553: Politics makes me feel stupid

Remember when Richard Nixon said "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal"? No, me neither. It was before I was born (Aside to self: would it be too arrogant to rephrase "before I was born" as "BKE: Before Kevin Era"? ... undecided ... ); back when it was all black and white. Way back in 1977; the year Elvis the King died and Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols was vomited onto the Queen's face. History. And that megalomaniacal utterance (the one from Nixon, not my stupid BKE thing) is one of the reasons he will be remembered as one of history's great big bell-ends. Much in the same way as Britain's current coalition government will be remembered after events of this last week.

Hooray Henry rah-rah we're going to smash the oiks braying their victory of public opinion and banging their destructive oily hands on their antique Bullingdon-battered tables. They destroy the NHS and the lives of Britain's poorest and most vulnerable with the wild abandon, social disregard, and lack of shame that Cameron and Boris Johnson destroyed restaurants in their student days. Cameron, Andrew Lansley and all other associated cunts and cronies are having the times of their pampered, privileged lives. The rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer and deader. And the rich will not give a shit.

I don't know what I'm talking about, but perhaps that's the set trap I've fallen into. These things are supposed to be complicated and tedious and as a result I'm uninformed and ignorant. They are supposed to be unjust and infuriating and as a result I am confused, frustrated and angry. The upshot of all this is that the public (I'm speaking for myself, if even I am speaking for anyone at all) are helpless and impotent as the ruling class repeatedly punches down, smashing the oiks.

Political injustice is so easy to get furious about, but so difficult to do anything about. It's not even easy to get a basic understanding of what is going on and why. It's not even easy to understand if what is perceived as injustice actually is. Perhaps it is the lesser of all possible evils, a temporary step back, a regroup. Political decisions aren't for ever. But can they cause irreparable damage? Is there an alternative to the Coalition which has the strength and intelligence to undo the damage being done? Sigh...

547: I can do an English speaks

Question, quest, quench, quorn, quesadilla, queue, quibble, 

quince, quiche, quick, quickest, quickie, 

quack, quid, quidditch, quite, quiet.

Qi, Qabalah, faqir, Qatar, qat.

Key, Kabalah, faker, cutter, Kat.

Qwerty.

I wonder if we can get rid of the u that nearly always follows the q in standard English words. It seems like a redundancy to me. By that I mean that Qu contains no more information than q. Observe: A q on its own, as when saying the alphabet, is pronounced kyew, like the first sound in cute. Qu is usually pronounced kw, as in queen or consequences. But sometimes Qu is pronounced as kyew, as in queue or quay. Admittedly I don't have a qlue what I'm talking about, but the more I think about it qu and q seem redundant.

The English language is a bizarre and beautiful beast, and its nuances and idiosyncrasies, so difficult to explain to non-native speakers, seem to be the result of accidents of history. Mixing the pronunciation from one region of Medieval England with the spelling from another when the movable type printing press became a thing. This leaves us with oddities such as "an hotel" which is a mixture of the apparently correct "a hotel" with the once correct pronunciation of "an 'otel" from the French dropped 'h' where the word comes from.

I can only assume now that the Q and the qu combo come from one of the invaders that have taken this land in the last thousand or so years. Why should queen not be spelt kween? Why should 氣

not be anglicised as ki instead of qi, and why should قطر not be anglicised as Katar instead of Qatar. Is this simply to inform the reader that this is a foreign word, recently admitted to the language, like the Japanese habit of using a seperate syllable set, katakana, for non-native words. (Notice katakana, not qataqana.) Anyway, I thought that, in English, foreign words were usually indicated by using italics.

Clearly the English language is full of contradictions, redundancies, errors, mistakes, pointless rules and downright gibberish. Makes me wonder why it took so many hundreds of years for the Bible to be rendered in English; seems like they make obviously perfect bedfellows. But I digress. Again. Anyhoo... I started off thinking I'd solved some long problematic error in the English language. Turns out I'm an idiot. Interesting.

I wonder how many millions of years it would take to comprehensively document all the oddities of the English language. Just look at all the different pronunciations of gh: ghost, cough, enough, hiccough, laugh, daughter, bright, dough, through, and plough. Not to mention its unusual use for creating past tense verbs: caught, taught, bought, etc.

Pff!

Exit, pursued by a bear.

460: The Great Stanisław Coincidence

November 2011 is, for me, the month of the great Stanisław coincidence. First on Tuesday I started reading The Cyberiad by Stanisław Lem. A legendary Polish science-fiction writer who I have only just discovered under recommendation from this guy. The very next morning I turned on the laptop at 7am, fired up the browser and was taken to my homepage, the endlessly useful google.co.uk (you may have heard of it). I like having google as my homepage because I enjoy the occasional surprise of a google doodle; yesterday was the most incredible day for google doodle spotting. It was an interactive game/animation depicting scenes from The Cyberiad (and possibly other stories by Stanisław Lem; I'll find out the more I read). I honestly thought I was dreaming; the coincidence was too high and it set me off for the day convinced all was not quite normal with the world.

