Anyone seen my altruism?

denialism blog : This guy is a brain surgeon?

Michael Egnor

Clearly the brain, as a material substance, causes movement of the body, which is also a material substance. The links are nerves and muscles. But there is no material link between our ideas and our brains, because ideas aren’t material. Substances that lack properties in common cannot cause mutual effects. ‘My altruism is three inches from the edge of the table’ is a nonsensical statement. ‘My brain caused my altruism’ is nonsensical as well. A satisfactory explanation of altruism intrinsically requires a method open to immaterial causes.

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Mark Hoofnagle of Denialism:

I'm not a neuroscientist, but that's strikes me as the dumbest thing I've heard yet. No material link between our ideas and our brains? So I guess when we take a hallucinogen like LSD it works by magic? How could it be that thinkingis separate from "material" as he puts it, when we can ingest material substances that alter our thinking? How is it that damage to specific areas of the brain can inhibit different kinds of thought? Immaterial things like remorse, impulsivity, memory, language can all be affected by "material" brain-damage and "material" drugs. How does the non-materialist explain this? Is it magic?

Eating, smoking, drinking - what's next?

First they came for the middle-class coke-heads (or not as it turned out) and now it's the turn of middle-class cabernet sauvignon drinkers.

Middle-class wine drinkers will be the focus of government plans to make drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking...Under the plans published today, a fresh audit is to be conducted by the Government into the overall costs of alcohol abuse to society and the National Health Service. “We want to target older drinkers, those that are maybe drinking one or two bottles of wine at home each evening,” a Whitehall source said. “They do not realise the damage they are doing to their health and that they risk developing liver disease. We are not talking here about the traditional wino.”

There are times when I feel like that Polish bloke who has just awoken from a 19 year coma. What the fuck is happening to our society? Yesterday it was reported that over 4,000 people a year are dying from infections acquired in hospital (although the MRSA support group puts the figure closer to 20,000). Does the government employ people to get out and clean our bloody hospitals? Does it fuck! It does, however, employs people to wander around the pubs, clubs and bars of England looking for people having a crafty fag. It starts a campaign warning intelligent, law abiding citizens to watch their wine  consumption levels. It sticks traffic light warnings on food. It uses mass medication (folic acid in flour) to reduce 350 neural tube defects a year and so on and on...But don't worry - it's not the nanny state:

Vivienne Nathanson, the head of science and ethics at the BMA, said: “It is not the nanny state. It is about informed choices. It is hard for the average person to work out how many units are in a drink these days. Glasses of wine are much larger than they used to be and many beers and wines are much stronger”.

Yeah, we are all too stupid to realise the difference between a small glass of wine and a large one. But, somehow, even the most gormless drinkers have always known the difference between a half pint of beer and a pint - just try buying a round.

 

Mmmmmmmm!

iPhone

Via CT

Consolidated Memorials Inc.

Too many Iraq deaths

So many Fort Lewis soldiers are being killed in Iraq the Army base will no longer hold individual memorial services. Starting next month Fort Lewis says it will hold one memorial a month for all the dead soldiers. Nineteen Fort Lewis soldiers have been killed this month -- the most of the war, so far. The Fort Lewis acting commander, Brigadier General William Troy, told staff last week that the number of soldiers in harm's way will preclude individual services.

Via J-Walk

In D-Fens of a great movie

25 Best Movies You've Never Seen

I've seen 5 of them and I'm delighted to see one of my all-time favourites in the number one slot - Falling Down, the Joel Schumacher black comedy staring Michael Douglas.

Dismissed as a racist 'serial-killer flick' at the time it has never got the acclaim it deserved despite terrific performances from Douglas and the great Robert Duvall (not forgetting Tuesday Weld as Duvall's neurotic, vulnerable wife). 

My favourite exchange is between Foster (Michael Douglas) and a young panhandler  he ignores:

Panhandler: That's a hell of a way to treat a vet, man.

Bill Foster: You're an animal doctor?
 
Panhandler: No, a vet. A veteran. I was in 'Nam, man.
 
Bill Foster: What were you - a drummer boy? You must've been 10 years old.

Panhandler: I meant the Gulf. I meant to say the Gulf. Jesus. Come on. All I'm asking for is a little change. I haven't eaten in three days. (He has a sandwich in his hand)

Panhandler: Well, I mean, except for this.

Via Neatorama

Intellectual pursuits of George W

What George W really does at Camp David

President George W Bush might have the odd difficulty with English syntax but, it appears, he is a dab hand at jigsaw puzzles.

Puzzles are strewn about the Bush family's homes and many family members have become devotees of Howard Robinson, a British painter of animal scenes for puzzle makers (see pic).

Now Mr Robinson has received the ultimate accolade - a commission from the White House. He was asked by the President's wife Laura Bush to paint a picture of the family's dogs - Miss Beazley and Barney - for a puzzle which was presented to Mr Bush on his 60th birthday.

About time

Spot checks to identify unhygienic hospitals

An unprecedented crackdown on dirty hospitals is being launched by the Government's health care inspectorate. The Healthcare Commission said it would carry out spot checks at 120 NHS trusts over the next year in its biggest ever programme of visits aimed at cutting rates of infection with the deadly superbugs MRSA and Clostridium difficile. Official figures published six weeks ago show Clostridium difficile causes 4,000 deaths a year and is still spreading despite all attempts to curb it. The bug causes severe diarrhoea which can lead to inflammation of the bowel, gas gangrene and death.

