Your five a day is going to kill you

This was only a matter of time, wasn't it?

AN APPLE a day is supposed to keep the doctor away, but a small but passionate group of Melbourne medics believes apples and other fresh fruit are in part to blame for the extra kilos some of us are carrying.

And if you're a bit of a fatty then you're a salad dodging couch potato who's already under a deferred sentence of self inflicted death, aren't you? The Institute of Stands To Reason Dunnit (among others) has told us so.

It is a controversial concept that riles nutritionists, but anaesthetist Rod Tayler's theory that restricting fresh fruit in the diet can result in weight loss has been borne out by the participants in a trial he is running at the Epworth Hospital.
Dr Tayler believes the biggest driver behind the rapid rise in the nation's girth is sugar, not fat.

Actually I'm not sure this is all that new. Sugar is a carbohydrate and there are lots of low carb diets, Atkins being probably the most well known, and plenty of people who find that they lose weight that way. And it is, or should be, pretty common knowledge that fruits, berries and vegetables contain lots of sugars. It's why they taste so good. Sweetcorn? Yes?

Mary McPherson, 60, was astounded to learn how much sugar she was consuming as part of what she thought was a healthy vegetarian diet that included four to five pieces of fruit a day. By reducing that to two pieces - ''some berries and a banana'' - Ms McPherson watched excess weight fall off.
''It was a slow loss of weight but in six to eight months I dropped about 10 kilograms and I have kept it off,'' says Ms McPherson, who now weighs 60.5 kilograms.
Instead of snacking on fruit, she ate dry roasted almonds. Occasional sweet cravings were satisfied with a single piece of dark chocolate. She also followed Dr Tayler's advice to reduce refined carbohydrates such as white rice and pasta, replacing them with brown rice and sweet potatoes. But she struggled with his recommendation to cut back on alcohol and continued to enjoy two glasses of wine with dinner

Oooh, they'll get you for that, Mary. Probably should have kept shtum about it or at least said you'd cut down like Katrina.

Katrina John, 26, a nurse who subscribes to Dr Tayler's recommendations, says that by cutting out the two to three pieces of fresh fruit she used to eat each working day she not only lost one kilogram in a fortnight, she started thinking more carefully about everything she ate.
''Then I removed the dried fruit from the nut mix I used to have every day and I stopped drinking orange juice on the weekend and I think it all made a big difference,'' Ms John says, adding she lost seven kilograms in seven months as she also reduced her alcohol and white carbohydrate intake.

Needless to say not everyone is thrilled to hear this.

Nutritionist Rosemary Stanton rejects the argument, saying there is no evidence for it, pointing out that Dr Tayler's sweet study has not been published in a medical journal. ''I think what they are doing is mixing up fruit and fruit juice,'' Dr Stanton says.
[...]
Dr Stanton says that overall fruit consumption in Australia is low and it is a struggle to get most people to eat the recommended two pieces a day.

Two? I thought it was five? And am I right in thinking that 'nutritionist', unlike 'dietitian', is not a legally protected term here? Not saying that Dr Stanton is unqualified or anything, and what she's said there doesn't seem unreasonable to me (and of course Dr Taylor being an anaesthetist is away from his normal field of expertise here anyway), but my point is that all this advice we get on what to eat and what not to eat is hardly clear. One week butter is good for you, the next it'll murder you in your sleep. We must eat five pieces of fruit and veg per day, then we get fat if we do and anyway it was really only two per day all along.

What's the right advice? Don't ask me, I'm as unqualified to give advice on eating as they come. But what I can tell you is that moderation in all things seems like the most sensible approach as well as the most pleasant (the idea of an all sprout diet doesn't bear thinking about), but I know it's not an ideal I live up to in reality. And yes, I could stand to drop a few kilos - I did say I was as unqualified as they come. The point is that there's no magic food and no magic maximum or minimum number for what's 'good' for you. For many things too much is bad, and invariably too little isn't a goo idea either. If you're not happy or not well then probably you need to change something. Otherwise the only thing I'd really suggest is not to read the newspapers too much, because consuming more than five articles on health per week is incredibly dangerous and is likely to send you to an early grave.*

* Research pending. ;-)

The sun won't fall down tomorrow...

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

Bet your bottom dollar, unless of course you're mad enough to still think that after at least two bum apocraplypse predictions Harold Camping's still on the money that it's game over at 6 tomorrow evening. Oh, and also too busy spreading the word to hear that Camping has dialled back the rhetoric slightly and has now only said that the end is 'probably' October 21st. Well, with his track record you can hardly blame the guy for wanting to build a way out into his current prediction, which brings me on to my own prediction which is that by Monday, or maybe the end of next week, Camping will be making similar noises to those Christians who last May were citing reasons why humanity couldn't possibly know the date for sure. In the meantime if the world's still here on Saturday morning those of his followers who've accidentally forgotten to blow literally all their money will be rapt.

Oh, sorry, poor choice of word? Maybe a very predictable choice of music will make up for it.



