Amateur Brain Surgery

The Food Standards Agency in Britain has received an anonymous tip that milk from cloned cows is being sold to the public.

Apparently the FSA was quoted as saying that they thought that selling milk from cloned cows or their offspring was illegal. So even the FSA aren’t sure on the exact details of the law! The FSA are now investigating the claim made by a dairy farmer who wishes to remain anonymous.

It was only recently that the European Parliament decided to ban selling meat and diary produce that has come from clones. Although the decision has yet to become an actual law, hence the confusion as to what exactly the FSA should be investigating.

While no one is quite sure on the effect of produce made from cloned cows there are health concerns for the cloned animals themselves. Research has shown that animals born by way of the cloning process have slightly higher rates of deformities and premature births. But not to worry because an FSA spokesman was quoted as saying: “Based on the best available evidence, there are no food safety concerns surrounding consumption of products from healthy clones or their offspring.”

To be honest I never knew that food from cloned cows was being produced. I had always been under the impression that cloning was a one off test that everyone made a big fuss about when dolly the sheep was cloned way back. The fact that food from cloned animals wasn’t even considered by law until recently makes me think we’re all going to be ok.

So I’m going to keep drinking milk, eating beef and wearing urban clothing.

The Nurse has noticed an interesting political phenomenon. Since the UK General Election she’s heard interviews with ex-MPs.  And they’ve all had major personality transplants. What’s going on?   

As MPs these people never answered a straight question. They prevaricated, delayed, obfuscated, avoided responsibility and played the blame game. Some even had body language coaching, which just made them look… well, weird. 

Outside politics, as ordinary humans being interviewed about their old job, they were funny, intelligent, entertaining and perceptive. The Nurse supposes it’s because they’re not under spin doctors’ influence any more, or obliged to toe the party line. And they don’t have to check every sentence they utter for gaffes. 

So are MPs being forced to sacrifice their best human traits on the altar of politics? And who’s responsible? Is it hereditary – have our politicians always been so slippery? Or is it a new phenomenon born of spin? Whatever the reason, The Nurse proposes a better way.

How about having human politicians? People who speak their minds honestly, with personalities and human failings. They’d confess their mistakes, admit it when they’d fucked up and apologise as though they meant it. They’d give straight answers to straight questions. 

Presumably spin doctors, PR people and the like are employed to improve the image of politicians and their parties. If so they’re doing a shit job.

The Nurse was half amused and half horrified by the happy, carefree, open interviews ex-MPs gave. Amused because the poor buggers were so obviously delighted to be out of the spotlight. Horrified because surely no job should twist essentially good people into the peculiar shapes our politicians end up in. 

It’s a lovely summer’s day. The Nurse can smell the scent of flowers drifting through her tiny, barred cell window. And the skylarks are belting out their tumbling, trilling arias on the moors outside. In a rare mellow mood, The Nurse is feeling uncannily cheerful.

Here’s her top three reasons for digging out her dusty smile and pinning it to her face.

First, the UK Government’s new website http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/. They’re asking for the public’s ideas about restoring civil liberty, repealing unneccessary laws and cutting business regulation. The Nurse enjoyed mouthing off about legalising recreational drugs and removing innocent people’s DNA from the police database. It felt good to be allowed her say despite – she admits it – being such a horrible human being, banged up and all.    

Second, Simon’s Cat. Simon’s Cat does The Nurse’s rotten soul good. She doesn’t often laugh. Partly because life isn’t fucking funny and partly because it scares people. But as a cat lover The Nurse laughed so hard at Simon’s Cat animations that a little bit of wee came out. 

Back in the days when she roamed free, she had cats. One of her cats used to store little heaps of worms under the rug, in various stages of mummification, presumably for a rainy day. Funny little beast. But The Nurse digresses… click through to Simon’s Cat for a collection of brilliantly observed animations.  