Stanisław Lem, as an author, was new to me, and the very name Stanisław (pronounced Stanis-wav) is entirely new to me. Might make a good name for my wee future baby boy? The great Stanisław coincidence continued today. At work I read the free papers from cover to cover three or four times. Monday to Wednesday this is just The Metro, but on Thursday and Friday The Manchester Evening News is free too. The letters page in today's MEN featured a letter, from a Manchester resident called Stanisław, informing a previous correspondent about the time, location and price of a local tea dance. Then, upon coming home I began reading online an interesting series of tweets by Ben Goldacre (Bad Science), and articles from the wonderful Quackometer blog:

The Burzynski Clinic Threatens My Family.
The False Hope of the Burzynski Clinic.

These posts were inspired by something called the Burzynski Clinic (that much is obvious thus far). Burzynski exhibits many typical traits of your typical quack, and in order to avoid the kind of hassle that quacks give their critics (read the above link about threats) I'm going to stick to describing him using quotes from wikipedia:

Since December 1976, Burzynski has administered peptides and their metabolites, which he calls antineoplastons, as treatments with alleged anti-cancer activity.

Another Stanisław

There is no convincing evidence from randomized controlled trials in the scientific literature that antineoplastons are useful treatments of cancer and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved these products for the treatment of any disease.[1] The American Cancer Society has stated that there is no evidence that antineoplastons have any beneficial effects in cancer and recommended that people do not buy these products.[2] A 2004 medical review described antioneoplaston treatment as a "disproven therapy".[3] Oncologists have described Burzynski's research on antineoplastons as "flawed" and "scientific nonsense",[4] and independent scientists have been unable to reproduce the positive results reported in Burzynski's studies.[5]

In other words there seems to be an consensus amongst experts that his methodology is flawed and his results are ineffective. At best this means he gives false hope to dying people as he takes their money while contributing to the public mis-understanding of science, at worse he, well I won't say. To make matters worse The Observer have just done an unquestioning puff-piece (The worst year of my life) about the sad case of a four-year old cancer patient and the hopeful and desperate parents attempts to raise £200,000 to pay Burzynski. It's a terribly sad story, and one that loads of celebrities have helped to raise money for. That money should go to Cancer Research, who do real work in the fight against cancer, not a quack running a private alternative clinic. Click here and here for information on Burzynski from Cancer Research.

Burzynski's first name is... you guessed it: Stanisław! And that brings us to the end of the great Stanisław coincidence of November 2011. And remember readers, fight cancer and quacks, not cancer with quacks.

167: sickening life-draining lingering zombification

Continuing yesterday’s geek-on I actually can’t wait for today’s episode of Stargazing LIVE.  Unfortunately the inevitable and unpleasant return to work is drawing closer.  Closer and closer with every ticking tocking second; closer and closer, eating away at my freedom and happiness.  That’s what work is, was and always will be.  The sickening life-draining lingering zombification that is the menial minimum wage grind.  Where is that deus ex machina that will purge my life of tedium and time-wasting, and fill my bank account?  Anyway, now that is out of my system I can go back to the childish enthusiasm roused by popular science and stuff.  It just makes me think what am I doing wasting my time for £5-something an hour when there is so much to learn and explore and write about.

As you might be able to tell I am currently undergoing some sort of late-20s crisis involving my professional life (or lack of one) and my private life (which is haemorrhaging money exponentially), and seeing people living their passions makes my lot hard to swallow.  I guess the only cure at the moment is patience and hard work.  I must have the patience to do the day job and not let it take over my life, and still allow myself the time to work hard on finishing the main three writing projects I am working on and getting them sent to the target markets.  Also I’ve now got a wedding to save for that I’ve barely thought about, but which has taken over my fiancée’s mind.  Just remember to breathe.  And get some sleep occasionally.

It’s times like this when I wish I was one of those massive losers who has ‘moved out’ into their parents cellar, and has loads of ‘friends’ on X-Box Live, and no reason or motivation to work.  Instead I’ve got real things like a flat and a fiancée and some good cook books and kitchen appliances, and gosh darn it I actually have to go and earn a living.  Although if I go on much longer with this unappealing whining and complaining, lazily wishing I was a slug, I might find myself suddenly single and living in a cellar in Lancaster.  That really wouldn’t do at all; be careful what you wish for, etc.  How much writing would I actually be likely to do if I had nothing to motivate me?  I would certainly spend my days sleeping, evenings drinking and nights watching telly and playing Civilisation IV.  Not that much different from now, to be honest.  So even though I have confused myself, and possibly made the opposite point to the one I thought I might make, I think I have reminded myself what it’s all about.  Confused?  Yes, me too.  It’s best I don’t read that back and try to make sense of it; I really don’t have the time.

Right I’m off for a cup of tea, and then try and get a little non-blog writing done before I fall asleep.  And maybe I’ll apply to join the runner pool at BBC Salford.