At last, hospitals are going to get the same treatment that every restaurant, cafe and kebab shop in the country has had to accept for decades - snap, unannounced hygiene inspections.

The one big difference is that, however awful that kebab might be, thousands aren't dying because of lax cleaning at your local 'greasy spoon'.

Appropriate memorial?

Tributes to motorcycle death boys

Tributes have been paid to two teenage boys killed in a motorcycle accident on Tyneside.Pillion passenger Conor Lowden, died at the scene. The rider, Ross Leggate, died from his injuries in hospital.

Ross, 16, of Wenlock Drive, and 15-year old Conor of Bamburgh Terrace, North Shields, were pupils at John Spence Community High School.The Kawasaki 750 they were riding crashed into a lamppost on Malvern Street in Preston Grange on Saturday.

Head teacher Jim Stephenson said of the boys, who were about to sit their GCSE exams: "The whole school is very saddened by the deaths of Ross and Conor and we are offering support to both children and staff. "They were two very lively and popular boys, both with lots of friends. "All our thoughts are with their families at this very difficult time.

In the future we will discuss with them what they feel may be an appropriate memorial."

Nurse! Nurse!

Heart surgery patient kills snake

An 80-year-old heart surgery patient leapt from his intensive care bed and used his walking stick to beat a deadly viper to death. Miko Vukovic spotted the snake on the floor of the hospital in Ogulin in central Croatia. The snake is believed to have been brought into the hospital in a giant bunch of flowers where a discarded snake skin was also found by the staff. It then made its way into the intensive care ward as it looked for a new place to hide.

Vukovic was with three other cardiology department patients during the night when he noticed the poisonous "vipera berus" snake close to his bed. He said: "I was fighting for 10 minutes before I managed to kill it with my walking stick. The bugger almost bit me in the leg but then I let it have it right between the eyes."

Via Kevin,M.D.

USS(R)

Via Right-Thinking from the Left Coast a brilliant piece in the NYT by Andrew Sullivan on torture.

In typical Communist legalistic fashion, the N.K.V.D. rationalized its use of torture and pressure in the interrogation of prisoners of war. When it desired to use such methods against a prisoner or to obtain from him a propaganda statement or “confession,” it simply declared the prisoner a “war-crimes uspect” and informed him that, therefore, he was not subject to international rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war.

And in the UK there is this worrying development:

A new article reports that British psychiatrists are going to start emulating their disgraced Soviet-era colleagues who hospitalized and involuntary drugged dissidents under the pretense of treating mental illness. The British psychiatrist will be part of preventive detention teams on the watch for “terrorists” under every bed

Don't (Big) B(r)other

Obsolete: 10 weeks of absolute fucking hell.

It's the stinking putrescence of vanity, greed and idiocy that blares at you from the television, occupies the front pages of those excrement purveyors, the tabloids, and tries to infiltrate its way inside your skull, infecting your brain and turning it inexorably to a maggot-ridden decaying reeking orb, being eaten away as the very oxygen you breathe itself seems to have become stale as a result of the demoralising, blanketing vacuity of it all. It's the nose-wrinkling decomposition of all that terrestrial television once stood for, laid bare, eviscerated for all to see, completely inescapable unless you decided to board up your windows, smash the goggle-box, throw the radio out the window and stay in bed living on tinned food for the best part of 3 months.

While I agree with Septicisle about this pile of crap I pride myself on being able to pretty well ignore it completely. I should think I've seen less than 30 minutes of this show during its entire run and I reckon about 20 minutes of that was during the first series when, I seem to recall, a builder from Liverpool won. Overall I remember someone called Nasty Nick (?), a transvestite that looked like he'd been sucking stinging nettles, a woman who looked like a pig, George Galloway and Sly Stallone's gruesome mother. I have occasionally caught the show while channel hopping but usually I get either a fixed camera showing people asleep or mind-numbingly boring 'chat' between some (usually) utterly gormless women.

The real shame, as Septicisle points out, is that this show will take over the 10-30 Friday slot which was home to, amongst other things, the terrific 'Peep Show'. My advice is to sign up with the excellent Amazon DVD Rental by Post scheme and spend the next 10 weeks catching up on some of your favourites.

Say cheese!

Jesus' General quotes Bill Maher on the recent French Presidential election:

Maybe the high turnout has something to do with the fact that the French candidates are never asked where they stand on evolution, prayer in school, abortion, stem-cell research or gay marriage. And if the candidate knows about a character in a book other than Jesus, it's not a drawback. There is no Pierre Six-pack who can be fooled by childish wedge issues. And the electorate doesn't vote for the guy they want to have a croissant with. Nor do they care about the candidate's private lives: In the recent race, Ségolène Royal had four kids but never bothered to get married. And she's a socialist.

In America, if a Democrat even thinks you're calling him a liberal he immediately grabs an orange vest and a rifle and heads into the woods to kill something. As for the French conservative candidate, he's married but he and his wife live apart and lead separate lives. They aren't asked about it in the media, and the people are OK with it, for the same reason the people are OK with nude beaches: because they're not a nation of 6-year-olds who scream and giggle if they see pee-pee parts. They have weird ideas about privacy. They think it should be private. In France, everyone has a mistress. Even mistresses have mistresses. To not have a lady on the side says to the voters, "I'm no good at multitasking."