Third, because she’s behaved so impeccably of late The Nurse is out of solitary. Back in the thick of things, amongst her fellow prisoners. And she’s managed to acquire the makings of a mighty fine shiv. A stainless steel ballpoint pen to most people, it represents an exciting opportunity for The Nurse. The time’s ripe for some more experimental amateur brain surgery. The siren call of trepanning is making her head hurt. And the voices are getting louder every day. The Nurse is grinning in anticipation. Happy, happy, happy.   

The Nurse enjoys researching stuff. Her fellow inmates mostly enjoy it too, although they’re naturally wary when forced to take part in her more bizarre experiments. Many of which are downright dangerous, if not lethal.  

So everyone was relieved to find her latest proposition wasn’t particularly dodgy, just a simple experiment to find out more about the nature of happiness. 

The Nurse’s happiness experiment

Splitting the inmate population neatly and randomly in two, The Nurse briefed each group as follows.

Group 1:  

• Before you go to sleep, imagine tomorrow is the best day you’ve ever had. You feel fantastic. You look great. Everything’s going your way. You’re fit, healthy and the world is full of possibilities.
• Pick up the thread when you wake up and carry on all day with your positive internal dialogue     

Group 2:

• Before you go to sleep, imagine tomorrow will be the worst day you’ve ever had. You look like a bag of shite, your feet smell, everyone hates you and you’ve just been sacked. 
• When you wake up, carry on convincing yourself your life stinks and the entire world thinks you’re an arse.

The Results

The Nurse asked everyone to describe how they felt about their day.

• Group 1:  Had a great time.
• Group 2:  Just wanted to die and get it over with. 

The next night The Nurse reversed the process.

• Group 1:  Had a dreadful time.
• Group 2:  Enjoyed themselves despite being banged up in a loony bin.

Conclusion

Sadly she daren’t try the experiment herself. The Nurse understands better than anyone how unpredictable and deadly she can be when in a bad mood.  But she suspects we’re in charge of our own happiness. Interesting.

The Nurse wants YOU!

Nobody’s going to take this seriously… an experiment run by a mass murderer, undertaken on the population of a mental institution, none of whom were given the remotest choice in the matter. 

The Nurse needs fresh test data, from normal people like you. Feel free to experiment on yourself and let her know what happens.

Those bastard screws found The Nurse’s laptop. Is nothing sacred in prison? Sadly The Nurse’s personal areas are obviously not particularly sacred. But on the other hand her lady garden is deep. And she’s a  stalwart type. Hidden where the sun never shines, they didn’t find her binoculars. 

So, stuck in solitary confinement since January with no internet access, The Nurse has been restricted to spying through a tiny hole drilled in her cell wall. From there she has watched the prison’s staff and visitors driving to and fro across the moors. And she’s been sickened by their behind-the-wheel mobile phone antics.

The Nurse thought using mobiles in cars was against the law unless they’re hands-free. But nobody seems to give a flying fuck. On average 30% of the drivers she watches from her cell are glued to their mobile phones while on the move at one time or another. The arseholes.

Drivers are quite obviously incapable of leaving their mobile phones alone. Pointing out the dangers doesn’t seem to help. The law isn’t helping much either. So the only thing left is to make sure using phones in cars is impossible.

The Nurse proposes fitting every car, old and new, with a mandatory signal blocker to stop this dickheadery in its tracks before total carnage ensues.  

The phrase ’ in-car entertainment’ must be one of the most disgusting oxymorons coined in recent years. When you’re in a car you should be concentrating on driving. And only driving. Is any conversation important enough to die for, or kill other people for? Why don’t all you lazy, selfish twats turn your phones off  when you’re in your cars? 

Surely you lot can manage to function as human beings without being entertained every single minute? But then again, perhaps not. The loony brigade is currently busy inventing an in-car personal computer with internet access.

Holy shit.   

The nurse is sometimes relieved to be safely incarcerated in jail. This is one of those times. Sod driving. Sod being a passenger too – it’s equally dangerous. At least in prison she’s safe from all you murderous mobile-using wankers. 

