The largest village in the World

The largest village in the world is extremely large. It occupies nearly 10 million square kilometres, and has a coastline on three oceans, its total length being more than 200,000 kilometres. It is a well-populated village, being home to more than 34 million people.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the village’s name is Canada. But hang on, you might say, Canada is a country, not a village!

Allow me to explain:

In 1535 the French explorer Jacques Cartier proceeded up the St Lawrence River into Iroquois country. He came to a village set on a high promontory, which he renamed Montreal, or “Royal Mountain”. He asked the Iroquois if they had a name for the whole area beyond the village, but there was clearly a breakdown in communication because the Iroquois misunderstood the question. They gave him the name “Canada”, which Cartier promptly inscribed on his map.

However, although the name has been used for the whole country ever since, the Iroquois word “Canada” only means “village”!

© John Welford

Falacious reasoning

In order to understand what a fallacy is, one must also understand the difference between validity and truth. A fact can be true or false, but only an argument can be valid or invalid. Fallacies have to do with false arguments, not false facts. Likewise, one can tell a lie without committing a fallacy, although it is also possible to do both at the same time.

The world is full of fallacies. They are uttered on a daily basis, quite often by politicians, lawyers, religious people, advertisers, and anyone who wishes to persuade someone to do or accept something on the basis of believing a reasoned argument. However, if the targets of persuasion were able to see that an argument was flawed, or fallacious, they might not be taken in. It is therefore useful to be able to spot fallacies when they are used, and to be aware that one might be committing one when the boot is on the other foot.

Fallacies are dangerous because they can so easily be confused with statements of fact. One frequently heard argument, for example, is that somebody in public esteem must have committed an indiscretion based on the strength of rumours currently circulating. The argument used is: “There’s no smoke without fire”. That may or may not be true, and the person in question may or may not be guilty of the act in question, but the argument used is faulty. The fallacy lies in the inappropriateness of applying the facts about smoke and fire to a situation in which unsubstantiated accusations spread via the grapevine (and newspaper tittle-tattle) and are taken as being true simply because they are frequent and insistent. There may not be smoke without fire, but there can certainly be false accusations without any grounding in reality.

Undistributed middles

Politicians frequently fall for the argument that “something must be done”. A bad situation has arisen and a solution must be found. Action is taken and justified with the line mentioned above. This is often taken as sound enough argument, but it is a fallacy. The argument could be expanded as: “Something must be done. This is something. Therefore it must be done”.

Such an argument might sound persuasive until one substitutes other terms in a similar argument. For example: “My cat drinks water. My dog drinks water. Therefore my cat is a dog”. This is known technically as the “fallacy of the undistributed middle”, because the significance of the middle term of the argument has not been appreciated as being applicable to other circumstances. Yes, my dog does drink water, but then so do plenty of other animals, and one could just as easily argue, on this basis, that my cat is a buffalo or a chimpanzee.

The absurdity of the cat/dog argument is obvious to anyone, which is why the same reasoning needs to be applied to “something must be done”. Yes, the proposed course of action is “something”, but there are plenty of other “somethings” that would be just as reasonable if offered as potential policies. People need to be more aware of the rhetorical tricks that politicians play, because they are often based on reasoning that is just as fallacious as this.

A prime example of the “undistributed middle” fallacy was its use by Senator Joseph McCarthy during the “UnAmerican” witch hunts of the 1950s, when proof was sought that people in the public eye were Communists. This took the form, for example, of: “Here is a man who disapproves of racial discrimination. Communists disapprove of racial discrimination. Therefore this man is a Communist”. The fact of whether or not this is true is neither here nor there; the man might indeed be a Communist but this reasoning is not proof of that fact, because it is perfectly possible to be against racial discrimination and not be a Communist. It is important to realise that the fact that the reasoning is fallacious only negates the validity of the argument and not its truth, because the two are entirely separate.

Many questions

Although a fallacy can be defined as a faulty argument, the way it is presented may come across in another way, for example as a question. One such, which is often asked in a religious context, is: “What is the purpose of human life?” The fallacy involved here is known as “The fallacy of many questions” because it purports to be one question but is really much more than that. When it is asked of someone, the questioner is implying the question “What is the purpose of your life?”, and the same would apply whenever they asked it of anyone else. Every time it is asked it is a different question and may therefore get a different answer, each of which could be equally valid. However, by phrasing it in general terms the implication is that there is only one answer, which is of course the one that the questioner wants everyone to accept, whereas the question could only be valid if it sought to ascertain a purpose for every live individual, each of whom would have to be asked and for all their answers to be taken into account.

In this latter case, the questioner cannot be accused of lying to the person being questioned, because no assertion has (at this stage) been made, but they can be held guilty of using fallacious reasoning because of the nature of the tactic they are employing. It is a trick used countless times, not only in the sphere of religion but by politicians and the whole range of snake-oil salesmen who rely on the gullibility of their audience.

