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us cities order curfews to stop violence?

Dentists 'pull out more teeth' under an NHS deal introduced two years ago,?

I'd like to see a piece on the BSc-in-witchcraft scandal festering in UK higher ed. Do you know about it?

Magwitch (#2) They have been about for years, but it's the postgraduates which have to be watched. They seem to have found opportunities in educational, clinical and forensic psychology these days. I have referenced some of their black 'arts' before, some have been endorsed by Mr Balls. In SEAL for example, the Executive Summary/Press Office announcement for the Primary Schools pilot seemed to say something at odds with the full report. But hey, it's magic..

This looks a interesting story

"Between mid-2006 and mid-2007, 605,000 long-term migrants arrived, up from 591,000 in the previous 12 months, said the Office for National Statistics.

The UK's population is growing by about a million every three years, also due to a rise in births, the ONS said.

About two-thirds of the increase in births were accounted for by women born outside the UK."

Steve-London (#4) Yes, don't forget, born here doesn't mean indigenous British. Furthermore, over 99% of London's growth over the next 30 years will be in BME groups, and what's more, the birthrate is also tilted towards lower SES groups. So there will be lots more crime and lowering of educational standards.

Isn't freedom and equality a truly wonderful thing?

Magwitch #2

I'm afraid this is very vague but it wasn't so long ago was it that Trading Standards took a stance on such things as 'mediums' and other psychic practitioners requiring them to be able to prove what they were asking payment for. As far as I recall it resulted in the sudden change from 'Seance' in publicity lines to 'Experiment".

There was a woman working within Harrods(?) offering supernatural services who was also conneccted with the prison service?

Can anyone help me here?

Re #6

Ooops, failing memory due to extreme old age / too much work.

It was NOT Harrods (it was Selfridges I am reliably informed) and the was NO connection with HMP.

Sorry for any confusion.

I tried to submit a post containing links to the DCscience.net blog and recent THE articles which explain what I'm on about.

The witchcraft in question is homeopathy and other varieties of pseudoscientific quackery. Some of our universities are offering /BSc/ degree courses in this occult drivel - bringing their institutions into disrepute, perpetrating a vile fraud on their students and the public and corrupting science.

Despite the valiant efforts of Prof. Colquhoun and others - most recently Dr Eslea at UCLan (one of the infected universities) - the problem is clearly worsening. Our bio-tech industry may have teething troubles but this is a cancer rotting at the very heart of science.

HOW SPIN BECOMES REALITY

NewFazer (#6) Sadly, I fear nobody can help here. I've seen many, otherwise well educated people (disproportionately women these days), seemingly succumb to this empirically baseless mumbo-jumbo once they feel critical/punitive constraints of rationality have been removed through their promotion or other 'releases'. In my experience, people who offer such services, be it 'Angel-Reading', SEAL Brain-Gym, or even SureStart, Aiming High and other 'get smart-quicker' panaceas, just don't see what's wrong with what they're doing, and explaining what's wrong will just received as 'patronising' personal attack rather than healthy scientific criticism.

I reckon we're regressing intellectually, and it's slowly getting worse as a close look at who sits what and GCEs reveal (although most don't look closely enough).

Ask people why it's wrong to say there are biologically based individual, sex and ethnic differences in mean cognitive ability and what the important implications of this are, and most won't be able to give rational answers. That's how bad it's become.

Hence the magic, witch-craft/doctoring and some with PhDs in it too.

Off-topic but how come I can't get Newsnight past Monday this week either your website or the iPlayer page?

If you're doing GCSE results could we at least agree on two starting points 1 they are no longer competitive ('graded on the curve'): rather you get the grade you deserve 2 there's little point comparing standards with yesterday's when the examing boards unfortunately failed to keep samples of student scripts of the time.

I passed 'O' Maths (just) at the age of 14 back in the early '60s. To get a pass in those days one merely had to make a reasonably decent showing on the compulsory 'hurdle' section of the paper where the material was a lot easier than the second section where you had a choice of questions.

Indeed one did 'real' geometry (good old Euclid but intellectual lobotomy for all but the mathematically gifted) for example in those days but not many ever had any success with the 'riders' of the second section.

DO WITCHES BELIEVE IN PLACEBOS?

