About half a year ago, I joined the Green Party. I'm ashamed to say that I haven't been at all active, for reasons far too dull to document here, but I've tried to keep abreast of the important developments, and I swing a tenner their way each month. In a few months time, when my life will be far more tranquil, I had planned to get much more involved, to go to meetings, take to the streets, help get the message out, and really get my hands dirty.

Actually, the dirty hands bit is just because I've seen a nice bit of clay in someone's back garden, and I'm going to nick it. It's got nothing to do with politics. But forget about that, it's of no consequence to anything.

A lot of things attracted me to the Greens. For a start, their leader, Caroline Lucas, is a remarkable, passionate and convincing woman, a genuine inspiration who refuses to weaken her ideals for populist gain - and nowadays, how many politicians can you truly say that about? Any party leader who actively recommends non-violent demonstrations and peaceful law-breaking gets a thumbs up from me.

And the core policies of the party, while sometimes overly optimistic, still align themselves very much with mine. The idea of kick-starting the economy by employing people to install free insulation in houses, and investing massively in green energy, while breaking up big banks, increasing the minimum wage, and most importantly of all to me, having economic policies which favour people and the planet over the free market - all of these things excite me. On top of that, they genuinely want to close off tax havens and tax loopholes, they'll look after public transport and take care of the elderly, they want to reverse the privatisation of the NHS, give free dental healthcare, and they're firmly against tuition fees and City Academies and Trust Schools. All in all, I've found a hell of a lot to like about the Greens.

But in recent days I've been feeling rather queasy, as some of my favourite science blogs have dug deep into the Green manifesto and uncovered all sorts of things which would make any pro-science liberal despair. As far as I'm aware, the recent round of blogging was inspired by a study done between the people behind The Lay Scientist and Science Punk, who sent all the parties ten questions on various matters of scientific importance - and the responses from the Greens were generally quite concerning. Take the astonishing limitations on research on embryonic stem cells ("We would work for an immediate international ban on all cloning and genetic manipulation of embryos, whether for research, therapeutic or reproductive purposes"), or the insistence that alternative and complimentary medicine (including homeopathy) should be free on the NHS, or the fact that they would ban any genetically engineered organism from entering the UK, which as Gimpy mentions could have very dire consequences for scientific research. There's plenty more besides which will definitely surprise you.

This has really troubled me. I agree with them on so many issues, I think their heart is absolutely in the right place, and I think they are one of the few - perhaps the only - party which can honestly say that it puts the idea of people before profit at its heart. They match my point of view precisely on so many issues. And yet on something so utterly fundamental to my beliefs, such as evidence-based medicine, they fail completely and utterly. My distress over this was so acute that I was genuinely considering cancelling my membership, and not voting Green at the election.

So imagine how heartened I felt today while reading Twitter. Ben Goldacre made a post saying "It's such a huge shame that the Greens have to be morons about science: sigh http://rly.cc/BjJ1r". He then followed up with "to be clear, even tho green party are infantile on quackery, embryo research, animal expts, etc they might still be worth a punt." Sian Berry, the Green candidate for London Mayor, tweeted him back saying "we're against embryo research? When did that happen? Bad science audit of GP policy well overdue I'm afraid but will be done", to which Ben replied "sadly true http://tr.im/ngsz happy to help with bad science audit of green sci policy, ps i actually love you." Which I think is very sweet, though maybe my positive bias for the people involved gives me rose tinted glasses which can't quite focus on the cheesiness of that last line!

Anyway, to my delight, Sian replied to Ben saying "excellent! (re bad science audit) will duly pester for help..." - and then she replied to a tweet I sent her where I expressed how happy this made me, where she said "I've been thinking about it for ages, being a bit of a scientist and that, but always too busy. Not after Friday tho..."

As it stands at the moment, the Green's scientific policies range from progressive and solid to ill considered to actively damaging. For a party that is trying to gain power, this is definitely something which should cause grave concern. The Greens are no longer on the far fringes, and at this stage of the game their policies should have at least been given the once-over by a few scientists of note.