It’s been a while since I last posted here on the ABS blog, partly due to site hosting issues, but mainly due to downright laziness. But I’m back; motivated to write this post by our most recent club meeting at which one of my colleagues made a most disagreeable suggestion.

It was proposed that members of the illustrious and highly exclusive Sussex Amateur Brain Surgery club should take part in the forthcoming Brighton naked bike ride. I was appalled at the very suggestion. On June 13^th over 1000 cyclists will ride through the city with body parts flapping in the breeze, ostensibly to raise awareness of the vulnerability of cyclists. My fellow club member’s reasoning was that since many of us are riders of bikes we would want to support this worthy effort.

Not me! And my views were shared by all of my fellow club members, except two. The chap who made the proposal and another who spends a lot of time on Brighton’s nudist beach. They will be taking part, exposing themselves to the elements and the shoppers in Brighton’s busy city centre.

Now I don’t consider myself a prude. But I first unwittingly encountered the naked bike ride when I was in the city shopping for some car accessories during the 2008 event. I recall spotting a young lady cycling topless and wondered if she might be drunk. Then I noticed a group of naked elderly gentlemen on bicycles behind her and I realised there was something going on.

I spent some time wondering what it was that I found so disagreeable about the event. While I’ve heard it described as sleazy, immoral and indecent I don’t actually agree with any of these. I just find it unpleasant to behold. I think it’s absolutely fine for people who enjoy being naked, outdoors in the company of others to indulge their whims, but I think that imposing their naked bodies on people who don’t want to see them is simply unacceptable.

So, this year I have set a reminder to tell me not to visit the city on the 13^th of June. The last thing I want to see is a couple of my colleagues from the  Amateur Brain Surgery club exposing their purple mushrooms while riding bicycles.

The Nurse, not usually shockable, is shocked speechless by today’s revelations about the goings on at Stafford hospital.

Everyone’s busy blaming the Government, the healthcare Trust, the NHS’s regulatory bodies, bureaucracy, budgets… but nobody has mentioned the role hospital staff played. 

Did the Government neglect, bully and starve all those poor, poor people? Nope. The nurses and hospital staff did. And the ones that didn’t join in stuck their fingers in their cowardly ears and pretended nothing was happening.  

Was it the NHS regulators’ job to keep the wards clean and free from dried blood, needles and disgusting medical waste? Nope, it was the cleaners’ job, and they obviously fucked it up beyond all redemption.  

The Nurse places almost all the blame squarely with Stafford hospital employees. They must be a rotten, cruel, thoughtless, mean, evil, nasty, lazy, shiftless lot of arseholes. 

Let’s hope they’ve all been sacked. Although it’s hard to tell… everyone’s so busy blaming Gordon Brown that Stafford’s nurses and support staff seem to have got away with it scott free. Without so much as a telling off. The bastards. 

Perhaps the NHS should pay more and attract better people. Or just stop employing sociopaths.

The Nurse thought she was a nasty piece of work but this lot make her look like Florence bloody Nightingale…

Plenty of countries, the UK and US included, have massive stocks of nuclear weapons.

OK, we’re not supposed to be building new ones and there’s a non-proliferation agreement in place. But – she has said it before and she’ll say it again – The Nurse still thinks it’s naive to expect Iran to abstain from nuclear weapons altogether.

It’d be a different story if very few or no other countries had nuclear bombs. Or if everyone was busy de-commissioning and dismantling them hell for leather, openly for all to see. 

But that isn’t happening. Countries with nuclear weapons are hanging on to them, reluctant to let go. 

The Nurse is neither surprised nor outraged that Iran seems to be moving towards making a few nuclear bombs of its own. She would too if she were them. Why? To keep things fair and create balance; some bargaining power and security while the rest of the world fannies around getting its non-nuclear act together… which could take decades. 

So, what to do? The Nurse proposes the UK, US and all the other nuclear powers each donate a nice, shiny bomb to Iran. Then we’ll all be on a level playing field and nuclear disarmament negotiations can start in earnest.

