Burbage

El Pibe Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'm all for some good old ghost stories. So am I, to be honest. There's nothing I like better than meeting up with the coven in Dulwich Woods, where after a bit of bat-charming, we'll share spooky stories and toasted crumpets. But perhaps that's because it's about the only time I allow myself to wear anything floaty. One of the best stories is the Tale of the Haunted Outfitters, which I can't give justice to on this forum, mostly because it's not mine, but which would surely strike a plangent chord in the heart of any gent who's experienced the back room of a provincial shirtsmiths. Sadly, local spooklore is very deficient on all counts. The Ghoul of G****C*** Lane rarely gets beyond the title, the same dimensionless salesperson seems to hang out in every shop on the Lane and almost everything else turns out to be the council. There might have been potential in the sportive genres of clowns and scarecrows, which might easily have stolen what spectral thunder there is, but it's all died a depressingly unsuspicious death. A few more noises from the Grove Tavern, though, and we might have something to work with.

It depends on what stage things are at. Is this something you're starting, or something that's outgrown ordinary shared hosting? If you're starting out, then there's a bunch of choice, with lots of cheap deals and the suchlike. The bigger players, like 1and1, GoDaddy etc get a lot of complaints, but that's because they've a lot more customers, and most of the time everything goes fine. If you're willing to spring ?5 a month, I'd suggest United Hosting, who have good support and haven't let anyone I know down yet, or HostNine or, for that matter, my own dear self, who resells a modest bit of hosting from time to time. Some of them have built-in, ready-installed versions of wordpress, which I avoid like the plague - I suspect some of them are a bit customised, and it might not be as easy to move them to another hosting company as it should be, though I've no evidence for that, except for being old enough to remember the days when tricks like that were de rigeur. Most problems arise when people try to swich provider later on (either they need better hosting, forget to pay a bill or the company fouls up). To guard against getting stuck, you want your eggs in different baskets, so most folk tend to register their domain name with one company (123-reg, for example, who are good at that but, like most domain name outfits, have rubbish hosting), get hosting with another, and put the email through Google. That means if you get annoyed with one aspect of the operation, you can switch about with ease, without having to do everything at once. If you're beyond that, and are looking to shift an existing set-up to a host with more bandwidth, more space and/or better optimisation, then that's a different, and often pricey, game. If that's the case, then I may be able to put you in touch with the proprietors of some stupidly busy blogs, who should give you some pointers (though it usually ends up either with Wordpress' VIP hosting or a dedicated server somewhere, either of which cost a few hundred a month without breakfast).

fabfor Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > And thanks for the truly fascinating article in > Nature. I'm time-impoverished at the moment but > can hardly wait to study it properly. For the > moment, it looks like exactly the kind of research > that could be used to support Dr. Sheldrake's > Morphic Resonance proposal - or is it unreasonable > to suggest this?? Fairly unreasonable. The evidence suggests a learned behavioural trait can be inherited through material in the gametes (they gave the mice to foster parents who weren't frightened of the same things). We know learned behaviour is not passed along through the genetic code as such, but there is a possible mechanism in the epigenetic (i.e. the mechanisms that regulate which genes are expressed or suppressed), and there's evidence of unexpected epigenetic changes in the offspring. We're not clear on how that happens, or how those changes are related to the behaviour. Or whether the initial experiment was dodgy. But the clues we have now suggest the answer is more likely to be found by repeating versions of the experiment, and looking for epigenetic clues, than by trying to look at fields we can't detect and which may not exist at all. > "If I were a proper scientist, I'd note that idea > down, design an experiment to test it and publish > my results if I got any." > Come on, be fair! It's also legitimate to collate > others' research to support a new theory > (actually, the idea behind Morphic Resonance > predates Sheldrake). It is perfectly legitimate to look for evidence to support a new theory, but you have to have a theory first. At the moment Sheldrake's got a hunch about some hypothetical, poorly-described and undetectable fields with a non-existent origin or mechanism and suggests that they might explain everything we can't explain, from deja-vu to who shot Kennedy. But so could aliens. So could the spirits that live in things. So could the blasted Easter Bunny. It's unfounded, copper-bottomed, rubber-stamped, unadulterated, utter, gibbering, woo. > Anyhow, I like old Rupert and admire his > intellectual honesty and courage but we'll have to > disagree on that, eh? That's nice. And as it would be very churlish of me to point out that's the one thing we don't disagree on, I won't.

