klog

I drink quite a lot. I won’t say how much, as it would shock some people, and other more serious drinkers (who I might call alcoholics) might think it trivial. Suffice to say it is enough that my wife thinks I’m in danger of my liver exploding and taking out the neighbourhood with it.

So, she “proposed” that I take milk-thistle tablets to make sure that doesn’t happen. In fact, it was less of a proposal than that I came home one day and she shoved a box of the things in front of me and said “take two”.

That annoyed me - not the fact that she might have been looking out for my welfare, but the fact that she, instead of asking a doctor about it, bought some pills because they are “believed” to have good effects on the liver.

Believed by who? Whenever I see a sentence which is qualified by “it is said” or “it is believed”, I always add in a modifier - “by gullible people”, which injects a bit of reality into it.

Example sentences: milk thistle is said, milk thistle is believed, it is said that milk thistle

Never mind whether any of that is true or not. There is a more fundamental problem here. You should never undergo a course of self-medication without the prior approval of your doctor; especially if the medicine has not been clinically proven to be safe.

The actual brand that was thrust upon me was Sona Milk Thistle. Have a read of that page.

There are vague sentences in there - “helpful during the festive season”, “supports the liver”. “helpful” and “supports” are not clearly defined terms - exactly what does it mean to be helpful during the festive season (here - let me help you with those drinks)? Exactly what does it mean to support the liver (oops - that liver is slipping - let me prop it up)?

The only clearly stated sentence in the descriptive paragraph is “Milk Thistle has been used extensively for liver diseases and jaundice”. Now, the thing is - I don’t have liver disease, and I also don’t have jaundice, so why should I take it?

I prefer my medicines to have very clear purposes - “anti-inflammatory” - “anti-histamine” - “pain relief”. If the purpose of the medicine is “said to support”, then I don’t want to know.

By the way - read Derren Brown’s autobiography - it’s full of logic and wit. One piece explains that alternative medicine by definition has not been proven to work - if it has undergone clinical trials and has been proven to work, then it automatically becomes medicine, and is no longer alternative. So, avoid “alternative” medicine as there is no way to know what the hell you’re doing to your body.

yes. another resolutions page. I’ll call them plans, though, as “resolutions” sounds a bit certain. in my experience, nothing is certain, even promises.

so, my plans:

• lose a half-stone. when I married Herself, I was 12 stone. this was probably partly caused by the anti-depressants I was on at the time. since then, it took me a few months to manage to cut down to 11 stone. my ideal weight is more like 10 stone, but I’m finding it incredibly difficult to do that - I just seem to be stuck at 11. so, this year’s plan is to get down to 10.5.
• build the new robot - I want a very small form-factor machine (gumstix or linutop). it should have caterpillar tracks, a robotic arm, and a cutting tool. my current bot is about 9′x14′. the new one should be at most 6′x6′. the software is not yet complete, but at least this will get the hardware out of the way
• get my finances back under control. for the last few years, I’ve had negative values in almost all of my bank accounts. about time I managed to fix that. I have one account under control by basically denying myself access to it and setting up a standing order into it. the same plan should work with everything else. the plan is to on average raise the total value of each account by a set value every month. this value (none of your damned business ) should be measured on a specific day each month.
• build a collapsible mini-ramp. I can’t make it to the local skate-park very often, so the plan is to build something that I can wheel out to the garden when I feel like some exercise. it should be big enough that I can use my bike on it as well as my skateboard.

notice that none of these are vague. it’s been shown that when a resolution is vague, it usually does not happen. an exact plan, though, gives solid goals that can be reached.

Sorry if this post is totally bonkers - I’m a layman but like to think about this stuff.

Got an email newsletter from Galaxy Zoo today. In it was a link to a recent Telegraph article pointing out the apparent lopsidedness of the universe. In short, most galaxies that we see in the universe appear to be rotating in the same direction, where the direction should be random.

I had a thought about this, and it occurred to me that this could be explained if there was some sort of “coriolis force” acting on space itself.

How can this be? Surely space is just space? Well, not according to quantum loop gravity, which describes space as a load of interlinked nodes. Where you think there is nothing, there is actually a load of interlinked points.

The “coriolis force” is hard to explain. A short explanation might be this: on a planet that is spinning, if you have a solid object which is sitting still (relative to the planet surface) on any latitude of the planet other than 0 or at the axis, then one side of the object is actually moving through space faster than the other because of the slight difference in radius of the sides’ paths through space as the planet rotates. Yeah - headrush.

Anyway - what it means is that objects sitting on the “north” hemisphere tend to turn clockwise instinctively, and vice versa.

So, what does this have to do with galaxies?

Well, if most galaxies are rotating in a specific direction, then that could indicate a coriolis effect happening on space itself. This could happen if the universe itself was rotating.

A further implication is that if you map the rotation of all galaxies and analyse them carefully, you may find that you can actually pinpoint the centre of that rotating universe. This is something that traditionally has been thought of as impossible, because the universe might not have a “centre” at all.

Anyway, please comment if you think this is stupid, but give a reason why it is.