtime.

Unfortunately, there were several things that made the book slightly harder to read. One was the way the text has been formatted. The fonts and sizes used to differentiate the side-notes or addenda as well as quotes and excerpts from the bible from the main text are confusing. Often, I would lose track of when I was supposed to be reading a passage from the bible and when I was back reading what the authors had to say.

Which brings me to one of the other problems I had. The terms of phrase and wording used by the authors are fairly colloquial and everything written is thick with the authors' opinions. There is nothing wrong with this on the whole, obviously, I have purchased their book and therefore it is their opinion I want to read, but there are occasions in the book where it feels like the authors are stretching to interpret several bible quotes in a negative fashion. This, combined with the fact that in those cases, little extra context, whether historical or current theological opinion or any other basis for more objectively and concretely showing that said passages mean what the authors are telling us they mean, impacts on how objective I perceived the authors as being, and therefore how trustworthy the rest of the information was. The book ended up coming across in parts as more of an opinion piece rather than the reference material I had hoped it would be.

And this is a shame, because the vast majority of the information is obviously correct and those passages in the bible do exist and they are as vile or wacky as the authors are pointing out (after all, you can check the passages are in the bible yourself).

At the end of the book, I found myself hoping that the authors would create a second edition of the book, improving on the formatting and various other small issues, so that the book could be the absolute reference to shocking bible quotes that it deserves to be.

Yours,
Charles

Ben Goldacre on the Placebo Effect

I've been reading a few books by Richard Wiseman and Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki, among other people. Among other things, when you read books about science written by scientists, as well as being far more interesting than any news article about the same topic could be, you also hear about the placebo effect time and time again.

Well, here's a short stand up comedy sketch by Dr. Ben Goldacre explaining exactly how weird the placebo effect really is:



Yours,
Charles

News in Review

I've lately been able to spend a fair bit of time reading, which has made me feel pretty good. Among other things, I've finally finished Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, by Natasha Walter and 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, by Richard Wiseman. I enjoyed both books and will be very soon posting up my thoughts on them.

In the meantime, I thought I'd muse a bit on some of the events of the past few months.

• I imagine the Catholic church considers Wikileaks a miracle sent directly from God, for completely stealing the media's attention away from them. Hopefully, this won't mean people will forget what they've done.

• Speaking of Wikileaks, I don't understand how anyone could have anything against them. After all, Wikileaks is no different in concept than any other newspaper or news source, save that it allows for the release of far more important stories than the latest celebrity non-event. Whatever negatives effects Wikileaks could have, or be capable of, seem no different to me, than those that a newspaper would be capable of; namely publishing a story without properly considering the consequences.

• Wikileaks itself got pushed out of the news, at least in Australia, by the the more immediate news of disastrous floods happening in Queensland, Australia. Justin Bieber sends his prayers; which would be understood as a kind gesture, except that unlike every other celebrity doing the same, he does not mention or suggest donating to the flood relief fund, or indeed doing anything constructive at all.
  

• The Pope, probably upset that he hasn't been in the news for a while, tries to convince people that they should give their children proper christian names from the bible, in order to combat the moral decay that he sees in society. Note that this is the pope who, before he was pope, thought that the church in the 17th century was right to have threatened to execute Galileo if he did not recant his scientific conclusions that the earth moved around the sun and not vice versa.[1]

And that's everything off the top of my head.

Yours,
Charles

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Church_reassessments_of_Galileo_in_later_centuries

Hello Again and Happy New Year

It's been a while since I posted here, for various reasons, some of which still hold at the moment. The first is having a lot less free time with access to a computer (a necessary tool for both keeping up to date with the news and blogging, as you can imagine)*. The second however, and probably more important reason, was that blogging about strange or infuriating or just discouraging things that appear in the news becomes draining after a while. Or at least, it does to me. By paying special attention to these stories, they begin to become almost all you see, and believe me, there is no lack of such stories, to the point where the world can seem a far more bleak place than it is**.

For this, and for the fact that this made me take an extended break without warning, I apologise***.

I have been prompted (repeatedly) to start blogging again by readers, you know who you are. So here I am.

In an effort to avoid the mistakes I made last time, and work in with the new restrictions on time I have now, several things will change, though probably without being particularly obvious.

The first is that I won't be able to blog nearly as often as I did before, so I'll be aiming for at least once or twice a week.

The second is that I will consciously not just post about doom and gloom stories, but will also post about the stories that make me feel as warm and fuzzy on the inside as I am on the outside.

So with this in mind, thanks for reading and let's get started.

Happy New Year everyone.

Yours,
Charles

* And computers are already hard to get to in the jungle.
** And it's not exactly the friendliest of places at the best of time.
*** I apologise for the fact that I blogged predominantly about these stories, to the point of not being able to blog anymore, rather than apologising for the fact that the world has such events in the first place; something which I have no control over, no matter what you may have heard. (Though I'd be flattered, really).

Some Responses From Parliament

I've finally gotten some responses from Parliament to my letter (and email) that I sent a little while ago.

Dear Mr Monkey*

On behalf of Senator Adams, I thank you for your email.
It will be brought to her attention shortly.

