If You Repeat A Statement Often Enough, People Will Believe It

EoR recently saw a fragment of a creationist video where the oft-repeated statement "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it" was displayed as a quotation from Adolf Hitler. Obviously, if Hitler said it, then evilution is a godless satanic plot.

But did Hitler say it? EoR had previously seen the statement sourced to Goebbels. Not so far from Hitler, perhaps, but an error of attribution nonetheless. So, EoR went searching on the internet. He quickly found the phrase attributed to Hitler, Goebbels, Reagan, Lenin, "and others".

Did they all say it? Simultaneously, or were they copying one another? The majority of references are, indeed, to Goebbels as the originator, but a popular vote still doesn't indicate proof. Since no one provides any primary sources that can be checked and verified, the question remains open.

Sometime ago, EoR was asked to verify the source of a rather obscure claim on the internet. As far as he could ascertain, all the quotes referenced each other, and there seemed no primary verification. Someone (who, it is unclear) had made the claim, and everyone else had repeated it as received truth.

This is a major problem of the internet. Much information is available. That information is available almost immediately. Sadly, very little of it has any imprimatur of truth or correctness, or lacks the necessary further information to confirm it. This is, of course, the problem with a lot of the alternative health information on the internet. Often, the same phrases and articles can be found from site to site, without any indication of who copied whom, let alone where the facts (if any) were obtained. It's not just a problem of altie beliefs, of course, but it's far too easy to make a statement than it is to prove it on the internet or to spend some time sourcing it and providing references.

It's not only the internet that no longer appears to have any claims to veracity or authenticity. The established media fell for the obviously fake photos of Hogzilla, and Mediawatch has exposed the Daily Telegraph for publishing statistics about the rise in ADHD cases and Ritalin prescriptions which where all false. Nonetheless, other media outlets repeated them, and now the Dore Program is using them:

"ADD/ADHD
Say no to high risk drugs
DORE developing skills, for life.

- The Daily Telegraph, 16th May, 2007"

Of course, this post is also published on the internet...

Car Dealer Alters Physical Basis Of World

EoR recently had occasion to attend at a car dealer's place of business. The saleswoman attempted to sell him electronic antirust protection which, she assured him, worked by "making all the neutrons in the car negative". EoR declined in case the car exploded.

Good Nutrition Bad Nutrition

Helen Frost, popular media commentator on nutrition issues hates white food ("white food is dead food"), she hates processed food (food needs to be ripped out of the ground or off the bone and eaten as "living food"), and she hates artificial additives since these are poisoning us (for example, her advice to go and look up Aspartame on the internet).

Why then doesn't she ever mention the possible adverse health effects of non-white, living food without additives? In her world such food is the heavenly source of all health. Yet the TGA has just revised warnings about possible liver toxicity from black cohosh. It can't be true! And will Ms Frost be warning us about this as well, or will she ignore it?

Meanwhile, Blacktriangle posts a salutary warning about additives and how food is killing us.

The Return Of The Poo Fairy

This week's radio appearance by nutrition educator (not nutritionist educator) Helen Frost was almost wall to wall faeces (or "number twos" as Ms Frost prefers to term it, with the occasional reference to "whoopsies").

In fact, after this week's advice EoR is afraid to eat anything ever again. Did you know your "number twos need to stay soft" or your insides "get congested and fester like a dead kangaroo on the roadside"? Improper number twos mean "you end up with dead bits of sheep and cow and cake and biscuit and so on festering in your pipes". Worse than that, "so many people are poisoning themselves from the inside because the number twos aren't getting out - they've got the graveyards of dead animals inside them". EoR surmises that number twos not getting out could possibly explain the "obesity epidemic"...

Ms Frost also warned us that synthesized phenylalanine "becomes a brain toxin with 92 side effects" which will destroy the nervous system at the very least - this, she assured us, is "well documented on the internet - just put in aspartame". Phenylalanine is okay in natural food, however.

