"… They haven't a clue what they're talking about: one minute they're saying meat is bad for you; the next, you should eat nothing but. Then they're saying you shouldn't eat carbohydrates; then they're saying you should. As far as I'm concerned, provided it's in moderation, you should eat whatever you damn well please."
"It's the in moderation bit that's my big problem."
"Oh, I know! I talk a great diet, but I can't eat one!"
BBC: Probe into wind turbine collapse
Police have started an inquiry into the collapse of a 25-year-old wind turbine in Cumbria.
Oh, the irony! It blew down. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!
Hat-tip to the LunarTalks fringe.
Guardian: Burning biofuels may be worse than coal and oil, say experts
Using biofuels made from corn, sugar cane and soy could have a greater environmental impact than burning fossil fuels, according to experts. Although the fuels themselves emit fewer greenhouse gases, they all have higher costs in terms of biodiversity loss and destruction of farmland.
Guardian: Palm oil: the biofuel of the future driving an ecological disaster now
… Oil palm for biofuel was to have been one of the best solutions in saving the planet from greenhouse gases and global warming. Instead the forests are being torn down in the headlong rush to boost palm oil production.
BBC: Low-energy bulbs 'worsen rashes'
The switch to energy-saving light bulbs may put thousands at risk of painful skin reactions, health charities warn.
BBC: Low-energy bulb disposal warning
The Environment Agency has called for more information to be made available on the health and environmental risks posed by low-energy light bulbs.
Hebden Bridge Times: Green bag makes me see red...
A severely disabled woman who suffered a potentially fatal allergic reaction to corn-starch bags provided by a Hebden Bridge shop is asking to be given back her "democratic right" to use plastic bags.
You have to do the cost-benefit analyses; weigh up the pros and cons. What might seem like an 'obvious' solution to a pressing environmental problem can often turn out to be anything but. And that which is treated as taboo by the tree-huggers might well turn out to be the only sensible answer.
It's time the politicians started listening to the scientists.
The BBC is doing a silly Scott-versus-Shackleton vote on their website.
I've always taken the piss out of this sort of celebrity beauty contest by asking who was better, Alfred the Great or Davey Crockett—then insisting that the correct answer is Alfred the Great. (Which it is, by the way.)
But anyone who votes for Scott of the Arse-antic is a total div. Go and vote for Shackleton immediately!
Torn: Johan Lippowitz, featuring Natalie Imbruglia (but definitely vice versa):
On a related note: Support Amnesty International.
Guardian: 'Skinny kid with a funny name' reshapes US politics
From the outset [US democratic presidential hopeful, Barack Obama] had described himself as "a skinny kid with a funny name". That his name was neither Clinton nor Bush may have mattered more than the fact that it rhymed with "Osama".
OK, there's no denying it: Barack Obama is quite a funny name. But it's nowhere near as funny as the name of US republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee.
A huckabee sounds like the sort of person who sits on his front porch in the Everglades all day, picking on his one-string banjo with his webbed fingers, while his wife, sister and daughter—that's one woman—cooks crawfish in the gumbo pot while giving birth to her little brother.
Mike is a pretty funny name too.
BBC: Regulation plans for homeopathy
A range of complementary therapies such as homeopathy and aromatherapy are to be regulated by a new body.
At face value, it sounds sensible that anyone practicing any sort of therapy—even totally bogus ones like homeopathy and aromatherapy—should be regulated in some way. Certainly herbal remedies (which, unlike homeopathy, involve actual, active ingredients) should be regulated, as should acupuncture (for no other reason than it involves sticking pins into people).
But exactly how impartial and, well, scientific is this new regulating body, the Natural Healthcare Council, going to be? Its very name made me suspicious: natural is one of those specious, pseudo-scientific words beloved of alternative therapy voodooists, such as holistic, complementary, balance, harmony, energy and crystal. My scepticism grew when I read that this is not a government initiative; it's being set up by the Prince of Wales's Foundation for Integrated Health (oops! forgot integrated—that's another of their buzzwords). Our future king is well known for his pseudoscientific credentials (and, credit where it's due, his expensive yet excellent blackcurrant preserve).
But my main misgiving about this move is that setting up a body to regulate quackery lends it an even more scientific air than it already (fraudulently) claims. Hell, it might even improve the placebo effect behind these therapies because there is a pseudo-scientific body regulating it!
You just can't win, can you?
I wonder if I should apply to become a registered rixologist.
Observer: Home wind turbines dealt a blow
Home wind turbines are significantly underperforming and in the worst cases generating less than the electricity needed to power a single lightbulb, according to the biggest study of its kind carried out in Britain.