And just in case the internet is here and the rest of us aren't I've scheduled the next few posts.

What did I say?

In the post a few hours back (actually written Friday evening) I mentioned that we in the west seem to get hung up on dates and anniversaries of major events, and if those events are a disaster inflicted deliberately we think that the enemy responsible is likely to do it again on the same date. Quite why he'd want to do that rather than pick another day at random or simply go when he's ready is rarely addressed, and I can't help feeling that it might be a western thing anyway. Remember the Alamo! Pearl Harbour! 9/11! So I'm not surprised to read this:

The US has warned of a "specific, credible threat" ahead of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, possibly in New York or Washington DC.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the threat was "uncorroborated", but security would be boosted at bridges, tunnels and on public transport.

That the 9/11 hijackers chose September 11th rather than February 26th, the anniversary of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is something else that doesn't get mentioned much. In fact the only case I can think of offhand in which an anniversary figured was the Oklahoma City bombing carried out by Timothy McVeigh, who chose the second anniversary of Waco to carry out his attack. And since McVeigh wasn't responsible for Waco but as he saw it was attacking in response to Waco I'm not sure that really counts. If September 11th marked some date in which the US or the west had done something specific to piss off Alky-Aida then perhaps there'd be a reason for them to mark that down in their calendars as getting-killed-for-the-cause day, but otherwise...

I dunno, maybe there really is a genuine cause for concern, but it seems to me that Alky-Aida could just as easily make a few noises about the tenth anniversary as a shit stir and then go back to milking the goat. Or it could just as easily be confirmation bias and we're twitching at shadows because we've half convinced ourselves that the people who attacked ten years ago attach some special significance to that date. I'll eat my words if anything does happen - and I mean more than some wide-eyed teenager with a milk bottle full of petrol damaging a police station or something - but I reckon any particular day is no less likely than any other. And no more likely either.

Remembering those important dates

Tomorrow marks a date we'll all be expected to remember. The papers will be full of it, it'll be mentioned on every news and current affairs show, the blogosphere will no doubt add its contribution (and in a way this post is a part of that) and the never-mind-liberty-give-me-security-or-at-least-the-illusion-of-it paranoia brigade will spend the whole day shitting themselves in case the alky-aida bogeyman blows something up. And on that point, look, if the alky-aida bogeyman can blow something up tomorrow I don't doubt that he will, but I doubt he'll be hung up on anniversaries and special dates like most of the west seems to be. He'll be just as happy to blow something up a fortnight next Tuesday or this time next month. Or a fortnight last Tuesday or this time last month. Whatever suits him, really.

We're all going to die, yet again

I was going to write something about the latest example of greenie toad licking / pushing the warble gloaming bandwagon along to keep those grant cheques coming, this NASA paper paper co-authored by a NASA affiliate about how Earth might be destroyed by aliens as a punishment for our warble gloaming sins (blogged at WUWT and the Real World Libertarian) and enthusiastically printed by The Grauniad. But aside from having little to say that's not already been said, in particular the point brought up by WUWT that this was a "fun paper by a few friends" that nonetheless ended up passing peer review to be published in the journal of the fucking IAA, I think The Daily Mash have done it far better than I could have.

MORK from Ork will blast your face off unless you reduce your average fuel consumption to 62 miles per gallon, scientists have warned.

Experts said intelligent extra-terrestrials will detect increases in the Earth's CO2 emissions and wipe us out because studies into 14 different species of intelligent extra-terrestrials have all confirmed that is exactly how they behave.

[...]

Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: "We now need to have a debate about whether angry alien genocide research is more terrifying than one of those book covers that has huge waves crashing against the middle of Big Ben.

"And it has surely got to be more effective than some fucking documentary called 'The Last Gnu' or 'Cry Me a Desert'."

He added: "My initial research confirms it is now imperative that we pinpoint a likely planet from whence our murderers will emanate and then publish painstakingly accurate drawings of what their flying saucers will definitely look like.

"We should also give them a name. I suggest 'the Monbions'."

The Monbions! Priceless. I imagine their flying saucers will somehow look like an archaeologist in nuclear explosion propelled fridge jumping over a shark. While you're trying to work out how anything could possibly look like that why not go and read the rest?

Welcome to The Asylum

In So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, the late Douglas Adams introduced us to a minor character by the name of John Watson or, as he preferred to be called, Wonko the Sane. Those who've read it will probably recall Wonko's unusual house and the reason for it being that way, but for those who don't know the story this is how the book put it.

His house was certainly peculiar, and since this was the first thing that Fenchurch and Arthur had encountered it would help to know what it was like. It was like this:

It was inside out.

Actually inside out, to the extent that they had had to park on the carpet.

All along what one would normally call the outer wall, which was decorated in a tasteful interior-deisgned pink, were bookshelves, also a couple of those odd three-legged tables with semicircular tops which stand in such a way as to suggest that someone just dropped the wall straight through them, and pictures which were clearly designed to soothe.

Where it got really odd was the roof.