Of course, if you search for anything on the internet you're likely to find it. EoR, personally, is well aware that alien reptiloid masters from the planet Beta Atlantis-Chakra engineered the 9/11 attacks via hologrammatic government controlled cruise missiles containing aspartame. Snopes.com provides a more balanced view (and a lot of other links to confirm their statements) regarding Aspartame. Wikipedia also has a page on the Aspartame controversy.

Ms Frost also brought her mother into the studio with her. EoR wanted to know what she made of all this, but she remained strangely silent (though getting a word in when Ms Frost is in full faecal flight would be an achievement). Luckily, the show ended up with The Poo Fairy Song again. Apparently, people were actually requesting this! So, if you too have a burning desire to sing nursery rhymes about bowel movements: The Poo Fairy Song.

Religion. For Dummies.

Sometimes book titles are so unintentionally funny (or horribly accurate) that EoR wonders how they get past the authors, editors and marketing armies... EoR found these invaluably salutary titles at amazon.co.uk.



Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins' The Root of All Evil has just been shown in Australia (by the ABC, during the religious programming slot). EoR now understands from some of the erudite religious spokespeoples shown in that documentary that killing babies is wrong, evil and heathenistic. Killing godless abortion doctors is, however, not only acceptable and the right god-fearing thing to do, but is apparently encouraged. Rape is not an excuse to find a loophole to let god allow an abortion - rape is just part of god's wonderful plan for us all.

EoR feels reassured that religion provides some firm, moral guidelines to preserve our upright sanctimonious society. Without religion, atheists could do any arbitrary thing they wanted to. And then where would we be?

Guest Blogger

Today's guest blogger is Bertrand Russell:

I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

Not The Secret

We all know how Secret pushers like to quote ancient and not so ancient identities as "proof" that their particular scam really really works, and to give their fatuous idea the semblence of historical authenticity. Strangely, they never quote the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece who, EoR imagines, would have known what they were talking about:

Call no man happy until he is dead.

There go all the marketing opportunities.

Nutrition Is (Not) Killing Us

Helen Frost (who EoR likes to think of as the incarnation of the Poo Fairy, though apparently having no qualifications in the field of nutrition, nonetheless runs regular and popular seminars on the subject.

She regularly lectures children in primary schools on her beliefs.

She lectures the Western Australian Practice Nurses Association though she appears to have no qualifications to provide medical advice:

A Nutritional Update on Protein needs and how to calculate our needs when ill and for varying situations.

She gives presentations to Therapy Focus, an association dealing with disabled children:

"For the first time ever, children have a lower life expectancy than their parents," said nutrition educator Helen Frost. "It’s what you put in your mouth that makes you feel good or bad." "We’ve got choices to make. We can choose either live food that gives us energy or dead processed food that takes our energy. You can only build healthy cells, bodies & brains with live foods."

She gives presentations for the Kids Health Alliance along with fellow "food is killing us" promoters, Dr Peter Dingle and Julie Eady.

She is praised by parents.

You can read a flyer for her seminars ("Great for 1st timers, or as a review for 2nd & 3rd timers") where some scary, and amazing, factoids are offered:

* 2 out of 3 adults are dieing of cancer or heart disease. Diabetes is epidemic.
* Over 60% adults & kids are overweight
* Some Pharmacists report that every 2nd script is an Anti Depressant
* Children are at risk of dieing faster than their parents

Many of Ms Frost's statements are bizarre and unprovable. "Some" pharmacists means how many? Are these pharmacists located near psychiatrists who might prescribe more antidepressants than other doctors? And, surely, it is as equally valid to say "Some Pharmacists report that every 2nd script is not an Anti Depressant"? The statement Ms Frost makes is intended to scare, without actually containing any relevant or logical information.

Where are the "2 out of 3 adults" who are "dieing of cancer or heart disease"? Ms Frost apparently has trouble with expressing herself clearly, since there is no evidence that two thirds of everyone you see on the street is presently dying. EoR suspects she might mean that cancer and heart disease are the eventual causes of death in two thirds of the population but, again, that is not the same thing as the intentionally frightening statement Ms Frost makes.

