Thursday 17 November 2011

Science fiction.

Bit of a rush job today. There seems to have been something going on between Lulu.com, the printer, and Amazon who will currently list their books. I don't know what, but from January, books printed by Lulu won't be available on Amazon.

Well, it doesn't matter too much because I have separated my eBook versions from print ones in the ones I do myself. Traditionally-published ones aren't affected and the self-published are available in print on Lulu and in eBook format through other means. I don't bother paying to have the print ones available on Amazon.

The only one that was, was only available on US Amazon and it wasn't by me. It was by one of my other personalities, Romulus Crowe, and one of my current projects has been rewriting that book with less bile and more information. So the first edition is about to vanish from Amazon, so what? I don't think it sold a single copy on there. The price for a 32-page book plus postage was awful.

Still, it would be a shame to let it vanish so I made it into a Kindle version and put it in myself. The second edition won't be too far away but I didn't want to lose the first edition forever. It's been doing okay as an eBook on other sites (Barnes and Noble and Apple) because it's much cheaper and there's no postage. The overpriced print book dies, the cheap eBook is still there. That little rage-fuelled pamphlet isn't going away.

It was about ghosthunting and came about because I had to research ghosthunting when writing about a ghosthunter. I had to watch things like 'Most Haunted' and related nonsense as well as read some of the books written by babbling fools who consider themselves experts on something nobody really knows anything about. I saw, on TV, people with University degrees aiming an infrared thermometer at a 'cold spot' and convincing themselves that its detection range stopped in mid-air, where they wanted it to stop. I saw them using an EMF meter in one plane when EMF works in three, a device that records none of its readings and which they used only when it suited so their data had no baseline.

Whether ghosts and the supernatural are real or not was never the point. The appalling lack of rigour in such investigations was the point and the sale of gadgets to suckers when none of those gadgets can possibly do what they claim to do fired up the rage glands. They are Italian rage glands so it doesn't take much. In fact it took five years to calm down enough to do the non-rage version.

Those same rage glands are activated by the pronouncements of the raddled harridans of ASH and the hideous monstrosites plucked from Dr. Frankenstein's reject pile to staff the British Meddling Asses. There is an image of one such creature at Frank's place but be warned - as Snowolf said, her face makes Daleks hide behind the sofa.

It's not about smoking in cars. Not for me. When I had one I never smoked while driving. Never drank either. I smoke roll-ups and can't do it one-handed. Banning smoking in cars is not going to affect me at all especially as there will never be children in my car nor in my home because as Counting Cats said, you all know what they'd call me if they found one in my freezer. All sorts of unfair generalisations would burst forth even if I hadn't eaten the whole thing..

Dick Puddlecote has covered the story, and Pat Nurse and Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, and more. But really, it's not about cars. It's not about the cheeldren and it's not about the pubs and it's not about the railway stations and it's not about the buses and it's not about homes and so on.

It is about the utter debasement of science. All of it. It's about how I cannot trust a doctor any more because I know they are lying about smoking, about alcohol units, about five-a-day, so what can I trust from them? Everything they say is based on made-up propaganda. Nothing they say can now be relied on at all. If they put on a scary wooden mask and shook a gourd full of dried beans at me I would have just as much confidence in their pronouncements. I know doctors will object but they brought this on themselves.

What is the point of going through medical school if you end up being less reliable in your diagnoses and advice than a rune-casting Druid? Alcohol units recommendations are made-up numbers. Five-a-day is a made-up number. Second hand smoke is entirely lies and third-hand smoke is beyond derisory from a profession that calls homeopathy bunkum. There is no science behind any of it. It is personal prejudice based on spite and malice and that is now called 'science' and the utter morons who now make up our government accept it all. The exclusion and demonisation of huge tracts of the population is justified on the basis of... nothing.

Climatology is a religion, not a science. Only religious texts are immutable. Real science is never settled but there doesn't seem to be any left. Just faith in Righteous doctrine.

We hear, often, about Islamic fundamentalism and how reform must come from within. That those Muslims who don't actually want to kill us all should speak out. That has started to happen.

