h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>Aye Clive could you tell us more about veterinary homoeopathy<

Not a lot - as you'll discover if my pulled post ever returns from the mod squad.

It's strange though, since placebo is largely to do with cultural anticipation. (if you've ever seen Ben Goldacre talks on this - red pills are more effective than blue ones even if there's no other difference. A saline drip is more effective than a pill becuase it's more invasive, it seems)

Quiet what a dog feels about anti-worming tablets is anyone's guess...

my post has been returned mostly intact....

http://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/22938979649191936#

I really don't know where to start in linking for this event I've waited half my life for..but I'll do a Stephen Fry twitter link...kind of h2g2 culturally appropriate.

He delighted me when he did his 'bipolar' programmes; then again with his programme about his love of Wagner and his trip to Bayreuth...but thank god most of all, he understands this thing..

This post has been removed.

Did someone use a naughty word?

apparently I'm not allowed to criticise Stephen Fry on the BBC!

Quite so. Smite the heretic.

>apparently I'm not allowed to criticise Stephen Fry on the BBC!<

I love the way you deign to describe it as something as intelligent as 'to criticise'.

There was one short, wonderfully insightful sentence describing him as a doorhandle

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8246403/Surgeon-escapes-driving-ban-after-court-hears-NHS-would-have-to-pay-thousands-for-locum.html

Surgeon escapes driving ban after pleading in court that the NHS would have to fork out thousands of pounds in locum cover.

As one of the commentators on the article said: if anyone else had to drive as a condition of employment, they'd be on the dole. Aside from that: it's your responsibility to get to your place of work not your employer's responsibility to get you there (unless it's in your contract)

My maternal grandmother (long since shuffled off this mortal coil) used to say something along the lines of 'the U.S.: where all the crazy things happen.'

Today I wish she had been wrong, and, I can't say that I couldn't see something like this coming in the toxic political atmosphere down there, but, here it is:



'U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was rushed to surgery after being shot in the head in Tucson while holding a public event, officials said Saturday.

Dr. Peter Rhee, of University Medical Center in Tucson, said a girl "about nine years old" was killed in the attack.

The hospital was treating 10 shooting victims, Rhee said. Gifford and four others were in critical condition, but Rhee said he was "very optimistic" that the congresswoman would recover.'

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2011/01/08/giffords-arizona-shooting.html#ixzz1AU5lsy4t



Something I don't understand is, if the place is The Greatest Country on Earth (tm) as we in the rest of the world seem to be told ad nauseam, what unbelievably horrible aspect of that country's wonderful system could possibly motivate someone to such an act against a duly elected representative. (Where I live, I get invited into the homes of my elected representatives. I can remember standing in line at 7-11 behind one of my elected representatives [diet Pepsi and some Miss Vicky's potato chips as I recall] and after paying she went outside, got in her vehicle, and drove herself away -- no chauffeur, no security. The incident in Tucson is unimaginable to me.)

Granted, my own country has had political assassinations (one in 1868, the other [generally considered to be accidental] in 1970) but the numbers for the U.S., both attempted and successful are tragically ridiculous: http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/archive/oldnews6/assassinations.htm (I don't think I'd include John Lennon in a list of assassinations) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_assassination#Pre-World_War_I


I certainly don't want to bash the U.S. and certainly not the people of the United States, but I find this horrible event today to be a depressingly expected outcome of the political climate I've been watching for a number of years, and the murderous unrest which has been fomented by, among others, Fox News.

I worry for American friends and neighbours, and I worry for my own country, so close to a U.S. in what strikes me as the most vitriolic time of civil strife since the sixties.

Sorry if this post is a little incoherent: I'm quite upset.

I'll finish this rant with my wish that all injured in today's attack in Tucson make a full and rapid recovery and that the families of the dead may somehow move forward without hatred.

Oh, hell! It's really happening. ing guns and irresponsible political voices! The way things are here now, I doubt this'll be the last for a while. [And, as for the BBC and political sensitivities here, I don't believe my having to use BLEEP is somehow anything but a waste of my time. I had 'F' and 'k' seperated by 2 underlines.]

You're wrong about John Lennon unless you're just thinking that his murderer didn't see it as an attack on the political left (and was just crazy). Lennon qualified as a serious political voice, which is why the Nixon administration harassed him so much and tried to get him and Yoko deported (to a country that treated them like , btw).

I have a bad habit of lurking on the Fox News comment forums and, frankly, they make me feel like puking and barring my doors and windows. I know that most Americans aren't like that, but I also know that the ones who are like that have guns and are itching to use them.

I saw the shooting in Tucson on the news earlier this evening. Terribly tragic.

I'm feeling quite shattered by this, not because of the shock, but rather because I couldn't help but expect something of this sort.

From what I understand, President Kennedy's killing was horrible for people largely because it was inconceivably unexpected -- I'm sure that's how my parents saw it (I was two at the time, so I didn't have much of a reaction). Attempts (Ford, Reagan) since then have also been at times when it was in no way an expected thing, no matter how jaded North American Society had become.

But these days, I've been feeling like it's only a matter of time . . .

. . . and it makes me sick to live in such a time.

We that were all around the world remember November 22 1963 when J.F.Kennedy
was shot--We remember what we were doing at that moment and till the end of that day --

Also those were good times --Although I think we are better today on those days everything seems very important --and there was a world to be built ...

Today thanks to God things are more clear --but the quality of life is not the same--We have to recover the good old things that are many and very important...Not in vain there are so many remakes of films of those times...

I really believe that the USA has to look inside its culture and see what happens that it is THE SO CALL ""MENACE FOR EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD""
It should made an authocritics and reason what really is happening
with that LAND OF DREAMS once it was .--

I just watched a good part of the press coference regarding the shooting. 6 dead, the rest mostly expected to survive. A federal judge named Roll was among those killed, and the congresswoman is probably the least likely of the survivors to stay that way. The sheriff called Arizona 'a mecca of hate' and said that certain things in the mainstream media 'may be free speech but are not without consequences'. The shooter's identity is known, and it seems likely that he had help from at least one individual whose photo was taken but whose identity is reportedly unknown (a man in his 50s--the shooter is past majority, but pretty young).

*conference

And, incidentally, 1) Congresswoman Giffords was privileged to be the reader of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution (whose full reading is ordinarily not done, but the Republican majority decided it was a good idea (leaving out the original bit on slavery as though that changes something)), and 2) The Congresswoman was one of the politicians who had a target over her on Sarah Palin's website (Does it really matter what she meant by that?)!

And I agree, anhaga, that this does not come as much of a surprise, though I think it might to some people on the right who thought what they were saying was just talk for their base.