There are many types of fallacy that have been recognized and named, some notable ones being the Naturalistic Fallacy (which claims that anything that occurs naturally must be inherently good) and the Pathetic Fallacy (which ascribes human characteristics to natural objects).

In all cases, a fallacious argument is one that is not necessarily without basis in fact, as it might well so have, but it has no basis in logic. It is therefore often more convincing to defeat an argument by proving it to be fallacious than to seek to show it up as factually inaccurate or advancing an untruth. Fact and truth can be argued both ways, but there is no gainsaying of logic.

© John Welford

Ground crew responses to pilots

The practice in the British Royal Air Force (RAF) is for pilots to report any faults they find during flights on "Form 700" and for the ground crews to add their responses after the faults have been traced and fixed.

Sometimes the pilots express themselves in ways that demand a cynical reply. The following faults (F) and responses (R) were reported at 35 Squadron, Bomber Command, in 1972:

F: Left inside main tyre almost needs replacement

R: Left inside main tyre has almost been replaced

F: Dead bugs on windshield

R: Replacement live bugs ordered

F: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick

R: That's what friction locks are for

F: Something loose in cockpit

R: Something tightened in cockpit

F: Target radar hums

R: Target radar reprogrammed with lyrics

F: Mouse in cockpit

R: Cat installed

F: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear

R: Evidence removed

F: Number 3 engine missing

R: Engine found on right wing after a brief search

F: Suspected crack in windshield

R: Suspect you're right

F: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget with a hammer

R: Took hammer away from midget

F: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough

R: Auto-land is not installed on this aircraft

F: Aircraft handles funny

R: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right and be serious

F: IFF inoperative in off mode

R: IFF is always inoperative in off mode

F: DME volume unbelievably loud

R: DME volume set to a more believable level

© John Welford

Was Pythagoras the first vegetarian?

Vegetarianism has been around for a long time, although where and when the practice started is uncertain.

One candidate for being first to advocate vegetarianism is the ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras (c.570 – c.495 BC) – he of the famous theorem about right-angled triangles and hippopotamuses, although I might have got that last bit wrong.

Pythagoras required pupils in his school of philosophy to refrain from eating meat, his thinking being connected to his belief in reincarnation – if people could have new lives as sheep or cows, eating these animals could be seen as a form of cannibalism!

The modern notion of vegetarianism was given substance in the 1840s, and before that date anyone who abstained from meat-eating was often referred to as a “Pythagorean”.

I am virtually vegetarian in that I don’t eat meat, although I do eat fish. Although I agree with many of the arguments in favour of not eating meat I do not abstain for ideological reasons – I just can’t stand the stuff and never could!

For me, the taste and texture of all forms of meat are far from pleasant, and for many years I really could not understand how anyone could actually enjoy eating it. I used to think that they were undergoing some sort of penance, because surely nobody would choose to eat it if they didn’t have to! I have become convinced over time that meat does actually get eaten because people like it, but it still seems odd to me.

One of the things I looked forward to on leaving home and becoming independent was never having to eat meat again, and I am glad to say that I never have. Perhaps I am a direct descendant of Pythagoras!

© John Welford

Hampi: an amazing survival from the 16th century

Hampi is a village within the ruins of Vijayanagar in Karnataka State, India. In former times it was an important city, and one of the most beautiful in the medieval world.

The Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar, which reached its peak during the reign of Krishna Deva Raya (1509-30), was extremely wealthy, and magnificent temples and palaces were built during a period that lasted from the 14^th to the 16^th centuries. However, the Deccan Muslim confederacy overran the city in 1565 and it was abandoned.

Among the group of monuments and buildings on this extensive site are the temples of Ramachandra (1513) and Hazara Rama (1520) which are among the best in the whole of India.

Within the fortified area is a whole range of civil and public buildings, as well as religious ones. There are stables for horses and elephants, bazaars and markets. The Queen’s Bath is particularly impressive, as is the Lotus Palace.

Within a courtyard of the Vitthala temple is a stone monument that depicts a massive chariot being pulled by two small elephants, which would not appear to be up to the job as they are no bigger than the chariot’s wheels.

The whole complex has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986, under the criteria “Human creative genius”, “Testimony to cultural tradition” and “Significance in human history”.

© John Welford

Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna

The palace and gardens of Schönbrunn, in Vienna, Austria, are testament to the immense wealth and power of the Habsburg emperors during the centuries when they ruled over a vast central European empire.

The palace, built in the Baroque style, dates from the late 17^th century although its construction was a long drawn-out process that was not completed until the 19^th century. It began as a hunting lodge but evolved into a magnificent edifice containing more than 1400 rooms. These are sumptuously decorated and furnished.

The grounds of the palace contain a number of other magnificent structures including a huge orangery and a “Roman ruin”.

The park at Schönbrunn is as impressive as the palace, being more than a square kilometre in size. The Baroque style gardens are much as they were during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa (1717-80), including fountains, lakes and statues. The grounds are home to the Schönbrunn zoo, founded in 1752 and the oldest zoo still in existence in Europe.