But at the same time, I've got to hand it to them... when their policies are criticised, they put their hands up and say "fair enough". This is amazing, and quite unprecedented in 21st century politics. Sian Berry is a very important member of the party, and if she can turn around and say "that's a fair comment, we need an audit of our policy", then that already makes her, and the party, far more reasonable than any of the other parties currently standing. Can you imagine Jacqui Smith, when she was at the Home Office, ever saying to people who criticised Labour's policy on 42 days detention "Well, you might have a point about all this civil liberties business. Could you pop in next week for a chat about it?" It's so unrealistic that the idea of Jacqui Smith doing such a thing almost makes you want to laugh.

I agree with an awful lot of what the Greens say. At present, I also think that the Greens have a fair number of problems with their manifesto. But just as Ben Goldacre says, I think they might still be worth a punt. I could cancel my membership and have a bit of a strop about how there's no-one that represents precisely what I believe in - as us lot on the left are often so tempted to do. But instead, I'm going to vote Green tomorrow, and I'm going to stay in the party. I'm going to go along to the next big conference, and I'm going to try to do what I can to change things for the better. I'll get involved in debates, and try to get my voice across - in a small party, I think this will be something that is at leat vaguely possible. If it doesn't do any good, I can re-assess all of this at the time. But for now, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

And if Sian really does take Ben up on that offer, then I think that the Greens will not only be better for it, but will gain a great deal of credibility for being thoughtful, transparent, honest and decent. And Christ knows how desperately we need a political party like that.

There's a fantastic post over at the always interesting Mind Hacks blog, with a long quote from a book by the psychiatrist Bill Fulford, which "describes a patient who was the living embodiment of the logical paradox 'this statement is false'" I can't tell you how much pleasure this passage of text brings me!

"...The patient, a 43-year-old man, was brought into the Accident and Emergency Department following an overdose. He had tried to kill himself because he was afraid he was going to be "locked up". However, this fear was secondary to a paranoid system at the heart of which was the hypochondriacal delusion that he was "mentally ill".

He was seen by the duty psychiatrist and by the consultant psychiatrist on call, neither of whom were in any doubt that he was deluded. Indeed, both were ready on the strength of their diagnosis to admit him as an involuntary patient.

Yet had their diagnosis depended on the falsity of the patient's belief, as in the standard definition, they would have been presented with a paradox: if the patient's belief that he was mentally ill was false, then (by the standard definition) he could have been deluded, but this would have made his belief true after all.

Equally, if his belief was true, then he was not deluded (by the standard definition), but this would have made his belief false after all. By the standard definition of delusion, then, his belief, is false, was true and, if true, was false."

I absolutely love the idea of it being impossible to tell whether someone who declares themselves to be "mentally ill" is actually mentally ill.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/330/7482/85

Here's a nice link for those of you who like boozing - it's a page by the BMJ (British Medical Journal) which gives tips not only on how to get drunk quickly, but also on how to get the best out of your inebriation! It's a very interesting read on precisely what alcohol does when it's inside you.

It also explains why The Japs are rubbish at boozing. Drink up some science!

Daylight savings? Daylight bastards, more like!

I've never understood the idea of Daylight Savings. As far as I can tell, it's something to do with helping the farmers to get more sunlight. But surely that can't be true? Just changing the time doesn't actually give you more hours of sunlight in a day. Why couldn't the farmers just wake up a little bit earlier? If the sun rises at 5am or at 7pm, either way the farmer has to wake up at sunrise.

No-one's ever been able to explain it to me. Can anyone solve the mystery? Not even Wikipedia can help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

"Adding daylight to afternoons promotes outdoor afternoon activities. This benefits retailing, sports, and other activities that exploit sunlight after working hours, but it causes problems for farmers and other workers whose hours depend on the sun."

Okay, fair enough. I can totally see the advantages of having our clocks in an advantageous sync with the sun in the summer. So why set the clocks back in winter? That's the bit that I don't understand. Why not just keep the time as it is through the summer?

