Author: admin

Anti-scientific?

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It was a recommendation of and a listening to Professor Angus Dalgleish, physician, oncologist, pathologist, medical researcher and author that prompted the thoughts.

The Professor makes a good point. There is a lack of consensus in many areas of science, and perhaps especially true in the context of cosmological and the design of bio-chemical machines, where radically contrary views may be held by main-stream scientists, but who rise up together when anything approaching a Biblical perspective on the known facts is introduced to silence the proponents of what is an alternative and more credible explanation than their own. Even Coco’s use of the word design in the preceding sentence will provoke the ire of such opponents of the scientific method to which they pretend to adhere but abandon when it does not suit their ideology or philosophy.

It is difficult however for the layman to assess and test the different points of view and ultimately comes down the question, as Coco read elsewhere in a different context, ‘who are you prepared to believe?’ whilst at the same time keeping only a tenuous hold on the current scientific thinking, for as has been seen very clearly in the last 500 years at least, current scientific thinking can be rapidly overturned by a new and aberrant ‘fact’ or a new explanation for a well-known fact that had previously not been adequately explained.

What Coco would suggest however is that we should not believe those who seek only to silence the opposition and are not prepared to let you listen to any alternative presentation or explanation.

The first one to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbour comes and examines him. Proverbs 18.17


Anti-scientific woke

Coloured

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South Africa’s Tyla sparks culture war over racial identity

English is a very difficult language as we who were born to speak it know from the moment we meet someone from the other side of the railway track (Coco would have said over the border but English speakers from other parts of the world may misunderstand what that means). It is not merely the orthography that confuses. Every English reader, who has read the preface of the OED, knows how to pronounce ghotti and what also it means.

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A dangerous work(around)

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You may have heard the expression: Rubbish in, rubbish out.

Forty years ago Coco used a early version of SuperCalc (SC2 – a spreadsheet like Excel for those who cannot remember) for the preparation of monthly reports under the operating system C/PM. It was ‘cutting’ edge at the time using simple lists of transactions which were converted into a report showing monthly, cumulative and projected figures against a flexible budget. Coco shall not go into the technical details of this. It was not many months before Coco noticed that the report sometimes did not balance.

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Translation

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We use the word translation in many different ways, accountants and theologians having quite specialised uses of the term which may befuddle, without a translation, the poor man on the Clapham omnibus.

When you try to translate Do you feel special? and Do you feel different? into certain Romance languages the distinction found in Germanic languages may be lost. Difficulties abound when seeking to give the correct and proper meaning of words in one language in a second. But have you noticed that there is as much difficulty when translating from even very closely related languages?

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International Lymphoedema Framework – Uganda Framework

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There is excitement in the world as the ILF begins an epidemiological (for those of you who do not understand that word, let Coco stand alongside you) study to ascertain the prevalence of lymphoedema in Uganda.

It is well known that lymphatic filariasis is endemic in tropical countries, alongside other mosquito borne diseases, but the real extent of the problem and its expression among the people is not properly understood.

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John to Gaius

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When John was an old man, and probably in gaol on Patmos, he wrote to his friend Gaius in Ephesus a short letter essentially about three things, but there is a fourth hidden there also which lies behind all three.

It is a personal letter, and the manner in which he writes, hiding in some ways the matter of the things of which he is speaking, makes it clear that he wanted the letter to get to Gaius even if it meant that he would have to leave Gaius to make an intelligent guess about what he meant. Gaius knew John. He would know what John meant even if the uninformed reader did not.

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From the River to the Western Sea

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Coco had wondered whether a lengthy introduction would be wise, as Coco has been reliably informed on several occasions that a lengthy introduction, as well as being long-winded, normally puts potential readers off so that they do not become actual readers but merely passers-by, but having learned a lesson of late of one who did precisely that in order to avoid provoking the wrath of the censor, which in his case would have been the Roman governor of his gaol, Coco thought perhaps that he too should seek to avoid his wrath, but by placing this introductory paragraph to the introduction he has probably rather more drawn his attention to the possibility that what is about to be said may be more than a little controversial, though if you, dear reader, carefully read you will note that that there is not a single note of controversy about it at all.  The argument is clear; it is precise; it is too the point; it is not rambling; it does not stray; it is compelling, to the point and it leads to an inescapable and unavoidable conclusion which many may wish to avoid.

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Never too late

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It was a warm afternoon when Elmer and Wilma drove up the mountain from Brenzone through Prada. As they drove behind another tourist, whom they recognised as a tourist from the British number plates, for some reason his thoughts turned to his elder brothers, Barney and Homer. He missed them both, though they were quite different both in the characters and their careers.

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Darwin’s Finches

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It was the proposal of the American Ornithological Society to rename some of the native birds of their homeland for reasons apparently dismissed by their counterpart body the National Audubon Society as reported by the BBC (US ornithological society says dozens of birds will be renamed) that prompted Coco to write. Once again it is evidence of a failure on the part of modern society to face its history – the journey it has taken to get where we are today – and it ready preparedness to efface its history in order to give the appearance of not participating in the sins of its fathers.

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