"Children are at risk of dieing faster than their parents"? also is meaningless. "At risk"? How much risk? And what, exactly, is "dying faster"? Personally, EoR would prefer to die faster than suffer a slow lingering expiry. Ms Frost yet again makes a frightening statement that doesn't actually contain any clear meaning. Does she mean that life expectancy is lower? Perhaps she does, but that would require EoR making an interpretation that isn't supported by the actual threatening statement. As noted earlier, she does state that children's life expectancies are "lower than their parents". This is true, but only iff you happen to live in AIDS/HIV riddled Sub-Saharan Africa (from the wikipedia article on life expectancy). Everywhere else, life expectancy is on a fairly steady upward incline. Wikipedia states:

In recent years, obesity-related diseases have become a major public health issue in many countries. The prevalence of obesity is thought to have reduced life expectancy by contributing to the rise of cancers, heart disease and diabetes in the developed world.

Note: "thought" to have reduced (the statement is not supported, at least in the US, by the US Department of Health and Human Services' Health, United States, 2006 (page 60 forward - there is also a graph showing declining rates of death from heart disease, and a fairly steady rate from cancer at page 67). Wikipedia also provides a map of the world showing life expectancies by country from -50 to 80+ years (also available as tabular data). Very few countries rate in the 80+ category. Among them are Sweden, Iceland, Switzerland, Japan. And Australia. The land of doom and death, according to Ms Frost. Australia rates 8th in terms of life expectancy. The US rates 45th. Ms Frost (and the earlier mentioned Ms Eady) hold up the US as the paragon of side-effect-inducing additive banning, in contrast to the only subtly implied government poisoning of people in Australia. Yet, Australians are living longer!

What Ms Frost is really doing is heavily promoting a fundamentalist view. Evidence that antioxidants (something that have a job to do, and do it when in the required amounts but which may be harmful if in excess) might cause problems will not change her view, since her views are a matter of faith (supported by science when it can be cherry picked, otherwise supported by vaguely unprovable scare statements). Coffee is the drink of the devil, if Ms Frost's diktats are to be believed. Evidence that coffee might help prevent gout is unlikely to change her faith-based commandments. Ms Frost lectures in the superfood world where, if something is good, more of it must be better.

None of this is helped by the media reporting early studies and scientific "breakthroughs". Or the general population's ability to decide which foods are good and which are not:

The modern health media as well as the food and diet industries praise certain foods and food nutrients as being healthful while at the same time criticizing other foods and nutrients as promoters of obesity and disease. Do the categorical messages that much of the general public has assimilated concerning food influence judgements of the weight-enhancing properties of foods? In the present study a sample of adult participants (mostly middle-aged) rated the weight-enhancing characteristics of a group of snack names that possess positive health reputations (e.g. a banana) along with snack names that were more disreputable in terms of wholesomeness (e.g. bacon). The results indicated that lower-calorie (and in some cases lower-fat) disreputable snacks were generally perceived to promote greater weight gain than much higher-calorie (and in some cases higher-fat) reputable snacks. Beliefs about particular foods' goodness or badness as well as fat content were most often emphasized. The good versus bad message that Americans have assimilated concerning foods may be contributing to tendencies toward obesity.

Sandy Szwarc also addresses how this "eat better and exercise" message is unnecessary and ineffective.

The Swiss Pocketknife Of Woo

Ho hum. Another day, another magic pendant being pushed by an Australian company. With all these healing devices hung around his neck, EoR is starting to get a bad back...

Tri-Vortex personal energy products resonate a natural energy field which replicates nature's creative processes. Anything that comes in contact with, or near Tri-Vortex products is returned, at a molecular level, back towards that which nature intended - whether plant, animal or human.

That statement doesn't mean anything. What "natural energy field"? Radiation? Heat? How does it replicate "nature's creative processes"? Does it perform sexual reproduction? What did "nature intend"? Do cotton clothes transform back to cotton plants? If you sit in a car with the Tri-Vortex marvel, does the car melt back into a sludgy pile of petroleum, metal and fabric? Does it contain Ubik?

