On the way to deliver another Scholarly Activity workshop in Manchester, I've found in today's papers yet another victory for reason and common sense dressed up as some sort of attack on Christianity by sections of our more reactionary press.
Happily for those of us who believe that only evidence based treatments have any credibility, Lesley Pilkington has lost her appeal against getting struck off by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy for professional malpractice, or in other words trying to "cure" homosexuality with a combination of counselling and prayer.
This so-called reparative therapy considers the sin of homosexuality to be an illness which can be put right by supernatural implorations, and even apparently asked a patient if any of his relatives were Freemasons, although how this could be connected wasn't explained in court or in Mrs Pilkington's post hearing interview.
She did however say that "counsellors with traditional views are being closed down": a statement I hope is a refection of our legislators' efforts nationwide . She's entitled to her views, no matter how irrational they are, but they have no place in a professional, scientific arena, and certainly should never be foisted on what might be very vulnerable individuals.
Monday, 21 May 2012
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Newsflash: 30 pieces of silver replaced by a pen
Idly flicking through the television channels while the cricket's rained off, I've come across what appears to a be loop of adverts aimed the elderly, the infirm, the very poor, the unemployed and in this case: me.
In amongst this heavy rotation of lawyers, loan sharks (do some people really think 1750% loans are a good idea?) and bingo there's good old Sir Michael Parkinson telling the over 50s how to cover their funeral costs and get a free pen. Apparently over 790,000 people have agreed to partake in a scheme that promises a limited lump sum on death, even though contributions are not.
This static nest egg won't rise even when you've covered it, but your payments continue until your last breath, so suppose you pay £20 every month and live to 94? It's not hard to see that you'll pay out over double what you'd get back, but if you unfortunately died at 93, neither you nor your dependents would get anything.
Not exactly a good deal, and one that any reputable insurance company could easily improve on, but perhaps Sir Michael doesn’t see it that way.
Maybe he really believes in this "investment".
Maybe he even has one himself.
Maybe he really is so in need of whatever AXA are paying him that misleading the elderly doesn't bother him in the slightest ...
In amongst this heavy rotation of lawyers, loan sharks (do some people really think 1750% loans are a good idea?) and bingo there's good old Sir Michael Parkinson telling the over 50s how to cover their funeral costs and get a free pen. Apparently over 790,000 people have agreed to partake in a scheme that promises a limited lump sum on death, even though contributions are not.
This static nest egg won't rise even when you've covered it, but your payments continue until your last breath, so suppose you pay £20 every month and live to 94? It's not hard to see that you'll pay out over double what you'd get back, but if you unfortunately died at 93, neither you nor your dependents would get anything.
Not exactly a good deal, and one that any reputable insurance company could easily improve on, but perhaps Sir Michael doesn’t see it that way.
Maybe he really believes in this "investment".
Maybe he even has one himself.
Maybe he really is so in need of whatever AXA are paying him that misleading the elderly doesn't bother him in the slightest ...
Thursday, 29 March 2012
A shroud and its sillier aligning
I've just finished another Scholarly Activity workshop (the third in a series of seven) in Manchester and would like to thank Adele Turner for bringing me a copy of Saturday's Telegraph which contains a wonderful example of how not to conduct evidence based research.
In it, a Cambridge-based art historian called Thomas de Wesselow describes his feelings upon finally seeing the Turin Shroud "face to face", and puts forward a "theory" as what it is. His "theory" is that the Shroud is indeed two thousand years old and the image on it is that of Jesus, but not necessarily created in a burst of divine energy during the resurrection. Although De Wesselow's "research" "was largely done at his desk or in libraries, save for one episode ... when the connection between the Shroud and Resurrection came to him in a kind of eureka moment", he's concluded that the first disciples didn't see the Risen Christ; they saw a soiled cloth with a miraculously-produced image on it and knew at that moment Jesus must have risen from the dead.
Neat idea, but unfortunately for his credibility as a historian, there's absolutely no evidence to support it. Nothing. No historical, material, scientific, archaeological or palaeographical evidence, and not even anything in the Bible as far as I can tell; where if memory serves correctly, Thomas is described as putting his hand into Jesus' pierced but resurrected flesh.
