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Health -
News
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Written by Cronan
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by Matt Parker - TimesOnline I have just purchased a packet of Boots-brand 84 arnica homeopathic 30C Pills for £5.09, which Boots proudly claim is only 6.1p per pill. Their in-store advice tells me that arnica is good for treating “bruising and injuries”, which gives the impression that this is a very cost-effective health-care option. Unlike most medication, it didn’t list the actual dose of the active ingredient that each pill contains, so I checked the British Homeopathic Association website. On their website it nonchalantly states that to make a homeopathic remedy, they start with the active ingredient and then proceed to dilute it to 1 per cent concentration. Then they dilute that new solution again, so there is now only 0.01 per cent of the original ingredients. For my 30C pills this diluting is repeated thirty times, which means that the arnica is one part in a million billion billion billion billion billion billion. |
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Games -
News
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Written by Cronan
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UK broadband provider Be have admitted that they leaked user information in an aborted change to their web-site. On the 22nd of July 2009 Be launched a new web-site and promptly took it down after users noticed they could see other people's information. Be have released the following statement, but have otherwise not commented further on the leak. The Be leak follows a series of leaks of personal information in the UK by government departments and private companies. Dear Members Sorry for the delay in updating you on the issue with the new member centre but we wanted to be absolutely sure we had all the facts before responding. We now know that a very small % of the Be member base who logged in between 12pm and 9.30pm on Wednesday 22nd had some of their details exposed to other members.
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Short Fiction -
Stories
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Written by Cronan
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They crashed on a bend after a long, straight section of road, running through the country-side. Her mother died just before sunrise on the next day, August 23rd, 1983. Her father joined her mother two days later. She was flown back home to begin rehabilitation October 2, an orphan. It was late February before they first bent her at the waist and sat her up. She was lowered into her first wheel-chair in late March, and she was discharged on June 18th, 1984.
When something terrible happens to us, we learn a whole new vocabulary, connected with the terrible fate that has befallen us.
SPI: Spinal cord injury.
Gatched: To be bent at the waist, for example, when propped up in bed. Slightly less boring than staring at the ceiling for months. |
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Short Fiction -
Stories
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Written by Cronan
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Although they seem to have been first used by the Ancient Egyptians, around 3000BC, they weren't a permanent feature of life in the USA until 1913. Before the Fuel Wars of the early 21st century, before the Great Wars of the 20th Century, they were levied to pay for conflicts, and sometimes imposed on alcohol, slaves and other goods.
Taxes.
You have to admire the ability of governments to use the issues of the day to raise them. During war, they create war taxes, few of which are ever repealed. During peace-time governments need to be more creative, using energy scarcity (or surplus), population growth (or shrinkage), the cold winters (or the warm summers) and everything in between as an excuse to raise taxes. In the late 20th century, people finally started realising that pumping CO2 into the air, chemical sludge into the sea, and salting the earth with heavy metals really wasn't a very clever idea. The politicians stepped up to the plate, agreeing with the noble sentiments, ready with their taxes that were going to save us all. Like beggars with machine-guns. Ratcheting up the burden. |
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Columns -
Cronan
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Written by Cronan
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Sense About Science, on behalf of the Singh campaign, have asked various bloggers around the world to take part in a mass posting of Simon Singh's 2008 Guardian article "Beware of the Spinal Tap" - the subject of an ongoing libel case instigated by the British Chiropractic Association. Here it is: BEWARE THE SPINAL TRAP Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh. You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body. In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.
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Short Fiction -
Stories
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Written by Cronan
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The first thing he'd noticed were her eyes. A warm brown, flecked with gold. Clear and bright. They smiled, even when she didn't. Above one eye was a small scar, the memento of a childhood scrap perhaps? Her forehead was speckled with tiny pimples; she could do with a facial mask, or a scrub. He smiled at the thought. He imagined her washing her face, the water dripping from her hands, splashing against her skin. Running down her neck. He moved closer to the television, until her image dissolved into pointillist static. He laid his face against the screen, breathing in the light. He closed his eyes. The glass was cold at first, and dusty, but it warmed quickly from the close contact. His lips tingled with static electricity and desire. He relaxed into the one-sided embrace.
"I put a spell on you
Because you're mine."
His knee started aching first, always the same one, the left one. He unwound himself from where he was wrapped around the television, staggering backwards slightly as he stood. He clicked the TV off, reluctantly, and sagged backwards into the ageing sofa. His back was slick with sweat; he'd turned the central heating up to full earlier. The colourful throw on the sofa, one of his apartment's few concessions to decoration, felt cool against his skin. He was naked, sweaty and exhausted. Adoring from afar was very hard work. |
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Short Fiction -
Stories
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Written by Cronan
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Larkin read the email again. He shook his head, blinked, and read it again. Slowly this time.
He had been online for six months. In his day there had been no Internet cafes, no computers at school, no "Web-Surfing for Wankers" books in the local library. In one of his first jobs after school Larkin actually was a Computer. Working in the depths of the accounting department of a large engineering company, his job was to add up the columns of paper spreadsheets. His buddy added up the rows, and together they checked the sub-totals. No online porn or dating involved.
But in all the months surfing, all the hours spent setting up dating profiles, sending and reading messages, Larkin had never had a response. Well, not a real one, not one that had amounted to anything. Sure, he'd had the usual suspects, porn and spam of all types.
"Gorgeous girls looking for men in your area", "Lovely Lola is waiting for your call right now", Larkin had seen them all. He'd even responded to one of those "enhancement" emails (before he knew better), and had received a bottle of cream in the mail. It had made all his pubic hairs fall out, but his member, sadly, had not changed, neither in length nor girth. He'd measured. More than once. |
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