That Explains So Much

You Know What's Stupid? Everything I Don't Understand

Will you look at all this stuff I have neither the intellect nor the maturity level to process? What a load of crap. It's in my face every day, doing lots of things I don't have an immediate desire to do and saying things I can't identify with at this stage in my life. How lame is that? I mean, what kind of pathetic loser would actually enjoy something that's so incredibly not among my personal preferences? Not me, that's for sure.

At the very least it explains that Guardian (Comment is Free, Thought Less) article below.

Who Guards The Guardian?

I grew up with the Graun. I used to read it most days as my parents had it delivered. These days, being in Austria, I check various Grauniad rss-feeds for my daily news intake. As a Liberal paper expressing the viewpoints of its readership it really shouldn't be too surprising to, every now and then, find articles expressing the exactly the sort of middle-class Liberal, London-centric, small-minded-ness that gets them derided in the tabloids. I don't even much care for Birmingham, but the heading and sub-heading for the article on the other side of this link, turned my stomach slightly:

Brum: Britain's number one?
Birmingham is to join Delice, a European food network. Are there not better qualified places?

I assume that Delice did some research. They didn't just pick Birmingham out of a hat. Perhaps Birmingham might have bid most and earliest, though that would suggest a city trying to enhance its image and therefore worthy of some encouragement, rather than outright sneering.

The cheek, really, of Delice not coming cap-in-hand to London first, if not for London's sake, but so that London-based journalists can spare Delice the embarrassment of choosing Birmingham when they could have suggested Ludlow, Cambridge or, in a few years when the requisite top chef has made his mark, Nottingham.

Update: Rebecca Seal, the author of the original post has now commented:

I'm not bashing Birmingham at all - I'm sure it's a brilliant place to live (and eat).

And yet the article starts with the question above and ends with:

Which towns have a proper food culture that's worth shouting about?

I'm sure the condescension wasn't entirely intended, but the whole article suggests Birmingham is neither qualified nor has a proper food culture. I don't know enough about Birmingham to really comment about that, but I'd be unwilling to just dismiss it out of hand. It's obvious that, as she hasn't done a lick of research, Ms Seal doesn't know enough either.

I suppose that's why the proper part of the Guardian has qualifed sub-editors.

It isn't just about Birmingham. I'm sure if the city in question were Sheffield or Leeds or wherever the same comment would be made. It's telling that in Ms Seal's later comment she adds:

However, while I'm not pleading penury, the Observer's budget definitely doesn't extend to sending me, or any of us, off to eat all over the country

It really should, shouldn't it?

Bad Science On Placebos

As Ben Goldacre of The Guardian points out, one of the most interesting thing about placebos is that they work. The effect can also effect the potency of some drugs that should work on a purely chemical level:

[A] study by Daniel Moerman looked at 117 studies of ulcer drugs from 1975 to 1994 and found that the drugs may interact in a way you might not expect: culturally, rather than pharmacodynamically.

Cimetidine was one of the first anti-ulcer drugs on the market, and it is still in use today. In 1975, when it was brand new, it eradicated 80% of ulcers, on average, in various different trials. But as time passed the success rate of cimetidine - this very same drug - deteriorated to just 50%.

This deterioration seems to have occurred particularly after the introduction of ranitidine, a competing and supposedly superior drug.

Simply Everyone's Linking To ...

Garfield Minus Garfield. Which is probably best described by it's own blurb:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

I'm sure this has been around before, but it's popped up and made a splash again. The thing is that the blurb is true. Garfield sans Garfield seems edgy and often disturbing and the strips are much more compelling than the original.

Credit Where It Is Due

The photo below was taken by Robert Unterfurtner, official photographer of The BluesBerries. I should have mentioned it at the time, he's a great snapper and always manages to make less of my chins.

Robert doesn't have a website, so I can't direct you to it. But if you're in the Steyr area and need quality photos for whatever reason, please, look him up.

Moody Blues Photo

Click, as they say, to enlarge!

That Review Finally...

OK, so grumbling was heard about technical problems and there was perhaps slightly too much faffing around with levels and distortion and things like that.

My voice, it's said, was a little too loud in the first half. There's at least one person who doesn't find that a problem.

Especially as my singing was a strong as it's ever been at the Adabei gig, and I have the CD to prove it (I also have photos, these shall be appearing on the web pretty soon).

Yes, there a still niggles, I sometimes try things that don't quite work and my timing on intros can be suspect —there are plenty of rough edges, but I'm not sure everything should be smooth— but as a whole we played well and sounded pretty tight. There were some great solos and very effective rhythm sectioning.

It's not always good to keep on going forward if you are facing in the wrong direction, but the BluesBerries in my biased opinion are marching happily in exactly the right direction. Every time we play, something that was wrong gets corrected, something was merely ok gets better. I'm not claiming we are the finished polished product, yet, but the prototype as it is now is looking none too shabby.

Ashcroft Right

Verve were correct the drugs don't work just a Placebo. No word as yet as to whether Dodgy drugs cause Catatonia. Pulp and Blur are awaiting obvious puns.

New Poster

This is for Doherty's St. Patrick's Mini-Fest, I think you can see what I tried here:

Damning!

I don't really know the issues or personalities involved in John Scazi's rant about the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. I do, however, find his description of one of the people most damning:

[H]e’s the sort of person who is under the impression that passive-aggressive lashing out can be hidden or mitigated with a smiley-face emoticon at the end of a sentence.

As a bonus, it turns some thing I've been describing as "unskilled and unaware of it" actually has a name, it's the Dunning-Kruger effect. I shall be shamelessly dropping this at any available opportunity in the future.