Aniseed Balls

A while back a friend made the woo-woo suggestion that all opinions are equally valid and equally true. Imagine a group of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers stalking a deer in a wood. The deer spooks and darts off. One of the hunters says it was a Spotted Pearlsbok, that always goes to ground a short distance away, and that the group should make loud noises to flush it out. Another hunter says it was a Spotted Milksbok, that always runs off completely, and that the group should look for new prey. It really matters to the group which of the two closely related species they have been stalking, but they are difficult to distinguish at a distance. Here is the first point. Both hunters have expressed valid opinions. They are based on careful observation and objective experience. But notice an important thing about these two valid opinions – one is wrong, in the obvious sense of incorrectly describing the world in a significant way. This is a major pitfall for the irrational. They

I've just watched a programme entitled Metamorphosis: The Science of Change . The BBC have reached rock bottom. The small amount of real science was swamped by the main theme – that humans can be said to undergo metamorphosis in "the truest broadest sense of the word". David Malone starts with dark emotive re-imaginings of basic biological processes, giving them overtones of the Alien films. Talking about metamorphosis in sea urchins, he asks a researcher "Does the process bother you?". He describes the life forms of some animals as "overlapping in a disturbing way". He uses the term "shape-shift" and talks of an animal "consuming its own brain". This is all deliberate for what is to come. After failing to get an obstetrician to describe neonatal changes as metamorphosis, he changes tack and babbles the following pseudo-psychological claptrap. Humans have a deep-seated dread of the process. Even his examples are weak. Jekyll

Ex-Pope Benedict XVI has published a letter in a German magazine making one of the most distasteful, poorly judged and ill-informed claims I've ever heard. He blames clerical sex abuse on the sexual revolution of the 1960s. The social changes of the 60s and early 70s resulted from improvements in and availability of contraception. This enabled consenting heterosexual adults of all ages (and near-adults) to express their sexuality with little fear of unwanted pregnancy. No doubt the increased financial independence of women over the preceding twenty-five years was also a factor. Neither of those drivers changed attitudes towards paedophilia or rape. (Except maybe women's increased independence made rape even less acceptable.) Indeed, fifty years on those things are still taboo in the wider society. Benedict claims that the sexual revolution led to paedophilia being "diagnosed as allowed and appropriate". Well, not outside of the Catholic Church it didn't!