The flying ghost.

I still say the tacky tabloid newspapers are the place to look for ghost stories that the seious papers won't touch, but this one is just too silly.

Yves Rossy has flown over the English channel on a jet wing - no mean feat and not without considerable personal risk. An historic act indeed.

Some idiot took a photo and was shocked to find a UFO following the flying man. The UFO is the same size and shape as M. Rossy and is clearly an internal reflection in the lens.

Genuine paranormal events are hard enough to spot as it is, without junk like this getting in the way.

Worse, Nick Pope, who claims to be an expert, seems to have been completely fooled. That doesn't help at all.

Sometimes I wish I'd been a train driver.

It's how you tell it that counts.

The often bizarre world of the paranormal is quiet at the moment. People have no time to worry about things moving on their own or strange lights and sounds. There are much bigger concerns.

I have already been told (offline) that this proves the non-existence of the paranormal. If it were real, they argue, we would all see it all the time. My argument is that maybe you are seeing it all the time but your mind is occupied with other things, such as trying to budget for a life where prices are going up exponentially and incomes are not.

It all hinges on one thing, really. Can people's perceptions be twisted by a few distractions and some clever manipulation to the extent that they aren't sure what they are seeing, reading, or believing?

Here are two links. One is something we all need to worry about, the other is nothing to worry about at all.

Which is which?

First impressions, please. A little thought will make the difference clear but remember, most people don't apply such reasoning. Most will go with those first impressions.

Then, perhaps, think a little about your day. What do you remember of travelling to and from work? What happened at lunchtime? Who did you see? What were they wearing?

Memory and perception are nowhere near as good as we like to think. Just because you can't remember the colour of your boss's tie doesn't mean he wasn't wearing one.

Or does it?

The economy, with swearing.

I came across this in my internet wanderings tonight.

Be warned - if you're sensitive to strong language, this might not be for you.

Maybe Canada would be a better option. Or Australia.

Or Antarctica.

Sometimes I wish I'd stayed ill...

It takes a while to get back into the swing of things. I'm scanning photos and listening to recordings from my outings earlier in the year. Nothing earth-shattering to report as yet. The recordings are hard work. Hours of night-time sounds coming through earphones are a sure way to get your attention to wander and a very good way to put yourself to sleep. There have been occasional perk-ups but the voice turns out to be me muttering something, the screams turn out to be a cat, or a cow in the distance. Storing up too much data and trying to go through it all afterwards is a very bad idea.

Then, yesterday, I had to go and buy a new keyboard because I sprayed coffee over mine.

Our country is involved in two wars against people who have never threatened us. The soldiers who are fighting those wars are underequipped and when they get home they are treated like dirt. That's not what cost me a keyboard.

We are in the middle of a financial crash that is going to go deep and hurt very hard. One of the worst-hit banks (HBOS) is where most of my money was stashed until I spent a few days moving it. The government have decided to fiddle with the world of finance, about which none of them know anything, and are making it much worse. That didn't cost me a keyboard either.

People are being arrested for littering and convicted in the absence of evidence, and they are denied the chance to prove they weren't even in the country at the time of the alleged 'offence'. Meanwhile, violent criminals are set free because the prisons are full of people who drop litter, overfill their bins and park in the wrong place. That nearly cost me a keyboard, but not quite.

Guns are banned, having a knife in your pocket on the street is banned, and yet gun and knife crime continue to rise. The youth are out of control and uneducated to the point where they know far more about drug use than they do about spelling. Electricity and gas prices rise by double-digit percentages every few months and the government insists on building inefficient windmills while the power stations are falling apart and all our nuclear energy generation is now owned by the French. None of those things cost me a keyboard.

What destroyed my keyboard was the news that, while the country crashes and burns around our ears, our government is spending its time wondering whether a catholic should be allowed to be the King or Queen of Britain.

It might well be an important question to some, and indeed I might weigh in with an argument or two at another time, but wouldn't you think that there are more pressing concerns than which church the Queen visits once a week?

What's it like in America, and does anyone over there have a spare room and an exceptionally tolerant attitude?

The smoking police.

As the pain in my throat subsides, the temptation to have just one cigar increases.

It's not so much addiction. I've been non-smoking (not by choice) for long enough to have flushed that away. It's more a case of... I like cigars.

There is also a definite element of sheer, perverse, bloody-minded disobedience involved.

Read this and tell me I am over reacting. If you say 'Yes, Romulus, you are over reacting' I will smack you one.

It's not just the patronising, officious, overbearing and dictatorial attitude of these people that has sent my blood pressure into dangerous territory. It's the appalling pseudoscience behind it.

I get told, all the time, that hunting for ghosts is pseudoscience. It is not. Hunting for ghosts with equipment that is not proven to find ghosts, and pretending to find evidence which is not evidence at all, is pseudoscience. Science is a method, not a subject of study. Any subject can be approached with either a scientific or a pseudoscientific approach. It is the approach, the experimental design, that determines whether the study is scientific or not. The subject of the study is not pseudoscience. The subject is not science at all. Science is only in the method of study.

In this case, our idiot government insist that smokers in the street must be shown how much carbon monoxide they inhale.

