Twits

Like many, many people, I just don't get Twitter. Nor do I want to. For the record, I am also not a fan of instant messaging, and tend to turn it off from gmail, Facebook, and other sites where it rears its ugly, unwelcome, interrupting head.

A few of my chums seem quite taken with Twitter, and there does seem to be an overlap between those who provide too much detail about their daily doings and those who use iPhones. I'm sure these things feed into each other. And some of them seem to have hooked up their twitterings to their Facebook account, meaning that I get that absurd level of detail turning up on my Facebook feed. It's really irritating, and I've resorted to hiding updates from friends who do this.

It got me thinking that the only way this technology is going to be acceptable to me is when it allows some sort of metadata that indicates how important the update is. That way, I can stay in the loop about important things that my friends are up to (e.g. if one of them is doing a show I might want to attend), but don't need to hear the trivial stuff ("going to the toilet", "in the toilet", "wiping" ...)

Of course, there's a lot more overhead involved, because I would have to specify what level of update was acceptable to me, and they would have to set the level each time they posted an update. Would it ever work? Or will we have to wait until the software is clever enough to understand whether a tweet is really significant (my gran has just died - she's gone for ever) or not (my gran has just dyed - she's gone for burnished beech-nut).

Not surprisingly, given the confusion of terms around twitter - tweets, tweetings, twittering - it is very tempting to call those who use it either twits or twats. Not that I ever would, of course.

Shoe / Lace / Blue

Is it my imagination, or have shoelaces become shit over the last few
years? The number of times I have started tying my shoes in the
morning, only to have the laces break on me is going up and up all the
time.

Is it one of those things that happens as you get older but no-one
tells you about, and you are left to discover it for yourself?

Are there environmental factors at play? Does living next to a
forest, and walking through the forest expose the laces to something
in nature which attacks the fibres in the lace?

The problem doesn't seem to be limited to one brand or one style of
lace. I've tried both the nice cotton variety, and the
plastic-feeling but "stronger" type (it may well be Mercerised
cotton). They both fail. And it just keeps happening.

Have I become much stronger? Or more inclined to tie my shoes aggressively?

So many questions.

Paper Boy

I'm in the paper. It's exciting.

(The Times, 23rd June 2009, times2, page 15)

Freezing in the light

Well, I've had a good run, but it had to happen some time ...

On Saturday, I was doing my dozenth stand-up comedy gig, and I had a bit of brain freeze, and couldn't remember what I was going to say next.  I managed to pick it up again, and got going.  Then I hit another freeze point, talked about it for a wee bit, and got back on track.  Unfortunately, the two freezes meant that I had less time available to me, so I had to drop some of the material that I had intended to perform.  Hey ho.  It was a learning experience.  I'm going to get my hands on a video of the performance so that I can analyse it a bit, but I think it was a combination of a big meal beforehand, and a lot of socialising, rather than hiding away and going over my stuff.  Once I got back on track, I got the audience on-side big time and got some huge laughs, so it could have been much, much worse.  So I'm not especially daunted or worried about my next performance.  As always, I'm just looking forward to it.

Bogus Osteopaths

The ever delightful Purps is encouraging folks to sign a petition supporting Dr Simon Singh in his efforts to avoid being sued for libel by the blinkered, fraudulent idiots of the British Chiropractic Association. I signed it. I hope lots of other people do, too.

The Telegraph have an article about it, as do most of the other papers, I'm sure.

I was especially taken with this Telegraph paragraph:

The BCA represents a quasi-scientific group of medical practitioners who believe that manipulating the spine can treat or cure a range of other conditions not normally associated with a bad back.

Such deliciously understated mockery. I love it.

There have been a great number of celebrity endorsements, including a very eloquent summary from Sir Steven Fry (okay, I know he's not been knighted yet, but it's surely only a matter of time). Funny man and husband to a doctor, Dara O'Briain also chipped in with this memorable comment:

The preliminary ruling is a worrying development for comedians as well, a number of whom have been ridiculing the world of dubious medicinal and scientific practices for some time. For example, I may now have to reconsider my routine about homeopathy being a 300 year old con trick.

I do hope the courts see sense on this matter, and I'm very grateful to see that James Randi has voiced his committment to back Dr. Singh in any way that he can.

We should enjoy it while we can. We can't know how many years the Queen has left in her, but when that gloved hand has waved its last wave, we're going to be lumbered with a King as in thrall to the looney new age horse-shit spreaders as it is possible to be. Okay, his mum her has own homeopath, but Charlie boy, with his Duchy product range is much more open and outspoken about it. Despite the recent setback of being accused of defrauding the public with his "detox tincture".

Incidentally, I recently read a few very interesting books on CAM (Complimentary and Alternative Medicine), as a result of which I will never have chiropractic again. Some of the manipulations they do can cause stroke! I don't want to be having one of those any time soon. Besides, the whole theory is based on "subluxations" which are made up nonsense. You might as well base a theory on naughty pixies wiggling your vertebrae during the night. I'll stick to regular massage from now on.

Amongst the other claims in one of the books I read, which was backed up with a lot of evidence, were:

• Chinese herbal medicine was more or less made up in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution
• Commonly used homeopathic remedies are so dilute that you would only get one molecule of active ingredient in a sphere of water with a radius greater than the distance from the earth to the sun
• The so-called Detox Foot Bath, or Ionic Detoxification relies on a standard electrochemical reaction

And what on earth are the so-called toxins that build up and need to be flushed from our bodies? Our organs do a very good job of that already, thank you very much. If they didn't, we'd all be dead.