A very happy new year to you all. And an extra-special happy new year to any Romanians and Bulgarians who happen to be tuning in—welcome to the E.U., chaps.
Bill ably fulfilled the role of first foot at our house last night. I explained that, in the Yorkshire version of the tradition, he had to enter the house with some money, a lump of coal, some bread, a glass of malt whisky and half a pound of lard. Bill didn't believe me for one second, but went along with the joke on the condition that the photo I took of him doing it didn't appear on Gruts.
I'm a man of my word, hence the absence of a photo.
(It was a pretty crap photo anyway.)
Sunday Times: MMR doctor given legal aid thousands
Andrew Wakefield, the former surgeon whose campaign linking the MMR vaccine with autism caused a collapse in immunisation rates, was paid more than £400,000 by lawyers trying to prove that the vaccine was unsafe.
The payments, unearthed by The Sunday Times, were part of £3.4m distributed from the legal aid fund to doctors and scientists who had been recruited to support a now failed lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers…
According to the figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, Wakefield was paid £435,643 in fees, plus £3,910 expenses.
No doubt, this story will receive a tiny fraction of the press coverage given to irresponsible MMR scaremongering stories.
Times: Creationism gains foothold in schools
The government has cleared the way for a form of creationism to be taught in Britain's schools as part of the religious syllabus.
Lord Adonis, an education minister, is to issue guidelines within two months for the teaching of "intelligent design" (ID), a theory being promoted by the religious right in America.
Until now the government has not approved the teaching of the controversial theory, which contradicts Darwinian evolutionary theory, the basis of modern biology.
Intelligent Design should not be dignified with the name theory; it is at best a hypothesis. A hypothesis that happens to be total bullshit. And it's not even good bullshit at that.
In an interview with New Scientist not two months ago, our god-bothering prime minister was asked about creationism in schools:
One subject that is of great concern to scientists is creationism. There has been a suggestion that creationism is being taught in some British schools. What are your views on this?
This can be hugely exaggerated. I've visited one of the schools in question and as far as I'm aware they are teaching the curriculum in a normal way. If I notice creationism becoming the mainstream of the education system in this country then that's the time to start worrying.
Sounds as if it's becoming mainstream to me, Tony. Time to get off your fat arse and do something.
Jen this morning: "It's very Mork and Mindy out there."
Well what does she expect? Is is the middle of Harold Pinter.
National Geographic: Europe's Largest Minority Gaining Recognition, Expert Says
Awareness of the centuries of discrimination against the Roma—the ethnic group often mistakenly called Gypsies—is on the rise in Eastern Europe, according to a leading scholar.
Not much of a scholar, if (s)he believes Gypsies are Europe's largest minority. At 49.5% of the adult population, Europe's largest minority is, in fact, men.
When will we gain recognition, do you reckon, chaps?
Don't be ridiculous, Pol Pot died in 1998!
BBC: Iranians 'up to no good' in Iraq
Five Iranians arrested by US troops in Baghdad last month were … "up to no good", an unnamed official told the Newsnight programme…
The White House has suggested the arrests validated US claims of Iranian "meddling" in Iraq.
BBC: 'No proof' organic food is better
There is no evidence organic food is better for you than conventional food, minister David Miliband has said.
Mr Miliband is probably right. But while there may be no causational link between organic food and nutritious, tasty food, there definitely appears to be a correlation between the two.
It's like vegetarianism. Vegetarians often claim that they are, on average, healthier than us omnivores. That may well be true—they're also a lot more miserable and pasty-faced on average, if you ask me—but that doesn't necessarily mean that vegetarianism is the cause of their better health. People who are keen to have healthy lifestyles are more likely than those who aren't to exercise more, drink less, smoke less, eat more sensibly and, in extreme cases, go veggie "because it's good for you". So people who are more likely to be healthy anyway are more likely to turn vegetarian. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's also a nice example of sampling bias.
It's the same, I suspect, with organic food. Organic food is not necessarily better for you, but producers of organic food tend to treat their products (and customers) with respect, so they end up with a better, tastier product. Take bacon, for example. Organic, dry-cured, free range bacon knocks the water-filled, globby, mass-produced shite they sell on the cheap shelves into a cocked hat. Next time you're in a butcher's, ask them for proper bacon—they'll know what you mean.
The reason, I suspect, that Mr Miliband made his comment is that he is the food minister—the man responsible for feeding the country. Intensive farming might yield less tasty food, but it's certainly a more efficient and economical way of feeding the masses.
"There was a couple going at it hammer and tongs on top of my shed on Saturday night," announced a colleague this morning.
I stared at him open-mouthed. I should probably have been paying closer attention to what he was saying.
It turned out he was talking about cats.
"I'm trying to get a bit fitter," said the overweight man. "I got one of those rowing machines for Christmas. I've set it up in front of the telly. I'm taking it fairly easy at first: only a mile a day."
"That's a good start, though!" said his friend encouragingly.