Australian therapeutic legal requirements are fairly straightforward, but these people are quite prepared to ignore the law and state:

Tri-Vortex helps the following conditions;
Arthritis, asthma, headaches and migraines, gout, back pain, injuries and recovery, jetlag, jaw and neck pain, sciatica, knee, hip and joint pain, pregnancy, cholesterol, blood pressure, ganglion, sinus, hayfever, digestion, ulcers, coldsores, acne, diabetes, bruises, burns, myalgia, swollen joints, bone fractures, herpes, twisted joints, common cold, flu symptoms, carpal tunnel, head concussions, torn muscles, wounds/cuts, tendonitis, stomach ulcers, tooth ache, cancer, asthma, aids, eye injuries, general surgery, dental surgery, intense workouts... and many other ailments not listed.

Yes. Use it for cancer. Asthma. Pregnancy (does it return the pregnancy to what "nature intended"?). Fractures. Actually, anything at all and everything. It's a panacea, literally. If you're gullible enough to believe that, further down the page it states you can use it not just for health reasons, but also to "protect" yourself from electromagnetic fields and "electrosmog". You can use it on your drinking water. You can use it to make that cheap bottle of plonk taste better! It can be used to improve your hydration (as long as you remember these magic pendants "are part of a much bigger healing solution and should be combined with proper hydration"). Stick them on your pets. You can probably stick it in your rectum and get exactly the same "healing powers" (and, given the holistic obsession with colon function, EoR wouldn't be surprised by such a use). Stick them on all your electronic devices. Remember:

Alternating current electricity is chaos and provides no value or benefit to the molecules of the cells in humans, animals or plants. Some individuals and scientists believe alternating current electricity is electromagnetic pollution and hazardous to short-term and long-term human and animal health. Are you experiencing fatigue and soreness after watching television? Or working on your computer for extended periods of time? The molecules in your cells have been exposed to chaotic alternating current electricity or electromagnetic pollution. Tri-Vortex products transform the electricity in your home, office, school or workshop into beneficial left- hand turn energies that are biologically friendly, safe, healthy and energising.

Oooh! "Friendly" electricity. Much better than nasty chaotic AC. EoR assumes it transforms all currents to DC. Which nature intended.

There is a tiny link at the bottom of the page to a rather strange and lengthy disclaimer which seems to be a cut and paste collation of some US web based service. It states in part:

This offering is a contract between you the buyer and our business, the seller. The seller is located in the State of Nevada, U.S.A. and by doing business with us you agree that this offering is made from the State of Nevada, U.S.A. and shall be governed by the laws of the State of Nevada and the U.S.A..

EoR isn't a lawyer, but it would seem difficult to defend an Australian website, selling products in Australia, on the basis of Nevada law. Particularly when the same disclaimer also states: "Disclaimer Pursuant to Australian State & Federal Laws" and "These Terms of Use will be governed and interpreted pursuant to the laws of Victoria, Australia". Which also, apparently, includes the law of Nevada. Very strange. Furthermore, users are prohibited from anything that "amounts to a 'pyramid' or similar scheme" or "solicits funds, advertisers or sponsors". Apart from all the stuff that's there already, presumably. There is, however, in the whole disclaimer not one word about diagnosing or curing (or, as so often at these sort of sites, the lack of such ability in the magic product). And anyway, pyramids are good things to these sort of people.

A device doesn't need to be advertised as a cure for all those conditions listed earlier, it merely needs to make claim to be used on such a wide range of conditions to start breaching parts of the relevant legislation (Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 and Trade Practices Act 1974). Further information for those interested (or those promoting TriVortex) can be found at the Therapeutic Goods Administration website. Complaints can be lodged through the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code Council website.