The grounds were opened to the public in 1769 and have been a popular destination for local and foreign visitors ever since.

The palace became the property of the Austrian government when the monarchy fell in 1918, and the whole complex has been carefully preserved and maintained. It now receives more than two million visitors a year.

Schönbrunn has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1996.

© John Welford

How to play Beleaguered Castle

Beleaguered Castle is a one-pack solitaire game (“patience” on the British side of the Pond) that needs careful thought to make it come out, as well as the usual slice of good fortune!

Take the four aces and place them in a column. These will be the bases on which you will build each suit up to its king. Then deal the rest of the pack face upwards as follows:

Deal the first card to the left of the top ace, and the second to the right of the top ace. The third card will go to the left of the second ace down, the fourth to the right of the second ace, and so on until eight cards have been dealt.

The next card goes on to the first card you dealt, but overlapping it so that you can see the number on the lower card, and likewise for the next card to the right of the top ace.

Carry on until all the cards have been dealt, so that you now have eight “wings” as well as the four bases. Each wing will have six cards, the top one of which will be fully exposed and the rest will be partially visible. You will probably find it convenient to deal the cards from the centre outwards, so that the exposed cards will be to the left of the left wings and the right of the right wings. However, your preference may be to deal all the wings in the same direction.

The eight exposed cards are available for play, either on to the bases or on to other exposed cards, in descending value but irrespective of suit or colour, so that a five of clubs could be played on to the six of spades for example. Only one card can be played at a time, so strings of cards cannot be moved as a block.

If a wing is completely removed, the space may be filled by any exposed card from another wing.

In this game, it is important to plan ahead, and just because a move is possible does not mean that it is sensible to make it. This applies both to building on exposed cards and playing to the foundations. The aim should be to try to create spaces, and you should plan your moves ahead to enable you to do this. If you can, build your foundations in parallel (i.e. don’t build one suit at a time), because you will need to keep cards that are close in number on the wings to make building possible.

It is also worth noting at the outset where the low numbered cards are so that you do not bury them too deeply as you play. If all your two and threes are deeply buried to start with, you are probably not going to win. That is where the luck comes into play!

© John Welford

Geological faults

When two sections of the Earth’s crust move relative to each other, the zone in which they do is known as a fault.

The two sections can move towards each other (in relative terms), apart from each other, or laterally (i.e. sideways to each other). Large areas of land can be pushed up or drop down as the result of a fault.

If two faults occur in parallel, the land between the faults can move downwards to form a rift valley, the best example of this being the Great Rift Valley in East Africa.

Fault movements occur suddenly, as pressures that have built up over tens or hundreds of years are released. This is a major cause of earthquakes.

Faults can allow material from deep in the Earth’s crust to come closer to the surface. This can include valuable minerals and deposits such as gold and silver. There is clearly an economic benefit to mankind in exploiting these resources, but there is also a downside in that zones that are mineral rich may also be prone to frequent earthquakes.

A prime example of this is California, where the discovery of gold led to the region attracting huge numbers of people to settle there, but the local geology made it subject to earthquakes. The whole area is riven with faults, the most prominent being the lateral tear fault known as the San Andreas (see picture).

© John Welford

Geysers

Geysers offer spectacular evidence that, in some parts of the world, there are some very hot rocks not far underground.

The word comes the Icelandic for ‘spouter’ or ‘gusher’, and they are a regular feature of the landscape in Iceland, which sits on top of the mid-Atlantic ridge where hot volcanic material is constantly being pushed towards the surface.

A geyser occurs when rainwater percolates down through cracks in the rocks to accumulate in an underground reservoir that is under constant pressure from a heat source such as rising magma. The water is heated to the point where it expands and is forced upwards through a narrow pipe to the surface.

The result is a geyser of hot water and steam that can shoot seventy metres or more into the air.

The reservoir is now ready to receive more water which will also be ejected when it has been heated and forced upwards. As long as the supply of water is constant, the geyser will erupt at predictable intervals.

It is as though one kept a kettle constantly on the boil but with the lid blocked and only a narrow spout. The contents would be forced out violently time after time, provided that water was always being added to the kettle to replace what had been lost.

One of the world’s best-known geysers is Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA. This often erupts at 90-minute intervals, with each eruption lasting up to five minutes. However, if the supply of water is lessened, it will erupt more frequently but for shorted durations. The heat source is the volcanic ‘hot spot’ that underlies a vast area in this part of the United States.

There is evidence that Old Faithful has been erupting for at least 700 years.

© John Welford

Henderson Island

Henderson Island is one of those places that you are highly unlikely ever to visit, unless you are an advanced student of ecology or evolution. The fact that it has been visited by so few people over the centuries is the main reason why it is so unusual and supports such an extraordinary variety of wildlife, much of which is found nowhere else.

Henderson Island is a raised coral atoll that forms part of the Pitcairn Group in the eastern Pacific Ocean, although it is 120 miles away from Pitcairn itself. The nearest landmass, South America, is 5,000 kms (3,100 miles away).

