Airport Security: The Response...

So, you will have probably heard of that plot on Christmas day of some nutcase who had explosives in his pants and attempted to blow the plane up, yet only managed to lightly singe his balls.

So, in true political glory, countries left right and center (well, mostly center really, mainly the US, UK etc) have ordered urgent reviews into procedures that never really worked against any criminal with a braincell anyway. Obama has ordered that people arriving in the US from certain countries will be searched. Some of you will think this makes sense. Some of you will cry "but good sir, that's like being guilty until proven innocent". But these aren't the main issues, this whole scheme can be quite simply circumvented by a terrorist going to a relatively safe country (say, the Netherlands) and then flying to the US. Clever ain't it? Oh wait, that's exactly what the dude did on Christmas day...d'oh.

On the other hand, countries like the US and Netherlands are strongly considering staring closely at our naked bodies via some clever x-ray gadgets because they can't use intelligence services or the no fly scheme properly and because it shows up stuff like explosives.

Of course, the best course of action is to overhaul the no fly scheme, so that, uh, terrorists (and cheeky journalists) can't make fake boarding passes/get knives on a plain/fly with no ID/get over a gallon of suspicious liquid on a plane etc...

Cervical cancer: and the case of the killer jab.

Read this article from the BBC website.

I am going to rip this article to shreds, much like I am currently devouring this rather delicious apple.

Basically, this article falls afoul of what I talked about in my blog post here.

The media does not understand causation. In other words, they will look at an outcome, such as in this case a teenage girl dying, and come to a conclusion perhaps a tad too quickly. They jump the gun, as it were - and this can have pretty silly consequences.

Take this hypothetical example. A man is hit by a train after tripping over his shoe laces. The logical conclusion is that he should have simply done his shoe laces up, the medias conclusion would just as likely be "long shoe laces prove fatal" or "govermnent urged to ban (long) shoelaces". In other words, the media would not realise that maybe the person was at fault some how.

Let's put this into context, This girl who died could well have died as a direct result of the jab. But she could just as likely have died due to underlying health problems being exacerbated by the jab, or it could quite possibly have been something causes coincidence. I don't think the media understands the term "coincidence" very well - but that's for another rant on another day.

Anyways, scientific trials for new drugs are nowadays incredibly pedantic. Nothing is kept to chance. Some people jump on the Thalidomide bandwagon and that drugs are never safe, but that drug was before drugs were tested on animals first and before all the rigorous safety guidelines.

Still not convinced?

There have currently been over 1,400,000 doses of the cervical cancer vaccination. Of that just over 4,600 reactions have been logged.

Out of the 1,400,000+ jabs. 1 person has died. By my hasty calculations, that's a piddly 0.0000007%.

Bad jab? Not a chance. Bad batch? Maybe. Bad health of person? Probably.

The media "doing it wrong"? Obviously.

Just another case of the individual not being accountable at all...god damn "injury lawyers 4 you"...

Discrimination and countering it with...discrimination!

Everyone discriminates, it's in our nature. We are more likely to trust people of our own race and to an extent, gender. Organisations discriminate due to the need to be competitive.

Discrimination is illegal (in the UK anyway).

Today the BBC reported that to counter accusations of ageism...they would actively aim to recruit older people.

In other words, they will counter ageist discrimination with ageist discrimination. Does one put out a fire by pouring fire onto it?

No.

I find it kinda silly that in response to discrimination organisations feel forced to employ a "token system" where they actively discriminate in order to comply with discrimination laws - even though they may have not discriminated in the first place.

Most businesses will employ people based on merit, their CV, if they can do the job better than someone else (ironically, this is technically a kind of discrimination). Unfortunately, the discrimination laws mean that it actually forces businesses and people to discriminate.

Just a thought, but I think our politicians should act with a bit of common sense sometimes. These discrimination laws appear to be causing more discrimination, rather than preventing it. Heck, the Police Service (not force as thats too "aggressive" and politically incorrect now) actively seeks to recruit from ethnic minorities and, for example, lesbians in order to "balance the books."

Who the hell made up this law? Nutters...

Employment and the consequences of acting like a complete wanker

In almost any job in which you have a boss, acting incompetently or breaking/bending the rules will likely get you sacked. Simple as that, it teaches people a valuable lesson on morals. This knowledge that being a bad person with regards to things like expenses and competance and the fact that is has consequences means that there is a good level in honesty.

Except for the public sector. This sector of work covers anyone employed by the government, this includes the military, police, fire, NHS politicians etc.

It is surprisingly difficult to get sacked from a job in the public sector - and for things such as redundancies, public sector employees need only worry in a recession (like now). Public sector organisations do not worry about profit, so incompetent staff generally do not suffer the consequences unless its really very very major (and I mean something like rape or other violent crime).

MP's expenses. That's right, a large number of MP's (who have a base salary or aprox £60k) were getting tens of thousands of pounds every year, many were also switching their "main home" so that they could get extra benefits to refurbish then possibly sell the house. In short, they were bending the rules (ie going against the spirit of them) in order for personal financial gain. An analogy is if a businesses man had a business card for "expenses" and used that cash to secretly finance a little business selling whatever. In the private sector, this businessman would get sacked when discovered.

I'd like to note, that ZERO MPs have been sacked as a result of the benefits scandel - if anything, they seem to think they have been short changed, Alan Duncan recently said while on holiday in some far off expensive island that they were forced "to live on rations." Mr Duncan, kindly shut up you fucking hypocrite. If you watched the episode of "Have I Got News For You" then you will understand my point of calling him a hypocrite. If you dont,

On the program he basically said:
"MP expenses, aren't they great? It's an awesome system! I love having monies for my many houses!"