In. The. Street.

Where they will inhale traffic fumes full of carbon monoxide, as will the non-smokers. Non-smokers will not be tested. Only smokers who, in the street, are guaranteed to have carbon monoxide in their lungs. So will everyone else.

The experimental hypothesis here should be 'In a particular environment, the lungs of smokers will contain more carbon monoxide than those of non-smokers'.

The experimental method would be to test smokers and non-smokers equally within a street, within a limited time range. A balanced experiment where overall, there are equal numbers of smokers and non-smokers exposed to the same amount of street with the same average traffic flow. That will show whether there is a difference due to smoking.

Yet all they plan to do is to show smokers that they have carbon monoxide in their lungs and so drum up business for their anti-smoking classes. They plan to do this on the street so that every single test will definitely be positive. There is no control group.

You want pseudoscience? Look to the government. They are the experts in this, not researchers into subjects you don't happen to like.

I still can't smoke. Perhaps I won't, but things like this definitely won't help.

Back and furious.

I missed all the furore about the Bigfoot corpse that turned out to be Urko from Planet of the Apes (that's who the photo reminded me of). Well, I didn't so much miss it as felt too ill to comment.

This one, however, I am perfectly well enough to rage at. You think universities and colleges are run by intelligent people?

Think again.

Who are these idiots, and why aren't they wearing tar and feather suits?

Not yet dead.

I've been ill. Nothing too deadly but seriously inconvenient.

It started with a cold which, it soon became clear, had ambition. It turned into flu. Not very serious but I couldn't stare at the screen so I stayed away from the computer. Since it refused to leave on its own, no matter how much whisky I poured over it, I broke the habit of a lifetime and went to see the doctor.

He was surprised to see me. Apparently he thought I might have died years ago.

Anyway, he gave me antibiotics, Now, I have just enough knowledge of that subject to be dangerous, gleaned from hanging around with microbiologists in universities. I knew that antibiotics had no effect on viruses. I knew I had a virus. So I didn't take them.

What I didn't know (but do now) is that the antibiotics have another purpose. They prevent secondary bacterial infections moving in where the virus has left a mess. Naturally, the bacteria took note of my reluctance to take pills and swiftly moved in.

After much head-shaking by the doctor, I relented and took the antibiotics. It was at that point I discovered I am allergic to penicillin. So the medication made me worse. It was small comfort to point out to the doctor that I had been right not to take them after all.

I'm almost back to normal now. I'll catch up with messages over the next few days.

Home again.

You know, it seemed like such a good idea to go for a wander around the countryside with no intenet access for a few weeks. It was, indeed, very pleasant apart from the British weather. When we say the weather is 'changeable', we don't mean by the day. We mean by the minute. Brilliant sunshine can turn into a thunderstorm in moments, so it's a good thing I never go anywhere without a hat.

Anyway, I have no astounding successes to report (which you must have guessed by now or there'd be a photo in this post) but I still have a lot to go through.

One thing I had forgotten about was spam. It turns up every day and I delete it as it comes in if I'm at the computer. Overnight I can expect to get about 20-30 spams, hardly enough to be troubled about. Those that appear while I'm at the computer get wiped at once so I couldn't say for sure how many appear daily.

Over a period of weeks they amass to several thousand! Buried in there are ones I actually want to read but for every good one there are at least a hundred duds! Phishing mails for banks I don't have accounts with, offers of marriage from Russian women (thanks, but I don't speak Russian so it just wouldn't work out), PayPal has apparently frozen my account fourteen times even though there's currently nothing in it, and if I took all those offers to expand my trouser bits I could use the damn thing as a scarf.

Well, I can see how they make money with them. They send millions and they only need a few gullible idiots to make it worthwhile. What I don't get are the ones that have only one line, usually a quote from a book. No link, no attached virus-riddled software, nothing. What are those? Is there a class of spammer now that just wants to be as much of a pain in the backside as possible, without all that bother of selling junk?

Anyway, I have still to clear them all so if you have an email in there, be patient. I'll find it. Eventually.

First, some sleep...

Intermittent postings.

I have been out and about, and am likely to continue in that vein for a few more weeks. I don't often get to the internet, but I hope, when it's all over, to have some interesting pictures.

While I was on this time I went back to look at Scary Monster's blog. He moved on quite a while ago and I could never find out where. Fortunately he left a clue.

The Monster is still stomping, here.

I hope he doesn't mind me handing out directions.

Roadkill

Recently I witnessed an accident at close quarters. Very close quarters indeed.

Whenever I drive, or ride the bus, I marvel at the idiots who think that once they set foot on the road, they are invincible. Ears plugged with iPods, or glued to phones, they stroll across as if their walking pace is more than a match for the approaching traffic. Every time I see them I think 'One day, mate, you are going to discover that these things are hard and heavy, and you present no obstacle to their progress at all'.

You'd expect hedgehogs to behave in this way, and rabbits, and to a lesser extent, dogs and cats. You'd think that people would be smarter, but they're not.

So while what I saw was unpleasant, it came as no surprise at all.