fabfor Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > .... I was > particularly impressed by his take on memory > location- not in the brain!?!!- and also the > apparent 'entanglement' in crystal compounds. No > woo but a wow from me. Impressed is one way of putting it. But it's still what the psychiatrists would call gibberish. To be fair, it depends a bit on what you count as a 'memory'. To some extent, memories may be shared across a culture. The internet is wonderful for that, shoe-boxes of photographs still get passed along from attic to attic, and fairy-tales are handed down from generation to generation (and form the basis of an intriguing offshoot of evolutionary theory). And, as well as photos, there are phobias. That's interesting because phobias, which are usually assumed to be handed down through nurture rather than nature, might also be inherited, possibly epigenetically. Sheldrake does, graciously, condescend to consider epigenetics, but only because it breaks one of the 'taboos' that he's invented. However, as it "does not challenge the materialist assumption that heredity is material", he decides it's of no value to him at all, going on to claim that it cannot explain instinctive behaviour, which must, therefore, be down to his blessed magic fields. Which is a shame, because those who do consider epigenetics have been busy. Only a month or so ago a paper turned up (reported and referenced here) showing that a learned fear seemed to be inherited via the gametes (i.e. material), and if fear isn't instinctive, I don't know what is. Fair enough. It's only been shown, not proven nor explained. But that's how proper science works. What happens next is that lots of scientists will carp away at it and they'll run the experiments again and see if they can get it to work, and pore over the data and scour the assumptions and propose some mechanisms (based on epigenetics, as that's what appears to be changed in the experiment), and find ways to test those and it'll all go quiet till the next bit of hoopla. It doesn't work by saying "that's not an explanation, therefore it must be down to these fancy fields I've just thought of", and it doesn't work by people claiming to have proof of anything, except in the mathematical sense. This experiment, though the results are surprising to the point of suspicion, is built on at least fifteen years of prior experiments* into epigenetic inheritance, during which time each surprising finding has been repeated, confirmed and used to support the next step in the speculative process. For it is speculative, but informedly so. It's a "we know this, so what if..." process, rather than, "maybe it's all down to something completely different that we can only vaguely imagine". That way madness lies. Or, at a pinch, religion. Which is why I've been able to be a little naughty here. There's no suggestion, so far, that human phobias are inherited - they're firmly in the nurture box at the moment, and their inheritance a little flight of hypothetical fancy. But if the fearful-mice work turns out to have an epigenetic mechanism, then it seems plausible that human phobias might do, too. If I were a proper scientist, I'd note that idea down, design an experiment to test it and publish my results if I got any. What I wouldn't do is write a book about it first and claim it was all to do with "something beyond our understanding", as Sheldrake does. That would be a lot easier, and much more lucrative, but it's not science and it's not an explanation. It's woo. * See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2989988/ for a summary.

cle Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I can't understand the passiveness of people that > would have this sitting in their garden for 2 year > before querying it?! In the old days people used to get rid of things like this by tying them to witches or leaving them in vampires, and perhaps they thought an opportunity would arise sooner rather than later.

fabfor Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Has anyone read "The science delusion"? If so, > what do you think?? Yes. It's an impressive bit of work, and he's right on many counts about the problems within science - publication bias, the way funding is allocated, fraud and so on. It's also, in part, a nice introduction to the history and philosophy of science, and a neat explorations of many of the things that we don't yet understand. The flaw in it, however, is that he seems not to understand what science is. He kicks off with ten, very arguable, statements that he reckons the scientific community believe - what he calls 'the scientific creed' - and spends most of the book bowling anecdotes at them. That's a bit of a shame, as the assumptions are arguable at best. For example, one assumption is that scientists 'believe' that all matter is unconscious and devoid of 'inner life'. Which might seem arrogant and unsubstantiated, but the alternative is to assume that every atom has a soul and I don't see how that's any better. A typical example of how he's gone about the project is the chapter about 'mechanistic medicine', where he argues that because 'mechanistic science' can't explain the placebo effect or why social isolation has a bad effect on health, it assumes that neither exist. But that's not the case at all, science just can't explain them yet. The effects exist, and are well-documented, which puts them a lot further up the scale than telepathy. But Sheldrake is unhappy with that and so, as in nearly every chapter, he inserts the suggestion that morphogenetic fields may be the explanation, if only science wasn't too blinkered to consider it. The reason science appears 'blinkered' is simple enough. It's the same reason why Higgs fields get more attention than morphogenetic fields. Higgs had an actual theory, and did the sums that showed scientists what they needed to look for so that, when the technology existed, they could look for it. Sheldrake, so far, has yet to get past the hand-waving. That's why his ideas are firmly on the back-burner. If and when he, or anyone else, can produce something to work with, then I'm sure they'll receive some attention. But at the moment, there's nothing to do, and plenty of other stuff to worry about. Science is far from perfect, and there are real problems with how resources are allocated and the way research is funded and laboratories incentivised. But the answer still isn't woo.

