I often write posts based on items from what I call my search-engine slush pile – this is a list of search terms, on my blog’s stats page, which bring people here. Sometimes they’ll find what they’re looking for, other times they won’t – as a key word in an unrelated post may have been the reason it showed on Google, or whatever.
If it’s a subject I haven’t covered before, I’ll write a post to address the lack.
A few minutes ago, I was intrigued to see Continue reading
WordPress has a seasonal add-on that shows “snow” falling across our blogs. I displayed it last year – it’s optional – and except for one curmudgeonly sod who moaned about it, I though it was a success, so I ran it again this year.
Over the last few days, though, I’ve noticed that my PC occasionally gets very slow, especially Continue reading
Andrew Watson, Royal Society Research Professor at the University of East Anglia, says in the Times today:-
We non-media-savvy scientists at the University of East Anglia have learnt a hard lesson this week…
Indeed, and a significant part of that lesson should be don’t leave email on the servers for years! I mean, really, how stupid is that?
But it made me wonder – is this because they used webmail? I don’t, and I never have, because I’ve never been convinced it’s secure and I’ve never seen the point. My email client is set to delete mail from the server as soon as it’s downloaded; I believe that’s the only sensible way. OK, my email has no value to hackers, but a small part Continue reading
Reading online newspaper comment sections, wherever Copenhagen is discussed, is immensely depressing. The overwhelming “opinion” is that climate change doesn’t exist. That’s in quotes because no-one has any evidence to support that view, it is, in fact, only an opinion – they don’t believe it because, well, they don’t believe it. It’s a self-reinforcing closed loop.
Oh, some will present “facts” Continue reading
Macmillan Cancer Support has found that 73% of cancer patients feel the cold more than most people, and believes that those that don’t already qualify, which is 60% of them, should get the winter fuel payment. But why?
Cancer patients are by no means the only people under 60 to suffer from the cold – many sick and disabled people do. It’s a particular problem with ME/CFS. Take my case. 20 years ago, I was cold at 20C when just sitting around, comfortable at 22C.
Now, though, things have changed considerably, and I’m cold below Continue reading
Up in Argyle, in Scotland, as I type this, several families of beavers are about to set out on their nightly depredations. Or just getting on with living their lives, depending whether you’re pro or anti the release of Norwegian beavers in Scotland. (In Norway, by the way, they’re such a pest they’re being shot pretty much at will.)
Those in whose back yards they have been dumped are, to put it mildly, just a tad pissed off, with livelihoods and landscapes under threat. This rather well-balanced article repays a read.
There is, by the way, zero evidence that beavers ever inhabited Scotland. Some tenuous fripperies – Robert the Bruce imposed a tax on beaver pelts, an allegedly beaver-nibbled tree stump, and some beaver bones found about 1500. None of which is actual evidence of beaver having once been native to Scotland, as they definitely were to England 400 years ago.
The Bruce may have been taxing Continue reading
“Call me Dave” Cameron has come up with a wizard wheeze for encouraging post-grad students to enter teaching – pay off their student loan debts for as long as they remain in teaching. By which I assume they mean paying it off gradually, so that should students realise what they’ve got themselves into, there will be a stiff financial penalty awaiting them should they quit.
Doubtless this scheme will bring more people into teaching – but Continue reading
I forgot to cover, when I wrote the post about why Ventolin might not be effective, the question of generic Salbutamol.
This, of course, is NOT Ventolin, and from long experience of the stuff, I can tell you with absolute certainty that IT IS NOT AS GOOD AS VENTOLIN. I don’t care what NICE claim – it simply is not as effective.
It may not even be the same drug, at a Continue reading
With apologies to the late Cyril Kornbluth.
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“UK should open borders to climate refugees, says Bangladeshi minister,” runs the headline in the Guardian. Well, no, we bloody well shouldn’t.
Over the next century or so, climate-change related migration is going to become a major problem for many countries, but a universal open-door policy, particularly for the UK, is certainly not the answer. Not least because these islands, themselves, will suffer considerably from rising sea levels.
What we should be seriously thinking of doing is Continue reading
In a debate on risk, on the Alpha Mummy blog at the Times, the discussion – almost inevitably – took a turn for the “all men are paedophiles” worse. (And if you visit the blog you’ll see I posted a shorter version of this there.)
One genius went so far as to say, in a comment that until then had been quite sensible “What we all fear is traffic and men.” Really? Men? WTF?
So, there we have it – an entire gender condemned at a stroke And what sort of Continue reading
Ron's Rants... 