I hear no scientist at all decrying the absolute destruction of science by the rafts of charlatans who now have the ear of government. I hear no doctors facing down the BMA and refusing to ask patients how much they smoke or drink or how much butter or salt they use when they come into the surgery with a bruised wrist. None. None at all. Yet the doctors must know that the advice they give is based on less reliable data than the avearage witchdoctor uses. The scientists must realise that their entire profession is now held in lower regard than alchemy. They say nothing.

The entire medical profession is being dismantled from the top down. The credibility of science is ruined. Where is the reform from within? There is none. They are just letting it happen.

They are allowing their radicals to destroy them, and us, and doing nothing about it. We can only assume that there are no moderates in science or medicine and that they are all liars and charlatans. No other conclusion can be drawn. They all just make up whatever suits them and are gratified when the drones believe it all. Doctors are no use and neither are scientists. They don't want to do what they are paid to do. They have found it easier to control their flocks using made-up nonsense.

Deny it if you like, doctors and scientists, but you have no credibility any more. The parasites you have allowed to flourish unchallenged now rule your professions and their actions define you all. It was your choice, it always was. Shouting at me won't change anything. Do any of you have the guts to shout at those you should have shouted down years ago?

I doubt it. I really do. And as a scientist myself who does shout at those who are destroying science even though I now do it from a position of redundancy and difficult self-employment, I hold my head high. I will not succeed alone but I tried. More than the rest of you cowardly weaklings can say.

Laugh at me for the ghosthunting book. Scoff at my attempts to vary my income. Yes, I write fiction as well as science.

At least my science is not fiction. How many scientists or doctors can now say the same?


11 comments:

Anonymous said...

LI.

All is not lost.

As you probably recall, my wife has MS. She has recently had a bad 'episode' (I do not want to go into the gruesome details).

I had to call out the District Nurse. There are several individuals. Both my wife and I smoke a lot. Not a single nurse has mentioned the fact. Not a one. Not even an implication. In fact, I pointed out to one of them my tobacco plant patch in the garden. There are ashtrays here and there with fag ends in them. I even described us as 'dirty, filthy smokers'.

The only thing that we do, is stop smoking in their presence when they arrive. Not that it matters - rather more 'leave us alone and we will leave you alone'. That is, if they leave us alone, we will not complain about their cockups.

Some how, and it is difficult to find a way, the cockups of the BMA and the RSP (Royal Soc of Physicians) must be brought out. They are far too flatulent.

john miller said...

Before I launch into this one I should point out that HMRC use the techniques I describe all the time to collect tax.

I would also point out that doctors referring to "tobacco related deaths" are merely parroting their own made up statistics. I only recently realised that all hearts attacks are allocated a percentage of "smoking related cause" even if the sufferer doesn't smoke. Just as any disease of the liver bears its quota of "alcohol related disease". Thus every disease carries its own little statistic, notwithstanding its true cause. So the health Nazis have decided that every 1000 fatal heart attacks give rise to 850 smoking related deaths. They then tell you this as a fact.

Anyway, I've decided to help Viv implement her plan. Ban smoking from everywhere except the smoking shed at the bottom of your garden. People living in flats will have their own individual smoking box near the dustbins.

The price for this?

Every penny collected in tax and duty from "tobacco related activities" is used for the benefit of smokers.

And I don't just mean from the sale of fags. Oh no. Just as second hand smoke exists and third and fourth and...

Every newsagent will be designated as having a percentage of his profits arising from "smoking related activities" and therefore a precentage of his tax will go into the Smokers' Fund. Tesco's contribution could be a biggie.

Every car dealer who supplies a company car to a "tobacco related executive" will have to put a proportion of the tax and duty and tax on the profits relating to that car into the Smokers' Fund.

Of course, we can just use the BMA approved method of calculating this, so we can just require each car dealer to pay 0.05% of his tax into the Smoker's Fund, rather than calculate each individual liability.

Of course, we then look at the tax on the profits of the companies that provide car spares, petrol, MOTs, etc etc.

Then we look at the proportion of PAYE that we can lay claim to, paid by the employees of said companies.

Then, irony of ironies, we look to those companies producingno-smoking signs...

Of course, the basis for this is that using any "tobacco related" tax or duty by non-smokers is the equivalent of living off immoral earnings. And the methodology of calculating contributions is BMA approved, so it can't fail.

Whaddya think, Viv?