fabfor Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Oh, and check out his book "the science delusion" > - guaranteed to amaze.:-). Is that the one that gives deja-vu as evidence for time-travel?

I'm fond of Sheldrake. He goes out and looks for things that are odd and although, so far and despite the bluster, he's failed to find anything, that doesn't mean he's entirely wrong about everything. In my lifetime acupuncture has moved from fringish quackery to proven therapy, Fred Hoyle's idea of an off-planet origin for life is no longer laughable insanity but one of the motives for an expensive mission to Mars, and SETI has grown up from giggle-fodder to near-respectability. Even homeopathy, which used to rank alongside spoon-bending, looked plausible for a moment - like room-temperature nuclear fusion or faster-than-light neutrinos. Those findings were all scuppered in the end, but that doesn't mean we should stop looking for things, or refuse to occasionally contemplate the incredible. But if we do, we must prove it in mathematics, show it in reproducible tests or carry on the search. Otherwise, we're just telling fairy-tales. Telepathy, for example, might exist and it's perfectly sane to check for it - even if the existence of casinos suggests it doesn't. But until reproducible results are in, which they aren't, it will have to remain as fictional as, until recently, singing mice and levitating frogs.

Although Clavinovas are a bit out of price-range, Yamaha has a more competitive range that they've chosen to call Arius. The obvious difference between them is that the latter look less like a piano and more like a keyboard on a chipboard stand (which is what they all are, really). The similarity is that they have the 88 full-size, touch-sensitive, weighted keys and a set of pedals which is probably your minimum set of requirements. As well as the woodwork, there may be other differences - a few minor refinements tone-wise, and speakers mightn't sound as good (though headphones are, I gather, compulsory up to grade 7) - but the workings are likely to be as similar as to make little practical difference. I don't have either myself. I've a Casio PX-830, and very happy with it. But I don't know where you could try one out, whereas the Yamaha shop in town (Chappells of Bond Street as was, not that it was in Bond Street) has the Yamahas on display for brass-necked shoppers to pound at (alongside the irritatingly proficient, but don't mind them), and I'd strongly advise a trip (though ring first and ask, in case they've shut again or something). In the meantime, the pianoworld forums, though US-based, have a buyer's guide, threads about most models available in the UK, and might be a good, if confusing, starting point for narrowing things down, deciding what is and isn't important and getting used to the terminology, if you've not done that already.

Andybol Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hmm seems to me this is a tough ask... Working > class criminal Lawyer (in London?) Female lead! That's how Silk started and somebody bought that, so it's clearly not impossible. Not sure if more grit and grumble would help but, as Otta point out, it seems to sell remarkably well. As does anything written in Swedish and filmed in the dark, which suggests one way of sparing Otta's blushes.