The island was once occupied by people of Polynesian origin, who arrived in the 12^th century but whose descendants abandoned it in the 15^th century. Since then there has been no permanent human presence. This means that it is one of only a handful of coral atolls in the world that has been free of human presence for a very long time.

For this reason, the process of evolution has developed unhindered, resulting in Henderson Island having ten plant and four bird species that are found here and nowhere else. The birds in question are the Henderson Lorikeet, the Henderson Fruit Dove, the Henderson Reed Warbler and the Henderson Crake.

The island therefore has immense value as an ecological time capsule and it is vitally important that human interference is kept to a minimum. It would be a tragedy if, for example, a visiting yacht were to leave a pair of rats behind, as these could easily lead to whole species being wiped out within quite a short time, as has happened elsewhere.

Henderson Island received its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988, for the criteria: “Natural phenomena or beauty” and “Significant natural habitat for biodiversity”.

This is one of those places that people might think was “nice to visit” but the message has to be – keep off!

© John Welford

Can "Big Pharma" have a heart?

Are the world’s major drugs companies only in it for the money, or might they, just occasionally, be persuaded to do research that brings them no profit but saves lives?

We all know that undertaking medical research and producing treatments is a hugely expensive business, and most people will appreciate that drugs companies must be allowed to make profits at a level that will enable them to carry out and sponsor such research. However, it is also very clear that the companies are making billions that are enriching their shareholders and their chief executives, vastly in excess of what is being ploughed back into research.

The net result seems to be that the drugs companies will spend huge amounts on finding cures that benefit large numbers of people, and which will therefore generate the biggest profits, but are quite happy to ignore rare conditions and diseases that are devastating to their sufferers but who, because there are relatively few of them, can safely be ignored.

A few years ago The Times newspaper highlighted the case of a boy who suffered from Batten disease. This is a fatal condition, caused by a genetic malformation, in which the victim begins life normally enough but, at the age of four or five, will start having seizures that look initially like epileptic fits. The child will gradually start losing all their functions, becoming blind, unable to walk, talk or feed themselves, then dying before they reach their teenage years.

If this condition affected a large number of children, one would have expected that research into it would have been undertaken many years ago and effective treatments developed by now. However, Batten disease is extremely rare, with fewer than 30 cases at any one time in the whole of the United Kingdom. There is therefore nothing to be gained by any drugs company that decided to invest in research. Even if an effective treatment were to be found, it is probable that it would be so expensive that the National Health Service would be unable to afford to provide it.

It must also be borne in mind that, even if research started today, no cure that was discovered would be any use for children currently suffering from Batten disease. These projects can take much longer to produce results than the lifespan of an affected child.

Even so, it would be a wonderful gesture on the part of a major drugs company were it to sacrifice some of its vast profits by getting to work on developing drugs for very rare conditions such as Batten disease, in the knowledge that there is no money to be made by so doing.

Or is it the case that only money talks in a capitalist world? One certain thing is that the boy mentioned by The Times was soon unable to talk at all.

© John Welford

The evolution of Sanskrit

Sanskrit is one of the foundation languages of the Indo-European family, and an understanding of its evolution is therefore vital to knowing how the languages of this family interrelate and how the modern languages of South Asia came to be as they are today.  Indeed, the science of linguistics owes its origins to the discovery by Sir William Jones, in 1786, of the similarities between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin.

It is also a religious language, in that it is the language of the ancient texts of Hinduism and Buddhism, and it thus occupies the same revered place for Hindus and Buddhists that Hebrew does for Jews and Arabic for Muslims. Surprisingly, despite its antiquity, it is also a living language, being one of the 22 official languages of India, although it is spoken fluently by only about 14,000 people.

Origins

The origins of Sanskrit are unknown, although one theory is that it derived from a source language that also spawned Greek, Latin, and several other language groups. This has been termed the Proto-Indo-European language (or PIE) which has been traced to Anatolia (part of modern Turkey) and which dates back to at least 6500 BCE. However, this theory is not accepted universally, with some Indian scholars holding that Sanskrit derived from the language of the first settlers of the Indus valley. Indeed, many Hindus regard Sanskrit as having existed for all time as the language of Heaven, and that to talk of its origins in other terms is sacrilegious.

For a language to spread and evolve, either the people speaking that language must migrate into new territories, or communities must have contact in other ways, such as by trade. There is no evidence that the ancient peoples of the Indian subcontinent came from Anatolia, so the latter path seems more likely. If Sanskrit did evolve from PIE, it must have happened before 5000 BCE or thereabouts, because the Indus Valley civilization (3300-1800 BCE) was clearly using a fully fledged version of Sanskrit that was adopted by the succeeding Vedic civilization at around 2500 BCE. It is generally accepted among Indian scholars that Sanskrit took at least 1000 years to reach its perfected state; indeed, the word “Sanskrit” means “complete and perfect”.