"The little computer thing says it's enough to burn up eight calories," said the man, taking another swig from his can of 7 Up.
Q: What do you call an exploding monkey?
A: A baboom.
Q: On which side of his house did Jack plant his beanstalk?
A: The outside.
BBC: Leo Sayer quits Big Brother house
Seventies pop star Leo Sayer has walked out of the Celebrity Big Brother house on the day he was up for eviction.
It is thought the 58-year-old quit the Channel 4 show after knocking down a door with a shovel…
Model Danielle Lloyd said she thought Leo had quit because he was "worried about being rejected" by the public.
All together now…
I won't let the show go on!
Actually, Sayer's actions are clearly a pathetic attempt to remind viewers of his biggest hit, which he will now, no doubt, be re-releasing. Just listen to a few of the lyrics:
Baby, there's an enormous crowd of people
And they're all after my blood
I wish maybe they'd tear down the walls of this theatre
And let me out… let me out
…
Baby, I wish you'd help me escape
And help me get away
Leave me outside my address
Far away from this masquerade
Coincidence? I'll leave it to you to decide.
Whatever happened to the colon-dash punctuation mark. You remember the thing:
:-
It seems to have gone the way of bowler hats, Texan bars and white dog poo.
When I was a kid, we were taught that we should always introduce a list with a colon followed by a dash. But nowadays, all you ever see is colons. Granted, the colons look a lot tidier without the dashes, but I wonder who it was who decided that the dash was no longer necessary. Perhaps they thought it looked a bit too much like one of those godawful smilies. A smiley without a smile.
I seem to be spending far too much time worrying about this sort of thing these days.
The colon-dash, eh? Sounds like some sort of sponsored charity event in a hospital.
I just spent a couple of hours tweaking my spam filters. Emails from all my usual correspondents (including people who usually leave comments, but sometimes email) should get through unaffected.
If, however, any of you suspect your emails aren't getting through to me, please re-send them with the word 'carrot' included anywhere in the title.
(This is not a wind-up, by the way.)
I don't claim to be the world's most patient man when it comes to queuing, but I usually manage to to bite my tongue and suffer in silence—with just the occasional, very British tut thrown in for good measure. But last week, they really were taking the piss.
It started at Tesco on Thursday. I'd queued very patiently while the man on the checkout had an item-by-item conversation with the elderly lady in front of me. She then took out her purse and paid in coppers.
But, when it finally came to my turn, the checkout man just stared at my bottles of wine on the conveyor belt and began to rearrange them. I coughed politely, and he rearranged them some more.
"That's a particularly good one," I said eventually, pointing at an Aussie Shiraz. It was the only way I could think of catching his attention.
"Ooh! Really?" said the man, who then proceeded to hunt around for a pen and copy down the name of the wine onto a piece of paper. "I might try that one next," he said.
Then, on Saturday, I spent what seemed like 20 minutes standing behind some bloke who was evidently going for the high score on the local cashpoint machine.
Either that, or he was emailing home.
The River Mersey earlier todayHoly crap, was it windy today, or what?
At lunchtime, I rather stupidly took a stroll down to the Pier Head in Liverpool to take some snaps. I now know what the River Mersey tastes like. It tastes like Golden Wonder ready salted crisps.
I'll admit it, I'm a rather heavy chap, but I was nearly blown arse over tit at one point, as lamp-post fittings crashed to the pavement on all sides.
It was fun, in a daring-man-of-action kind of way.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say, it was so windy, that the wind powerstations of the nation must have generated at least 3 Watts of power before they were taken offline for safety reasons.
No commercial nouse, that's my problem. That and scruples.
I've had a few freebies over the years, thanks to Gruts and my Darwin website: occasional Darwin-related books from publishers, and the odd unexpected present from my Amazon wishlist. Hell, I've even made over a tenner from Amazon referral fees. But I don't have that killer business instinct—the ability to recognise and seize upon a nice little earner.
Take this proposition I received via the Darwin site the other day, for example:
I can offer you $35 if you'll place an ad on [this page] for a website that provides information about LASIK eye surgery. I can supply the ad to you with payment if you're interested.
You see, all I had to do was act the pimp, turn my personal hero, Charles Darwin, into a whore, and $35 could have been mine. That's £15.22 in proper money. A few thousand more offers like that each year, and I could be living the life of Riley. If it weren't for my scruples, that is.
DAMN SCRUPLES!
BBC: Race row shows 'ugly underbelly'
The Big Brother race row shows an "ugly underbelly in society…", the Archbishop of York has said.
Unlike publically bad-mouthing illiberal atheists, eh, archbishop?
Liverpool dented Chelsea's Premiership title challenge in impressive style…
The defeat leaves Chelsea six points behind Manchester United - who visit Arsenal on Sunday - and puts Liverpool only five points behind Jose Mourinho's troubled champions.
I never thought I'd live to see the day, but, a couple of weeks ago, an ardent Liverpool fan who shall remain nameless—so let's call him Bill—stated quite unequivocally that he would rather Manchester United won the Premiership than Chelsea.