taper Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I have. I don't think you have though. At the risk of gatecrashing someone else's bun-fight, I'd like to add my own humble handbag to the debate. For there is a middle way. The thing with abnormal activity (to give it its proper name) is there never is any unambiguous or verifiable evidence to support any conclusions. And thus no conclusions. If there was, it wouldn't be abnormal. And so, in the absence of testable evidence, your can either pin it on the spirit world and have the little folk for scapegoats, or ascribe it (with equally little evidence) to gin or the vapours. Logically, we'd just say we don't know. But what is logical is not always convenient. And what is logical to us is not necessarily logical to others. We shouldn't forget, after all, that the tools of logical reasoning, including scepticism and even science, are cultural artefacts in themselves, theoretically undermined by incompleteness theorems and practically stymied by the uncertainty (or otherwise) between anti-, non- and realism itself. Different cultures have developed different ways of handling these deficiencies, so what might get a traditionally British sceptic hollering for an exorcist would be met by their Gallic equivalent with a shrug. But, as near as makes no difference, everybody is wrong about everything, just not always in the same way. And no, I can't be sure about that, but only in the same way as you can't be sure what exactly you mean by 'sure'. Thus, although the abnormal has, so far, been only used to replace an explanation that's inconvenient, embarrassing or expensive, that doesn't necessarily make it not normal from a sceptical viewpoint. This is, sort-of, what Sheldrake is about with his dog-bothering experiments (and, somewhat paradoxically, what his critics rely on). And that's also why it's not entirely true to think of practitioners as quacks or fraudsters. Sure, they prey on the vulnerable, but who doesn't? The doctor, who profits from our sickness? The humble bookseller who flogs self-help to the helpless? The lawyer, who makes divorce and dying the most undignified of pastimes, and charges heftily for the privilege? Take that noblest of professionals, the undertaker, whose whole career is a pantomime acted out ostensibly for the sake of the one person who's beyond caring. But we go along with that because funerals are for the vulnerable living, rather than the dead and, being vulnerable, we'll happily pay through the nose for one last, futile chance of appearing to be less mean to them. The spiritualists are doing exactly the same thing. And, compared with advertisers, insurers, bankers, politicians, policepersons, estate-agents, journalists, non-executive directors, consultants, project managers, opinion-formers, television cooks and the burgeoning bureaucratic incompetocracy, they seem a lot more honest about it. So, although it's hokum, it's hokum with a purpose, and thus deserves a place in all our hearts, along with Satan, Santa and the Easter Bunny's Magic Basket. At least until we're in a position to test it properly. Which, in case you missed your own point, we're not.

james90 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I speculate there are a lot of > time wasters attending extrapolating from what is > seen on the A&E show and from the evidence in the > waiting room. That's the impression given by stupidity-porn telly, and what they want you to believe. But taken in conjunction with the news that walk-in centres are closing, it's far from the whole picture. I've been sent to A&E with a bruise - by my GP (and, at a different time, for a cut finger). This is partly a good thing; I might have broken my foot, and an X-ray could have been advisable. But anyone with five minutes and a knowledge of foot anatomy could have checked more quickly and easily. The trouble is finding one of those. GPs and practice nurses usually won't look at anything you've not planned, and booked, at least three days in advance, and the alternatives, those that are still running, are something of a secret. The minor injury units and walk-in centres are what's supposed to fill the gap. But GPs, GP receptionists, pharmacists, NHS Direct (until very recently) and even A&E departments don't refer patients to them. It is a matter for deeply cynical speculation why this should be the case, but the upshot is that you either know they exist or you don't. And most people don't. So any sort of urgent (i.e. unplanned) situation, whether it's a splinter or a bruise, ends up at A&E. This may change if we get a sort-of-polyclinic at the Dulwich Hospital. But whether it'll be advertised, whether you'll be welcome there, and whether GPs will refer patients to it are still very open questions. It's a competitive world in the NHS and A&E is a comparatively cheap referral. Moreover, it's the very lowest-risk of options. On the matter of DMC specifically, the group has expanded rapidly in the last year, and now offers imaging, practice management and call-centre services to healthcare services both here and abroad. They may not be very good, just yet, and it may mean their surgeries are no longer their core business, but it looks like being the model for the future, so it won't be long before we'll all be enjoying the same quality of service.

Alan Medic Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Is Woodrot pregnant then? That could be seen as an insensitive comment. For all we know, Woorot was once a frolicksome schoolgirl who dreamt of nothing more than founding a cat sanctuary on a mediterranean island, like all her classmates. But if life after St Borgia's was harsher to Woodrot than for Bunty or Tiggy or Mo, as seems likely, then it's possible she may have been forced to explore a career under a famous Sussex healer, a career that might have, for reasons we need not go into, gracelessly expired during the Summer of Love. Following which, she might well have discovered other talents in pest control before celebrating her dotage in a bedsit on the Peckham Borders, with only Dubonnet and The Mortifier - both a tool of a trade and a memento of a tragic teatime - to fend off the haunting reminiscences and sordidly persistent regrets. None of us are perfect, and we all, from time to time, dream the unspeakable dream. But there are worse things than that, and a little kindness and consideration wouldn't go amiss.

aprovocateur Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- "to question the morals of anything in our society" With the apparent exception of the consumerisation of infanticide. Begone, tat-monger.