Sanskrit is recognised in two forms, known as Vedic and Classical, although the differences between them are not great. Vedic Sanskrit was the language of the Vedas, the four foundation texts of the Hindu religion. These were doubtless the result of a long oral tradition, but the written forms date from around 1800-1500 BCE.

At the close of the Vedic period, in the 4^th century BCE, the grammar of Sanskrit was set out in great detail by Panini, who defined 3,959 rules of morphology. His grammar effectively created Classical Sanskrit, which became the language of science and scholarship as well as of religion.

Evolution into other languages

The languages of modern India derive from two main sources, one being Sanskrit and the other Dravidian, which was the ancient language of southern India, and was not Indo-European. Later movements of population, and military invasions, have led to many other influences entering the language spoken in everyday use, and the creation of new languages.

The term “apabhramsha” is used to denote north Indian dialects of the 6^th to 13^th centuries AD that deviated from Sanskrit, the word meaning “corrupt”. From these dialects, several quite distinct modern languages have evolved, including Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Marathi, Gujarati and Sinhala. Hindi, for example, shows many instances of grammar and vocabulary that derive straight from Sanskrit.

The evolution of Sanskrit, both before and since the Classical period, is therefore a complex study, and there are many issues that are far from certain. However, the preservation of so many ancient texts, and the current interest in reviving Sanskrit as a working language, show that interest in this supposedly “dead” language is still at a high level.

© John Welford

Counting the votes at a UK General Election

The political process in the United Kingdom is steeped in tradition, and no part of it is more traditional than the actual process of counting the votes and declaring the result. During a General Election this will happen across the country on election night, with the media anxious to catch each constituency’s declaration and calculate the “swings” that can be used to predict the overall result.

Getting the results early is clearly in everyone’s interest, and it is remarkable how quickly this can sometimes be done. Some constituencies actively seek to race to be the first to declare a result, and the record is currently held by Sunderland South, which, on the 5^th of May 2005, was able to announce its next MP only 43 minutes after the polls had closed, beating its previous record by two seconds.

So how is the count organised?

This is normally done in a large hall at a central point in a constituency. Quite often this is a sports hall, but it can be a room in a civic centre, a large church hall, or any other space that is big enough for the job. Quite often, neighbouring constituencies share the same hall for their count, either counting in parallel or delaying one of the counts until the previous one has finished.

Under current electoral law, the polling stations close at 10.00pm, at which time the ballot boxes are sealed and then taken to wherever the count is to be held. This is normally done in vans belonging to the local authority, with a council official on hand to certify that the number of boxes originally delivered to the polling stations are returned to the count. Police officers often accompany the boxes on this journey, especially if there are concerns about security in a particular area.

In most constituencies, the count starts during the night of the same day that the poll took place, but this is not always possible. For example, some Scottish constituencies include many remote villages and offshore islands, from which the ballot boxes have to be transported by boat or plane. The count in these places is usually delayed until the day (sometimes two days) after polling day.

At the count, rows of tables await the boxes. Each table usually represents a council ward within the constituency, and the boxes delivered to that table will be from all the polling stations within the ward. This makes it possible for election results to be monitored for trends within different parts of a constituency – such as between urban and rural wards, for example.

Sitting at the tables are the counting staff, who are often recruited for the night from local banks, as they are used to counting large numbers of pieces of paper.

Overseeing them are council officials, and at the head of the operation is the “Returning Officer” who is responsible for declaring the result and delivering, or “returning”, the announcement to Parliament.

The title of Returning Officer is traditionally an honorary one that belongs to a mayor or a “high sheriff”, and the task is usually performed by somebody a little lower down the pecking order in the local hierarchy, who takes the title of “Acting Returning Officer” on the night. Even if they have political views of their own, these must be set to one side when people are carrying out their electoral duties.

Counting the votes

The election candidates are allowed to view the count at close quarters, by walking around the room and looking out for any obvious mistakes, such as a paper being assigned to the wrong pile. If they think they see something untoward they can draw this to the attention of a supervisor but must not interfere with the counting staffs or touch any of the papers. The candidates are also allowed to nominate a small number of assistants who can patrol the count. Apart from these people, everyone else in the room must stay well away from the tables.

The ballot papers are actually counted twice. When a box is first emptied on to a table, each paper must be unfolded and then counted to ensure that the number in the box matches the number of counterfoils that the polling station officer has stamped. This process is known as verification. If there is a discrepancy there could be a problem of votes having gone astray, or even of “ballot box stuffing” with illegal votes.

Once the papers have been verified, they can be divided between the different candidates’ names according to where the crosses have been placed. The counters will also be on the lookout for “spoilt papers” where either a voter has deliberately or accidentally marked the paper wrongly, or not at all, or there is a technical discrepancy such as an official mark not being present on the paper. There may be papers on which the voter’s intention is not immediately clear, and these are consigned to the “bad or doubtful” pile so that a senior official can make a decision on each one later on.