So logically, not only did the gospel writers, Paul, the early church fathers and everybody else writing things down during the development of Christianity keep the "facts" of the Easter (up)rising secret; everybody who saw it for the next millennium-and-a-half or so also neglected to mention the existence of the Shroud until it was exhibited in northern France around 1355. It was soon withdrawn from view on the orders of the local Bishop (Henri de Poitiers) who doubted its authenticity at the time "after diligent inquiry and examination, ... the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it, to wit, that it was a work of human skill and not miraculously wrought or bestowed."
The real mystery of the Turin Shroud, is unfortunately not just limited to why this undoubted fake continues to exert any fascination over believers, researchers, writers and documentary-makers, but that it also gets used to disparage 1988's carbon dating which gave the Shroud's date of manufacture as sometime in the 13th or 14th century. It would after all, be truly miraculous if the normal rules of carbon 14 decomposition were actually unreliable just this once. So not only is there good 14th century evidence that the Turin Shroud was known (or at least very strongly suspected) at the time to be a forgery, there is excellent scientific evidence to confirm it.
To paraphrase an old saying about ducks: if looks logically a fake, looks historically like a fake, and tests scientifically like a fake, then it's a ....
In it, a Cambridge-based art historian called Thomas de Wesselow describes his feelings upon finally seeing the Turin Shroud "face to face", and puts forward a "theory" as what it is. His "theory" is that the Shroud is indeed two thousand years old and the image on it is that of Jesus, but not necessarily created in a burst of divine energy during the resurrection. Although De Wesselow's "research" "was largely done at his desk or in libraries, save for one episode ... when the connection between the Shroud and Resurrection came to him in a kind of eureka moment", he's concluded that the first disciples didn't see the Risen Christ; they saw a soiled cloth with a miraculously-produced image on it and knew at that moment Jesus must have risen from the dead.
Neat idea, but unfortunately for his credibility as a historian, there's absolutely no evidence to support it. Nothing. No historical, material, scientific, archaeological or palaeographical evidence, and not even anything in the Bible as far as I can tell; where if memory serves correctly, Thomas is described as putting his hand into Jesus' pierced but resurrected flesh.
So logically, not only did the gospel writers, Paul, the early church fathers and everybody else writing things down during the development of Christianity keep the "facts" of the Easter (up)rising secret; everybody who saw it for the next millennium-and-a-half or so also neglected to mention the existence of the Shroud until it was exhibited in northern France around 1355. It was soon withdrawn from view on the orders of the local Bishop (Henri de Poitiers) who doubted its authenticity at the time "after diligent inquiry and examination, ... the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it, to wit, that it was a work of human skill and not miraculously wrought or bestowed."
The real mystery of the Turin Shroud, is unfortunately not just limited to why this undoubted fake continues to exert any fascination over believers, researchers, writers and documentary-makers, but that it also gets used to disparage 1988's carbon dating which gave the Shroud's date of manufacture as sometime in the 13th or 14th century. It would after all, be truly miraculous if the normal rules of carbon 14 decomposition were actually unreliable just this once. So not only is there good 14th century evidence that the Turin Shroud was known (or at least very strongly suspected) at the time to be a forgery, there is excellent scientific evidence to confirm it.
To paraphrase an old saying about ducks: if looks logically a fake, looks historically like a fake, and tests scientifically like a fake, then it's a ....
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Money Talks
I've just arrived in Crawley to deliver a day full of assessment workshops and am happy to discover that not only is there apparently no recession here, the local authority has such a cash surplus that it must surely be reducing the business rates and community charges for the coming year. Not convinced? Well the local paper is carrying the headline that West Sussex county council has spent over £100,000 making information videos on such important subjects as "how to wash your hands", and "how to use a mobile phone". Therefore, simple logic suggests a surfeit of cash, as they surely can't think that this kind of thing is in anyway necessary. Can they?
For example, any user of the national rail service could have told them that 90% of the population already know how to "get on train/switch on phone/call someone/use loud voice to tell that someone you're on a train .....".
For example, any user of the national rail service could have told them that 90% of the population already know how to "get on train/switch on phone/call someone/use loud voice to tell that someone you're on a train .....".
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Disreputable Behaviour
I'm currently watching Sky News in a London hotel prior to tomorrow's assessment conference and wondering how exactly Fred Goodwin has "brought the honours system into disrepute"? He didn't award himself the knighthood that the queen has just withdrawn; all he did was accept it. You could probably argue that he brought himself into disrepute by graceless behaviour and reckless management of the Royal Bank of Scotland. And you could also make a case that he brought the banking industry into disrepute (admittedly in conjunction with many other supposedly leading lights). But the honours system? That charge really ought to be levelled at those who recommended and confirmed the award for "services to banking" for someone who was effectively just gambling with someone else's money.