PeckhamRose Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Wow. This backs up what the police tell us every > time we attend the Police Ward Panel! Love living > here! That's because these figures are invented by Plod itself (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25022680), allegedly according to whatever gets targets met or makes a good case for more funding. The British Crime Survey is regarded (by government and others, when it suits them) as being more reliable. However, the BCS is done through interviews with about 50,000 randomly-selected people, so won't be directly comparable at ward level, and won't be fine-grained enough to base strategies on. It's also probable that the victims of nastier crimes, such as murder, would be less likely than average to respond.

woodrot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > are we still anti fur in ED or is it acceptable ? > - unless its kitty fur of course If you read the Taxidermy thread, you'll find kitty fur is most acceptable, and it's only the lack of practiced cat-skinning artisans that prevents its widespread use. Which suggests, even to my jaundiced mind, that a match made in heaven may be looming round your corner.

spark67 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I don't go with the idea that drivers do not give > a wider berth to cyclists with helmets on Here you go: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/9332/

buggie Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Is it bad I'm disappointed the John Lewis ad > didn't make me cry?! Yes. Although the jumped-up draper has spent ?1m of its customers' ex-money on the best by-the-yard mawkishness the nation's most talented cynics could produce, the expectation that feeding it back to them in the viciously profitable form of CGI sentiment will result in both undiluted adulation and a chance to prise its punters' purses once again may have been over-stated, however perky the flouncy little execs that flogged this hogwash might have been about it. Such manipulative tosh might well have an effect on the feeble upper-lips of the top 20% or so, who have little else to warm the clammy remains of their self-entitled little hearts, not to mention an easily-calculated psychology. But it's unlikely to do much at all for normal people. So, in this case, your disappointment is entirely unjustified, and my advice would be to stop fretting about it and turn your attention to the many other, and utterly genuine, disappointments that life has to offer.

Count me in, please. I'd be proud to be part of any paradigm-shifting new-media initiative that helps bring citizen drama to the community. I have experience in the role of Sheep (1973, Ms Lydon's class), and have since performed near-lead roles in some of the works of Bennett and Ridley. I can also touch-type, with a certifiable wpm of 12.

bobbly Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Has this been cancelled? No, not cancelled exactly. I'm not sure how to put this, but it might be a good idea to get your calendar serviced before Christmas.

woodrot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > can someone, in less than a minute, justify why > this is worth $20bn? It's facebook for people without friends.

As far as I know, there isn't one and probably shouldn't be one. The only suitable place is Palm Tree Roundabout, and that's already occupied. Moreover, judging by previous threads, if the council dared spend taxpayers' money on displaying the severed head of an innocent tree purely for the entertainment of the public we'd never hear the end of it.

It's because the bus and the relevant legislation were both badly designed. Most of the noise, which breaks the regulations, comes from the cooling fans at the back which apparently get stuck on full blast thanks to some cack-handed engineering. The solution that the makers found was simply to disconnect the fans on the one they sent for noise testing, so now they've got a certificate that says they hardly make a sound. And that is all that matters. Both Westminster and Kensingtonandchelsea have been fuming about this for years, but there's apparently nothing that can be done.

woodrot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Has anyone got a graph showig the timeline between > facile arriviste liberal art facilitator parasite > nazi arrival and the de facto ethnic cleansing* of > those who are not their type ? Something like this? http://www.economist.com/blogs/blighty/2013/09/mapping-gentrification

fl0wer Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Sorry, but I am going to bring your well-meaning, > jargon infested document to the attention of EDF > readers. This seems a little unfair, give the document is effectively a summary of a repeat. They're just re-announcing the choice of Option A (or possibly B, I forget), and setting out some of the blander findings of the survey. If they'd just said they were building the polyclinic, without adding all the guff, they'd have had nothing new to say at all. Besides, the fact that patients feel the health service should deliver healthcare in a way that people can access might seem haemorrhagically obvious to the layman, but other threads suggest it'll come as shocking news to GPs. Dressing it up in the euphemistic garbage of the industry may help drive the message home and thus move the project forward within the service delivery community. That, surely, can't be a bad thing.