A few days later, as the scandal started:
"This system is abysmal and must be stopped. It is dishonest and I not believe in it."

Another instance, recently a policeman convicted of rape was allowed to retain some of his police pension.

All this gives me the emotion where I start a revolution and go "rawr".

E-coli outbreak: the issue of health and safety

So, in the UK in the last week or two the bacterium e-coli has been discovered at various petting farms - several young children have become ill, some seriously.

Fair enough.

Now "experts" have called for under 5s to not be able to touch the animals at all.

Now that, I have an issue with.

Our immune system works by our bodies basically recognising a bacteria or virus and basically going "aha, i have a cunning plan!" and it makes antibodies to kill the infection blah de blah. Simply, if the body can recognise faintly an infectious bacteria, then it can fight it - it's why the common cold is pretty weak...it's so common that our bodies get really good at recognising the many cold viruses. For our bodies to be able to have an effective immune system in this way, though, we have to become ill at sometime. It is the same principle as vaccines - such as if you are injected with some dead cow pox bacteria then you will become immune to that and the very similar (but much worse) small pox. Genius!

What the experts are suggesting, then, is pretty stupid. Basically it can be put this way...under 5s not touching animals means they won't get e coli, but it also means they wont be able to get any other so called "tummy bugs" and so won't build up an as effective immune system. Meaning the children lose out in the long run. Nice advice, experts.

This "no touching animals if under 5" has other bad consequences too. If you watched "Jamie's School Dinners" on Channel 4 a few years back, you will have observed that many kids on the program did not know for example here their burgers, chips or fruit came from. A big reason for this is that children living in urbanised settings such as a town or a city will rarely see wildlife such as farm animals or orchards or crops etc. In short, this restriction on touching animals will mean even more children will be ignorant about where their food comes from as they will only know the animals from sight and perhaps smell - which in many cases is not as effective in terms of learning as actually doing the learning (ie touching the animals).

A much more sensible course of action would be to wash the kids hands straight after they touch the animals. Sure, they could theoretically get some nasty illness, but this act will mean they learn good basic hygiene at a young age and also learn where their good comes from to boot. Everyones a winner (except the animals which get inevitably slaughtered/abused for food - but who cares? I like my steak and full English breakfast thanks)! If you look at history, improvements of basic hygiene, not limitations on contact with animals, is what saved lives.

I think these "experts" are stupid. I bet they work for the government.

Irony

Don't you just love irony? Whether subtle or blindingly obvious, it's nonetheless usually hilariously...ironic.

Click on the image to see it properly...

I realised, and I laughed. Hard.

On a more serious note, I fucking hate and wish to inflict harm on those who try to make money for these kind of phony "causes". Seriously, what would they spend it on?

And that is all for today, I'm knackered.

Media reporting on science

Everyday, we view/hear/read reports in all forms of media of scientific or medical things. Surveys tell us that people trust doctors the most and journalists the least.

So why do we believe the scare mongering in medical and science reports written by journalists?

This rant involves some numbers. Beware.

Ok, so basically, there are things called "relative" and "absolute" numbers. If in a media report you see the headline "COCAINE USE BY SCHOOL CHILDREN DOUBLES", then this is (almost certainly) a relative value, by this it means a 100% increase of the original percentage. In this case the use had risen from 1% to 2% - so the relative increase is 100%. Understand? In this case, the absolute number for the increase is 1%.

Note that in this particular real headline, the real statistics were 1.4% and 1.9%, the media got it wrong due to poor research and god damn civil servants rounding figures to make the situation sound bad. Fools!

Anyway, so already you can see how the media can make big (technically legitimate) claims, due to the phenomenon of relative statistics and how they can cause the audience to jump to conclusions. Here's another case.

"IBUPROFEN CAUSES HEART ATTACKS!" Yep, you heard me, this was the claim. It is technically true, but the actual figures were that out of 1,055 people who took the drug, there was an increase of a SINGLE HEART ATTACK. Enough for a front page headline? I shall not dignify that rhetorical question with a proper answer.

Always remember, the business model of the media is to attract our attention. Unfortunately, this often involves scaring us or twisting statistics.

"MMR CAUSES AUTISM!" Now this is the big one. A few years back research was conducted and it found that MMR caused autism. The actual research, quite interestingly, involved children with autism. Of the 12 children in the study, 8 had had the MMR jab. A (tiny) result! This finding was pounced upon by the media and lauded as proof that doctors are nazis who don't care about our well being and that the government is saving money at the expense of our health yada yada yada...

Anyways, research done by scientists in Denmark. Research of nearly 450,000 children, found absolutely NO link between autism and having the MMR jab. A meta analysis of research from three other countries came to the exact same conclusion.

Guess what? The media systematically ignored these major findings, I guess because they were "boring".

As I said, the media survives because they are so efficient at grabbing our attention. I'll also note that most science reports are done by general journalists with no qualification on what they are discussing. Science today is incredibly complicated. Can anyone within 10 metres of you fix a modern car now? Almost certainly not, 50 years ago - cars were so simple that anyone with a spanner could have a decent go. This analogy holds for the science world.

I'd like to add that all research results posted in this rant are real statistics, however shocking they are(n't). Not just figments of my imagination.


I advise reading Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, it inspired me to rant about this topic and is a great read!