Until then Iran will doubtless remain justifiably pissed off and pressurised. Feeling pissed off and pressurised makes The Nurse feel provocative. She’s extremely dangerous when cornered. The same probably goes for Iran. 

Do you believe in Homeopathy? The Nurse isn’t convinced. Why? Because to work, it’d have to defy the laws of physics.  

Even if you wouldn’t know a law of physics if it punched you on the nose, you probably realise that it is 100% impossible to defy them. 

Fact: the only way homeopathy could work is if it managed to defy those laws. It can’t. Nothing can. Conclusion: homeopathy is bollocks.     

That’s not all. High quality clinical trials cannot find any scientific basis whatsoever for homeopathy working. Nobody ever has.

Invented in the 1700s, homeopathy is based on three so-called ‘laws’; the law of similars, the law of infinitesimals and the law of succussion. All three are too silly to merit any detail. And all were disproved a very long time ago. 

But people still persist in believing that homeopathy works… to the tune of £40 million a year in the UK, £4 million of which is spent by the UK’s NHS. 

The Nurse thinks she knows why. It’s the placebo and nocebo effects, both of which are much more powerful than you might realise.

There’s the true story of the man misdiagnosed with terminal cancer who was found, at post mortem, to have  nothing wrong with him… classic nocebo effect. There are many reports of people dying because they believed they’d been cursed – more nocebos.

The placebo effect is well documented too, with countless cases of people given a placebo and recovering. And there’s even a recent study where people who thought they were watching HD TV reported experiencing a dramatically better picture when they were actually only looking at a regular TV. 

The Nurse marvels at how easy it is to fool ourselves! 

A fellow inmate argued the other day that it didn’t matter whether or not homeopathy worked because some people’s belief  is so strong that it works for them. So what’s the harm.

Hm. The Nurse thinks that’s a thin excuse for perpetuating such a scandalous and expensive scam. Surely it’d be better to save a considerable amount of cash, spread the word about placebo / nocebo effects and make it clear to everyone that believing you’re healthy goes a surprisingly long way towards making it so.

In fact scientific experiments have proved that 30 minutes of meditation a day over eight weeks can significantly strengthen your immune system. Who needs quack medicine when you can DIY? 

Until she’s perfected her meditation techniques, The Nurse vows to steer clear of homeopathy charlatans. No doubt they mean well but even they can’t defy the laws of physics. 

It’s been a while since I last posted any details of my ongoing battle with my (previously) expanding waist line and lots has happened.

The first thing to report is that I have managed to shed around 10lbs since I embarked on my new weight-loss campaign back in September 2009. Before the Christmas holidays I’d managed to shed almost a stone (14lb) in weight but the festive period, combined with the recent snowy weather keeping me from getting outdoors for some much needed exercise, have resulted in a small amount of weight gain. But I am still enormously pleased with myself.

Christmas is a tough time when dieting. Too many tempting, tasty but fattening treats combined with cold weather and an inclination to indulge is a near fatal combination. I was lucky that Father Christmas brought me some new DJ equipment which acted as a distraction from the mince pies, Christmas cake and booze.

If you have read my previous posts you’ll know that myself and my DJ friend, Chemical Dave, met a hypnotherapist in a night club last year who offered to give me a free session that she promised would help with my weight loss objectives. Well Dave and I paid a visit to our new Harley Street Hypnotist friend and I have to report that it has worked for me.

I’ve always been skeptical about hypno-therapy and wondered if I would make a good subject. The session I had suggests that I am a good subject for hypnotism and that it works. Our therapist friend said that all she did was reinforce my own drive towards getting more exercise, eating healthily and steering clear of junk food. Since the session I’ve had no trouble resisting most temptations, even over the Christmas holidays.

So if you have been toying with the idea of trying hypnotism in your quest to lose weight and get into shape I’d strongly recommend that you give it a go.