Minimal

Prayer ‘no aid to heart patients’ [BBC News]
As an atheist, the above comes as no shock to me. That’s not to say, however, that I think religion has no worth. I wouldn’t be surprised if merely telling some patients from the above study that they were being prayed for had helped them. And you can bet your ass that if I lay dying in a car crash (touch wood), I’d be looking for the big fella to help me out. Anything to improve my brain chemistry in a traumatic situation.

Of course, for being so cynical, I’d probably end up being cast into Hades. Hey ho. ;)

Incidentally, I love the way studies like this are leapt upon by supporters of the findings and ignored by dissenters. I also love the way the same topic can be studied many different times, concluded differently each time and still given press coverage. Just look at the See Also section of the article above for a nice history of prayer-influenced healing studies. Incredible.

It’s perhaps not the simplest of keystrokes to perform, but it’s rapidly becoming my favourite. A few weeks back, I downloaded Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Beta 2 (nice mouthful, there) and its code editor is a vast step forward, now including basic refactoring and code generation tools.

Having been wowed by this sort of thing in Java IDEs at conferences, it’s great to finally see it in Microsoft’s dev tools. And yay for a good use of smart tags, too. :)

Among all the reporting on the web today, Wikipedia’s coverage of the London bombings has to be some of the best. It’s surprised me just how well it’s stood up as a source of solid information. Looking at the discussion on the article, it’s clear that community-spirited people move just as swiftly to remove vandalism as the vandals do to put it there in the first place. I’m impressed. Though I’ve not used it much in the past, I think I’ll be turning to Wikipedia a lot more in the future.

Of course, I should really be looking at Wikinews, but that’s a separate issue.

London beats Paris to 2012 Games [BBC Sport]
Stick that in your baguette and smoke it, Frenchies. He he, I can’t quite believe it. I was 100% prepared for another glorious British failure and we only went and won it. Bagsy being a volunteer for the beach volleyball. ;)

Update: brilliant! (Both the picture and the comment.)

Crivens, it looks like I’ve been made part of some insidious meme. I’m not one for chaining things, so I’ll blurt and then fail to pass it on to however many mates I haven’t got. (What a misery-guts, eh?)

Total volume of music files on my computer?

Explorer says I’ve got 3.23 GB. That’s not much, is it?

Last CD I bought?

God knows. It may even have been a long overdue purchase of Rooty by Basement Jaxx.

Song playing now?

“Out of Here” by Corduroy

Five songs I listen to a lot or mean something to me?

• “Hey, Johnny Park!” by Foo Fighters: a favourite in the car
• “Ribcage” by Elbow: anything with a choir on backing vocals is fine by me
• “Philosophy” by Ben Folds Five: unrivalled piano-work
• “Dancing Queen” by Abba: the only song I can think of that reminds me of a specific friend
• “James Joyce Soles” by Deacon Blue: opening track on Fellow Hoodlums reminds me it’s always been too long since the last listen

So, there you have it. If anyone reading this wants to pick up the baton and run with it, be my guest. Just let me know when you do, as I want to read your selections. Ta. :)

Last Saturday, I attended the Make Poverty History march in Edinburgh, accompanied by Ashley and Daisy. I hadn’t exactly read up much on the issues beforehand and went primarily to experience it and hopefully learn something along the way. And, I figured, at least I would be able to say I’d done something—even if it was solely based on me trusting Sir Bob’s word.

On the day, I managed to feel rather out of place. Something of a puppet. A sheep, even. Standing amid thousands in the baking sun, I felt part of something special for a grand total of about 5 seconds. And that was entirely down to some motivational VT playing out on the big screen. On the whole, I felt little optimism. If over a million people marched against the Iraq war and made no difference, what could a couple of hundred thousand manage here? Nothing immediate, that’s for sure.

One of the problems with these sorts of protests always seems to be the lack of focus. The Make Poverty History campaign actually seemed to have done a pretty good job in distilling its aims into 3 key points (trade justice, debt relief and more aid), but its message was still diluted. Every other pressure group you could think of had gatecrashed the event. Anarchists, anti-capitalists, anti-war campaigners, anti-nuclear campaigners, Palestinian liberation campaigners and plenty more besides. I guess I felt a little disillusioned at what seemed like an opportunity being missed.

Ultimately, however, it wasn’t the reality of the event that mattered, but how it was reported in the media. If it was to inspire further action, it had to at least be heard about. What concerned me most was that the Live 8 concerts were happening at exactly the same time and, I feared, likely to get more column inches. How could a series of pop concerts be more important than what was happening here? And how many thousands of people had been diverted to Hyde Park instead of The Meadows? Maybe all publicity is good publicity, but seeing the march relegated to page 12 of the next day’s paper was a bit gutting.

And now, do I feel any differently? Not really. I’m glad I went, but I don’t expect anything great to come of the Gleneagles summit. I’m also a little disappointed by the turn-out in Edinburgh. Not so much by the numbers, but by the fact there didn’t seem to be many average Joes like myself there. There were only seasoned campaigners and their families. For anything like this to really have an impact, it’s got to have an appeal far beyond the Guardian’s readership. Anyway, I hope the people in Hyde Park enjoyed the gig. Wish I’d seen it too.