An interim report revealed that homeowners could be being misled by the official figures for wind speeds because they are consistently overestimating how much wind there is - sometimes finding that real speeds are only one third of those forecast. In the worst case scenario, the figures indicate that it would take more than 15 years to generate enough 'clean' energy to compensate for the manufacture of the turbine in the first place.
Inefficient home wind turbines aren't the real story here. In case you missed it, let me repeat the key phrase:
official figures for wind speeds […] are consistently overestimating how much wind there is
In other words, the UK government is overestimating—by up to a factor of three—the amount of wind there actually is.
That's the same UK government that wants to build 7,000 offshore wind turbines which, according to UK Business Secretary John Hutton, are "going to change our coastline, yes for sure".
Can you smell the coffee yet?
Who says the pope has lost touch with reality?
A thoroughly practical solution to a very serious problem, I'm sure we'd all agree.
Meanwhile, in other news, the former Bishop of Oxford (and thoroughly good egg), Lord Harries of Pentregarth, points out:
Guardian: It is possible to be moral without God
Best kind of morality, if you ask me, M'Lud: none of that imaginary-friend-in-sky-looking-down-on-you-and-judging-you nonsense. I always thought that particular philosophy was a bit dodgy as the foundation for an entire system of morals.
Complete list of things in our kitchen at the moment:
- one Aga cooker (turned off)
- one kitchen sink (disconnected and lying on floor)
- a couple of dozen bags of rubble
Work has finally begun in earnest on our new kitchen. Jen and I ripped the old one out on New Year's Day, the electricians were here on Friday, the plasterer and plumber began work today, and the bloke doing the floor arrives on 21st. Then work can begin on the kitchen proper (scheduled for completion late February mid-March).
Last night, it suddenly occurred to us, how are we going to do the washing up without a kitchen to do it in? This afternoon, for the first (and hopefully last) time in my life, I went to buy a washing-up bowl.
As washing-up bowls go, it's pretty natty. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's the nattiest washing-up bowl I've ever owned. It's a fetching blue colour. It goes rather well with my piercing blue eyes.
The new washing-up bowl had a sticker on the side:
Large washing up bowl.
Durable finish.
Scratch resistant and easy to clean.
Dishwasher safe.
Which kind of begs the question, if you own a dishwasher, what on earth would possess you to buy a washing-up bowl?
You don't have a dog and bark yourself.
Gruts lurker Stense thought it was pretty funny I'd resorted to reading washing-up bowls. Today, I found myself reading a railway ticket. This ticket, in fact:
Notice anything odd? Look again. Look at that date: 08-JNR-08.
SINCE WHEN EXACTLY was January abbreviated to JNR? JNR doesn't stand for January. If anything, it stands for Junior. Abbreviating January to JNR (first, third and sixth letters) makes as much sense as abbreviating October to OTE. In other words, it makes no bloody sense whatsoever.
I'll tell you who's behind this. The French. I'll bet there's some sort of silly euro-month standard so that travellers on Eurostar don't get confused, and the French totally insisted on JNR for January (Janvier)—in the same way as they insisted on having that silly e at the end of Concorde. They tend to do an awful lot of that sort of thing, the French.
We Brits are a tolerant bunch, Pierre, but you can push us only so far!
My dad gave me a lift to the railway station the night I bought my defective railway ticket. As he was reversing out the drive in the dark, Dad made the following observation:
I remember when reversing lights were bright enough for you to actually see where you were going. You used to get two. Then some bright spark in London somewhere decided that two white lights on the back of a car looked like a car coming the other way…
Well they bloody well were a car coming the other way!
So now you know where I get it from.
I bought my dodgy railway ticket in order to meet Fitz for a pint or six in Birkenhead.
We hadn't seen each other since the unnecessary and draconian smoking ban. Sadly, Fitz had to spend most of the evening standing outside the pub in the rain smoking roll-ups. This despite the fact that every single one of the pub's other customers that evening (i.e. yours truly) had no objection whatsoever to his illegal, evil emissions.
Finally, the penny dropped:
Fitz: I think it must be my round.
Me: In that case, I'll just have a pint.
Fitz: Are you sure I can't persuade you to have a half?
John Scot Cree has left a comment on this item (which referred to comments you and he made on this earlier item.)
Internets, eh?
Guardian: Science chief: greens hurting climate fight
The scientist credited as being the first to convince Tony Blair of the urgency of the climate crisis has accused green activists of being Luddites who risk setting back the fight against global warming.
In an interview with the Guardian today Sir David King, who stepped down last month after seven years as the government's chief scientific adviser, says any approach that does not focus on technological solutions to climate change - including nuclear power - is one of "utter hopelessness".