Go steady guys, science and the Tao require uncertainty. Very interesting program on Radio 4 (yesterday) about the placebo effect.
Said to double the pain relief of Morphine (and a whole lot of other confounding stuff). Believe nothing - disbelieve nothing. But then - what do I mean by nothing?

Barrie #11 appreciated:

'How goes it with the Nothing?

Answer: the Nothing is nothinging it'.

Heidegger I believe ...

Another nauseating photo call for Commissar Brown - dealing with service men and women in Afghanistan whose boots he is not fit to clean.

I suppose we are going to be "treated" to the spectacle of him basking in the reflected glory of the Olympic medalists.

Excuse me while I get a sick-bag.

BEING AND NOTHNGNESS

rinpoche1 (#12) So, perhaps existential inauthenticity/bad-faith is behind Colony Collapse Disorder? (The Iranian political intelligentsia is rather fond of Sartre I believe...)

..Tao require uncertainty..

that which is larger than any mental concept is not the same as uncertainty. it just means it greater than any image or idea one can have about it.


if science rejects a hierarchical universe then there can be no science only probabilities that things might happen [but they don't have to].

"EVENIN' JEAN PAUL" (Python)

I am off to do a bit of rocking and weeping in a foetal position. What with rinposhe1 skewering me with Heidegger (of whom I know 'nothing') and now bookhimdano says the Tao goes at 90degrees to my conceiving; I am out of my depth . . . I sulk, therefore I am.

JadedJean #12

Lost me on the philosophy I'm afraid. I confess to being a total fraud there i.e. I can read one thing and be absolutely convinced of its correctedness and then turn to an entirely opposed view and be just as absolutely convinced by that too ... oh dear and I'm pretty sure I'm in denial when I reflect that maybe that's the real mark of a philosopher anyway.

I don't know whether you're correct about the Iran political intelligentsia being fond of Sartre but you do do us a service by reminding us that it's not all just the Koran over there.

They've read their Marx and so on just as closely.

rinpoche1 (#17) Indeed, and they have powerful friends.

Last section - .

Barrie 16#

Comfort ye: to slightly modify a putdown due to Edith Sitwell I suspect there's a lot less to know than meets the eye.

The quote was from 'The Will to Power as Art' (must have been because that's all I've ever tried of his) and it's always stuck in my mind as genuinely funny but I don't think he meant to be.

Extraordinary book - must have another go sometime.

JadedJean #17

Thanks for the link. I do remember Khomene's exile in Paris before coming to power. It was featured once or twice on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News bulletins. I remember footage of as po-faced a character as was possible to conceive of squatting in a cellar and Angela Rippon benignly smiling a 'what a nice old man' smile at us as she strutted her stuff...

Someone in the beeb should resurrect it.

Steve #4; Suggests The office for National Statistics figures looks an interesting story -

If only it were just a story

JadedJean #5; Comments - BME and SES groups = More crime and lower educational standards.
Since no one else has pointed it out. Religious and cultural clashes will also be an inevitable consequence.
I do not feel any of the above is acceptable.
How will our government tackle such a daunting prospect? With it's head in the sand, no doubt.
I fear for my children, and for their children. It is time we demand the government seriously consider the benefit of uncontrolled immigration. Perhaps in a word I have inadvertently clinched a key measure that would certainly control undesirables.
If nothing else will... BENEFITS should.
Social Security Benefits, Social Housing, Healthcare etc. All need to be earned, as should the right to remain in this country, be dependant upon contribution. Conduct and desirability. Many countries will only allow entry if it's in the interest of their Nation. We need to follow that measure. Future social cohesion must come into the equation. Likewise. We also need to determine what's in our best interest.

SEX-EQUALITY AND USURY

shrinkingviole(#20) , the root problem is fear of family life through loss of financial independence, especially amongst secular, intelligent women who are more naturally inclined to invest in an intensive parenting strategy. Whilst sex-equality looks good on paper, given the reality that it's women who have children and raise them (with men playing essentially a supporting role), it's promotion has, in practice, been subversive and cynically opportunistic, in that it's just filled usurer's/bank's coffers faster by effectively doubling the number of . Islam, like original Christianity, still proscribes usury, but one group still has the chutzpah to proscribe usury in endogamous but not exogamous transactions (no doubt it's 'politically incorrect' to keep pointing this out - but then again, isn't that precisely how/why the beneficiaries play this egregious PC game?).