Wednesday 31 March 2010

Homeopathic smoking.

Further to that link to Frank's article in the previous post, here are two articles from New Scientist worth looking up. I'm not a subscriber so don't have archive access. The references are to the real-paper magazines.

Issue 2745, 30th January 2010, page 22: "Overdosing on nothing", in which the New Scientist supports those 'activists' who publicly swallowed huge doses of homeopathic medicine to prove it didn't do anything. New Scientist regards homeopathy as 'an arcane 18th century ritual' and scoffs at it.

I've never tried homeopathy so I don't care if it works or not. I'm not going to argue about it. Seriously, I don't care who drinks whatever dilution of what, as long as they don't make me drink it.

Issue 2747, 13th February 2010, page 15 (yes, just two weeks later): "Carcinogenic residue may pose third-hand smoke danger", in which the New Scientist reports, perfectly seriously, that barely detectable amounts of tobacco smoke - utterly insignificant when compared to the amount of smoke produced by one puff on one cigarette - will kill you.

Now, let's hear the nonsmokers (I mean antismokers, of course) justify why homeopathic principles are to be ridiculed in all instances except where they are applied to tobacco smoke. Smokiopathy, anyone?


Incidentally, New Scientist is also opposed to the teaching of creationism in schools, while at the same time regarding anyone who questions the doctrine of Climatology as a deranged heretic. Doublethink is alive and well at NuSci.

It's not science. it's NuScience and there's a reason for that.

Which I have just found the article for. Well, reports all done, I've been tidying this office and even I have to admit, it's an absolute disgrace. The dust has progressed even beyond what the average human male can ignore. That's a lot of dust.

Some of it has spawned new forms of life, I think. I certainly haven't seen anything with that many legs before.

7 comments:

Frank Davis said...

I'm thinking I might try making some homeopathic whisky. I figure that if I buy a bottle of a good single malt whisky - like Bowmore -, and blend it with pure homeopathic water over and over again until there are just a couple of molecules of whisky in each bottle, then the result will be something that will be not only a thousand times cheaper than a bottle of the real thing, but which one tiny sip will blow the back of my head off.

I happen to have an unopened bottle of Bowmore. So I think that when it's only got a few drops left in it, I'll make myself a bottle of homeopathic Bowmore firewater with the residue. I think you may have to stir it with celery or asparagus or something after you've added the water. And maybe drop in a lentil or two. I will investigate rigorously, and report back in due course.

dvide said...

Actually Frank homoeopathic whisky would be used to cure inebriation according to the Law of Similars :)

This is why it is not strictly homoeopathic principles being espoused here Leg-iron. Actual homoeopathic principles are far more wacky than you're giving it credit for.

Gendeau said...

1) Is it possible to take it easy with homeopathic medecine?

2) If homeopathy wasn't utter fucking bollocks, just supposing, why isn't the sea 'homeopathic everything'? Or do the water molecules' 'memory' get confused because they've been in contact with every compound on the earth at some point?

We need a moron tax, modern britain could pay of its debt in weeks, if not days.

Antisthenes said...

I love your blogs but regret I do not have the wit or intellect to comment on them, I do not have a PhD thingy I don't even have an 'O' level, that's not strictly true I have got three but I was 22 when I gained them so they don't count really.

Leg-iron said...

dvide - Homeopathy isn't any wackier than believing that opening an iPod owned by a smoker will give you cancer. Yet Apple won't honour their guarantees on items sold to smokers for that reason.


Gendeau - 1. Yes. Double the dose.
2. If water can remember everything, and I'm 80% water, why do I keep forgetting where I've left my keys?

Antisthenes - qualifications are only relevant in specific jobs. Just because I have a PhD in one subject doesn't mean I know anything at all about another subject. Ask me about plastering - no, don't, because I don't know. Ask three of my cousins instead - they run three separate plastering businesses and they have barely an O level between them.

You need intelligence to get qualifications, but the absence of qualifications does not prove the absence of intelligence.

Leg-iron said...

Frank - stir it with a stick of frozen vodka until the stick disappears. That'll work.

hangemall said...

L-I, I was following a few links from your site and I came across this article 49 percent of last year's lung donors in the UK were smokers. There is a link in this article to an original CNN article.

I did a little more digging and found this page showing the last three years of transplants, including lung(s).

49 percent of 140-odd in each of the last three years gives about 70 tranplants from smokers.

1 in 70 gives 1.4 percent "failure."

I think I would takes those odds, and if they went against me, I could always throw myself under the wheels of the car of the most Righteous person in the local NHS.

I couldn't quickly find stats concerning length-of-survival rates (in terms of years) from smoking and non-smoking donors. I wonder if there are any.

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