You know these pieces of plastic work because they've been tested. On other magic machines. At acupuncture points. Which we all know is much more proofy type proof than proper calibrated testing by standardised machines that measure real things (which would, EoR makes the bold prediction, show no result whatsoever for these particular devices). Nor are randomised trials of any worth in establishing whether energy is dechaoticised or not. No. Testimonials (the first and last refuge of the quack) are required. EoR particularly admired that from Clea F:

Clea has a tumour at the stem of her brain which caused a lot of pain and stiffness of the neck. Her left knee was swollen and very painful. She was unable to sleep and took lots of Homeopathic Medicines with little relief. She had no energy.

After one night on Tri-Vortex products:
- She felt re-born.
- She stopped medication.
- Slept very well.
- Swelling of leg went down all together.
- Her tightened neck disappeared.
- She goes for long walks without any ill effects.
- Able to work in garden again.
- Feels energetic and good.

Note the none too subtle dig at homeopathy (bad, nasty, ineffective non-magic therapy!). Apart from feeling good and being reborn (as a Christian?), what about the brain tumour? And why couldn't Clea F write her own testimonial? EoR is particularly amazed at the number of testimonials about conditions which appear to have reduced or resolved at almost exactly the same rate as they would have if these people had not stuck magic pendants on their body parts, and for which any number of alternative explanations are much more likely than that a magic cure was effected.

If you want to know how this device works, do not go to the page trying to explain it. Your mind will be dazzled by radial periodic tables, pyramids (see! they do really like pyramids!), Quantum Election Theory [sic], numerology, ESP and all manner of woo and nonscience.

These products range in price from A$40 for the pet pendant, to A$175 for the Tri-Vortex Solid Silver Twisting Oval Link Necklace ("boosted with energy in the Tri-Vortex chamber, with your Tri-Vortex Pendant to resonate even more energy.") Not forgetting the Tri-Vortex Green Laser for only A$495 ("The most powerful healing tool for pain relief and treatment of water and liquids." - what? the other products are inferior? and what happened to those magic red penlights that did exactly the same thing with a massive markup on the supermarket penlights?).

One of the people behind this product proudly states:

John is no longer involved in pure profit business initiatives.

Obviously, Mr Murphy has a good sense of humour. Alternatively, this is an "impure" profit business initiative.

Like all such "exciting" breakthroughs in science, the promoters are keen for you to join their affiliate program.

Aerial Recycling

Finished reading your copy of The Guardian and don't know what to do with it? Turn it into paper planes.

Must Avoid Electromagnetism... Brain Getting Duller...

The latest technology scare being pushed by various people and credulous news media is wi-fi sensitivity (mobile phone sensitivity seems to have been fairly quietly dropped by the majority of alties - perhaps because there's been sufficient time to determine that there's no observable health problem with their use).

Many think that this is jumping the gun, rather like promoting mercury as the cause of autism. It also seems somewhat less than reliable to claim wi-fi as the cause of various health problems when there is no proof other than some people claiming "it works for me". Such people try to avoid wi-fi (but not radio and television waves and, probably, televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, house wiring, clock radios, stereos, DVD players, computers, heaters, iPods, cars, telephones etc).

Yet, perhaps, there is something in this. Could the fact that people making and supporting these claims do not seem to be functioning with all their faculties be meaningful? Could it be that magnetism doesn't make you duller, but the opposite?

COULD magnets make the mind grow stronger? In mice at least, stimulating the brain with a magnetic coil appears to promote the growth of new neurons in areas associated with learning and memory. If the effect is confirmed in humans, it might open up new ways of treating age-related memory decline and diseases like Alzheimer's.

Does this mean that people avoiding electromagnetism are making themselves duller intellectually? Of course, one would first have to separate cause and effect.

And if you really believe that such forces are inimical, it might be hard for the alties to find anywhere in the universe to hide.

We aren't even sure such things exist. But that hasn't stopped two cosmologists from proposing that huge magnetic fields spanning the great voids of the universe could explain where dark energy comes from.