It folded back on itself like something that M. C. Escher, had he been given to hard nights on the town, which it is no part of this narrative's purpose to suggest was the case, though it is sometimes hard, looking at his pictures, particularly the one with all the awkward steps, not to wonder, might have dreamed up after having been on one, for the little chandeliers which should have been hanging inside were on the outside pointing up.

[...]

The sign above the front door read "Come Outside," and so, nervously, they had.

Inside, of course, was where the Outside was. Rough brickwork, nicely done pointing, gutters in good repair, a garden path, a couple of small trees, some rooms leading off.

And the inner walls stretched down, folded curiously, and opened at the end as if, by and optical illusion which would have had M. C. Escher frowning and wondering how it was done, to enclose the Pacific Ocean itself.

[...]

"Your wife," said Arthur, looking around, "mentioned some toothpicks." He said it with a hunted look, as if he was worried that she might suddenly leap out from behind a door and mention them again.

Wonko the Sane laughed. It was a light easy laugh, and sounded like one he had used a lot before and was happy with.

"Ah yes," he said, "that's to do with the day I finally realized that the world had gone totally mad and built the Asylum to put it in, poor thing, and hoped it would get better."

This was the point at which Arthur began to feel a little nervous again.

"Here," said Wonko the Sane, "we are outside the Asylum." He pointed again at the rough brickwork, the pointing, and the gutters. "Go through that door" -- he pointed at the first door through which they had originally entered -- "and you go into the Asylum. I've tried to decorate it nicely to keep the inmates happy, but there's very little one can do. I never go in there myself. If I ever am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I simply look at the sign written over the door and I shy away."

"That one?" said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at a blue plaque with some instructions written on it.

"Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do."

The sign read:

"Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion."

"It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane."

And it's Wonko the Sane and his house that immediately spring to mind when I read, via Watts Up With That, that fat people are the latest cause of warble gloaming ...

Researchers at the Robert Gordon University have completed a study that addresses the link between climate change and obesity.
The academics suggest that global weight loss would result in a drop in the production of the major greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO(2)).
The study was carried out by a trio of researchers within the university's Centre for Obesity Research and Epidemiology (CORE). It suggests that if every obese and overweight person in the world lost 10 kilograms (or 1.58 stone), the resulting drop in greenhouse emissions would be the equivalent of 0.2% of the CO(2) emitted globally in 2007 (49.560Mt).

... and via this PR that watching TV is as bad for you as smoking.

Every hour spent watching television shortens your life by a little over 20 minutes – on a par with smoking a cigarette, Australian researchers claim.
And the worst couch potatoes – watching more than six hours of TV a day – can expect to die almost five years earlier than people who watch no TV at all, researchers calculated.
Writing in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (online), the Brisbane-led group say Australia’s love of TV poses a significant threat to the health of the population.

Click for linky, and also to increase your risk of developing a need for lithium carbonate

We've known for some time that Niemöller's warning is as relevant today as it ever was, that as victories are won over the smokers and drinkers the rest of us would come in for our turn, and that the salad dodgers would be among the first. And now I think the next couple of phases are becoming clear. Your weight isn't just your problem anymore and it's not just for your own good that the swivel-eyed are exhorting you to lose weight. No, it's also essential to help stop warble gloaming. Yes, folks, we have identified passive obesity, and since we're also going to be told that TV is as bad as smoking - no qualification, no consideration to the obvious differences between, say, an hour's telly time after a hard afternoon's slob and an hour's telly time after a daily 10km cycle followed by a warm down and a shower - we can expect passive TV watching to be only around the corner. Christ's sake! I'd intended to sit down with Mrs Exile this evening and watch Sons of Anarchy together over some delicious take-away food from Urban Burger* just up the road in Balaclava.** Actually I still do intend to, but I'm wondering how much longer we'll be allowed to get away with it if we're going to be told it's bad for us and accused of raping polar bears to death with our wanton secondary televisioning.

Wonko the Sane was very nearly correct: the world, or at least quite a lot of people who have a disproportionate say in its running, is completely mad. Where Wonko was wrong is the nature of the insanity. It's not the harmless*** and almost genteel lunacy of Adams' H²G² universe, but a vicious psychosis that increasingly seems determined to stamp out anything it does not approve of - freedom, mostly - and isn't at all reticent in coming up with all kinds of reasons why having your liberty reduced and removed is A Good Thing. Why you must be nudged into it if you don't want to and punished if you refuse is rarely far behind.

And so I find Wonko the Sane's take on house design increasingly appealing. So appealing, in fact, that I might have applied for planning permission if it wasn't for the problem that there isn't the faintest hope of the inmates of The Asylum granting it. But I've also spotted a critical flaw in the design. Remember that door that Wonko pointed out to Arthur and Fenchurch, the door they had just opened and walked through minutes before to come in from The Asylum?

I reckon it needs a big fucking lock on it.


* Which incidentally serves delicious burgers and chips, and preempts the possibility of food packaging legislation in the future by putting them in plain brown paper bags. I'm absolutely not making that up, and even if it is just coincidental I wouldn't bet against it one day coming in handy for them.