Now, it's not that I'm particularly advocating that (the now) Mr Goodwin deserves to keep his knighthood, but unlike previously dispossessed knights, he is not a criminal or a traitor, just someone who didn't turn out to have been quite so brilliant a banker as they thought him to be when bestowing the award in the first place. So it occurs to me that if you consider the many still-knighted leading bankers who must be grateful to Fred Goodwin for effectively taking the public flak on their behalf, you might conceivably say that he's performed his fellow money men a great service. And doesn't great service eventually lead to honours? A knighthood perhaps?....
Now, it's not that I'm particularly advocating that (the now) Mr Goodwin deserves to keep his knighthood, but unlike previously dispossessed knights, he is not a criminal or a traitor, just someone who didn't turn out to have been quite so brilliant a banker as they thought him to be when bestowing the award in the first place. So it occurs to me that if you consider the many still-knighted leading bankers who must be grateful to Fred Goodwin for effectively taking the public flak on their behalf, you might conceivably say that he's performed his fellow money men a great service. And doesn't great service eventually lead to honours? A knighthood perhaps?....
Friday, 6 January 2012
Troweller in Error
Much as I agree that gardening is important, after all the Office for National Statistics has declared it to be one of the few activities which make people of all income levels and national origins happier, but television gardener Alan Titchmarsh has told this week's Radio Times that "Gardening is more important than politics [because] it has a consistent point of view".
No explanation is supplied as to how he considers domestic agriculture on any scale able to hold a viewpoint, consistent or otherwise, or why political variability is apparently undesirable (surely the point of democracy is that change can, and does, happen?), but those of us who thought the appeal of gardening to be creative joy, useful solitude or a connection to nature, are now aware that in addition to the pruning, planting and potting: there's philosophy!
No explanation is supplied as to how he considers domestic agriculture on any scale able to hold a viewpoint, consistent or otherwise, or why political variability is apparently undesirable (surely the point of democracy is that change can, and does, happen?), but those of us who thought the appeal of gardening to be creative joy, useful solitude or a connection to nature, are now aware that in addition to the pruning, planting and potting: there's philosophy!
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Much ado about nothing sensible
Now I know that Hollywood produces works of fiction, and takes very extensive liberties with any actual facts upon which a story might be based, but I've just seen on the hotel television a report about the new film Anonymous which said that Sony Pictures were intending to send out "information packs" to schools to promote its release.
Not only did the reporter not point out how far from reality the film's basis actually is, she actually suggested that it was based on a credible theory which hadn't been disproved.
Well, let me have a go, and this is without even trying very hard...
The film advances the claim that Shakespeare’s works were written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who died in 1604. This was before 12 of Shakespeare’s plays were written, a year prior to the Gunpowder Plot alluded to in Macbeth, and five years before the Sea Venture ran aground off Bermuda and inspired The Tempest.
And that's without even trying to pull apart the "possibility" that De Vere put his own name to comparatively poor poetry while submitting works of genius behind an alias to a rival’s theatre company...
Quick (and admittedly not triangulated) research on Google tells me that the originator of this unintellectual drivel is an aptly named J.Thomas Looney, but unfortunately the stuff our schools might be getting won't come with a Looney Tunes label on the cover, just something that says it's "supporting education".
Not only did the reporter not point out how far from reality the film's basis actually is, she actually suggested that it was based on a credible theory which hadn't been disproved.
Well, let me have a go, and this is without even trying very hard...
The film advances the claim that Shakespeare’s works were written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who died in 1604. This was before 12 of Shakespeare’s plays were written, a year prior to the Gunpowder Plot alluded to in Macbeth, and five years before the Sea Venture ran aground off Bermuda and inspired The Tempest.
And that's without even trying to pull apart the "possibility" that De Vere put his own name to comparatively poor poetry while submitting works of genius behind an alias to a rival’s theatre company...
Quick (and admittedly not triangulated) research on Google tells me that the originator of this unintellectual drivel is an aptly named J.Thomas Looney, but unfortunately the stuff our schools might be getting won't come with a Looney Tunes label on the cover, just something that says it's "supporting education".
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