The Bad Blogger

So, no blog entries since 8th December.

This is due to:
a. Fuck all happens
b. Life
c. An excellent young forum of nice clever people: Come play with us.
d. French stuff that was novel and amazing 5 years ago has now become routine. I need to rediscover some innocence and a sense of wonder.

My apologies for all those who clicked and saw the same page week after week.

Stuff I have failed to blog on and will try and catch up:
New Years Eve at the salle des fetes
Comic Book festival at Angouleme
The Tile Factory rocked by the financial crisis

Yesterday I finally got the bike out and cycled to work. 3:00am and -4C degrees! Yow! Worse than the cold was my utter lack of fitness and wobbly legs. I'm in lycra & jacket right now about to jump on the bike to go to the midday shift (+5C degrees).

On the scales I am 87kilos (192lbs) Who ate all the pies? That puts me 20lbs overweight. Fuck, that's a lot of cycling and lettuce.

The New Chez Nous

Join the Bloggers in France blogroll

The Bloggers in France blogroll is a means of linking the various people in France who (amongst other topics) blog about their experiences in France. Membership is limited to active bloggers who spend time in France. It is not limited by nationality or language.

Minimum Requirements:
You live in France or you spend time in France regularly. Your experiences give insight into the cultural differences between the French and other nations. You may love the country or detest it. You might write in French or your native language.

There is no requirement that your blog be exclusively French experiences. At "A night on the Tiles" I write about many topics, atheism, skepticism and current affairs among them. The learning experience of life in France is just one of the things that interests me.
if possible, could you display the Bloggers in France blogroll and its graphic on your blog.
Your blog must be active. Post at least once every two months to maintain your membership.
Photoblogs are welcome as long as some written content is provided.
No pornography please.

To Join:If you would like to join the blogroll, simply send me an email Put "Join the Bloggers in France Blogroll" in the subject line. In the body of the email, give me some info about you or your blog to use as short intro. I will add your blog after I have verified that your blog meets the minimum requirements. Also - send me any site you find worthy of joining. The goal is to collect as many fellow French bloggers as possible.


To include the blogroll on your blog:
When you email me requesting that your blog be added to the blogroll, I will send the code by return email.

My apologies to mojoey at Deep Thoughts for lifting most of this text from his intro to the Atheist Bloggroll

The Society of Homeopaths

via Skeptico and Orac (See blogroll on right)

The Society of Homeopaths successfully forced The Quackometer to drop an article titled The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing – an expose of how homeopaths falsely claim that homeopathy can prevent and cure malaria.
They threatened his ISP with legal action, and the ISP gave way.

In order to make sure that the article is always available, I reproduce it here.

The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing

By The Quackometer

The Society of Homeopaths (SoH) are a shambles and a bad joke. It is now over a year since Sense about Science, Simon Singh and the BBC Newsnight programme exposed how it is common practice for high street homeopaths to tell customers that their magic pills can prevent malaria. The Society of Homeopaths have done diddly-squat to stamp out this dangerous practice apart from issue a few ambiguously weasel-worded press statements.

The SoH has a code of practice, but my feeling is that this is just a smokescreen and is widely flouted and that the Society do not care about this. If this is true, then the code of practice is nothing more than a thin veneer used to give authority and credibility to its deluded members. It does nothing more than fool the public into thinking they are dealing with a regulated professional.

As a quick test, I picked a random homeopath with a web site from the SoH register to see if they flouted a couple of important rules:

48: • Advertising shall not contain claims of superiority. • No advertising may be used which expressly or implicitly claims to cure named diseases.

72: To avoid making claims (whether explicit or implied; orally or in writing) implying cure of any named disease.

The homeopath I picked on is called Julia Wilson and runs a practice from the Leicestershire town of Market Harborough. What I found rather shocked and angered me.

Straight away, we find that Julia M Wilson LCHE, RSHom specialises in asthma and works at a clinic that says,

Many illnesses and disease can be successfully treated using homeopathy, including arthritis, asthma, digestive disorders, emotional and behavioural difficulties, headaches, infertility, skin and sleep problems.

Well, there are a number of named diseases there to start off. She also gives a leaflet that advertises her asthma clinic. The advertising leaflet says,

Conventional medicine is at a loss when it comes to understanding the origin of allergies. ... The best that medical research can do is try to keep the symptoms under control. Homeopathy is different, it seeks to address the triggers for asthma and eczema. It is a safe, drug free approach that helps alleviate the flaring of skin and tightening of lungs...

Now, despite the usual homeopathic contradiction of claiming to treat causes not symptoms and then in the next breath saying it can alleviate symptoms, the advert is clearly in breach of the above rule 47 on advertising as it implicitly claims superiority over real medicine and names a disease.

Asthma is estimated to be responsible for 1,500 deaths and 74,000 emergency hospital admissions in the UK each year. It is not a trivial illness that sugar pills ought to be anywhere near. The Cochrane Review says the following about the evidence for asthma and homeopathy,

The review of trials found that the type of homeopathy varied between the studies, that the study designs used in the trials were varied and that no strong evidence existed that usual forms of homeopathy for asthma are effective.