** Yes, I'm still in Melbourne, not the Crimea, and no, I have no idea why a landlocked local suburb is called Balaclava. After the battle, I think, but why exactly and why that battle I can't imagine.

*** Okay, mostly harmless.

Aha Shake Nowt Break

Oh noes, we have teh erfquakes.

Click for linky

We're all going to di... oh, wait.

MORE aftershocks are expected after Victoria's south was rocked by two earthquakes, including a magnitude 4.4 tremor felt in Melbourne, more than 100km from its epicentre.

The shallow magnitude 4.4 earthquake, which hit at 11.32am (AEST), was felt in Melbourne's CBD and the city's southeastern suburbs.

Look, it doesn't become an 8.8 if you say it twice, you know. There have been a few of these in the last couple of years, the epicentres apparently being in the Korumburra area - or under it, presumably - and to be honest I haven't even felt them all. If you're driving a 4.4 wobble is either soaked up by the car's suspension or indistinguishable from the regular wobbles from imperfections in the road surface, of which Melbourne has no shortage what with having a substantial tram network. Oh, and some shit roads too. As for the possibility of aftershocks, well, we got those after the 4.6 quake in early 2009 but since most were much smaller few got any attention from anyone but the scientists. So why the hell are we hearing stuff like this:

“You would think a truck had driven through the pub.”

Or this:

"It sounded like a truck was approaching up the street and then it was as if the truck had run into the building..."

Orly? Like this kind of thing, you mean?

No? Well, then I think the description you're looking for is something like "not like a truck hitting the building". It's like standing on a bridge when a truck, a big, long heavy truck like a road train, drives past at speed - you get that same shaking felt through your feet and it goes on for about as long as it takes a road train to cross a bridge. It's weird, yes, and definitely a bit disconcerting, but it is not like having a truck, even a small one, hit your house. There's a sort of clue in the lack of sudden sky and falling masonry. The poor bloody Kiwis have just had another 6.5 - the thick end of 1000 times more powerful - and even though they seem to have emerged unscathed this time I don't think we here in Melbourne have any call to exaggerate how our little ≈4 mag wobbles feel, especially when at least one young Kiwi didn't even notice theirs either.

@UpsideBackwards 8yo didn't feel #eqnz because.... they were having an earthquake drill at the time! #couldntmakethisup

Over precautious, much?

On my list of things to blog about when I have some more time this weekend is the decision in Germany to ditch nuclear power because of post-Fukushima safety concerns. Yes, Germany doesn't have a lot of coastline, and the fact that the term for enormous fuck-off great killer tidal wave is not a German word but a Japanese one is a hint that Germany doesn't really have a history of devastating tsunamis destroying property and drowning citizens without the RAF bombing their dams first. All the same they've decided that the risk - excuse me, I'm just going to stop for a bit of a giggle - the risk isn't worth it. As it happens I'm now not going to blog about it because The Snowolf has already said everything I would have, in particular this:

Of course, by doing this, Germany has ensured that it is immune from any nuclear issues at all, should something happen in France (which is almost entirely reliant on nuclear power, sensible Froggies) any fall out will stop at the border.

Quite. They're not getting rid of power stations that pose a potential though tiny risk, they're just getting rid of the ones that Germany currently gets something of value from. The Snowolf adds a little shopping and financial investment advice as well: order your Beemer now while they're still able to make the things and dump Euros for shares in German candle manufacturers. Go read the whole thing.

The end of the world yet again

From the other day

Wrong!


Anything that swivel-eyed, radar-eared, Bible thumping, Pilkington taste tester in the US can do, I can do better. My own research, or rather accidental discovery, into the date on which the world will come to an end suggests that it will take place on New Years Eve, 2030. The year, that is, not half past eight. In fact it'll all happen just as we're doing that thing with the hand holding in a circle and singing something only Scottish people can do properly.

How do I know? My evidence for this? Well, I admit I'm not absolutely sure it's much more reliable than interpretations of various ancient texts that were written by different people living centuries apart, but which these days are usually found in a single volume translated from ancient Hebrew and Aramaic into archaic styles of English via Greek and/or Latin. By all means play at interpreting that if you wish, but at least what I'm interpreting is a hell of a lot more up to date:
only the actual bloody internet!

Blogger, which has recently been spookily prescient with the word verifications it's been making me do when commenting on other's blogs, seems to have foreknowledge of the end of everything as well. While saving a draft blog post for a few weeks ahead in order to keep it at the top of the list I accidentally set the year to 2031 and a little message popped up to tell me that dates could not be past the year 9999. Thing is, it wasn't, was it? But Blogger wouldn't permit it anyway. Some further experimentation revealed the limits of the dates Blogger will accept, and it seems to believe that despite being nearly 8,000 years short of its limit it's not worth it's while accepting anything scheduled for midnight on January 1st 2031 onwards.

