Homoeo apathy

There's been a bit of a bust up in the media over the last few days about homoeopathy and whether or not it works. This old conundrum never gets resolved, with people who swear blind on both sides of the debate.

Essentially, the active ingredient -- usually a toxin -- is actively diluted by a factor of 100 many times until there is no molecule left of the original ingredient, The solution that is left is said to have a 'water memory' and has potency for treating ailments. Whether or not this alternative medicine works is beyond my knowledge: there's been an argument for over 200 years. But think about other scenarios where the technique could be tried out.

• Politics: diluting policy through committee after committee until the remaining bill only has a 'water memory' of the original idea.
• Sport: Chinese whispers communication of tactics from coaches and manager to a squad only for the players to dilute the message when they get out on to the pitch.
• Media: a minion has an idea that gets stolen progressively up the food-chain hierarchy until the commissioner decides to act on the original, unrecognisable idea convinced it was his or her own Eureka moment.
• Relationships: repeated requests from wives and girlfriends directed towards their men get progressively diluted so that by the time he's slumped in front of the telly watching Match of the Day, the memory of what was said seems in the distant past.

This is human nature, I suppose, but in politics this can have positive outcomes occasionally, say when filibustering an unpopular bill, and at least the media projects get made, albeit with workers at the plankton level of the scale perhaps feeling used.