I'm totally confused. What is the world coming to?
Ya cannae change the laws of physics, cap'n!
BBC: Dog-owners 'lead healthier lives'
If you want to live a healthier life get a dog, research suggests.
The companionship offered by many pets is thought to be good for you, but the benefits of owning a dog outstrip those of cat owners, the study says.
And, unlike with cats, you're not likely to have your personality altered by toxoplasma gondii parasites.
According to my garden thermometer, last night was the coldest so far this winter: the temperature dropped to +3°C. Bearing in mind that I live 800ft above sea level in the Pennines, this is pretty remarkable: it's a month after the winter solstice, and we haven't had any frost yet, let alone snow and ice.
Last year's hot, dry summer was bad news for my garden slugs, but what we really need now is some really cold weather to kick them while they're down; the sort of cold, clear, frosty weather that hurts your lungs when you breathe in.
It's hailing outside as I type, and the Met Office is predicting a cold snap, so fingers-crossed!
Perhaps there's something in this global warming malarkey after all.
Seville oranges are in season, so Jen and I made some marmalade today. We'd never made any before. It took bloody hours.
I worked out that, if you take the cost of the ingredients and our combined salaries into account, each jar cost us approximately £23. Perhaps we'll stick with Frank Cooper's in future: he can undercut us by about 90%.
While we were making the marmalade, it occurred to me that two of the best things in the world for eating on toast both begin with the letters M-A-R-M: marmalade and Marmite™.
I wonder what marmosets taste like.
New Scientist: Chemical trigger for reproduction
Male hamsters' urge to mate is switched on by the same chemical that triggers puberty in humans.
Seriously, let's not go there.
Molly
Say my mum's new puppy is the cutest thing you ever saw in your life, or I will run over your cat!
She's called Molly, after my late grandmother. Had she been named after my other late grandmother, she would have been called Margaret.
So Molly it was.
I've given her the same speech I gave her much-missed predecessor when she was about the same age, explaining how she has a hell of an act to follow, but I'm sure she'll do just fine.
Best birthday present ever, according to mum.
For the second week on the run, I was unable to buy a replacement dish-brush at Tesco today. This from the store with no shortage of pickled quail's eggs.
I think they need to get back to basics.
BBC: Paedophiles to undergo lie tests
Paedophiles are to undergo lie detector tests to see if they are likely to re-offend, the Home Office confirmed.
OK, for the sake of argument, let's assume the following:
- lie-detectors have an accuracy of 90% (although I'm sure it must actually be far lower than this)
- there is a 20% chance of a convicted paedophile re-offending if released (This figure is very difficult to estimate. The latest official recidivism figure for people conviced of child sex offences is 14%, but this doesn't take into account recidivists who are not re-convicted, nor people who would re-offend, but are never released.)
- 100 convicted paedophiles are tested to decide whether they should be released
20% (i.e. 20) of the 100 paedophiles will re-offend if released. The 90% accurate lie-detector will detect 18 of these. So, presumably, they will not be released, and the other two will.
80% (i.e. 80) of the 100 paedophiles will not re-offend if released. The 90% accurate lie-detector will say 72 of these people should be released, and 8 should not.
Overall Results:
- 74 people released from prison, of whom two (3%) will re-offend
- 26 people remain in prison, of whom 8 (31%) would not have re-offended
If, instead of 90%, I had assumed a lie-detector accuracy of, what seems to me, a far more realistic yet still generous 60%, the result would have been a 14% recidivism rate, with 44 people kept in prison, of whom 32 (73%) should have been released.
Does this inspire you with confidence? If you were being accused of a crime, would you prefer your liberty to be determined by one of these machines, or by a group of your peers?
But we're talking about convicted paedophiles, so I guess it's all right, then, isn't it?
About a mile from my house, there's a picturesque bend in the road with a three-foot-high tree stump that always reminds me of a giant owl. A very giant owl.
I was approaching this bend on my way home this evening, when a tawny owl [Strix aluco] flew in front of my car and landed on top of the public footpath sign at the side of the road. I slammed on my brakes and watched the bird in the car's headlights. It looked back at me for about 20 seconds, then flew up into the branches of a tree on the other side of the road.
I moved the car a bit closer and watched some more. Suddenly, a second tawny owl flew out of the darkness and attacked the first. After a brief altercation, the first owl flew off, and the second took its place on the branch.
Nowadays, owls are literally fighting each other to get a mention on Gruts.
Occasional Gruts commenter, Friend of Charles Darwin, ship's master, Yorkshireman, and all-round good egg, Peter McGrath, has finally started accepting PayPal donations for the Beagle Project. The project's aim is to build a working replica of HMS Beagle, celebrating Charles Darwin's 200th anniversary and helping to inspire a new generation of scientists.
This isn't your typical half-baked, internet-based campaign. I'm in regular email contact with Peter, and, if anyone can get this thing built and on the water, it's him. Check out his weblog for more background info.
Go on, I'll be your best mate!
