Trolloping jihadis

Not sure what led me to have that as a category. It must have been big and important, though. Other categories used this year have included adulterous lardbucket, cool as polar bear shit, dictatorial ruggery (that was to do with Pervez Musharraf’s remarkable hair), dodgy adults, does my fucking nut in, fraudulent swine, get this!, he’s a dick, I’m a dick, Hollywood asholes, less androgens, mad as a wet hen, McCack, municipal dickheads, narked, shove it up your ass adnan, squiffy blogging, superior slob, twat, vapid hackery, vomiting deities, wankahhhhs and waste of DNA.

Terrific pandemic flu post from Revere (updated)

at Effect Measure. Whether avian influenza is being ignored by the media, or there’s a human cluster and hacks suddenly predict the sky falling on our heads, EM is a place to go for sober professional analysis (his atheosplenetic Freethinker Sunday Sermonettes are worth a visit, too). Here is a case in point: Pandemic influenza subtypes: end of year round up.

It contains some good science about flu viruses, pandemics and their -ology. You don’t need a degree, it is lucid informative writing that doesn’t scare and does inform. And at the end it puts in a plea for good public health provision and a strengthening of society’s structures:

Because perseveration is a characteristic and privilege of the aged, we will repeat again in this last bird flu post of 2007 what we have been saying here since late 2004. The best way to prepare for an influenza pandemic is to do those things which make for a robust community, especially building and strengthening the public health and social service infrastructure. This is like repairing the roof on your dwelling. It will help protect against heat, cold, rain, sleet or snow. It won’t keep you safe from an asteroid or a nuclear attack. A strong public health system also won’t protect you from a pandemic with a 30% attack rate and 60% CFR. But it will help with a hell of a lot of other things, including many of the most plausible candidate influenza pandemic viruses.

Update: another flublog of note  H5N1 (does what it says on the tin) has a Thoughts on 2008 roundup piece which is also really worth a read.  A couple of points: H5N1 does not have to infect humans to have a major impact:

When scores of millions of people make their livings from poultry, H5N1 becomes a political issue. When hundreds of millions depend on poultry for much of their protein, H5N1 becomes a major political issue.

He also paints a possible and desirable world picture:

With all my heart, I hope 2008 will see a further drop in the number of cases. Sixty would be good. Forty would be better. Maybe H5N1, in its patient efforts to mutate into something deadlier, could mutate itself into total failure, make itself a viral has-been.

And makes a plea for Homo to be just that bit more sapiens in case H5N1 does not become a viral has-been.

But at this point it still has the power to frighten not just us, but our governments. If it frightens them enough, they might stop buying so goddam many fighter planes and ICBMs and stealth bombers, and start spending on public-health measures for the people the weapons are supposed to protect.

A robustly healthy population will survive the worst pandemic in better shape than the best-prepared individual household, with its basement full of canned soup and toilet paper. If flu bloggers can help to prod governments into realizing this, before the pandemic hits, then we will have done a service worth doing.

And so say all of us.

Science books ‘08

The Guardian (my groom of the stool gets it) rounds up the forth coming pop science publications for ‘08 here. Of particular note:

Sean B Carroll picks up the challenge of the creationists with The Making of the Fittest (Quercus): another look at what DNA tells us about the two-billion-year process that turned a primitive blob in the primeval ooze into Paris Hilton in her Jimmy Choos. The blurb tells us that such evidence points to the end of the “rancorous, distracting debate over the validity of the theory of evolution”. If only . . .

Now I must go and disinherit my firstborn: Baghdad Holiday Inn.

Prizewinning atheist rant

by Sunday Times rentagob Jeremy Clarkson: Unhand my patio heater, Archbishop.

(Not safe for environmentalists of a nervous or humourless disposition.)

