joined-up bloggery

Talking of Appleyard, he links to this article about the decline in blogging. Apparently, the activity is ''so 2005''. Maybe it is but I've said it before and by now any claim suggesting blogging is past its peak is pretty much also ''so 2005''.

Then we learn about Twitter - essentially a ''mini-blog'' when used properly. I love Twitter - when used properly - 95.7% of the time 140 characters is all anyone needs to post and all people ever need to read. Sure, blogging has talent but this takes genius! Of course, not all Twitters are showing genius but I've heard if you give enough chimps typewriters you'll end up with Shakespeare.

Talking of mini-blogs, Bad Science has one and I think Goldacre's mini-blog is better than the big one. I got the TinEye link from ''Superclever image recognition search shows BNP voters don't actually exist.'' Brilliant.

And what's this about ''Peter Hain promotes quacks''? The thing I hate most about this story is the statement;

“It seems extraordinary to me that despite a recent poll indicating that 75% of people want complementary medicine available to all on the NHS, that very few such clinics exist.”

What poll was that then? No one asked me! In fact, a recent poll suggested that 85.7% of people claim they have never been asked to take part in a survey to represent public opinion on any issue. (I know because I conducted the poll. I asked myself, I wasn't entirely sure I was never ever asked my opinion on anything otherwise it would have been 100%. No one else was involved.)

This piece is awash with these meaningless statistical percentages. At no point do we know who or how many, or how they were asked. Did they use the expression ''in an ideal world'' or did they suggest diverting their taxes from valuable research and proven therapies and care to employ non-medical practioners and dubious therapies?

I don't hate all alternative (or complementary) medicine, but I do hate that it's presented as a confederacy. Most of it is, to paraphrase James Lovelock, largely useless but mostly harmless. Some of it is pleasant enough in a flattering way, and a bit has been proven effective. But too much is plain nuts and I wouldn't want to see my tax pounds diverted from, say, Leukaemia research or palliative nursing care, and given to an on-line course graduate sugar-pill pusher. I'd really hate that.