(I've never done this before but WV is "notaxit" ffs)

smokervoter said...

You've done a lot to demystify science for this layman/carpenter. Reading your blog is often like sitting in on an engaging, palatable science lesson. It doesn't leave you wondering if you'd just been sold a bottle of snake oil due to a jumble of double-negative sentences purposely constructed so as to obfuscate the obvious. I call that health crusade bias.

I learned from your deconstruction of the thirdhand smoke study by the Institute of Technology in Haifa just what ozone is and what it does and it stuck in my head to this day - "a form of oxygen with three atoms instead of two" that bumps into things. Prior to this it was simply the weird smell that came off of small electric motors to me.

Thanks for the all knowledge you pass along, you're a credit to your discipline.

Neal Asher said...

I agree with much of what you've said here, Leg-Iron, but wish you hadn't used that title. Generally science fiction writers adhere to scientific fact much more closely than those dicks at the BMA.

Anonymous said...

Today's news.

Cigarette safety standards tightened across EU

"New cigarette safety standards have come into force in an attempt to cut the number of people killed in house fires.
They mean that every cigarette sold in the EU must meet a reduced ignition propensity (RIP) requirement.

Cigarette paper must have special bands at intervals down its length so that, once lit, a cigarette will go out if it is not actively smoked.

The change has been welcomed by safety campaigners and anti-smoking groups."

"The anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) believes the new cigarettes could dramatically reduce the number of house fires.

Its director of policy and research, Martin Dockrell, said "Cigarettes are without doubt the most dangerous consumer product on earth - they kill 50% of people who use them."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15754934

Rose

George Speller said...

LI - I'm sure you're too modest to point out that if you did your science the way these bastards do there wouldn't be a farm animal left standing.

PS word verification is "macclaye" I think I might use that at a pseudonym

G.F.Macclaye

View from the Solent said...

"I hear no scientist at all decrying the absolute destruction of science by the rafts of charlatans who now have the ear of government."

LI, that's because such information doesn't fit with the prevailing orthodoxy. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
For example http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/9/14/a-nobel-deed.html

Or search on Freeman Dyson.

Michael Fowke said...

Ghosthunting? You should take a look at sleep paralysis. I think it's ghost attacks myself.

Anonymous said...

Some of what these people say is true; but, it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

BMJ article stated that Irish pubs(48) had 340 ug/m3 of PM2.5 'caused' by smoking.
This may be true(?), Irish pubs may be lacking in ventilation for all that I know.

But, a m3 of air contains,by weight, 1.286 billion ug(micrograms) of air.

You can add the 340 ug to that and then find out that 99.99997% of the weight of a m3 of air is NOT PM2.5 'caused' by smoking.

I guess that they use the 340 ug/m3 because it sounds a lot scarrier than saying 1/3rd of 1,000,000th of a gram per liter.

Gary K.

Anonymous said...

You might wonder what is in that 99.99997%.

Here is a list of 33 of the 188 toxic pollutants the EPA has found will be in CLEAN smoke free,urban air.

Some you may recognize as being in cigarette smoke and there are some that are not found in cigarette smoke.

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/nata/mapconc.html


Acetaldehyde-Acrolein-Acrylonitrile-Arsenic Compounds-Benzene-Beryllium Compounds-1,3-Butadiene-Cadmium Compounds-Carbon tetrachloride-Chloroform-Chromium Compounds-Coke Oven Emissions- 1,3-Dichloropropene-Diesel Particulate Matter-Ethylene dibromide-Ethylene dichloride-Ethylene oxide-Formaldehyde-Hexachlorobenzene- Hydrazine-Lead Compounds-Manganese Compounds-Mercury Compounds-Methylene chloride-Nickel Compounds-Perchloroethylene-Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB)-Polycyclic Organic Matter (POM)-Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (7-PAH)-Propylene dichloride-Quinoline-1,1,2,2-Tetrachloroethane- Trichloroethylene-Vinyl chloride

Gary K.

Man and a half said...

Superb article, clear and passionate.

So depressing the nonsense they come up with, as you say so-called scientists and doctors.

They have already "re-considered" their warning, didn't take long lol

http://fullfact.org/factchecks/smoking_in_car_health_safety-3123

Well done again on your terrific article, keep it up!

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