National Day of Secularism

EoR has mentioned the political activities of the ostensibly non-politcal Exclusive Brethren before. The Australian Electoral Commission has also taken an interest:

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) will announce today it is referring questions to the federal police about whether members of the sect lied about their links to the election campaign. The AEC has been following the source of money used to pay for pro-Liberal and anti-Greens advertisements and leaflets worth $370,000 in Tasmania, South Australia and Mr Howard's Sydney seat of Bennelong, shortly before the 2004 election, Fairfax said. A $10 company set up three weeks before the poll and deregistered 18 months after it was one of the top five "third party" political spenders in the poll. The company, Willmac Enterprises, was set up by Sydney man Mark Mackenzie, a member of the sect.

There is also a question of whether the Exclusive Brethren are involved in funding an appeal against a sex shop. EoR's understanding is that the Exclusive Brethren do not involve themselves in worldly matters.

Now, what was that injunction against "bearing false witness"?

---

National Day of Secularism
May the 26th

EoR was tagged for the National Day of Secularism, a protest against the National Day of Thanksgiving, by Dikkii, which tied in nicely with this matter appearing in the news. Maybe there is a Flying Sphagetti Monster after all...

It's also forty years since the Australian Constitution was amended by the Australian people (or a part thereof) voting to repeal Section 127:

127. In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.

They also still have little to be thankful for.

Carnival Time

The 27th Carnivalesque carnival is at Aardvarcheology, gathering together the best blogging about ancient and medieval history.

The 61st Skeptics' Circle is at Memoirs of a Skepchick. EoR submitted something, but it appears to have been intercepted by the Poo Fairy and disappeared into the bowels of the interweb.

Singalongafrosty

Helen Frost's weekly half hour of nonscience on the radio becomes increasingly surreal. EoR expects that one day soon she'll just break down, and admit that the whole thing has been a vast practical joke. Or maybe not.

This week, she objected to being introduced as a "nutritionist educator". The correct term she requested was "nutrition educator". Only a subtle difference, one would think, except that a nutritionist who educates implies some sort of qualification, as opposed to a person who educates about nutrition.

A female caller congratulated Ms Frost on a statement she made at one of her seminars: she wishes doctors wouldn't just give medication but helped people to find a solution to their problems. Obviously, medication, when indicated, is not a solution. The woman complained that her neurologist just wants to put her on drugs. She much prefers the homeopath. One treatment from her homeopath cured a "lifelong" eye problem that the doctor had given her drops for. EoR is willing to bet that the homeopath "prescribed" drops for her as well, but at least these would have been magic drops.

Yet again Ms Frost reiterated her statement that certain foods have no nutritive value. "You cannot build live body parts out of dead junky food. You can't do it!" she stated forcefully. In fact, you need to eat "as close to out of the ground as possible". EoR imagines you need to crawl around the vegetable patch on your hands and knees carefully munching at the cabbages and nibbling the tomatoes.

Yet, all this was just the standard madness she provides every week. She finished by singing The Poo Fairy Song (which helps to get the poo through, she assured us). Sadly, EoR was so shocked and surprised he didn't get it all, but this is a sample (to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star):

Fibre give my bowel a brush
Sugar and fats make sticky poo
When you do a number two
If your poos are hard and smelly
Get more water in your belly
Water give my bowel a brush
Soft and comfortable every day
Your body is better in every way

If you go to her frequently mentioned seminars, everyone gets to sing it together. Oh, joy.

EoR wishes he was making all this up. He isn't. It's as silly as a bumfull of Smarties.

Towelie Says

Don't panic, but it's Towel Day.

The Great ABC Swindle

ABC Television had demonstrated yet again its total rejection of any standards in presenting science programs. From Second Opinion to Psychic Investigators and now to a documentary of less than perfect journalism arguing that global warming is a myth.

A leading US climate scientist is considering legal action after he says he was duped into appearing in a Channel 4 documentary that claimed man-made global warming is a myth. Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was 'grossly distorted' and 'as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two'.

