“Vitamin pills… pep pills… tranquiliser pills…”

['Dr. Strangelove']
Obliged to Henry for the cure for (and prophylaxis against) swine, or any other species of, flu.
It corresponds quite closely to Mrs. Underclass’ traditional remedy, though to heroic doses of vitamin C she usually adds what she describes as a ‘hot toddy’, the recipe for which she does not disclose, but the fumes from [...]

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Pseudoscience

Just in case anyone doesn’t read the comments, here is a quote, usually attributed to Lord Kelvin:
“What I always say is that if one can measure the thing one is talking about, and express it in numbers, then one knows something about it, but if one cannot measure it, nor express it in numbers, then [...]

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Advocatus diaboli

Cat-counter Ian B gives Dr. Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance both barrels, with a couple of reloads, for this:
…intelligence and general ability seem for the most part to be inherited…
Not wishing to incite Ian B to further wrath, I will not of course for one moment suggest that intelligence can be inherited.
However, I would [...]

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Hawking: not, I trust, evaporating (sensu Hawking)

It says on both Slashdot and ITN that Professor Stephen Hawking is very ill.
Not that there is much we can do about it other than to hope that he gets over it. He is a national treasure.
I have never phoned him up, but have been told by my sister (who was at Cambridge at [...]

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Unscientific

I am so old that I remember when the UK had a proper general science periodical.
It was called Science Journal, and was rather similar in principle to Scientific American, only in a slightly larger format, slightly glossier, and rather better written and illustrated.
In those days nobody took seriously a minor publication called New Scientist, which [...]

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You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

[er, Bob Dylan, man]
It says in the Daily Telegraph that
A nationwide network of amateur weather stations is taking on the Met Office in an attempt to become the country’s most accurate forecaster.
This sounds entirely right and proper. The Met Office isn’t really there to forecast the weather anyway. It’s there to forecast the fallout. A [...]

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At last

Smokers like myself will doubtless be relieved to hear that
Russian scientists grow new tobacco that kills cancer instead of humans
It must be true; it says so in Pravda…

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Not our subsystem

It now turns out (BBC, via Slashdot) that the Beagle 2 spacecraft made that for which the accepted euphemism is ‘a hard landing’ for reasons other than the failure of the bit of hardware that my former employer provided.
A simulation by Queensland University scientists suggests the probe went out of control during its descent due [...]

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Fings ain’t wot they useta be

It says in The Telegraph that
Researchers found that ageing brains allow negative memories to fade leaving pensioners with a distorted impression of how great life was in their younger days.
Isn’t this going to be convenient? For example, do any of us really remember that police officers used to uphold the law instead of making it [...]

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Do it yourself

David Davis, at the Libertarian Alliance, doesn’t do conspiracy theories.
I have to say that neither do I. To be quite honest most of them are of such a depressing quality as to encourage the practical chap to make his own as required.
When DD says that
…this planet may become too unpleasant for liberals, and in the [...]

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