Ya gotta laugh

Well, everything seems to be going pretty badly these days (climate change, Australian IR and Terrorism legislation, US political foolishness, Iraq, fundamentalism and other unreason, climatic disasters, etc), so it's hard to retain your sanity and some sense of humour. Lots of people just give up and retreat to the nest, which only allows these influences further rein to reign further.

But even so, you have to wonder how the forces of unreason can be so influential when you read junk like this -

"'It has been established beyond doubt that the placebo-controlled, randomised controlled trial is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy.' A spokeswoman for The Society fo Homeopaths on a study in The Lancet that showed homeopathic medicine works no better than placebos (BBC news online, 29 August)".

New Scientist, no. 2515, 3 Sept 2005, p. 10.