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Thursday, February 24, 2005

HOMOEOPATHY RATHER THAN SCIENCE

The media are full of this story about how we are in danger from carcinogenic dye
The Food Standards Agency has issued a warning advising people not to eat the products but said there was "no need to panic" because of the "very low risk".

The full list of products can be found on the website www.food.gov.uk.

Premier Foods said it had been assured the powder did not contain Sudan 1.

"It must be stressed that the product withdrawal is a purely precautionary measure, and the levels at which Sudan 1 occurs in the products concerned presents no immediate risk to health," Premier Foods said in a statement.

How do they determine if a material is carcinogenic. Well basically they force feed a solid diet of the material to rats for years at about 5,000 times what you & I could manage to eat.

This stuff formed only a part of the chili powder - lets be generous & say 10%.

Worcester sauce is not pure chili powder or anything like it - lets say 1%.

The sauce is only a small taster of most most of these products - I'd say 1% would be high.

So the amount of this "poison" is 1/5000 X 1/10 X 1/100 X 1/100 = 1 part in 500 million of what sometimes causes cancer in rats. By the theory that there is no lower level on poisons that might mean 1 death in 500 million or 1 tenth of person here. In fact that is a rather silly political theory with no evidence behind it - the older theory is that "the dose makes the poison" which is fairly obviously true since many trace elements we need to survive are dangerous in large quantities.

homoeopathy is a medical theory that even if you dilute a substance so far there are less than 1 atom of it it will still cure you. It was believed by the royal family, congenital idiots, hysterical women with more money than sense & nobody else.

And now the entire UK media.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

SOD OFF SWAMPY

From the Times & generally going round the anti-green bits of the net:
WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.
What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

"We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,"; one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. "I've never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view."

Another said: "I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot." Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: "Sod off, Swampy."

The things that get me about this in order of increasing importance are
1) the remark about Cockney barrow boys is quite indicative of exactly where the Greens stand in Britain's class war. The Greens do not represent oppressed workers but middle classes who are afraid that technological progress is taking away their social privileges & are trying to hold onto them by force. You can see this in their horror that air travel is becoming so cheap that even common types can holiday on the Seychelles. It is also obvious in the fact that their best votes are not in Springburn or even in rural constituencies but in such centres of environmental deprivation as Hyndland & Morningside. Also the funding which keeps the whole Green movement going comes from the Foundations set up by the established super-rich.

Actually this is very similar to the original Luddites who were relatively well off weavers who opposed the introduction of mechanical weaving. They were in the wrong but I have sympathy for them because they lived on the breadline - modern Luddites aren't even trying to keep their luxuries they are merely trying to ensure the Jonses don't catch up.

2) I only caught this side of the story today from the net & it is only published in this form by the Times & Washington Post. When I first heard it on the BBC they reported a successful attempt by Greenpeace to occupy the Exchange. So the BBC were, at best, taking Greenpeace's initial pre-written press release of a great success verbatim & putting it out as news.

Judging news either as something new & unexpected or simply as entertainment the fact that they got kicked out is much the better part of the story but most of our media either chose to print only Greenpeace's PR without checking or checked & decided to suppress the real story.

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