Sir David King is right. Nuclear power "is not necessarily an ideal way to make energy, [but] the dangers of climate change are certainly far worse".
(He's dead wrong about badgers, though.)
Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times): This has been my perfect week
… All the harebrained schemes for renewable energy are popular among Britain's beardies
Not with this bloody beardy they're not, Jezza! I'm cut to the quick. Don't you read Gruts or something?
(He's very sensible re. nuclear power and windmills, though-but.)
Fed up of trying to keep track of which Gruts posts have been commented on recently? Well, why not check out the handy new Recent Comments page? (For the geeks amongst you, I'll be knocking up an RSS feed soon.)
Go on, admit it, you love me!
Carolyn in an online chat yesterday evening:
I cooked luch for my parents today. First I thought I had a 16lb ham (because the man in the recipe did and I assumed that I must too), and then I tried to cook a treacle tart. Easy I thought, I started it last night just to be sure. First, the pastry was runny - so I added more flour and icing sugar, and then it was still very sticky and I mean VERY sticky this morning and so I had to put it in the freezer in cling film before rolling. Then the topping took all morning to make - what a nightmare. Luch was finally served at about 2.30! […]
I took the cooking wrapper off last night to soak the ham as per instructions on Gary Rhodes recipe so that was why I didn't know what weight it was. It never occurred to me that I wasn't using the same weight as him - although it's apparently very obvious to everyone else. So then I thought I had to cook it for about 5 hours - very worrying when I only had 2! That was when I rang my mum to delay luch for ½ hour thinking that I'd just do 2½ hours and hope nobody noticed if it wasn't cooked!
Stuff came out my nose.
I went for a walk on the moors on Saturday (photos here). It was extremely wet.
On my way down, I spotted between 40 and 50 fieldfares gathered in the gloaming on some powerlines. A couple of other walkers spotted me looking at the birds and came over to ask me what they were. I explained that they were fieldfares. They asked me what I knew about them.
As luck would have it, I had listened to a podcast about fieldfares earlier that week, so I knew quite a bit about them. So I told the walkers about how fieldfares come over from Scandinavia in the winter, how they have a distinctive call (which a few of the birds immediately obliged me by demonstrating), how they hang around with redwings, how they have a distinctive grey hood, blah, blah, blah… My new friends seemed very impressed with my vast knowledge of all things fieldfare.
"So why are they called fieldfares?" asked the woman (who I couldn't help noticing was rather cute). It was a fair enough question. Unfortunately, I hadn't a clue what the answer was. But I was on a roll, so I made one up:
"Ah!" I ahed. "It's because they are 'fare' (food) which is found in fields. Our ancestors used to eat them. Quite tasty, by all accounts. They're a type of thrush, just like blackbirds… 'Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie' and all that!"
OK, so I bullshat for Britain. But I had a new-found reputation to live up to.
As promised, a Recent Gruts Comments RSS feed is now available.
Try to contain your excitement.
I tried to engage a couple of colleagues in a metaphysical discussion last week. Actually, it was more of a metabiological thought experiment:
"Stand still," I said, "and imagine that you have suddenly sprouted a tail like a monkey's."
My colleagues looked at me sceptically.
"No, go on, I'm being serious. Imagine you've got a monkey's tail. Now here's my question: would you instinctively know how to move it about? Do you think your brain would be capable of sending a message via your nervous system to your new limb to tell it to move? Go on, try it now: try to move your imaginary tail. Can you do it?"
The sceptical looks turned to blank ones.
"Well I can!" I said. "I instinctively know how to move my imaginary tail around. In fact, I'm doing it right now!"
My colleagues told me I was weird.
I think about this sort of thing a lot.
From a late-night online chat with Carolyn during the transition between yesterday and today (slightly abridged for brevity):
Carolyn: We had [friend's name] to tea tonight and so we had to have sausages.
Me: So when are you inviting ME to tea? I'm not a fussy eater! But I do love sausages!
Carolyn: I do a good ham and treacle tart!
Me: Have you ever eaten muffs?
Carolyn: What are they?
Me: You come from Bromborough! You MUST have eaten muffs! They're fantastic!
Carolyn: Oh yes, I thought it was a fancy pudding!
The U.S. Library of Congress has done a really cool thing and started publishing many of its old photographs on Flickr.
This is exactly the sort of thing the internet is supposed to be for.
I bet you'll all be copying this one.