See? See? It must know something we don't. The bad news is that I have no evidence at all for any kind of salvation. No being beamed up, no motherships, not even a bloke from Betelgeuse who can get you a ride on a Vogon constructor ship. So my advice for dealing with what appears to be the last New Year's Eve ever is have some good sex - put some Viagra aside now if need be - and then get as pissed or stoned as you both possible can. If the world does end it's best you have some fun before getting too wasted to be concerned, and if the next day does dawn after all you won't give a rip about anything more than getting some headache pills.

I like to think of this blog as offering a service sometimes. You can thank me in 2031, or not as the case may be, and in the meantime credit card donations to the usual place so I can afford all the advertising.

Apocalypse reset

Click for linky

Everybody panic, the end of the world is back on again.

Mr Camping, who predicted that 200 million Christians would be taken to heaven on Saturday before the earth was destroyed, said he felt so terrible when his doomsday prediction did not come true that he left home and took refuge in a motel with his wife.
His independent ministry, Family Radio International, spent millions - some of it from donations made by followers - on more than 5000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the Judgment Day message.
But Mr Camping said that he had now realised the apocalypse would come five months after May 21, the original date he predicted. He had earlier said October 21 was when the globe would be consumed by a fireball.

No real surprise there since these doomsday types do have a bit of a mental block when it comes to events they've predicted with absolute certainty not actually happening. Far from being forced to concede that (a) they were mistaken and (b) now look like complete tits it's apparently not unusual for their belief to actually get stronger as a result of failed predictions.

Shouldn't the failure of a very precise prediction for which they had made extreme sacrifices have prompted disillusionment and disgust — not greater commitment?
Not according to Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, which predicts that the more we have given and invested in a particular point of view, the less likely we will be to abandon it in the face of contrary evidence. It's the same cognitive process that kicks in when we are made to behave in ways that are inconsistent with our beliefs; in the face of that disharmony, we often change our beliefs to be congruent with our behaviors and self-perception.

That cognitive dissonance thing again, and as the article points out it's not new to doomsayers in general or Camping in particular. They get so emotionally, mentally and financially invested in their prophecies of disaster that letting go of them when they don't happen becomes very difficult. Easier to reset your belief a little and say you mistaken about the date than reboot your head completely and admit the whole idea was wrong from the start. This is Rapture v2.1.

So come October 22nd when we're all still here we can go back to worrying about the end of the world from warble gloaming instead, which is entirely different in that when predictions don't match the reality you have to change your model rather than abandon the overall theory. This is of course not at all the same as a religious nut saying he made an error on the detail but that the end is definitely nigh anyway. No, not even a little bit like it. Because these warnings come from the government, clearly impartial while still attempting to persuade us of the need for the carbon tax PM Gingery Dullard specifically ruled out before the election but which is now demanded by the Green tail waging the minority Labor government dog, and from the equally impartial Climate Commission, established by the aforementioned Gingery Dullard and headed by Tim Flannery. Not the remotest chance that their apocalypse is either overstated or will not materialise on schedule, or that they are as deeply invested in their conviction of the doom that we have wrought upon ourselves, meted out by an angry God Gaia, as Harold Camping is in his belief in his apocalypse, is there?

Dooooomed, but available to stand in for any catastrophists

Nine years, seven months, and twenty-one days - UPDATED AGAIN

During which time the Yanks alone have, by some estimates, spent $1,118,600,000,000, or about $317,784,091 per day, along with the lives of close on 6,000 of their servicemen and women - not to mention those of other coalition members and civilians in the areas of fighting. All to achieve this result.

George W Bush's personal fantasy?

Oh, and also reducing liberty across much of the 'free' world, especially for anyone who wants to get on a plane without a complete stranger in a uniform either making them stand in a giant microwave or groping them or both. Maybe it's just me but it doesn't seem like much of a bargain. In fact it seems like an awful lot of time, effort, money and blood just to get one nutjob who persuaded some people to crash planes into buildings. But at least we can finally knock all that on the head now that someone's finally shot the bastard, right?

Yeah, right.

Mr Obama added:“The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation's efforts to defeat al-Qa'ida.

[...]

“Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort.

“There is no doubt that al-Qa'ida will continue to pursue attacks against us.

“We must and will remain vigilant at home and abroad.”

The US State Department immediately issued a global travel alert to all US citizens following the news, warning of “enhanced potential” for anti-American violence.

The US also put its embassies on alert, warning Americans of al-Qa'ida reprisal attacks.

The Australian

Presumably not the nuclear hell storm variety of reprisal that waterboarding these numpties would suggest, but all the same it does seem reasonable to expect that there'll be some kind of reaction. Which means that after nine years, seven months and twenty-one days, after more than a trillion dollars, after twice as many allied personnel killed than died in the World Trade Centre attacks, after all that we're still less safe and less free than we were on September 12th 2001. Nine years, seven months, twenty one days, a trillion dollars and thousands of lives and a billion or more people less free than they were.

Osama Bin Living might now be moshing with the black metal band invisible but I'd say that technically he's still ahead on points.

