Rosemary McLeod: That's just far too sensible to believe in

I'd look closely at the foam on my latte in future if I were John Key.

WE MAY be better educated than people have ever been in the history of our destructive and grubby race, but we still believe whatever makes, on balance, the least possible sense.

Our Prime Minister pulled a waitress's ponytail repeatedly, but would be furious if someone pinched his backside, hard, every time he had a coffee at their cafe.

He knows women don't like being touched by strangers, but believed that if a masterful and delightful chap such as himself does it, they love it.

I'd look closely at the foam on my latte in future if I were John Key.

A dear friend once brought me arnica when I was in hospital after major surgery. I would have laughed if it wouldn't have hurt so much.

There are people who think a homeopathic remedy is just the thing to cure pain after any injury, on whatever scale.

Medical researchers work tirelessly to develop drugs that genuinely do that, but these guys prefer unproven remedies because they find the rationale behind them appealing, and deep down they think there's a sinister conspiracy to force us to use medication that works.

I can no more make sense of this than I can the Prime Minister's ponytail fetish. I guess they've never had a nasty enough medical crisis to challenge their beliefs.

We live longer, and healthier, than people have ever done, with access to a wider range of food than our ancestors dreamed of - yet we are obsessed with our health, and constantly told we're eating the wrong stuff.

We invent ever newer and more extreme diets to cure us of conditions we don't want to get, when we were not unhealthy in the first place.

They're not so much diets as aversion therapy. And don't get me started on fashionable allergies. What bores people are.

When the definition of obesity has become anyone who's fatter than you, and the ideal body shape verges on starvation, is it any wonder people have eating disorders?

In a flash of genius we invented the motorcar, a means of transportation far quicker than walking, or horseback, which also shelters you from wind and rain, lets you take the whole family out together, drop kids off to football, and carry the groceries home all on the same day. But people are turning to bicycles, which offer none of those advantages.

So they keep you fit. So does jumping up and down on the spot, and you'd save on all the nasty Lycra that bike riding demands.

And don't believe you're saving petrol. Lycra, without which no bicycle rider can earn respect, is made from petroleum: what's more you're responsible for reacting a polymer with a diisocyanate, and that's vicious.

History is a zone of more astonishing beliefs.

You can make it up as you go along, and will attract fellow believers if what you claim is annoying enough. TV programming is padded out with eager "experts" who swear that extra-terrestrial beings gave us the wheel, or we're descended from frogs. They sound plausible to stoners, maybe.

This is where I get interested in Australian journalist Scott McIntyre, who has just lost his job in TV for tweeting to his 30,000 followers: "Remembering the summary execution, widespread rape and theft committed by these brave Anzacs in Egypt, Palestine and Japan". The claims, and the sacking, have developed into an online squabble between left and right-wing commentators in which facts are lacking but battle lines are drawn, much as they were over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and look what happened next.

McIntyre reminds me of the feminists who took to infuriating old soldiers some years back by laying wreaths on Anzac Day for women raped in wartime. I wonder how McIntyre can prove his claims, and won't hold my breath while I await developments.

• Rosemary McLeod is a journalist and author