RESEARCH/NOTBORN YESTERDAY
And Research Shows….. |
A regular collection of the contradictory, misinterpreted, bleedin' obvious and quite interesting
In a Holy Spirit of confidence
A spoonful of research can work wonders in these dispiriting times, especially when the results are headlined 'Belief in God makes people more confident'. As a finding, it is so wonderfully dotty and internally illogical that I found myself opening the pc to start typing within minutes of reading it.
A parallel result - for example 'Belief in imminent execution makes people more anxious' - would be equally silly, but my main beef with the study is not that the result had, shall we say, a certain celestial certainty before the congregation had uttered a single response; rather, it's the intrinsically funny idea of getting reassurance from somebody you've never met, and whose very existence is to say the least uncertain.
Human beings, as the old irony has it, would have invented God had he not existed. The wag who coined that marvellous observation would be convulsed with laughter at this latest research finding, but when one sits down to write why, it's not as easy as it seems on first reading. Applying narrow logic, if faith moves mountains, then this latest study tells us lack of faith moves bowels. As just another introspective human being occasionally disturbed by the prospect of approaching oblivion, I can get behind the result, obvious or not. I just can't see the headline Belief in God makes people more confident and keep a straight face.
The piece of research I'd love to author is Believing in God and finding he doesn't exist really pisses religious people off. It'd be a bit of a task to prove that Big G had nothing to do with anything going down in our material world: but assuming you could, administering the questionnaire to prove the second part would be a hoot.
Interviewer: So knowing now that God doesn't exist, how do feel?
Respondent: I don't believe it.
I: I see, and why don't you believe it?
R: It's a matter of faith.
I: It is?
R: Yes. I mean, he might've have just, you know, popped to do a bit of shopping when they called.
I: So, how would you describe your faith in the light of this news?
R: I believe in God and have no faith in science.
I: Uh-huh....and does that make you more or less confident?
R: Terrified.
I: I see....and why is that exactly?
R: All scientists are mad. You never know what they're going to do.
I: I see. So does your continuing certainty of God's existence stretch to a belief in him intervening to stop scientists?
R: Not necessarily. I mean, he's a busy man. What with building new constellations on his infinite canvas - that, and avoiding nosey scientists trying to prove he doesn't exist.
I: I see. But if he wanted his existence to be proved, wouldn't he stay in?
R: I doubt it. Sod's Law states that if you wait in all day for a delivery, it arrives around six in the evening. Also, I'd imagine he ticks the No Publicity box whenever he does the Pools or buys a lottery ticket. He's a very private person, God. And he moves in mysterious ways.
I hope this is beginning to explain my belief in the hilarious possibilities inherent within the God/confidence paradigm. What would the reaction among Muslims be if, say, if it was discovered that there were hundreds of Gods? You'd expect that to dent their confidence in Allah a bit, although I have to believe that the Mahmoods would be blowing themselves up at an even higher rate, the faster to get up there and sort the imposters out.
Things don't just stop with organised religion: if God moves mysteriously, then faith is applied eclectically. You'd have thought that once the astronauts brought orbital pictures back, the Flat Earth Society would've joined the Anarchic Apathy Society in quietly disbanding. Not a bit of it: apparently, the FES went from strength to strength, feeding off 'NASA faked the whole thing' conspiracy madness in order to confirm its belief - 'Of course the Earth is flat - that's why they had to fake the the space flights - and bring back all those moon rocks to kill the obvious conclusion that our satellite is made of cheese'.
If folks truly believe, there's no way you can shake the conviction. That's why my roll-about belly laughter surrounding this latest piece of research has so many dimensions. Suppose we tracked God down and found He wasn't very nice? This is not as blasphemous and far-fetched as you'd think: the evidence that God has something of a blood-lust is irresistible, but as a misogynist He has no equal. Anyone who designs a mean average 2" circumference vagina as the means of delivering 8lb babies has to be on a par with James Thurber when it comes to woman-hating. So low is the Alimghty's esteem of women, he chose one measly rib as the raw material for their creation. I mean come on - brain or heart tissue would be taking a serious stab at gender balance: but a rib? Was He serious?
