Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Dara O'Briain, sugar pills and water memory.

Sunday night went to see Dara O'Briain at the City Hall as part of the Grin Up North Comedy Festival. Seeing quite a few acts over the next few weeks - hope they're all as good as Dara was. Very fast speaker, took a bit of getting used to especially with the Irish accent, but so funny. And a lot of improvisation from talking to the audience. Last time he was in Sheffield he found it difficult to get the audience to interact (according to his book Tickling the English), but that didn't happen this time. Lots of good responses, and some random heckling. He's a great supporter of the "skeptic" movement, and I was glad to see stuff like homeopathy and chiropractic getting a good going over.

I love the non science behind homeopathy - been written about too many times for me to go over it again. Suffice to say that its medicines are merely sugar pills or sugar water. Active ingredients diluted down so much that there are no molecules of them left in the solution at all. But, so homeopaths would have us believe, water has memory, so can remember traces of the active ingredient. Well, given what most water that we drink has been in contact with, I hope that's not true!

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