Once sorted, the piles, one for each candidate, are counted. The usual procedure is for the teller to count 20 papers at a time and clip them together. Two counters sitting together can double-check each others’ clips of 20. The papers are then placed on a central table, in their clips, where, as the count progresses, it can be seen which candidate is ahead as the overlapping clips spread down the length of the table.

The candidates will have a fairly good idea of which parts of the constituency are more likely to show a preference to them. They will therefore be aware that, as boxes will arrive from the more outlying areas later than will those closer to the count, the pattern of voting may change. An early lead can often be reversed.

One unknown factor is the box containing the postal votes that have been received prior to election day. In some constituencies, postal votes can represent a considerable portion of the votes, such as where there is a large military base and most of the servicemen are overseas at the time but eligible to vote by post. The box (or boxes) containing the postal votes is often the first to be counted, as the counterfoils can be matched with the votes received in advance, and the box is already at the count when the polls close.

The total number of votes for each candidate is ascertained by adding up the number of clips of 20 and then adding the “odd” votes numbering less than 20. Normally, the Returning Officer will tell the candidates what the result is before announcing it in public. This gives a candidate an opportunity to ask for a recount if the vote looks to be close.

Recounts

If a recount is called, the whole process must start again, or at least some of it must. Mistakes are possible at almost any stage, in that papers could have been mis-assigned to the wrong pile, a 20 might not have been a 20, or the number of clips has been added up wrongly. When the vote is very tight, the number of papers in the “last clip” is likely to be vital. It is very rare for a recounted vote to be exactly the same as the original count.

It should also be noted that a recount may not have been called for the purpose of deciding the winner. A candidate must achieve 5% of the vote in order to reclaim the £500 deposit that was paid when he or she submitted their nomination. If they are just short of that number they may ask for their own papers to be recounted, which clearly will not take as long.

The result

At the end of the count, the Returning Officer will mount a stage or dais and invite the candidates to array themselves behind him. He/she will then announce: “I, (name), being the Acting Returning Officer for the (name) constituency, hereby declare that the votes cast in the election for each candidate were as follows”. He/she then reads out the names in alphabetical order and their number of votes. In past times, the political affiliations of candidates were not given on ballot papers or announced by Returning Officers. However, this is no longer the case and the names are now given together with their political allegiances.

The final line of the Returning Officer’s speech is: “And I hereby declare that the said (name) is elected to serve as Member of Parliament for this constituency”. He/she then concedes the microphone to the winning candidate who makes a short speech that firstly thanks the Returning Officer and his/her team for the count, then the officials and Police who oversaw the election, and his/her supporters for the campaign. It is usual for politics to enter proceedings at this stage, with the new MP declaring that this result shows how the British people have given a fresh mandate to … and so on!

The losing candidates then make speeches of their own, thanking the same groups of people as the winner and stating that they will be back and will win next time!

The speeches have most interest when the winners and losers are prominent in the political scene. In the British system, the Prime Minister and most of his team must also be Members of Parliament and thus also attend their count when they are elected. At this point, even the highest politicians in the land are no more than candidates who are seeking a seat, and are subject to exactly the same procedures as the humblest would-be backbencher.

Election counts are all part of the rich tapestry of the British political scene. They can often be highly dramatic, as when a whole string of recounts takes place, or a cabinet minister loses their seat. They are always highly charged pieces of political theatre that the United Kingdom will long treasure.

 © John Welford

Donkey mobile libraries in Zimbabwe

In some parts of the world the need for information services in remote rural areas is met by using traditional modes of transport in unusual ways. This is certainly the case in Zimbabwe, where the role of libraries is essential in supporting education in schools and also for initiatives that bring economic and social benefits to people of all ages.

Mobile libraries offer information services in rural areas, but the typical “bookmobile” is limited in terms of the places it can reach if the road network is simply not up to the job. This is true of vast regions of the developing world and not just Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe the problem is being addressed by the use of donkey-drawn libraries – simply a cart, pulled by a donkey, that offers books and other information resources and which can go just about anywhere.

The initiative is just one element of the work of the Rural Libraries and Resources Development Programme (RLRDP), which is a community based not-for-profit non-governmental organization formed in 1990 with the objective of establishing and developing community libraries and information services to empower the rural population.

According to Obadiah T. Moyo, the Secretary General of RLRDP, the organization has assisted in the establishment of “300 rural community libraries, 10 donkey-drawn mobile libraries and 130 book delivery bicycles. They provide an extension outreach service in areas where proper roads are not available. About 105 rural libraries have access to computers.”

Donkey-drawn mobile libraries were first conceptualized and developed by RLRDP in the Nkayi district of Zimbabwe in 1995. It is a very important initiative that has attracted world attention, and was recognized and commended by the World Summit on the Information Society (2003 and 2005), which has made clear that access to information leads to sustainable development.

