Fuddland

A never-finished attempt at producing autobiographical entries based on the song titles of R.E.M.'s greatest-hits album.

This category is a subcategory of About.

here’s bill bailey:

‘i’m a relaxed empiracist, i’m not a staunch empiracist — someone who demands actual tangible proof of something before they believe it to be true — i’m more a relaxed empiracist, which means i only believe something to be true if somebody a little bit cleverer than me tells me that is pretty much what happens.’

having an effective vetting system as to whether you believe the source of information, be it a book, person or website — a vetting system that you trust — is very important, but i don’t think it should ever be the sole reason to believe something.

here’s an example, which i’ve taken from john diamond’s excellent beginnings of a critique of alternative medicine, ‘snake oil’.

scientists have no idea how aspirin works.

now, your first reaction might be, “well, don’t be silly. of course they do.” but then some doubt might creep in. aspirin has been around for ages — over a hundred years. it is only relatively recently we can engineer drugs to specifically target certain things — genes, organs, whatever — in our body. you take aspirin, it gets rid of your headache. how? could it be that this was discovered by accident, trialled, found to be wondrously effective and not harmful? who cares if no one knows how it works when it works so well?

Read the rest of “man on the moon”…

spilt tea on white t-shirt. tea stain on white cotton. immediate action required.

dabbed tea stain with damp leafy-patterned kitchen towel. result: green stain on t-shirt where leafy pattern has transferred to shirt.