As The Australian reports:

THE ABC was under pressure from its board to air a British documentary that challenges climate change theories. The Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired controversially on Britain's Channel 4 in March, argues changes in radiation from the sun, not human activity, is the main cause of global warming. Scientists, including some featured in the program, said it contained fabricated data and misleading statements. The documentary will be shown on the ABC in July against the advice of ABC science journalist Robyn Williams, who instructed the ABC's TV division not to buy the program, Fairfax newspaper said. Mr Williams yesterday accused the broadcaster of "verging on the irresponsible" for airing a program that was "demonstrably wrong".

While EoR is sympathetic to Robyn Williams, he can't see the difference from every other instance of ABC television absolving itself of any sort of standards in determining what to broadcast, and whether to present it as fact or fiction. Sadly, the majority of ABC television these days seems to be fiction.

ABC Radio National still maintains some journalistic standards, particularly with programs such as The Health Report, Ockham's Razor, and The Science Show. Even The Philospher's Zone, dealing as it does with much more nebulous concepts, still understands what proof and logic are.

Blistering Barnacles, Tintin's Motion-Captured!

Tintin is returning, again. This time on the big screen,with big money and motion-capture technology. Can the likes of Spielberg and Jackson and their lavish CGI recreate the simplicity and clarity of Herge's style? Wouldn't Tintin be more suited to a Miyazaki-type rendition?
Three stories are to be selected for production. Will they adapt scenarios to suit our times? And which do you think they'll choose? I guess as follows...

"Tintin in the Axis of Evil": Tintin is captured whilst seeking the WMD.
Beheading is imminent. Snowy fetches Captain Haddock, who, in a drunken
outburst, is mistaken for Saddam's ghost. He engineers Tintin's release,
only to be thrown into Abu Ghraib by the 'coalition of the willing'. Haddock's alcohol dependency convinces the guards of his true identity.

"Tintin in the Republic of Congo": Deep in the jungle, where guerrillas are waring with gorillas in the mist, Tintin and Snowy hunt the legendary Mokele-mbembe. Tintin fells the ancient beast and discovers it was but one of a thriving population. Local pygmies embrace the bushmeat trade. Meanwhile, in London, Ebola is rife and Thomson and Thompson investigate. Back at Heathrow, Tintin is arrested for quarantine violation.

"Tintin - Destination Mars": When Calculus mysteriously summons his friends, they fear he has been kidnapped by North Koreans. On coming to his aid, Tintin, Haddock and Snowy become pioneers in China's Marsproject. They explore the red planet and its extraterrestrial life. An extraterrestrial Chineseherbal-bushmeat trade is born.

So... we shall have to wait and see. I hope there are no aliens, armies or orcs in the new productions.

His Greyish Materials

EoR enjoyed reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, in which the deity is the evil force to be defeated (and also written partly as a protest against the cosy religiosity of C S Lewis' Narnia books). There has been a film in the works for a long time, and now it seems not too far away, but this statement worries EoR:

Chris Weitz, its screenwriter and director, used the event to address speculation about whether the books' firmly anti-religious message would be retained. Referring to the Magisterium - the all-powerful religious body that wields total political power in the world of Lyra, the heroine - he said: "In the books the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic church gone wildly astray from its roots. If that's what you want in the film, you'll be disappointed. We have expanded the range of meanings that the Magisterium represents." [...] Weitz said: "Philip Pullman is against any kind of organised dogma, whether it is church hierarchy or, say, a Soviet hierarchy. We often deal quite obliquely with it in the film ... but we have done service to Pullman's books. Those people who read them for their philosophical content will not be disappointed."

Of course, EoR hasn't seen the film yet, and Philip Pullman is quoted in the report as stating he is happy with the screenplay, but EoR hopes that "expanded the range of meanings" and "obliquely" dealing with the central theme of the books doesn't mean that it's been watered down or obscured.

Now, what EoR really wants to see is a screenplay of a Pullman novel written by Richard Dawkins...

The New Scribes

The Guardian reports how the Bodleian Library is assisting Google to scan out of copyright books.

The future, generally speaking, isn't the sort of thing that happens in the hushed corridors of Oxford University's Bodleian Library. And superficially, there's something low-tech about the curious performance that has been taking place there every day for some time now. Each morning, a team of technicians carts piles of books from Oxford's collection of 11m titles to a nearby building. There, behind closed doors, they are placed on scanning machines. It is laborious work: each page must be manually turned. After that, however, the technology kicks in.

