silliness

[sebastienne]

For a moment, I questioned mentioning "Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters" in this job application. Then I realised - they're LIBRARIANS!

...ook?

Cabaret, on stage, is very different from the film. If they'd had a different Sally Bowles, I might have been blown away; as it was, I was merely enchanted. It is much colder and darker, its message is clearer and starker. Much more of a portrait of a whole time, much less of a love-letter to something beautiful that must (by the very nature of beauty) decay. More of a warning, too; during Tomorrow Belongs To Me, this production has full-frontal nudity on another part of the stage. While you're distracted by the flesh, this pretty, harmless, hymn-like song turns into a genocidal anthem. Chilling.

Homeopathy is nonsense, yes? Specifically, "Bach Flower Remedies". Herbal substances of dubious effectiveness in such immense dilution that there's no way they can have any chemical effect. Then why are my Mum & Nan insisting that I need Aspen, Wild Oat, White Chestnut, Hornbeam, Chicory, and Larch? Shelling out a not-insignificant amount of money to buy me remedies I don't believe in? I normally think of these things as working by the placebo effect, so there's no way they can do anything for me.. right?

Comments

[hildabeast.livejournal.com]

ooh did you see Cabaret too? ben and i saw it on friday. we were sat between lots of old couples, which made it kind of odd when cocks started being waggled around...

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

yes i did! did you think Anna Maxwell-Martin was a bit not-quite-right, or was it just the night I saw her?

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

I don't think Bach Flower Remedies are too great, as they're so... general; but I've been seeing a homeopath who is also a GP for a while and it's been mildly helpful - the treatment seems much more closely tailored to specific details of one's condition. On the other hand, perhaps I'm just very susceptible to placebos?
And there are an awful lot of homeopaths who are basically just quacks - I saw a guy once who put on me on this insanely restricted diet and used bizarre machines to discover if one had "chronic, deep-seated" infections. Very weird.

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

Personally, a lot of things only work by placebo effect - Bach REscue Remedy does. Paracetamol can work in 10 seconds via placebo. and I *know* it's placebo, but it still works. It probably shouldn't, though.

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

The important thing about Bach Flower Remedies is that they're made of brandy. Not much, but just the knowledge they contain booze is enough to make me like them. Booze makes everything better. This is possibly the placebo effect.

Anyway. They're the perfect combination of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg. They've got some vaguely folkloric headology in a Granny style, and they've got booze in a Nanny style. What's not to like?


Also, mentioning plays is always a good thing on applications & interviews. They're wonderful- tight schedules, lots of teams of different people needing to work together, inevitable disasters & setbacks... I've always used my backstage work to good effect to get me jobs, I'm sure you actor types must also have useful experiences.

[hildabeast.livejournal.com]

i haven't seen it before so i don't really know, but i did get that impression... she was just a bit "meh", i think.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

Homeopathy is nonsense, yes?

Beyond nonsense. My favourite bit - they claim they can take posison and mke i good for you - the more diluted it is the more effective - to the point where most of the bottles mum tried to give me more than likely contained not a single atom of magic. Not to mention that for serious conditions they reccommend taking two doses... surely it should be a half?

If you want a cheap placebo I could get some dodgy smelling herbs, put them near a bottle of water for a while and let you have it at cost ;)

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

No, the bit with the poisons is the only bit that makes any sense. The claim being that most symptoms of the disease are actually the side-effects of the body's fight against the disease, so giving substances that promote those symptoms will, in some way, aid the body in its fight.

I didn't say it made much sense...

Nature and transience of beauty: Euclid's proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers has remained beautiful for 2500 years, and will remain beautiful as long as there are tool-using sophonts around to appreciate it. The trick is to choose an incorruptible medium.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

The poison is fine. Diluting it to the point where it isn't there anymore and claiming the water "remembers" is just, gah!

There are prettier proofs of infinate primes, but few that can be understood without an understanding of number theory. (My fav currently being one about weighted products of numbers. All primes => 2*pi. This means both infinate as finite sequences have real products. I'm still mildly lost on completely understanding how the weighting works though)

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

I didn't realise you were a mathmo! What kind of stuff do you do?

And I'm afraid I don't even begin to understand the proof you're talking about - can you give me a reference? (this looks related (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_the_sum_of_the_reciprocals_of_the_primes_diverges) - is that what you were talking about?)

[stronglight.livejournal.com]

I've never seen any reason why homeopathy would work - and generally I'm quite sympathetic to alternative medicine.

I didn't think the Bach remedies were homeopathic, I thought they were somewhat closer to unusual herbal remedies, but I don't know if that's right or not. I had a quick peek at the website and it doesn't mention dosage - as mentioned in other comments, the main scientific issue with homeopathy is the low dose. So - if the flower remedies have a sensible dose of flower in them, I would imagine they're equally likely to work as any herbal remedy but have not undergone such rigorous testing as pharmaceuticals. OTOH they would not be purified beyond all recognition like pharmaceuticals and as such might be slightly nicer for your body to cope with - as it is designed to take in dietary sources of substances not purified pills. However, if they are similar in dosage to homeopathic remedies I would be surprised if anything happened.

That said, my mum believes in homeopathy. I found Rescue Remedy helped before GCSEs. I do think that the placebo effect can occur even if you know it's a placebo. So you might well get something happening.