The RLRDP also promotes community libraries by providing relevant reading materials, sponsoring debates in communities about issues and problems affecting daily life, providing the means and mechanisms for continuing education for everyone in the community, and pooling resources to benefit the wider spectrum of the community through networking activities. All these tasks have proved successful as they reinforce a sense of collective responsibility for the community libraries that have been established.

© John Welford

Does homeopathy really work?

Many people put their faith on homeopathy to cure their ills, but that is all it is – faith. Homeopathic remedies are pseudo-medicines that can have no physical effect on the human body whatsoever.

Does homeopathy really work?

There are really two questions here, one being whether homeopathic medicines and treatments produce clinical benefits for patients, but the other being whether patients feel better after having been treated by such medicines and treatments. This may sound like two ways of saying the same thing, but it is not. I am quite prepared to give a “No” answer to the first question but a “Yes” answer to the second.

What is homeopathy?

If we examine the clinical claims of homeopathy, they do indeed sound extraordinary. Working on the “hair of the dog” principle (that to cure a hangover you need to drink a small quantity of what it was that made you drunk in the first place), homeopathic medicines consist of highly diluted doses of the substance that may have caused your disease.

The principle is known by homeopaths as “like cures like”. In itself, this sounds highly unlikely, but the degree of dilution is so extreme that it becomes very hard to believe that the substance in question can have any effect on the body at all. Indeed, some of the claims of dilution would require a single molecule of a substance to be surrounded by more atoms than exist in the entire Universe!

On the face of it, this sounds to be nothing short of absurd. How could a treatment prepared on this basis (if it were indeed possible to create such a medicine, which is clearly not the case) have any effect at all? But that is not the whole story. What turns a dilution into a homeopathic remedy is another principle of homeopathy, namely that “water remembers”. The fact that the water you ingest has been in contact with the active substance is what gives rise to the cure. This is an enormous claim, especially when you consider that water gets around a lot, and the water that comprises my cup of coffee has been drunk and excreted countless times before, and been in contact with any number of substances, both benign and not. Just which of those millions of memories is supposed to effect my cure?

It gets even more ridiculous than that!

We must not forget “succussion” either. A homeopathic medicine only acquires its power if it undergoes a process that involves the vessel containing the remedy being struck ten times against “a hard but elastic object”. This practice goes back to the founder of homeopathy, the 18^th century German doctor Samuel Hahnemann, and is still at the heart of homeopathy today. Without the ten strikes, the remedy does not work.

So, if you ask yourself how homeopathy can work, in purely clinical terms, the answer must surely be that it cannot. Nothing is being done to the body that can possibly have any effect on it whatsoever.

If it works, what is going on?

Countless people claim to have had their illnesses cured by homeopathy, and it would be perverse to claim that they must all be either lying or deceiving themselves. I am quite prepared to accept what they say. However, I do not believe that it is the physical nature of the treatment that is doing the trick as much as the psychological effect of actually being treated.

The psychology of “mind over matter” takes many different forms. Many fascinating studies have been performed over the years into the “placebo effect”, namely how a patient’s condition is improved when they believe that they are being treated with real medicine when it is in fact only a harmless sugar pill (or equivalent) that they are being given. It has also been shown, for example, that when the same pills are packed in plain boxes and in colourful ones with brand names all over them, the latter produce better results.

Proper clinical trials, carried out with all necessary precautions by independent scientific institutes, have shown consistently that homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos, but that is not the same as saying that they entirely useless, because placebos often work remarkably well in any case.

Don’t discount placebos

Medical practitioners have always known that a patient with a positive attitude towards their condition will often do better than someone who is pessimistic, whatever treatment is offered. Doctors know that the time spent talking with a patient and discussing their illness is frequently more effective than any medicine that is prescribed. They also know that when a patient insists on leaving with a prescription in their hands, it is usually better to give in to their demand, because if someone really believes that a medicine is what they need, then even a box of sugar pills will be better than nothing.

One problem with the health system, at least in the United Kingdom, is that regular medical practitioners cannot give as much time to their patients as they would like, with seven minutes being the average time of a consultation. However, people working in alternative medicine, such as homeopaths, are free to give as much time as they want to discussing a patient’s needs, going into their family background, social circumstances, medical history, and much more besides. All this focused attention on the patient is far more effective, psychologically, than any pill that is prescribed.

Another factor, hinted at above, is the self-belief of the patient. Very often, a patient goes to a homeopath after having been, as they see it, let down by conventional medicine. The homeopath is not seen as the last hope, but as a beacon of hope. The patient wants the treatment to work; they are, after all, paying good money for this consultation, and most people do not throw good money after bad by spending it on causes that are lost from the start. Many first visits to a homeopath come after a recommendation by a friend who reports good results; this again is likely to inspire hope and a positive attitude.

Can homeopathy always be trusted?

Homeopathy does not always work, and I would personally be very reluctant to trust a serious condition to homeopathic treatment. Although “miracle cures” are sometimes reported, it must be remembered that “miracles” do sometimes happen and, by definition, the cause of a miracle cannot be determined with certainty. I am referring here to the statistical evidence of the 1% of terminal cancer patients who are still alive five years after 99% have died; there is no single factor that distinguishes the survivors from the deceased.