UPDATE - The generally less cynical than me but still occasionally pretty cynical Mrs Exile noted that anyone would think there's an election coming up or something. I see the same thought has already occurred to The All Seeing Eye, who incidentally owes me a new keyboard and a coffee refill for this:

Woke up this morning to hear the news that the world's most hated man was dead. Imagine TheEye's disappointment when it turns out it wasn't Bono.

Gold.

UPDATE 2 - Echoing the views of a number of others, odd decision to bury him at sea. So there's no grave to become a shrine we're told, but there wouldn't if you simply incinerated what was left after the PM and scattered the ashes into a landfill. Or buried the body and never told anybody where. I'm not reaching for the tinfoil and claiming the reason is a cover - it might be and it might not - but it is nonetheless an odd decision to choose not to bring the body back.

Be heard

Via email, an update from the I Deserve To Be Heard campaign:

[...] The Government has recently announced that they intend to introduce plain packaging. Now is the time to tell the Government that plain packaging for cigarettes just makes no sense and will not work. Click here

It's just another policy like the alcopops tax that they have not thought through. On top of unreasonable tax increases and outdoor smoking bans, this is just another example of the Government unfairly targeting you as a smoker.

With cigarettes already hidden behind doors in most shops across the country, plain packaging will just make it harder for you to identify and purchase your cigarettes, causing long queues and all for a policy that has not been proven to prevent or stop people from smoking.

As I've said often enough I'm not a smoker, so I'm not being unfairly targeted for being one. But I have no doubt that I will be unfairly targeted for entirely new things in the future, along with virtually everybody else. So if you're in Australia please do click the link and support the campaign even if you're not a smoker, and if you're not in Oz please lend whatever verbal support you can - blog it, tweet it, email it, chat about it over a beer in the pub, whatever. Most of all watch the situation where you are like a hawk, because I guarantee there are people where you are who want this to happen there too. Don't think they'll stop at smoking either. There is almost no limit to the number of things that someone somewhere would happily ban because as they see it it's for your own good.

The choice is a simple and stark one. You support the smokers right here and now, or you hope like hell some of them are still around to support you when it's your turn.

Another follow up

Following on from the fresh warble gloaming date for your diary from WUWT the other day comes something similar via the Von Mises Institute. No memory holes for some of these they're just too well known, but we shouldn't let them be forgotten or glossed over either. Enjoy the fail.

This explains so much

No comment necessary.

Click for linky

Austria ≠ Australia

Click for linky

Per your own fucking article, folks, that'll be Austria, not Australia.

Austria's ORF network has so far banned a total of eight episodes, including one that features scientists Marie and Pierre Curie dying of radiation poisoning.

Australia didn't get a mention, although the softcocks at Channel Ten have since followed suit.

"All new and repeat Simpsons episodes are, as a matter of course, reviewed before going to air in case sensitive issues are detected, particularly during natural disasters," a Ten spokesman said.

"In light of this, we have decided to rest certain episodes that refer to nuclear power storylines." Ten screens The Simpsons on its digital channel, Eleven.

Look, you could find a reason that something in every single episode of every single program ever made might offend or upset someone somewhere. Everyone has sensitive issues at some time or another. What are you going to do, broadcast nothing just to be on the safe side? Of course not. You assume that if someone sees something they don't like they'll reach for the remote and turn off or over. And guess what? That's what they fucking do. Well, normal people anyway. I realise there is a small minority of DOTWs that will carry on watching because it'll help them achieve offencegasm.* But everybody can tell the difference between cartoons and reality, and if one is an uncomfortable reminder of the other they're capable of deciding not to watch. They don't fucking need you to decide for them. Adelaide Now! has a poll up on the subject on that article if anyone's interested.

Meanwhile at The Teletubbygraph they've managed to link detection of trace amounts of Iodine 131 in Oxfordshire and Scotland to Japan's ongoing problems at Fukushima in a single headline, before going on to say in the article that actually it might not be related at all.

But, just to clarify, Iodine-131 is also used as a radiopharmaceutical.
"So it might just be worth the people checking there that this is not some slight release, just above background, associated with people washing their pharmaceuticals down the drains in Scotland.

And then adding

The risk to human health at the levels that they are talking about, I think, are basically zero.

Nowhere do they mention that ¹³¹I has a half life of just over a week and so in a couple of months where it came from will be moot since effectively there won't be any more than you'd find normally.

in other words it's the usual bullshit doom laden headline before clarifying in the main article, at a point which the attention deficit generation rarely reach of course, that actually there's nothing to worry about.


* Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells.

Depressing...

... that somebody thought it necessary to write this sentence.

The latest Japanese disaster is unrelated to the quake that devastated Christchurch last month, which was caused by a fracturing within the Pacific plate.