I think the bottom line for all this is that faith and God-belief are not confidence-boosters really: this latest study is just another example of very bad interpretation of research. And so in that particular context, my preferred Sun headline would be 'Shutting down all possibility of faiths alternative to Mine is an enormous comfort'. Unfortunately, one could apply the same conclusion to New Labour. And look where that got us.
the short and uneventful life of Tommy Atkins
Tommy attended school at the Sharia Lane Primary School Ealing, and the Chris Mullins Comprehensive in Slough. From an early age his mother Victoria ensured he was always up to date with the latest Long & Successful Life wisdom handed out by everyone from the Health & Safety Executive to the Guardian. By the age of four this had become Tommy's obssessively compulsive order of play.
He cultivated hundreds of friends at school, as this was clearly correlated with business success, and then - once he started work - became as angry as often as possible with as many people as possible for the same reason. By the age of twenty-three over two hundred people owed him money, and he had been fired from eleven straight jobs in a row.
As a result of this he caught the attention of Mr Ed Balls' Failure Intervention Team, and became the anchor-person for Ed's favourite channel, Teachers' TV. Such fame made him attractive to online dietician celebrity Helga Prang, and amid much publicity they were married at the Pentecostal Multi-Faith Action Non-Deitic Hall, Clapham.
Until this time a moderate eater of steamed chicken and fish, he learned that a face-free diet would massively reduce global warming, and too little fat could easily lead to stomach cancer. So he switched to deep-fried pulses and sunflower oil-baked beans. Within weeks the marriage was on the rocks on account of Tommy's high-velocity farts lifting the bedclothes off his cold-sensitive spouse. But then she became pregnant, and as new research suggested a link between veggie diets and miscarriages, they took up an Atkins-Pescitarian mid-fat fusion diet.
Ever the conformist, Atkins had read that 80% of people would rather sleep than have sex, and so from this point on he abstained entirely from conjugal activities. Sadly, Helga Atkins-Prang was an insomniac nymphomaniac, and the couple were divorced the following year.
Towards the end of his twenties, Tommy found himself unemployed, unknown and uncertain. Diagnosed as a victim of Ridiculously Early Alzheimer's Onset and osteoporosis, he drank copious amounts of full-cream milk to counter these afflictions, but was forced to enter a Home for Cabbages two years later. There, he tended plants day and night as a recommended approach to increasing lifespan, but unfortunately died from lactic poisoning and forty-seven massive heart attacks at the age of thirty-three.
Worryingly, the advice Tommy followed is genuine
tasting the whine
Did you know that moderate drinking of red wine can calm anxiety, and thus save you from a heart attack, give you cancer, get you tiddly, prevent cancer, rot your liver, harden your arteries and thus give you a heart attack, make you fart, fill you with antioxidants, get you involved in silly accidents, maintain the immune system, give you headaches, knacker the immune system, cure headaches, break down fat and thus save you from a heart attack, help you in business, land you on Skid Row and turn bread into flesh?
Of course you did - and like everyone else, you're so confused by and fed up of it all, you have a glass of red wine to clear your head, and then another two....following which your head gets blurred. In this next sentence is all you need to know about drinking red wine: too much will kill you, a moderate amount will shorten your life, a small amount will lengthen your life a bit, and none will make you like the retired headmaster down the street who gets on your tits.
You pays yer money, and you takes your choice.
How do you like your eggs in the morning?
Hardly had I got this series off the ground than two things became immediately apparent. First, the supply of useless and contradictory research was even greater than I had anticipated: just keeping this section up to date is a full-time job, but not one I crave. And second, virtually nobody is reading it in the current format. This is, I suspect, because it comes under the heading 'I know this already'.
Experience has taught me in these circumstance that the only way open to an inveterate scribbler is thus to take the most silly research carried out or undertaken recently and have a good laugh at its expense.