I was on the bus, sitting on the right side at the window. In the UK, that's the side facing the traffic. The bus was stopped at traffic lights, another bus in front and just enough gap between them for a dim young girl to run through. So she did, ignoring the fact that there existed, just past the buses, another lane of traffic moving away from the junction and therefore accelerating.

She made quite a dent in the 4x4 (SUV) she collided with. Then she bounced off the bus and landed in the road.

Police, ambulances, all arrived with impressive speed. The girl was not seriously harmed but off she went to get checked anyway. The woman driving the 4x4 was very shaken and was questioned, but the accident was not her fault. She can't see through buses and could not have anticipated that anyone would be stupid enough to just run out in front of her.

Chalk up one, then. One pedestrian who is now aware that cars are not made of fuzzy felt and that a pedestrian cannot stop them once in motion. She was shaken, slightly cut, possibly had a fracture or two, but was mostly undamaged. She was lucky.

She could have been roadkill.

Another newspaper ghost.

See what you think of this one .

It could be a ghost, but the background of trees means it could also be an artifact of light and shadow.

If I had taken that one, I’d be pleased with myself, but I don’t think I’d have gone to the newspapers with it. It’s not perfect, it’s open to interpretation.

Still, it’s pretty good.

Sometimes there's no alternative.

Alternative medicine isn't something I've studied at all. I don't bother conventional doctors much either because I'm rarely ill enough to take up their time. I haven't even had my blood pressure tested in decades and I've never had a cholesterol test. Shocking, isn't it? Here I am, managing to stay alive without being tested for anything. How dare I?

So I haven't experienced much at all in the way of medicine, alternative or conventional.

As far as I understand it, 'alternative' includes things like homeopathy, acupuncture, something involving poking your feet that I can't recall the name of and other things that I would consider harmless. Whether they are effective or not I wouldn't like to say, having experienced none of them myself. Yet I would consider them harmless because they don't involve any invasive techniques, no cutting, no drugs, nothing like that. Even homeopathic remedies I would say are harmless because of the extreme dilution.

If someone has a stress-related illness, with symptoms that are entirely psychological, then any placebo will work as long as the patient believes it. Any relaxation treatment will help with stress, anything the patient believes in will alleviate imagined symptoms.

I don't discount the possibility that some of these alternatives might have effects on real diseases too, but I'm a scientist so I need to see data to convince me. Many herbs have proven antibacterial effects, and some have proven systemic effects. Wintergreen for headaches, for example, does work because wintergreen contains salicylic acid (better known as aspirin). New data (unpublished so I can't say too much or someone won't ever tell me anything again) has shown that some types of fruit have a direct effect on Salmonella infection, and other infections, in the gut. Anecdotally, I know several people who say that acupuncture has definitely helped them with arthritic pain. Whether it alleviated the arthritis or simply reduced their perception of the pain, doesn't matter to them. They feel in less pain and that's what counts.

So I maintain that alternative medicine is harmless. What is not harmless, however, is some people's mania for these treatments which reaches a level bordering on the fanatical.

There are many things alternative medicine can't do. There are some things that medical science simply must be trusted with. If you have a serious and chronic gut infection, don't just eat fruit. Get antibiotic treatment. Eat the fruit too - it'll help your gut recover - but get the antibiotics. If you have cancer, do not rely on herbal tea and pins in your skin. Get to a doctor and get that thing cut out. If it's done early your chances of survival are good. If it's left to fester while you run the gamut of alternative therapies, you're going to die. Get it out first, then go to alternatives for pain relief and recovery if you wish.

Should you be one of those who regards 'alternative' as your only choice, then I suggest you read this all the way through.

Alternatives have a place. It's good to have choices.

The trick lies in making the right choice.

Zap!

One thing I like about the UK is that it's really not very big. If pushed, I could walk from one end to the other in a month or two. I'd pass a town or at least a village every day so I wouldn't starve either. Side to side is, in most parts, a week at most and that's not even rushing. The thin bit, between Glasgow (West coast) and Edinburgh (East coast) is around 50 miles. Two days walking with lots of rest stops.

Not so America. That place is huge. Unlike the UK, it has desert regions where walking would present a very real risk of death. It has massive areas of woodland where you could get lost, die, and never be found. There, you'd have to have transport.

But at what cost? If this is to be believed, flying will soon be dependent on allowing yourself to be fitted with a zap-o-matic wrist band. I don't like the sound of that.

I also don't like the thought that such ideas don't take too long to cross the Atlantic these days.

Fortunately, I don't like flying either.

Idiot supreme.

People are stupid.

I've said it many times, yet I take no pleasure in finding, almost every day, that it's true.

This one takes the biscuit.

The whole biscuit, and also the green cheese....

How about now?

Three (including me) have seen something that matches. Let's try a little closer. I've trimmed the pictures to the parts that include (I think) the most interesting bits. See anything human-shaped here?



In this one, three people (including me) independently found a sitting figure. We also found others, but aren't all agreed on all of those.

These are the same photos as before (you can download the previous ones to check that) although I've increased the brightness by 10% on the second one here.

Enough clues for now. Feel free to download these and fiddle with them.