EoR can't help thinking of the medieval monks who spent their lives laboriously copying out books. Back in those days monks would occasionally put little images in among the glosses as a sort of "I was here" marker. The new method doesn't seem very different:

It is already possible, at books.google.com, to search thousands of works, both in and out of copyright, and in many cases to access scanned images of a few pages. On some of them - as critics of the project have delighted in noting -you can see the fingers of the person who scanned them.

The Guardian also provide some frightening statistics:

In 1450, new titles were published at a rate of 100 per year. In 1950, that figure had grown to 250,000. By the millennium, the number published exceeded a million.

So, in 1450, the leisured classes might, if they wished, have kept up with published books. By the time of mass production, this was clearly now impossible. And by the millennium, it was beyond a joke.

How do you decide which books to read? How do you know whether you're missing anything important or of quality? And, as authors attest, it's becoming harder and harder to get anything published these days in the modern, marketing driven, profit up front, economic rationalist publishing world; if you're J K Rowling, you can become a multimillion dollar bestseller even before the book is published - if you're a struggling first time author you're unpublishable (because you've never had a book published).

In which case, where are all these books coming from?

A Leap Of Faith Is Not A Logical Proof

Wilf Hey, longtime contributor of the Programming column in PC Plus, and originator of the acronym GIGO amongst other achievements, died earlier this year.

Mr Hey's columns addressed fundamental issues of mathematics and programming, rather than specific languages, covering issues from sorting algorithms to traversing complex network diagrams. His thinking was always rigourous and clear, as is required for effective (and elegant) programming.

While looking him up on the interweb, EoR discovered that Mr Hey had, not so much a secret life, as a whole other side which demonstrates how apparently logical minds can still be partitioned off into sectors of illogicality.

Here is his article on Religion and the Bible: Is the Holy Book Trustworthy?. The argument effectively offers an unproven assertion, offers some possibly correct (but irrelevant argument), and reaches an impossible conclusion.

The writings of other religions and philosophies are often very valuable. They encapsulate the wisdom and experience of the best people this world has seen. But they do not represent the mind of God, our loving Father and Creator.

How does Mr Hey know that other religious writings do not represent the mind of god, as opposed to the Bible? Because the Bible says so. It becomes its own ontological proof. Of course, this is the same argument that adherents of other religions offer for their own particular version of theology.

Mr Hey then offers some woolly thinking. We find Plato reliable, he states, even though the earliest manuscript of his works we possess is from AD900. Yet we have copies of the New Testament from AD130. Ergo, the New Testament is reliable.

In fact, the New Testament is by far the best-attested ancient work, the runner-up for the prize being The Iliad. Homer's first major work exists in some 644 copies, the earliest of which is all of 500 years removed from its original.

All of those dates may or may not be correct, but they're not of relevance to whether the holy book is "trustworthy". Mr Hey then argues that there was scrupulous error checking by scribes to ensure there were no errors in the New Testament. Of course, all such manuscripts have errors and ellisions. Such as a surreal image of a camel passing through the eye of a needle instead of the clearer metaphor of a rope passing through.

Mr Hey's conclusion follows:

With these exacting methods, we can be certain that the oldest manuscripts we have of the Old Testament are virtually identical to manuscripts from hundreds of years earlier. So we see that what we read in the Bible today is reliably God's Word as He originally delivered it through the original authors. It can be trusted, as He can be trusted.

Now, the first sentence of that conclusion may or may not be true, but it has no connection with the second sentence. He could have just as easily argued that Moby Dick or Ulysses are virtually identical to their manuscripts. Therefore God is real. It just doesn't follow (of course, Ulysses with its numerous typographical errors probably isn't the best choice, especially when trying to argue that chronological closeness to source eliminates any copying errors). The final sentence of the conclusion is a standard religious confirmation.

It's not called a "leap of faith" for nothing.