Saturday, March 19, 2011

The science of homeopathy

It turns out that if you take intelligence and fact, and dilute them with a few centuries of woo, folk-lore, misunderstood quotations, here-say and shake for several years in the head of the gullible and the misguided, then repeat the process over and over again for a few generations, what you end up with is the science of homeopathy. For legal reasons I shall say nothing of the overall intelligence of the women presenting her ideas of how homeopathy works, but I can say quite confidently that she manages to get more facts wrong in the fields of mathematics, physics, biology and biography than anyone I've ever seen before. It's truly remarkable.


On another note, you may have noted my absence for the last few weeks. The normal excuses follow...I've just come back from a very busy two weeks in the UK, working with my former boss and some other friends in Southampton on a paper which we hope to be out next week. We're actually very pleased with these results, and the paper takes a rather different form to most of my previous papers in the fact that we're really trying to construct a framework for other people to use rather than applying techniques to a new problem.

The other things which are taking up lots of time are currently various language classes and meetings. I've set up a Chinese conversation group here in Munich and the first meeting, just before my trip to England saw a group of 12 of us getting together in a cafe to chat. The range of abilities was very varied from complete newbies to a few native Chinese and I think with a few more meetings we should find a good rhythm so that everyone can benefit. Second meeting is this afternoon, hopefully followed by hotpot.

Anyway, speaking of which I have homework to be getting on with, but just wanted to pop by to say that I'm still here, just on the verge of chaos.