Such news items deserve an exceptional double bill. Hope you enjoy as much as I do that what is linked below proves that scientists are humans and some time not even of the best mind disposition.
22 November 2009
In the name of charity, get rid of chuggers (only the first paragraph is relevant)
Julian Knight
Sad truth: Charity is just another business
20 November 2009
Sushi DNA Tests Reveal Fraud
Aaron Rowe Wired Online
What the world has come to? You cannot even trust sushi any more.
20 November 2009
Edel-Stifte mit Steuergeldern gekauft (should read: Precious pins [pens] purchased with tax money, according to Google Translator)
Apparently the Germans, instead of cleaning up their moats, as their British counterparts, prefer classy pens.
18 November 2009
What voters think of the Queen's speech: the view from Hyndburn
Helen Carter
Interesting quotes
[...]
"I have always voted for them [Labour] and nothing is going to change that," said Margaret Wilson
and [...]
"I am not going to change my mind. I have never voted Labour and I never will. They are not the party of the working man."
More and more evidence that politics is like football only with more evolved bribes, less clubs (only 3 big ones in this country), hence, ultimately, only more boring.
Bec Gill
James Bond prefers brunettes, says Cleveland State study
News.com June 8, 2009
Yet another ground-breaking result advertised on the news. I spot a worrying trend in what makes the headlines when it is about research results.
Beppe Severgnini
Silvio Berlusconi: An Italian Mirror
Time 30th April 2009
The idea that the current prime minister is so popular because he is so similar to the average Italian or represents a widespread aspiration is not new and is the core of the article above.
However, I frankly struggle to understand how a woman identifies in the Italian PM, do our other halves see in him their ideal husband?
Moreover, even more obscure is the sentence: "We are too anarchic to allow anyone to tell us what do for long (they all failed, from Caesar Augustus to Benito Mussolini)"
Now, Mussolini ruled Italy until 1943 (for 21 years) whilst Augustus was the Emperor of something slightly bigger than Italy alone for 41 years. Although neither is an example of illuminated government, surely we cannot talk of them as underachievers in the tightness of the grip they imposed on the state and its subjects, for not exactly one week.
Sleep better than sex, say tired Britons
The Independent 28 February 2009
Well, I knew it! Even more shocking are some of the comments to this article.
Notwithstanding the shocking amount of alcohol consumed to loosen inhibitions, and the stoic efforts men and women undergo every weekend night braving the British cold in fewer and fewer layers of clothing, for 8 out of 10 Brit, bed has only one purpose...
Toby Litt
The Italian Job
The Guardian, Saturday 24 January 2009 (Review inset)
I happen to have read the book. I happen to disagree on many points of this review, however that is not the point.
The article is introduced by the following lines (I quote): "Toby Litt has fun with a novelist who delights in cliché and coincidence".
Toby Litt underlines the use of clichès in the novel but his review's title is just the millionth time the famous movie has been used to refer to something conceived or implemented in Italy. I say, if you have to pick on something, at least try and refrain to do the same thing it the title of your piece(*).
(*) I know the authors, often, do not pick the titles themselves, still I think a little coherence is lacking there
Julian Glover
Britain loses faith in economy
The Guardian, Wednesday 14 January 2009
I decided to save this clipping (form today's front page) because it is a proof that statistics when not used with a pinch of salt are as as informative as the prediction of the outcome of a coin toss (er...).
A big survey carried out worldwide concluded the following, as reported in the article linked above:
1) "confidence in the banking system appears lower in Britain - 4.2 out of 10 - than in bankrupt Iceland, which polled 4.6". Now, in order to assess that people worldwide and, particular in Britain, do not trust banks, we needed a survey
2) "Not surprisingly, pessimism about personal finances is greatest in Iceland, and lowest in fast-growing economies such as India". At least the author said not surprisingly. Do we really need statistics to say that the average Icelandic who is about to lose a lifetime's savings in the banks meltdown up there is not really willing to look on the bright side? Or that the average Indian, on one of the poorest wages worldwide is not really positive he is going to become rich in the next couple of months?
I leave the rest of the amazing results to your curiosity
