Closure

People have a need for closure. They hear snippets (of gossip) like "Frank's had a new baby" or "Sarah has an exciting new job with..." and they want to know more. One could end the story with "and they lived happily ever after", but that's not real life, when the next question is "And then what happened?" Only when someone dies do you get any real closure. (And when you die, but that's another matter.)

I'm going on a secondment for new years, working in another government department. As part of the need for closure, here at my current working area, they are doing the "whip around" for a leaving card and money for some pressie (although I suspect it might be vouchers as I wouldn't think people around here know what I really want). This is done more out of a social need for closure than any other reason (considering I don't know most of these people that well, one can't use the "they want to send you off properly" excuse. Most of them will just be in it for the morning tea.)

But, and here's the thing: I don't need closure. I'd like to just leave when the day rolls to a close, and then start the next day at the new place. (And I'm not the only one who wanted that, but they got a leaving thing as well.) Societal needs are powerful, and in many ways the individual doesn't matter.

It's really tempting to call in sick...

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I got pictures, and so do you

Yep, still got more pictures yet. From pages 3, 18 and 26.



This one was captioned in the book. And the caption was...?
"Bermuda Triangle" of course!

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Perhaps they could try Ufocusyn?

Hey, we got our own group of Ufologists here in NZ, and they have themselves a slew of stories to tell. (I particularly noted this story given that I am coincidentally talking with someone about UFOs are the moment.)

This newspaper article is a fairly typical example of reporting. It starts off with the tale of a UFO sighting that someone is reluctant about because "Hansen knows how many people react to her story." But eventually we get to the tale: "When Hansen and her husband came over the brow of the hill that night, the bottom of the valley ahead was out of sight. She still dreams of being able to peek down that valley a little further. What they did see was the whole valley bathed in a bright white light. It was like someone had flicked a switch, but the light was brighter than the brightest sunlight. The car stalled and the couple sat there stunned. On either side of the valley she could see virtually every tree lit up so brightly they had a silvery white colour." Then "Hansen began to notice her arms and legs were feeling numb and tingly. She heard a deep buzzing sound and felt dizzy and faint. She tried to talk to her husband to ask him if he felt the same, but she couldn't speak. Her next recollection is sitting next to him in the dark, both of them staring out the front window of the car."

Wow. Sounds really weird. What the heck could have happened? (A strange light... they decide to stop, it's late at night, they fall asleep... MUST BE ALIENS!) Yeah, to be honest, she knows how people react, because it just doesn't sound credible.

After that, there are more UFO stories related, and the discussion of Ufocus NZ> Towards the end, we get the Skeptic coming in, but the last word is given to the believers.

The big problem with UFO stories is that they are not replicable or testable. As Russell (the skeptic) points out, in today's society as people expect aliens, they see aliens. But "He says just because something is a mystery, doesn't make it an alien spacecraft."
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Sigh

I play the puzzles at YouPlay, and on each page they have a wee quiz, with a question and four options.

One I came across was "What term is given to the result of length x width of a square?"

Answers were: radius, circumference, area and rectangle (I think). There were 1360 responses for this when I took it. And the number of people with the right answer was...
80%

I also recall there was another math question (about pi being related to the circumference and radius, I think) that also had a scoring that made me depressed. This is as simple a math as you can get!

(It might have been that people misunderstood the question and went for rectangle (if indeed, that was one of the options). That's the only ray of hope I can see...)

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Ah, sod it

Here, courtesy of YouTube, is a complete episode of MST3K (ep 311 - It Conquered The World), from part 1 to part 11:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HJjXYzNWSU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI4XM5XbVFU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKSoq7FVsec
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y91sLc3NzI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sj3Q1_kf6o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S24BqwgK0hY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjBz0brQRms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81N2KgELH78
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN1r4WwyRZk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL-IL5ENaEw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJlLHo2J5A8
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The power of disbelief

I'm not going to cite the recent homeopathic liposuction case, or the scientific study about prayer vs heart disease, but I am going to state a simple principle:
Any medical practice that claims to treat different medical conditions DO NOT WORK. (Because there are different causal mechanisms, which can't all be affected by one treatment method.)

(Fine, fine, there is the placebo effect, blah blah blah, but aside from that...)

We've got homeopaths, reiki specialists, , and now "prayer rooms".
"Visitors to the rooms – established at churches in Wellington and Auckland, with another planned for Dunedin – receive attention from three-person "prayer teams" who say they can cure conditions as varied as cancer and back pain."

Let me repeat: "they can cure conditions as varied as cancer and back pain." And now let me repeat my above principle: Any medical practice that claims to treat different medical conditions DO NOT WORK.

"[Mr Fox] cited the examples of a woman with an inflamed eye that returned to normal after prayer and another person whose back pain was healed instantly." Oh yeah? Then let's see the medical case histories, reports of doctors who examined these people before and after, and follow up studies that show it's not simply the euphoria of the moment (which explains the evangelical shows).

And remember kids: '[Professor Les Toop] was not aware of any evidence showing prayer could physically heal people. "I'm quite sure there will be multiple anecdotes about, but that's not the same as objective evidence."'

But I'll let them have the last word:

'Prayer minister Lana Schmidt, who helped establish the room in December 2005, said "God's healing power" could cure any physical ailment – but prayer was not a substitute for medical treatment.

"Don't go off your medications because you have got prayer. We would never tell anyone to do that."

Ms Schmidt said she had seen people healed of serious afflictions, though her own condition – kidney failure that keeps her on life support 12 hours a day – was yet to be resolved.'

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80c of sweetness

Yeah, I know it's hurting the exporters, but, man, 80c to the dollar! Although I tend to use this source for my exchange rates, but it's going for over 80c too!

Now, if only I had the money to actually buy something. There are certainly a lot of DVD sets I have my eye on. (*Snort* Yeah, like I need more DVDs...)

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