Really? Two earthquakes more than 8,500km away from each other are not related? Gee, thanks for the heads up, because I was sitting here worrying that when there's only a couple of weeks or so between two big earthquakes they must be linked even if they are nearly a quarter of the way round the frigging planet apart from one another. And I'd only just finished making my tinfoil hat after reading an news.com.au article titled Moonageddon about the potential (non-existent) for disaster resulting from the Moon reaching the closest point in its orbit next weekend. In fairness the article does explain that it's complete bollocks being put about by space cadets and astrologers, and I'm not going to take too much notice of someone who thinks that half a billion other people are going to have the same type of day as me because they were all born around the same time of year. It was also depressing that someone though it necessary to write another article explaining that the moon didn't have anything to do with the Japanese earthquake either. 'Kinell!

Incidentally, I don't get much traffic from Japan but on the off chance that anyone there does pop in for a look I'll just add my belated sympathies to that of practically everyone else in the world apart from the small number of fruitloops on the interwebs who think it's God's punishment for Pearl Harbour. I've experienced the disconcerting feeling of being in a little earthquake and having driven through areas utterly destroyed by bushfire I can well imagine the creeping horror on looking out at the devastation caused by a natural disaster, but I can't imagine what a big quake is like or what I'd feel looking into the distance to see a thirty foot wall of water heading my way at speed. As it was last month with the Kiwis, my thoughts have been with the Japanese the last couple of days.

We're all doooooomed. Yet again.

Or so some say. However, I'm not going to rush out and blow every cent I have on every single legal and illegal high just to try them all before the whole place goes splat since one of them is the knobber responsible for Jar-Jar Binks.

Seth Rogen, a comedian and actor, said that he was left speechless by a recent conversation in which George Lucas, the producer of Star Wars and other Hollywood hits, told him of his belief that the world would end in 2012.
...
Rogen told the Toronto Sun: "George Lucas sits down and seriously proceeds to talk for around 25 minutes about how he thinks the world is going to end in the year 2012, like, for real. He thinks it.
"He's going on about the tectonic plates and all the time Spielberg is, like, rolling his eyes, like, 'My nerdy friend won't shut up, I'm sorry ...'

No, George. It won't, but watching the six and a half hours of furniture advertising you called the Star Wars prequels all in one go might make it feel like the world is ending.

Nor is George Lucas the only one.

Actor Ashton Kutcher is preparing for the end and has ramped up his workout routine to protect his family.
"I'm going to be ready to take myself and my family to a safe place where they don't have to worry," he told Men's Fitness. "All of my physical fitness regimen is completely tailored around the end of day," he explained. "I stay fit for no other reason than to save the people I care about."

And that extra fitness will come in handy, because when the sun rises on December 22nd it will no doubt shine down on Ashton Kutcher running around the shops doing all the Christmas shopping that he didn't see any point in doing up 'til then. Never mind, Ashton. You'll be able cheer yourself up by dropping the fitness kick, letting go and having extra Christmas pud instead.

Rapper Lil Wayne agrees with Lucas that 2012 will be the end of the world.
"The world is about to end in 2012," he told Bender magazine. "The Mayans made calendars, and they stop at 2012 ... The world is about to end as we know it."

Yes, they made calendars. So what? Ryan Air, who trump the ancient Mayans by knowing how to fly in big metal tubes even if they're not so clued up on landing the fucking things near the place you want to be, keep making calendars which stop at December 31st, but nobody - not Ryan Air and certainly not the Mayans - says that they believe this means the end of the world happens then. What they usually say is something like: "A little less clothing next year, please." And I feel this is partly because there's no logical reason it would, partly because, as Sadbutmadlad points out over at Anna Raccoon's, apocalypse theories come and go but as far as accuracy goes they've not got a great track record, having so far predicted precisely square root of fuck all, and partly because the Mayans say all this is bullshit.

... the prophecies are news to the modern Maya of Guatemala and Mexico who use a different calendar system and are scornful of what they see as a sensational Western hijacking of their culture and traditions.
They believe that the end of the Long Count cycle – if it indeed does end in Dec 2012 – is simply the closure of one particular system of calendar measurement.
"There is no concept of apocalypse in the Mayan culture," Jesus Gomez, head of the Guatemalan confederation of Mayan priests and spiritual guides, told The Daily Telegraph...

No doubt what will really happen on Dec 22nd next year is that George, Ashton, Lil Wayne and everyone else in the Make-Tom-Cruise-Look-Sane club who thinks that the ancient Mayans could predict the end of the world, even though if shown a block and tackle would have complained that it was too blunt to sacrifice anyone with, will convince themselves that the calculations are off and the end is coming later than thought. Doomsayers are known to do that sometimes. So here's my prediction. In 698 days time when the world wakes up as normal up to 35,000 books are going to start to be re-written, possibly arguing that our stupid advanced society miscalculated the records of the wise and all-knowing Mayans and that they actually meant 2020, or 2062 or maybe even later.

Mark it in your calendars, folks.

We're all going to die. Again.

Oh noes, the oceans are coming to kills us all, their levels rising from melting sea ice in the arctic. Except that this is only possible inside the brains of people like The Telegraph's Roger Howard, who writes here that:

Regional sea ice is retreating fast, threatening to raise global sea levels...