Unsurprisingly, today this involves eggs. You wouldn't want to have been selling eggs over the last twenty years. In the 1980s, the doctors in their wisdom fingered eggs as the key culprit in cholestorol build-up in the body. Then some time later they got Curried by the listeria hysteria. And of course Health & Safety bring in an exorcist every time somone eats a raw egg.
But now it turns out, oops, they were wrong about the cholestorol. And listeria did not take over the world. And raw egg deaths are so obscure, there isn't a site anywhere with data on how many humans they kill a year - although some sources put the figure as high as three.
My wife has a boiled egg each and every morning, and her cholesterol is about minus seventeen. Two years ago when I told the GP I ate two eggs a week, he raised his eyebrows above his head and described the number as "far too many". 'Far too' and 'two' rarely go together in the same sentence - except in the criminal context of 'far too lenient, the bastard only got two years'. How can two of anything be far too much? What's 'too much' - one? In which case, a sufficiency is none at all. Daft.
I'll keep the column going, if only to remind us all that fifty years ago doctors prescribed cigarettes for losing weight, thirty years ago any exercise of less than twenty minutes was dismissed as a waste of time, twenty years ago press-ups were the only way to firm up your abs, and until three years ago salt was bad for all ages. All of these truths have been shown to be, in so many words, wrong.
THOSE WHO NEVER LEARN ARE BANKERS Four in ten new mortgages are still being lent on high loan/income multiples....and of these, over a third were accompanied by no documentation: not so much as a driving licence. Meanwhile, over three-quarters (78%) of all mortgages in arrears have made no concession or rescheduling arrangement with the bank. Heigh ho.... Source: FSA |
Amazing....
| a good childhood Produced after a two-year inquiry A Good Childhood highlights the trend towards mothers of young children choosing to work as instrumental in the breakdown of traditional family life. It Source: The Children's Society |
Taking the credit Around 2.6 million people intend to spend even more on their credit cards than last year, with an average spend in January of £318. This supports other data suggesting that while the majority are paying off debt, the hard core are simply carrying on as before - because they have no choice. Source: The Post Office |
all greek to me
According to scientists from Athens Medical School, sipping a cup of green tea has recently been shown in volunteers to widen the artery that runs from the shoulder to the elbow by 4 per cent within half an hour of drinking, suggesting a short-term benefit at least on large blood vessels.
1 in 4 don't want free money More than 3,700 people asked about their perception of charities revealed that the stigma about being the recipient of charitable services is rife. More than a quarter of those surveyed, 28%, said they would be embarrassed to receive free help from a charity. Source: Charity Commission |
care in the prison community A report, Too Little Too Late, suggests that too often the courts are using prisons as "a default option" for people who should have been diverted into the mental health system, which places "intolerable strains on prisons". It also concludes that had some people been dealt with adequately by mental health services in the community, they may not have ended up in the criminal justice system. Source: The Prison Reform Trust |
Unhappiness not good for you The Britain Under Pressure report found that, compared to three years ago, nearly two thirds of the nation feel more prone to illness, more stressed, and less fit and healthy. Source: Friends Provident |
GOING DOWN FOR THE THIRD TIME The Move Monitor survey, has revealed a 31% increase in the number of individuals and families who moved from the UK to Australia in 2008, compared with 2007. Source: Pickfords |
You'll never guess.....
if you can't cure 'em, kill 'em A study which followed 165 patients in dementia care homes has produced conclusive evidence of the mortal danger of antipsychotic drugs, designed to treat aggression, agitation and delusions. Despite this, experts warn that the drugs are commonly given to Alzheimer's sufferers to keep them quiet. Campaigners estimate that 23,000 Alzheimer's patients a year are being killed by antipsychotics. Earlier this year, a study by researchers at Queen's University in Belfast and Brown University in Rhode Island suggested that up to 200,000 dementia sufferers in British care homes were being given the drugs, twice as many as previously thought. Source: The Alzheimer's Trust |