This is not a surprise given that homeopathy is just a ritualised placebo. Hopefully, most parents attending this clinic will have the good sense to go to a real accident and emergency unit in the event of a severe attack and consult their GP about real management of the illness. I would hope that Julia does little harm here.

However, a little more research on her site reveals much more serious concerns. She says on her site that 'she worked in Kenya teaching homeopathy at a college in Nairobi and supporting graduates to set up their own clinics'. Now, we have seen what homeopaths do in Kenya before. It is not treating a little stress and the odd headache. Free from strong UK legislation, these missionary homeopaths make the boldest claims about the deadliest diseases.

A bit of web research shows where Julia was working (picture above). The Abha Light Foundation is a registered NGO in Kenya. It takes mobile homeopathy clinics through the slums of Nairobi and surrounding villages. Its stated aim is to,

introduce Homeopathy and natural medicines as a method of managing HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in Kenya.

I must admit, I had to pause for breath after reading that. The clinic sells its own homeopathic remedies for 'treating' various lethal diseases. Its MalariaX potion,

is a homeopathic preparation for prevention of malaria and treatment of malaria. Suitable for children. For prevention. Only 1 pill each week before entering, during and after leaving malaria risk areas. For treatment. Take 1 pill every 1-3 hours during a malaria attack.

This is nothing short of being totally outrageous. It is a murderous delusion. David Colquhoun has been writing about this wicked scam recently and it is well worth following his blog on the issue.

Let's remind ourselves what one of the most senior and respected homeopaths in the UK, Dr Peter Fisher of the London Homeopathic Hospital, has to say on this matter.

there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria and you won't find that in any textbook or journal of homeopathy so people will get malaria, people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice.

Malaria is a huge killer in Kenya. It is the biggest killer of children under five. The problem is so huge that the reintroduction of DDT is considered as a proven way of reducing deaths. Magic sugar pills and water drops will do nothing. Many of the poorest in Kenya cannot afford real anti-malaria medicine, but offering them insane nonsense as a substitute will not help anyone.

Ironically, the WHO has issued a press release today on cheap ways of reducing child and adult mortality due to malaria. Their trials, conducted in Kenya, of using cheap mosquito nets soaked in insecticide have reduced child deaths by 44% over two years. It says that issuing these nets be the 'immediate priority' to governments with a malaria problem. No mention of homeopathy. These results were arrived at by careful trials and observation. Science. We now know that nets work. A lifesaving net costs $5. A bottle of useless homeopathic crap costs $4.50. Both are large amounts for a poor Kenyan, but is their life really worth the 50c saving?

I am sure we are going to hear the usual homeopath bleat that this is just a campaign by Big Pharma to discredit unpatentable homeopathic remedies. Are we to add to the conspiracy Big Net manufacturers too?

It amazes me that to add to all the list of ills and injustices that our rich nations impose on the poor of the world, we have to add the widespread export of our bourgeois and lethal healing fantasies. To make a strong point: if we can introduce laws that allow the arrest of sex tourists on their return to the UK, can we not charge people who travel to Africa to indulge their dangerous healing delusions?

At the very least, we could expect the Society of Homeopaths to try to stamp out this wicked practice? Could we?

Christians are such lovely people

There's a new little forum I've been visiting.
It's called Russell's Teapot
I'd recommend this site for a number of reasons, not least because of the EXCELLENT cartoons by Chaz Braman, and their BRILLIANT series of "know your Bible" posters.
If you have not seen the cartoons or posters before, stop reading this post and click on the links to go there NOW. Go on, I can wait . . .
The site is named after, of course, Bertrand Russell who said of the ability to disprove the existance of god:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time

Now this excellent site has a little, young forum, so far only 36 registered users and not many posts. As a result of their comics and posters content (which you've just been to see, haven't you?) Their server receives constant attack. Chaz says:

It's interesting to note that the site is almost constantly under malicious attack by hackers. ... there's a big group out there working very hard to shut us down. Maybe Jason, my admin, can share some specifics about the attacks we receive. The numbers are pretty amazing actually.

Jason replied:

In the last 24 hours, we've had...
- +2000 brute-force break-in attempts.
- 13 distinct types of SSH, Apache, PHP, and MySQL attacks
- +500 spam e-mail addresses to various accounts
- 2 attempts to spoof or misroute our internet packets

and, my favourite by far...

- Over 100 distinct attempts to logon to the server, webpage, and forum as "JesusHatesYou"

The people involved probably think they are frontline soldiers in spiritual warfare. More likely they are bitter nerds who are breaking the law.

The Atheist Blogroll

If you look over to the right hand side of the page, in my links section, I have added the Atheist Blogroll.
This blogroll is currently running at over 220 sites, they may not all be exclusively atheist content. Like me they may only get on their atheist soapbox from time to time.
If your blog has atheist content, if you have significant things to say about the absence of evidence for any kind of god, and how that impacts on life, get added to the blogroll.
Joe Crumpler at Deep Thoughts can provide code for a rotating 25 site list, or a scrolling marquee. I've opted for the full list because at certain sites I visit daily (like Skeptico) have excellent links that I use daily, and I'd be bugged if I went there and a link I use regularly wasn't there.