That's only the second and third line of the article, and is a schoolboy error of such epic proportions - and unusually for teh interwebz 'epic' is probably not overstating it - that for me he's shut his own balls in the drawer credibility wise. Roger? Watch this carefully.



See? As the ice shrinks you get water in the glass, and once all the ice is floating (about 25 seconds in) the level remains constant no matter how much melts from that point. The same thing happens with ice floating in the oceans when it melts.

'Kinell.


PS - not the only recent schoolboy error on this subject. A fortnight ago the Devil pointed this out. Polar bears in Antarctica... oh dear, oh dear. They've changed it now so it'll be interesting to see if Roger Howard rewrites his piece. Enough commenters have pointed out his mistake that he's surely aware by now.

Pork flu returns to kill us all.

Click for brain damage linky

We're DOOOOOOOOOOMED! Doooomed, I say! Run, run for the hills. Run for your li... oh wait, no.
What's that last bit again?

... and other winter viruses.

Ah, so should we run around screaming, "PORK FLU" at the top of our lungs before rounding up absolutely everything that looks a bit piggy?

Kill it! Kill it with fire!

Or should we calm the fuck down a bit first and look at what viruses we're talking about that are all being lumped together with pork flu by The Daily Jellygraph?

Yeah, I'm going for the second one (my bold).

Scores of hospital wards closed due to norovirus, the winter vomiting bug, which put more than 1,200 beds out of use in one week as nurses attempted to isolate the disease.

Norovirus. Okay. Although my medical expertise doesn't extend beyond A level biology I'm reasonably confident in saying without bothering to check that norovirus, while it may be unpleasant, possibly deadly and apt to make you able to shit through the eye of a needle or puke your own sphincter across the room (not sure which, possibly both), is not actually swine flu. But just in case I'm wrong I will go and check. Bear with me.

Okay, I've checked and it isn't. I won't bother to reference it since anyone with internet access can confirm it in seconds unless they are either lobotomised, retarded or, just possibly, a journalist.

And, er, that's it. The only illnesses mentioned are norovirus, flu and swine flu, and it's not made clear how much flu is swine flu or whether the writer intends flu to mean non-swine flu versions of flu. Beyond that we've got mention of a couple of deaths from swine flu and a list of areas where hospitals have cancelled routine surgery, slightly spoiled by the admission that many hospitals do that at this time of year anyway. Again, the article fails to say how many have cancelled routine surgery who would otherwise have carried on, though presumably Southampton General was one.

Southampton General Hospital spent more than three weeks on “black alert”, closing 10 wards as norovirus swept through the centre. It was forced to stop all non-emergency surgery and cancel most appointments for outpatients during the period. The crisis warning was finally lifted on Thursday.

Three points. One, it's norovirus again, not swine flu. Two, they seem to be over it now. And three, it's fucking norovirus for fuck's sake.

Okay, maybe it's just that one and all the others are ... oh, who am I kidding?

Because of the same bug, four wards were closed at Royal Cornwall Hospital last week and cancer and surgery wards in Poole, Dorset, were closed to new admissions. Three wards were closed at West Suffolk hospital.

Again, norovirus in the case of the first two for sure and by implication the third as well, though since the article says no more than that they were closed it could have been for fucking redecorating for all we know.

Now I'm not saying the NHS is struggling to cope or that the restrictions on routine surgery are a non-issue. This is not a dig about health so much as journalism, and in particular the use of this headline

Swine flu: hospitals 'gridlocked'

to describe events that the article itself ascribes largely to other illness such as norovirus, which pops into my head for no obvious reason whatsoever, and standard fucking procedure for this time of year.

All of which leads me to wonder whether the Jellygraph is after the crown of another newspaper.

PS - looks like they might be gunning for The Express as well.

The sky is falling.

It amazes me how anyone takes this shit seriously anymore.

Click to article

The winters here certainly feel like they've got colder since I arrived and the last one was wet enough to have virtually ended a decade long drought on its own. The winters in the northern hemisphere have definitely been getting colder while barbecue summers in Britain have been cold and wet. The last winter in particular seemed savagely cold what with the almost the entire British Isles, except for of a couple of small areas near Westminster and Cambridge that had benefited from a certain amount of local warming from hot air, was covered in a blanket of globally warmed snow and ice that was so thick in places that supplies of salt and grit ran low or even ran out. This winter has barely started and already the warble gloaming is falling in deep drifts and people in Europe have quite literally frozen to death.

But it's the warmest decade ever, obviously. Surely we can all see that? Something must be done, future generations, carbon dioxide, trees, chiiiiildren, yaddayaddayadda. Well, here's my forecast: that something will involve more money to people already making a living, if not epic pots of cash, off the back of this induced epidemic of weather-phobia. Subsidies are already starting to look a little shaky in places and I'm sure that those who've still got incomes or comfy tenures that rely on a continued belief in warble gloaming would very much like things to continue as per the recent norm. So make sure you turn the gas down as you sit there shivering in the dark.