We should not be swayed by the claims for potentially miraculous cures due to homeopathy, because there is no way of knowing that it was the homeopathy that did the trick. We must beware of falling into the logical trap of “post hoc ergo propter hoc”, meaning that because A happened after B, then B must be the cause of A.

It is disturbing to read of patients being persuaded by homeopathic practitioners to abandon conventional treatments for such conditions as advanced heart disease and cancer, and dying much sooner than they should have done. Having faith in a treatment can only take you so far, and, in such circumstances, I would prefer on balance to favour science against irrational belief.

That said, and for the reasons advanced above, I do think that homeopathy and other alternative therapies have a role to play, and that they can produce positive outcomes in certain circumstances, but by no means all. The psychological aspects of medicine are of considerable importance, because the human being is not just a machine.

It all seems to be summed up very well by the words of the famous song by Oliver and Young: “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it; that’s what gets results”.

© John Welford

Severely distressed jeans

Just how distressed do you want your jeans to be?

A zoo in Japan has started producing jeans that not merely distressed but screaming for help!

What they do is wrap pieces of denim around tyres and other toys in the enclosures belonging to animals such as tigers and bears. The pieces are then ripped by the teeth and claws of the animals and removed from the enclosure before being reduced entirely to shreds.

When the pieces are sewn together they comprise jeans that have been individually “styled” by a fierce animal, and this look has proved to be surprisingly sought-after.

It was reported that the zoo had sold a pair of “tiger-destroyed jeans” for $US 1,200 in an Internet auction and were hoping to get similar amounts for the “bear-destroyed” garments that were being assembled at the time.

Would you spend that sort of money on a pair of jeans that gave the impression that you had survived an encounter with a tiger in the jungle? Presumably you would need to make up a good story to tell your friends!

© John Welford

Disliked foods

A survey was conducted a few years ago by Birds Eye (and reported in the London Times) on the foods that British people most dislike to find on their plate. It was based on answers given by 1,000 people, all being adult men and women.

Here is the list, in reverse order, with my personal reactions – with which you may or may not agree!

10^th place

Mushrooms. What? Mushrooms? Unbelievable! 15% said that they would not want to eat them, but that would not have been my reply – I can never get enough, raw or cooked! Maybe the 15% fear the reputation of fungi as being poisonous but, as Terry Pratchett said, all fungi are edible.

(OK – he did go on to say that some of them are not edible more than once!)

9^th place

Salami – 20%. I can’t really comment on salami, because I can’t remember ever having eaten it. However, it is made from meat, and I don’t eat meat, so it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be tempted.

8^th place

(It’s actually 7^th equal) Brussels sprouts – 24%. This is surprising, because they are something that many children dislike but adults acquire a taste for later in life. Perhaps the 24% didn’t bother trying. Anyway, it’s certainly one of my favourite vegetables and one that I would choose in preference to many others.

7^th place

Avocados – 24%. They don’t come my way very often, and I can’t say that they delight me when they do. On the other hand they don’t disgust me either – they don’t taste strongly enough to be either loved or hated, in my opinion.

6^th place

Goats cheese – 27%. I do sometimes choose goats cheese in restaurants because it offers an interesting change from more conventional cheeses. It certainly wouldn’t be on my list of dislikes.

5^th place

Blue cheese – 38%. I can understand why this is on the list, because some blue cheeses are not very pleasant – Danish blue comes to mind. However, my favourite cheese of all time is Stilton, which is always a delight to me. OK – it’s local to where I live in Leicestershire, but then so are Melton Mowbray pork pies and I wouldn’t give them house room!

4^th place

(Or 3^rd equal to be precise) Black pudding – 39%. I wonder how many people dislike it before they know that it is made from pig’s blood and how many do so afterwards? It’s not something I would eat – for the same reason that I wouldn’t eat salami.

3^rd place

Olives – 39%. I can’t agree with these being so high on the list – I absolutely love olives, especially black ones. When choosing a pizza I will always go for one that has olives on it, or I’ll ask for them to be added. A pizza without olives just isn’t a pizza in my opinion!

2^nd place

Chicken liver – 41%. I am really surprised that this is nearly at the top of the list, because I wouldn’t have thought that all that many people would have had the opportunity to eat it. It’s not a dislike for me because I’ve never eaten it and almost certainly never will.

1^st place

Anchovies – 44%. Oh yes – these get my vote every time! I’m very fond of fish (I’m that kind of vegetarian!) but anchovies are just nasty little lumps of salt masquerading as fish, and I’ve always hated the taste of salt.

Some other findings

So what do you do when your dinner party host presents you with a plate containing one or more of the offending foods? Apparently 21% of people will surreptitiously feed pieces to the waiting dog, and 9% of women admitted to slipping unwanted items into their handbag when the host wasn’t looking!

© John Welford