Yours sincerely
JARROD LOMAS

Office of Senator Judith Adams
Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate

Liberal Senator for Western Australia

Electorate Office

48 Ventnor Avenue, WEST PERTH WA 6005
PO Box 930, West Perth WA 6872
Ph: (08) 9481 0349 | Fax: (08) 9321 4876

Canberra Office
Suite SG-98, Parliament House, CANBERRA ACT 2600
Ph: (02) 6277 3646 | Fax: (02) 6277 5774

I suppose that's to be expected, but here's another one:

Dear Charles*

Thank you for your email. Given that you don’t want to receive what you describe as party political rhetoric, I am interested to know how you intend to use the information you gather from the politicians to whom you have written.

Also could you provide me with your contact details including an address.

With best wishes

Julie Bishop

The Hon Julie Bishop MP
Deputy Leader of the Opposition
Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs

Canberra: 02 6277 2102
Perth: 08 9388 0288

www.juliebishop.com.au

To this email, I replied:

Dear Ms Bishop,

First, thank you for responding to my email.

Second, my interest is a personal one. By that I mean, I don't work for any media organisations, I am acting on my own behalf.

These are questions I have never really heard answered or even asked of particular politicians, save perhaps the ones most caught in the public eye. I decided I (and indeed perhaps most Australians) didn't know enough about the people guiding the country, as people, and that it couldn't hurt to ask a few questions. Chalk it up to curiosity.

On that note, rereading the phrase "political party rhetoric" I realise it could have come across as cynical or even abrasive. This was not my intention at all. I merely meant that I am aware that due to time constraints and a concern over saying perhaps unsubstantiated statements or statements that may come across as contradictory to party lines (if there are any), many politicians answer with generic answers (like Senator Conroy's office sending me a pdf when I asked about the internet censorship issue). I was just expressing a hope that, time permitting, the answers I received would be as honest and natural as possible.

I hope that answers at least some of your concerns.

My contact details are:
Address: *
E-mail: *
Mobile: *

If you have any need of more details, please let me know.

Yours,
Charles T. Monkey*

No response has been forthcoming from this second email to her. I wouldn't mind given that she's not my geographical representative, except that she's, you know, the Deputy Leader of Opposition in my country's government and if she could answer my first email, she could have answered the questions.

We'll see how things develop.

Yours,
Charles

* Not necessarily the actual details.

Letters to Parliament

A little while ago, I wrote a letter to Parliament. By this, I mean this letter was sent to every member of the Australian House of Representatives, the Senate, at both State and Federal levels, as well as all the members of my local council.

The letter was as follows:

Dear Politician*,

As a citizen with an ongoing interest in Australian politics I write to ask a few questions to ascertain your views on a number of issues; which political direction you are coming from and what you are aiming for.

Unfortunately, the kind of information I'm looking for from members of parliament, in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, is seldom forthcoming or is couched in party political rhetoric that doesn't give an accurate indication of the actual views held.

While several of the questions I wish to ask deal with complex topics that could in fact be the sole subject of a thesis on their own, I do not wish to impose it upon you to go to that level of detail. Of course, I would be more than happy to receive such an answer.

My questions are as follows:

1. What motivated you to move into politics? What motivates you now?

2. Where do you see yourself in 4 years? Where do you see Australia in 4 years? More importantly, where do you wish Australia to be in 4 years?

3. What are you aiming for, as a politician, both for yourself and Australia, in the longer term? In answering this, I am particularly interested in any goals you have that may extend beyond your own career as a politician, or beyond your placement in a particular role in government.

4. If you could wish for one thing for Australia, what would it be? For example, a free public transport system running at such a capacity as to reduce traffic on roads by 70% of 2010 levels by 2040 or, for the coal industry to be wound down and replaced by the geothermal or solar power industries by 2015. (Bear in mind I've pulled these examples and dates out of the ether, as I write this).

I thank you in advance for taking the time to read and hopefully respond to my enquiry.

Yours faithfully,

Charles T. Monkey**

I've started getting a few responses back, so I thought I'd begin posting them up here once I collect them all together.

This should be interesting.

Yours,
Charles

* Their name and title obviously went there.
** May not have been the name I actually signed with.

Potential Darwin Award Winner

Jim Rawlinson is a surfer. This is not the reason I propose keeping an eye on him as a potential winner of the Darwin awards*.

Jim was surfing, as surfers typically do, when a shark that was trying to catch turtles accidentally bit into Jim's board. This knocked Jim off balance, causing him to, according to Jim, fall onto the shark's back, where he remained for 5 to 10 seconds before sliding off.

Let us assume that what Jim is saying is accurate and not a fabrication, stranger things have happened. The reason I want Jim to be noted as a potential Darwin award is after his close encounter with the shark, he claims to have continued surfing for another 45 minutes before getting out of the water.

I must confess, the story makes him sound, I believe the term is, "bad-ass" and I expect the tale to be related around many campfires, perhaps with grandchildren sitting on one knee, enthralled at this legendary exploit.

On the other hand, had Jim been again accidentally attacked by perhaps even the same shark, I imagine the doctor would have no choice but to fill out 'Cause of injury' on related hospital forms as 'Stupidity'.

Yours,
Charles

* For those who don't know, the Darwin Awards are explained here.