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

As should Giles Brandreth.

I love this, 75% of social psychology studies, we're talking really prestigious studies here, including some by the famous Stanford University, cannot be replicated, they repeat the study, or experiment or whatever you want to call it and the results are totally different! Did you see the figure today, over 2000 people have died a few weeks after being assessed as fit for work by benefit agency assessors! Apparently the data hasn't been analysed yet, how many suicides etc, but you can bet your boots the whole policy is based on some dodgy psychological study which happens to fit in with current government policy. Too many cooks. https://archive.is/SICeP

Its incredible how many people in the social sciences don't know what a chi square test is or how to apply one.

...and many political axe grinders are utterly lacking in empathy.

Some of the problem is that the people doing the assessments don't always understand the conditions they are assessing. For example, I suffer from MS. I've lost count of the number of fellow sufferers who have been turned down for disability benefits (DLA, ESA) on the grounds that they'll get better after a few sessions of physiotherapy. They then have to go to appeal. The whole thing is way too stressful. It wouldn't surprise if there were suicides amongst the 2000 dead.

I should mention that physio can help MS sufferers to stay mobile or alleviate muscle problems. What it won't do is get somebody to throw away their walking sticks or offer any other kind of dramatic improvement to their condition.

Tony Blair reckons that if Mr Corbin is the next Labour leader they'll be unelectable, as does Mr Kinnock, Gordon Brown and John Prescott!!!! They should know I suppose, Blair and Prescott turned the country Conservative as crypto Tories,, Kinnock managed to lose when he should have walked it, and Gordon, much as I revere the man and I do, was genuinely psychologically incapable of being a Prime Minister. All the current crop could come up with was the hapless Milliband who got wiped out by the most hated PM since Thatcher, (personally I despise him more than Thatcher, if that's possible) So roll on Jeremy, at least it will be interesting!

What Blair et al really fear is that Corbyn becomes PM. The days of glutony and excess at the expenses of British folks will end.

Yesterday I read in UK Uncuts that an unión leader was banned to vote.

Currents labor leaders are digging their polítical grave with every step they take against Corbyn.


And another thing, why do we have so much od Donald Trump and nothing of Berni Sanders?

Maria, Senator Sanders is more of a progressive socialist and less of a colourful blowhard than Trump. Therefore he gets a lot less press. You can usually find his policy statements in salon.com or in alternet.org which are sort of what we have for left wing publications. But the US press loves to print the stupidities of millionaires!

Maria, I got a call from Yvette Cooper's campaign people asking which way I intended to vote, I'm a lifelong party member so not one of the recent influx, though I would have thought an influx of new members should be seen as a positive rather than the opposite, apparently not so. Anyways they asked me which way I voted, I said for Jeremy. Would I vote for Yvette second? No say I, I thought her savage attack on JC was vindictive and politically stupid, phone went dead!

"Because it’s not in the interest of the corporations who own the networks to actually be educating the American people so that are debating the real issues. It’s much better to deflect attention away from those issues and get into the story of the day." - Bernie Sanders, October 2014


http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/30/bernie-sanders-big-money-big-media/

indeed, stupidities from that joyless clown are more useful than debating the real issues, as the link of BG says.

I think that both politicians share being genuine. They have participated in grassroots movements, they know how basic rights have been achieved along history. They are strong for that clear honestity.

Some want to think that when in office, these kind of people get fragile, their ideas seem just nice utopias... but that is also part of the narrative of those ms media. The case of Greece is not told as it should be so that people might understand the tactic of the
financial mafia.
Most media are the voice of corporations that do not want informed citizens, just in case they organize and make democracy works for them.

In Barcelona, Madrid, and many more villages and towns, citizens have organized, created a party a la Podemos and are showing that to be in office is to serve the citizens needs, not those of greedy corporations.


/rant over, sorry

offtopic
Mag is my alter-ego. Just to write entries, but she jumped in first than me.

Had me fooled

Twitter is the medium of choice for modern lynch mobs and once respected sources of journalism, like the BBC, find these stories "too good to [fact] check".

The sad story of how a Nobel Laureate's career was destroyed in 140 words or less.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-timothy-hunt-witch-hunt/

Some people, as covered in the article, just can't handle humor, pathologically literal minded.

Especially, given their projective outlook, they're completely incapable of understanding self-deprecatory humor.

Even given incontrovertable proofs they are wrong, they'll twist and ignore the facts rather accept correction, a problem that's a decided liability in the sciences.

Paranoia is like that.

I dislike a press and a politics founded on playing to the twisted thinking of paranoids.

It says in The Times today, that the Queen has never said or done anything that anybody will remember. They were contrasting our present monarch with Queen Victoria. I racked my admittedly feeble brain and couldn't come up with anything other than 'My husband and I' whether this was ever actually said or not I really don't know. And while we're on about it, what did Queen Victoria ever say that was so riveting? They should make Jo Brand queen, she's always interesting, and funny with it.

Annus Horribulus.

People remember that

Yes. I remember it, but only for childish reasons. The Queen has a horrible bottom? Poor Philip!

I don't remember what was wrong though.

PP.

Apparently Victoria never even said 'We are not amused'