[footnotetoplato.livejournal.com]

There's a nice topological proof of it which needs no number theory but involves putting a topology on the integers.

Ah ... Google tells me that it's due to Fürstenberg: http://primes.utm.edu/notes/proofs/infinite/topproof.html

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

Mmm, that is pretty.

Introduces Self

[ms-rebecca-riot.livejournal.com]

ello. I hope you don't mind I've added you to my flist. You like Oscar Wilde. This is a great thing. You like Dr Who, etc etc. I saw you on Dyddgu's flist- I only know her through LJ- she's a mutual friend of Wonderwelsh. (with whom you miiight get on- he was pres of the Ox Uni Dr Who soc for a while). rambles...

[ms-rebecca-riot.livejournal.com]

Yeah I tried BFR too- but I suspect its the alcohol content rather than anything mystical. Heck whatever works;)

Re: Introduces Self

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

heyhey! as my resolution for next term is to get involved with DocSoc, and I can't find them on the net, I have friended wonderwelsh on principle. Have also friended you back because I'm so with you on the cider thing. Didn't even like the stuff 'til I was playing Nanny Ogg, and tried to get into character.. now it is vital for my well-being.

If you would interpret that sentence in a way that doesn't make me sound like a raging alcoholic, I'd be obliged.

[germainsgame.livejournal.com]

I've spent many, many years taking treatments which shouldn't work, and which I hate and don't really believe in, yet can't deny that they've turned me into a functioning human being, minus the chronic migraines.

There's one nutritionist I see who 'tests' for what my body needs by placing sealed vials containing various substances on my chest as I lie down, then feels the way my arm moves, sometimes when my hand is in different positions. I can't help thinking it's utter bullshit, yet she did work out my and other people's allergies that way, and though the pills she gives are of rather random types and strengths, if I don't go for a while my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome flares up and my brain slowly fills with headache. I'm pretty much immune to all the painkillers I'm not allergic to now, so it's mumbo-jumbo or nothing for me! yay!

Conclusion- you never know, and when you need help, get it from whatever source.

[ktroo85.livejournal.com]

i find australian bush flower rememdies work for me better than the bach ones. I have a friend who makes them up for me (there are apparently training courses you can go on and qualifications you can get in this sort of thing).

[opportunemoment.livejournal.com]

Bach Flower Remedies are the main treatment of the traumatised horse stable in Heartland, the children's books I'm reading for work (so, so flaky. Post-traumatic stress police horse cured with accupuncture, I kid you not). Odd to hear them actually referred to in reference to use on humans!

anotherusedpage and I saw Cabaret on stage but in New York, so presumably a different production (I don't remember nudity at that point). I liked it marginally better than the film version I think. We must go to the West End one.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

Not easily - I saw a lecture on it at this year Halibron thingie in soton. I have notes on it somewhere- will try to look them up :) Was cutting edge number theory fun stuff though.

Definately not reciprocals though

Am mathmo at .ox, fourth year undergrad, hoping to do PhD in random matrix theory. Like number theory, elliptic curves, communtication theory and mathematical biology. The last one is a bit weird :)

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

O_o shiny :)

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

I should mention am horribly biased against - my mother used to refuse me paracetamol for period pains, and insisted on me using homeopathy instead. I'd eat several packets, which would annoy her because those things are expensive and annoy me because it _still_ hurt.

Not to mention one of my crazy ex's is obsessive with homeopathy and reiki, as they are not part of the evil "chemical" conspiracy that is moderen medicine way of forcing profit from sick people via falsified drug tests and general eviliness. Once you've heard that speech a couple of times (followed up with the "I see angels in the sky telling me where I need to be" and the always good "I can't stay with you because I need to be in America overthrowing Bush by taking lots of opium") and it all sounds way more crazy than I ever thought it could.

Also check with a doctor/pharmacist before taking anything - "natural" remedis can sometimes have nasty nasty interactions with other medicines (the truly diabolical St. John's Wort for example. Lovely plant so I hear, by not if you have a heart condition/ depression meds/ contraceptives...)

Re: Introduces Self

[ms-rebecca-riot.livejournal.com]

interpretating thing at the ready. like the Drs language translation thingy. But nerdier!

[the-whybird.livejournal.com]

Agreed. The idea that homeopathy should be accepted by the medical community makes me incandescently angry. Even as a private practice it concerns me (since it becomes a way of separating people from their money by preying on their illness.) And like all alternative medicenes, it's popularised by people under the erroneous belief that the plural of "anecdote" is "data".

Just as well that we don't have any major public figures, like, say, a member of the Royal Family, promoting it, eh?

Oh.

Wait.

Fuck.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

We suffer from an infestation of mathematical biologists up here, too*. Mostly biofluids stuff (blood flow through the lungs, etc), but we have some population dynamics types too. I never much enjoyed number theory - actual, y'know, numbers (even when held at arm's length) always seemed far too concrete :-) Random matrix theory sounds like it could be interesting, though.

* Not really, they're all lovely.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

While it's always nice to meet mathematicians, your icon rubbed me up the wrong way. Consequently, I have just blogged about (http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/40478.html) the utter banality of the equation shown.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

That's... made entirely out of crack. I love it.

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. That it falls out so vacuously from the definitions is one of my favourite things about the equation, but I'm sorry the emphasis some people put on it irritates you.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

How ironic :-) I'll quote you in my post, if you don't mind...