Dancing in the sheets.

[reddragdiva]

• Wikimedia blog: We will add your activist distinctness to our own.

Having failed to find any of the several phones-and-chargers I know are kicking around here, I have bought something cheap and horrible (cheap and cheerful, really) for ten quid. It makes calls and has an FM radio which Freda promptly danced around to and I expect the K750i will show up tomorrow.

Domesticity is becoming rather busy; unlikely to be leaving the house much at all in the next month or two, barring work (at which I am doing my boss's job as well as my own for the next fortnight). I remain somewhat contactable online.

I have been on an alt-med binge, having read literally every page of Wiki4CAM. In the last coupla days we have Oprah Winfrey, Acupressure, Bach flower remedies, Craniosacral therapy, Pranic healing, ThetaHealing™, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Isopathy. And mind uploading.

Comments

[rone]

Reading about this shit makes my brain hurt. It's way stupider than religion, and that's saying something.

[reddragdiva]

Biofield flower therapy remains my favourite. I feel a cosmic subtle energy vibration moral certainty that it was invented because Professor Doctor Meyl's wife was nagging him about schnapps.

[hirez]

That's... quite something. I'm not sure what it is, but it does make my brain curl up and whimper.

And. Chelation Therapy? I mean, what? How long have they been administering British Anti-Lewisite down the Holistic Drop-in Centre?

Jayzus.

[reddragdiva]

As long as they could avoid getting arrested for it, basically.

[thefon.net]

I have the same phone, but I've come to quite like it.
Cheap & cheerful, it is light, has good battery, OK sound quality, and fairly easy to use (though mass-delete of SMS would be good).
No easy phonebook sync but I can bluetooth contacts across from my PC.

[reddragdiva]

"Cheap and cheerful" - yep! It's a "voice and texts" phone that is small, thin, light and has reasonably-sized buttons and display. It is clearly disposable, but also shows phones moving into pocket calculator territory, i.e. a quid for something with big buttons and a big display that runs on ambient light, and the plastic case is probably the most expensive item on the bill of materials. Here's to Moore's Law.

arkady is due for an iPhone upgrade when she's had her BlackBerry a while longer, but my old mostly-dead phone, a Motorola V525, was frankly giving me the absolute shits.

[nanaya]

Hm, I kind of assume that craniosacral therapy might have *some* benefit, in the form of a nice relaxing head massage. Not going to cure tumours, but might alleviate the odd headache?

[reddragdiva]

And reflexology is a nice foot rub. Both are still made entirely of woo.

[nanaya]

Oh, indeed. But I think the underlying woo doesn't change the fact that they may have *some* positive application, even if it's not for the reason the practitioners argue (and I'm not convinced that most people who use these things believe or necessarily even know about the complicated pseudoscience behind them), even if it's just the placebo effect. And reflexology probably won't cause any additional harm.

Whereas something like chelation therapy seems as though it could potentially be extremely harmful. For all we know, it's harming people right now, and we'll discover how in a few years - like with sunbed tanning.

I kind of feel there should be a sub-division of the efficacy category into "possible benefits" (which for eg reflexology might be 'diminishing foot pain' or 'stress reduction' or something like that, but would still say 'no evidence that it magically helps with stomach problems') and possible harm, which means all the gentle touching or not-quite-touching therapies would generally fall into "mostly harmless', while chelation would be "whoa, danger time!"

Does that make sense? I do feel there's an important distinction between woo which doesn't do what it says on the tin, but doesn't really do any harm (unless people decide to forego conventional medicine and rely on it) and might have some beneficial side-effects, and between woo which can be actively harmful.

[reddragdiva]

Possibly. However, even the harmless variety is harmful in that it keeps people from seeking proper medical attention. Homeopaths recommending homeopathic malaria vaccines spring to mind. And there's good reason even implying something can help treat cancer when it can't is illegal.

[nanaya]

However, even the harmless variety is harmful in that it keeps people from seeking proper medical attention.

IA, but I think these are different kinds of harm. Things which are directly harmful in their own right need bigger warnings in brighter red letters, IYSWIM.

[reddragdiva]

I'm not convinced, but it is possible that this would mitigate harm amongst the determinedly stupid, yes.