For a few brief moments, I thought Hillary Clinton had been assassinated. Turned out they were referring to the late Sir Edmund Hillary. Not that Sir Edmund Hillary was assassinated, you understand. I suppose, if he had been, the headline would have been They Knocked the Bastard Off!
Doesn't it annoy you how Hillary Clinton is campaigning for the U.S. Democratic nomination under her first name? Anyone might think she is trying to distance herself from her surname.
Which she is.
No, you're not mistaken: that's soil you're looking at.
This is getting beyond a joke.
Winehouse in more defiant mood:
Great talent. Needs to sort her act out.
BBC: Massive wind farm 'turned down'
Plans to build one of Europe's biggest wind farms on the Isle of Lewis are set to be turned down, BBC Scotland understands.
The BBC's Gaelic news service, Radio nan Gaidheal, has learned that Scottish Government ministers are "minded to refuse" the 181 turbine scheme.
More of a temporary reprieve than a permanent stay of environmental and cultural vandalism, I fear, but enough to make me crack open a bottle of my favourite malt to celebrate.
Slainte Mhath!
Happy Burns Night!
The whirring noise you can hear is Lord Reith spinning in his grave:
Invite is a verb; the noun the BBC is looking for is invitation.
BBC: US network faces $1m nudity fine
US television network ABC may have to pay a fine of $1.4m (£707,000) for airing an episode of NYPD Blue which depicted female nudity…
ABC has rejected the claims, saying the buttocks are not a sexual organ.
Erm… Let's not go there.
My dad has what can only be described as an unhealthy paranoia about the BBC. He thinks they're the spawn of Satan.
Like all the best paranoias and conspiracy theories, Dad's has a small toe-hold in reality. There certainly is a Southern England bias at the BBC, which is reflected in its news coverage and even its weather forecasts. But Dad seems to believe that every single BBC presenter or continuity announcer who pronounces their A's long was personally selected by the Director General to promote the corporation's Cockney Agenda.
Dad's fixation with the BBC began in the summer of 1982 during the Falklands War. Every evening, the Newsnight programme would wheel on some recently retired British general and get him to talk military tactics. Dad was convinced this was tantamount to treason. "The Argentinan Embassy will be noting all this down!" he would shout at Peter Snow.
In fact, Dad did have a point: I clearly remember how, during the early days of the war, when one Argentinian bomb hit a British warship but failed to explode, the BBC displayed a helpful graphic showing how the bomb should have been dropped. Next thing our lads in the South Atlantic knew, that was exactly how the bombs were being dropped—with far greater effect.
Ever since then, Dad has been convinced that the BBC's not particularly well-hidden agenda is to undermine British society and betray us to our enemies. He is, for example, the only person I know who believes that the Hutton Enquiry wasn't a shameless stitch-up, totally exhonorated the Blair government, and showed up the BBC and its Cockney Director General for what they really were.
This Tuesday, Dad's BBC paranoia finally tipped him over the edge. My parents and I were watching the comedy quiz show QI, when Stephen Fry asked a question along the lines of, "Why might it be dangerous to have a ship-load of pistachio nuts?" The answer, it turned out, was that large masses of pistachio nuts are prone to spontaneous combustion and can sometimes explode.
"There they go again!" Dad shouted at the telly. "Giving away information of use to terrorists!"
Mum and I thought we were going to die. We were laughing so much, we couldn't breath.
"I hardly think the pistachio nut is going to be the weapon of choice for a terrorist!" I gasped at Dad, still trying to work out out how to get my lungs to take in air.
Dad was adamant: "Mark my words, you'll be watching the news one day soon, saying 'Norm predicted that!'"
…or does he? You're not fooling us, Jezza: this is another one of your hilarious practical jokes!
(Admit it, the thought crossed your mind too.)
Interesting Jeremy Beadle factoid: he organised Captain Beefheart's first UK tour. No, seriously. So not such an idiot after all, eh?
Reuters: Pope says some science shatters human dignity
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Thursday that embryonic stem cell research, artificial insemination and the prospect of human cloning had "shattered" human dignity.
The scientists carrying out stem cell research have realistic hopes of finding effective treatments for cancer, Parkinson's Disease, brain injuries, and many other horrible ailments.
My grandfather spent the last 20 years of his life bedridden with Pakinson's Disease. It was not dignifying. A very close family member recently underwent major cancer treatment. They found it utterly humiliating. Another close family member has been disabled for many years following a major brain injury. They would give their ineffective left arm for a cure.
Repeat pious bullshit like that in front of me, Ratzinger, and you'll be making an unplanned trip to Lourdes—on your knees, wearing sackcloth—to beg for the intervention of a figment of your imagination.
I trust you'll find that commensurate with your human dignity.