2008: no scientists, mathematicians or engineers need apply

This time of year the media lazily spews out endless looks back and predictograms.  The Observer favours us with a breathless six-page look in the Review section at who will shower us with greatness ‘08 in pop, film, opera, art and design, politics, eco, theatre and dance. Business gets one look in. Most of these fields improve our lives, although I doubt my life will be affected by any of the dahlings thus paraded.
The Brits who will make an impact in science, engineering, mathematics and medicine (the things which make our modern lives possible)? Not included, because it takes years of underpaid hard work and dedicated study to break eggs with big sticks in these fields, and reporting on this stuff gives journalists - most, I make no doubt, arts grads - hurty brains.

I am so pleased Britain will have an audio visualiser of note in 2008.  Whatever one of those may be.

Benazir Bhutto’s death.

Being an English liberal white man, there had to be some way I was responsible. Well, well, maybe the British were (historically, anyway). ‘Storm and Conquest‘ is a damn fine read, and an account of how the Royal Navy kicked the French out of the Indian Ocean in 1809, an event which allowed the British to conquer and dominate India and beyond for 150-ish years. India’s independence from British rule in 1947 ended in the creation of Pakistan (which means ‘Land of the Pure’. Rrrrrrrr-ight.)  So without that escapade (we wouldn’t dream of invading a soverign country today…) it is unlikely that Pakistan would have ever been made, and Ms Bhutto would not have met her unfortunate end.

Even worse, it seems my nearby town had something to do with it, as far back as the 5th century. Alcuin, the foremost philosopher of his age (and inventor of tinfoil) persuaded King Charles the Great of France to send young nobles to Whitby Abbey (then a centre of great learning) to be educated that the local brainboxes’  ‘fragrance…might also perfume the palaces of Tours.’ Many of those educated in Whitby Abbey went to the University of Paris,were expelled in 1229 (anyone who has spent a Saturday night on the piss in Whitby will know why) and scarpered to Oxford (stay with me) and Cambridge where they were ’strumental in establishing the Universities. They should really be called Oxpont universities.

Anyway, the late Benazir Bhutto studied at Oxford, was the first woman to be president of the Oxford Union. Had she not done so, her life might have taken a different course and she might not have met her death this week. Small decisions have big consequences.

Detox diets

don’t work, according to a Dr Wadge, reported by the BBC.  Pills, drinks, potions all aimed at detoxing, all pointless.  The Doc’s prescription?  Drink some water (tap is fine), go for a walk, get a decent night’s sleep, eat home cooked food.  Source: Sense About Science.

Excellent site:

Counterknowledge.  Highlights bullshit and stomps it dead.

Oh my God!

Is a tremendous post and comment thread on the Sandwalk blog. It starts with some rather depressing polling on what the majority of Americans believe (they have guns! On the basis of this I wouldn’t give ‘em sharp crayons) then things take off in comments when a couple of creationists (one a real Megan-esque head-spinner) turn up.

Great fun, but worrying.

Clostridium difficile

is UK superbug du jour. (What happens when it becomes more resistant, virulent and nasty, does it become a superduperbug?) The British media thrive on health scares and of course bacteria are triffic because they are invisible, sinister, little understood, easily labelled, thrive around dirt and therefore belong in the same tabloid story silo as foreigners.

MRSA is so last year and is on the decline (for now) so C. difficile made its tabloid debut (rather alarming graph showing UK deaths up to 2005 attributed to C. difficile here). It is very infectious, hard to eradicate and despite what you might read currently has a mortality rate of 3%. Once it sets up shop in the large intestine, it can be hard to shift, upsetting the normal intestinal bacterial communities which keep things running smoothly down there. Some people with prolonged intractible infections have resorted to extreme measures to reset their gut microbial populations, and in a majority of cases it seems to have worked. Absolutely not dinner table safe.

And if are interested in things small and infectious Tara Smith’s Aetiology is an excellent blog and should be bookmarked: top-class, lucid, well-linked science writing for the rest of us. (A couple of comedy howling-at-the-moon nutjob commentators infest the place too.)