I've heard a few comics recently who have short sets about "Dr" Gillian McKeith. It's good to see her being mocked in public, but I think it's a shame that the comics I've heard so far have limited themselves to jokes that are essentially "yuck, she looks at poo and that!", when there's so much more to say about her:

- The Advertising Standards Authority has made her remove the title "Dr" from her name because the title was "likely to mislead the public"

- A membership to the American Association of Nutritional Consultants, an organisation to which McKeith belongs, can be bought for $60, as proven by the thoroughly inspiring journalist, Ben Goldacre

- John Garrow, professor emeritus in human nutrition at London University, has claimed that "there is no scientific basis in anything she says"

- In November 2006 her dodgy sex pills were taken off the market when the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) found that she was "selling goods without legal authorisation whilst making medicinal claims about their efficacy". I'll quote the next bit straight from Wikipedia: "McKeith's website suggested the sex aids had been withdrawn "[d]ue to the new EU licensing laws regarding herbal products". According to McKeith, "the EU bureaucrats are clearly concerned that people in the UK are having too much good sex." The MHRA disagreed, according to Goldacre: "The [MHRA] press office were very helpful and told me: 'This has nothing to do with new EU regulations.' And just to be absolutely clear: 'They were never legal for sale in the UK.' They also point out that there's no excuse for not knowing about the regulations, and that … the MHRA’s Medicines Borderline Section offers free advice on the phone." The MHRA told the Glasgow newspaper The Herald that "[a]s Ms McKeith's organisation had already been made aware of the requirements of medicines legislation in previous years, there was no reason at all for all the products not to be compliant with the law.""

All this, without even beginning to mention the string of factually inaccurate things she's actually said. And again, Ben Goldacre has been a source of genius, explaining in detail the myriad ways in which she is wrong. For example, she claims that we should eat darker leaves because they are rich in chlorophyll, because they will will "really oxygenate your blood", even though, as we learned when we were 12, plants only make oxygen when there is light. Goldacre points out that "it’s very dark in your bowel; and even if, to prove a point, you put a searchlight up your bottom, you probably wouldn't absorb too much oxygen through the gut wall". There's definitely a "the sun shines out of her arse" joke here.

In McKeith, we have a woman who essentially deceives people for money. So it's a terrible shame that, with the ocean of material available about her, the things that people are choosing to talk about on stage is how she spends her time looking at poo, and how she looks a bit ropey. Given some time and some thought, there's easily ten minutes of very high-brow material about this woman.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dgbalancesrocks/239195904/

For fucks sake - Dave Gorman is not a terrorist!! He seems to have taken the whole thing incredibly well, but if that were me, I would have been livid. To think that taxpayers money is being wasted to pay for policeman to interview people taking photos of a massive building... it's astonishing.

(found via Bloggerheads)

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http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kcmhr/information/articles/private_farr.pdf

This is an interesting article analysing the execution of Private Harry Farr during the First World War, for corwardice in the face of the enemy. It is now believed that the man was suffering from shell shock.

(found via Mind Hacks)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1793785,00.html

SUPERB article by Charlie Brooker about passionless music and the drones that listen to it. "There's a word for this sort of thing. It's not "art", it's "content". And it's everywhere, measured out by unseen hands, mechanically dangled over the replicants' flapping gobholes; flavourless worms for android hatchlings.

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http://badscience.net/forum/

It's only a couple of days old, but already this forum looks like a snopes.com just for the science world.

"When it starts to rain, first identify the nearest shelter, and then run to it as quickly as you can."

This piece of advice may seem like it's stating the bleedin' obvious, but in fact it comes from solid maths. Or at least, it looks like it is:



This piece of math-oh-matticks was created to answer a question posed in honour of The Beano's Billy Whizz, who runs so fast that he doesn't get wet in the rain: "Do you get less wet if you run in the rain?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4562132.stm, for those of you who are also desperately trying to find ways to make the time spent at your parent's house pass by slightly less slowly.