Enemies of Reason

I'll start with the joy in getting hits back from Flickr as well as fun comments. In case you missed Don's comment Wilden Lane is out from the 17th to the 3rd, I expect it to be open for access to frontages. Oh and look out for the three-way traffic light system on the Worcester Road opposite Sandy Lane as well as the slalom down the estate.

[Forgot to mention the little fact that the 200yd marker correctly shows the left hand lane closed and the right one open, but the 100yd marker reverses that assessment; just slack.]

GMTV this morning "Let's talk about dreams" BBC "Let's talk about dreams" what have I missed a conference or something? GMTV took the proper route of getting a dream therapist in, the BBC took the wishy washy 'science' approach of getting a GP in, oh and a hypnotherapist "For recurring nightmares hypnotherapy is a good solution" he said, wow what a surprising statement from a hypnotherapist. Fortunately the good doctor had the most talk time and made a lot of sense, unlike GMTV's therapist "Dreams of falling indicate a feeling of being out of control" yeah or you've just been watching "The world's greatest stunts".

Speaking of superstitious nonsense Channel 4 had Richard Dawkins taking on the psychics, dowsers and astrologers and what a joy to behold as they all back-peddled and made excuses rationalised their failures. I swear one 'psychic' couldn't seem to start a sentence without prefacing it with "I feel...". Yeah someone says "I think" and you can argue logically; if they start with "I feel" or "I believe" then you'd be hitting out at them personally and we're all much too polite to do that.

Of course all this has a knock-on effect, sure have your own personal beliefs, just be prepared to back them up with facts. No matter how you may swear that copper burns red it still burns green and writing "I feel/believe this" won't get you a pass in a science course so don't do one, stick to the 'soft' sciences instead.

"Trees have an underlying tree-ness"
"and rocks a Rock-ness?"

So does a table have a table-ness? What if you sit on a table does that increase its chair-ness or are we talking about natural processes only? Take a block of marble and carve David out of it and does that mean it's lost its marble-ness? Does oil still have it's plankton-ness, we seem to be in the realm of homoeopathy here.

The guy doing the "-ness" insists its not an imposition on an object, of course it is. Describe the exact point that a pebble becomes a rock becomes a boulder. Look at a lump of coal (carbon) and a diamond (carbon) and compare with a tree (carbon) or an animal (carbon). Take all the elements and mix them up in different ratios and declare that this is therefore different to that. If you want to talk about "-ness" shouldn't we be looking at carbon-ness or oxygen-ness, perhaps proton-ness or even quark-ness?

Nah stick to the parochial human viewpoint and talk about rocks and trees; much easier.