Afghanistan
I have two views on Afghanistan; we should stay and we should come home.
It’s difficult and I think that whatever we do, the number of casualties we are suffering in the country, can’t be sustained for ever. Although rightly, we focus on the number of dead, there is also a real problem in the number who are injured. Wikipedia gives a lot of details.
One telling figure in the article is that between January 2006 and June 2009, we have had to medically evacuate 2,192 personel from Afghanistan for medical reasons. That’s an average of just over 70 a month. Almost three times as many troops have been admitted to UK Field Hospitals for reasons of disease or non-battle injuries, than for those caused in battle.
Can we sustain those losses? And how long before everybody in the UK knows someone who has been killed or injured?
Whether politicians like it or not, we are getting to the point where we have to negotiate our way out of Afghanistan.
Usain Bolt
I’ve never seen anything like him. I should think bets are off as to whether he finally beats a time of 9.4 seconds. Good luck to him too, as he seems to be a nice bloke too.
I do feel sorry for Tyson Gay though. He’s obviously a great athlete too, and in most generations he would be some distance ahead of the others, but for Usain.
He also has to deal with the problems of some say in his name. When I was growing up, gay was a word that was often paired with happy and girls were often called Gaynor, Gai and Gay. Now like many other words, it’s usage has changed and I don’t think too many people bother. I don’t.
But America’s Christian Right do and automatically change his name on their web sites.
I thought religion was all about loving your neighbour and not hating them for their sexuality. What happened to the parable of the Good Samaritan?
Cooked Meats and Cancer
The World Cancer Research Fund are now saying that cooked meats, such as ham and salami and bacon, can cause cancer and should be banned from lunch boxes.
They have form in this area and have been warning for some time. Do I eat much cooked meats? Not really, as I possibly eat them once or twice a month. I did eat a bit more at the weekend, but it was my party.
They also provoked this blast from the Daily Mail. I’ve read that and that perhaps says one important thing and that is moderation in all things.
But what is missing from all of this research and rants is any degree of statistical sense.
We could take a silly example, which states that if you spend all your time on a computer, playing computer games as a child that this is bad for your health. Other research could also say that playing on railway tracks is also bad. They both probably are, but the second is many times more dangerous than the first and people these days tend to lump everything as equally bad.
Now my worry about this “ham sandwich is bad for you” scare is that I’ve never seen any relative risk information compared to say cigarettes, obesity, excessive drinking or spending eight hours a day on a sunbed. So you get the obese smoker giving up cooked meats as his bit towards better health.
So what are the relative risks?
The best book on the subject is The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. He analyses the risks and prints them in detail. Everyone should read his book. You may not agree with everything he says, but it will certainly make you think.
But bear in mind one thing; if you want to live a long time, you can increase your chances by not smoking, eating a good diet, exercising and maintaining a healthy weight. I do all four. But then so did my late wife and she died at fifty-nine!
One point about diet is that diagnosed coeliacs on a gluten-free diet have a twenty-five percent less chance of cancer. That more than mitigates the bad affects of a ham sandwich in gluten-free bread.
Chicken Goujons
This is a recipe I used for my party. Everybody liked them.
I used the following.
- A pack of four boneless and skinless chicken breasts. I don’t know how to bone and skin!
- Half a pot of natural yogurt.
- A good teaspoonful of curry powder.
- Zest of a lime.
The method is simple.
- Slice the chicken into long, thin strips. I found it best to slice slightly across the chicken. These are then places in a baking tray. As it was a party I used disposable ones.
- Mix the yogurt, curry powder and zest of the lime in a bowl and then spoon it all over the chicken. I also turned the chicken, so that everything was well covered. It was then left to marinate for about twenty minutes.
- I then cooked it in the bottom of the top oven of the AGA for about twenty minutes, turning them in the sauce every five minutes or so,
Everybody liked them. They also seemed to keep well for a couple of days in the fridge.
The Anonymous Widower 