Man Gets Stuck In A Vagina
This story was the most looked at on the BBC’s web site, so I had to link to it.
I should say it was a stone statue and the man was an American student.
The Psychopaths Are Trying To Run The Asylum
One news story stood out on the BBC this lunchtime. It was all about how jogging has been banned in Burundi and can get you many years in jail.
I noticed this paragraph in the story.
The 49-year-old president, for his part, remains an enthusiastic consumer of team games – football in particular.
He has his own side, Hallelujah FC, for whom, according to government leaflets, he plays as a striker and often scores goals.
So it’s not just Muslim fanatcs who are three parts round the bend.
The news is depressing with more fighting and massacres in Iraq due to ISIS, dozens killed in Kenya by Al Shabab, kidnappings in Israel probably by Hamas and all the Boko Haram troubles in Nigeria.
Although those four seem to say they support Islam, many of those they kill seem to be Muslims too!
I sometimes think that this section of mindless violence will only end when the various divisions have eliminated each other.
It just gets more depressing!
Bannockburn Riding for the Disabled
I was alerted to the plight of this organisation by Melanie Reid in her Saturday column in The Times.
Riding for the Disabled was one of the charities C and myself supported, so she would be totally behind my donation to help the Bannockburn RDA in their fight against a difficult landlord.
If you would like to donate, you can use Just Giving.
Skin Cancer Trial Results Exciting
That is the headline on this story on the BBC web site. Here’s the first few paragraphs.
The results of two international trials against advanced skin cancer have been hailed as “exciting and striking”.
Both treatments, for advanced melanoma, are designed to enable the immune system to recognise and target tumours.
The last statement is key. After all one of ourposes of your immune system is to fight infections and any other dangerous things it finds in your body.
Research has shown that coeliacs on a gluten free diet, have a reduced cancer rate compared to the general population.
So should everybody avoid obesity, too much drink, smoking and gluten, if they want to reduce their cancer risk?
I don’t have the data, so I won’t make a prediction. But the man, who helped to identify the link between smoking and lung cancer, Richard Doll, was a coeliac and was obviously on a gluten-free diet.
He lived until he was 92.
He obviously looked at the data and probably massaged his immune system.
I Can’t Bear To Look At The Times Website Today
The headline story is of the poor woman sentenced to death in Sudan for a love of a man of the wrong religion, giving birth on the floor of a prison cell in chains.
What has all this got to do with religion?
A Statistical Provocateur
Not by words, but they are used in this thought-provoking article on the BBC web site.
It shows how the divorce rate mirrors margarine consumption, according to a web site called Spurious Correlations.
The trouble is that people tend to believe these relationships or not, as it suits them.
Perhaps the most famous statistical correlation is that smoking causes lunch cancer. But people still smoke! Or should that be idiots still smoke?
One correlation used by the Police, may have been found using my software called Daisy. Analysis by the Metropolitan Police showed that if they found a car, had no valid excise duty, insurance or MOT, then there was a fifty percent chance that if they stopped the car, they’d find evidence of a non-motoring offence. The logic behind this, is if you are say a burglar, drug-dealer or other crimnal, you are less likely to make sure that your car is legal.
BBC Breakfast’s Pointless Move To Manchester
It may be a day of a minor political tremor, but today is illustrating how pointless it was to move BBC Breakfast and probably many other programs to Manchester.
All of the major politicians are of course in Westminster, so Bill Turnbull is in London with Louise Minchin sitting almost by herself in the North, with a few lightweight guests. It is showing, it is a bad recipe for a good programme.
The sooner the BBC does the right thing and moves BBC Breakfast back to London the better.
May Puts The Boot In
One of the lead stories on the BBC is about Theresa May’s speech to the Police Federation. This is the first paragraph.
Theresa May has urged the Police Federation of England and Wales to reform, or she will enforce change.
But the extraordinary thing about the report in The Times, is not the report itself, but the number of comments entered by readers.
As these comments do not seem to favour one side or another, surely the large number, indicates that many Times readers are very interested in what happens to the Police Federation.
The Queen Starts An Inter Union Row
Her Majesty doesn’t often get involved in trade union disputes, but according to this report in the Standard, she’s very much involved in this one on the London Ungerground.
What puzzles me about this dispute is why we still have so many unions involved in the rail industry.
Over the many years, I’ve been watching industrial relations, it strikes me, that companies with a single union, seem to have better industrial relations, than those with more.
Why We Shouldn’t Mine Coal
I’m sixty-seven this year and all my life, every year or so, I’ve heard reports of the deaths of coal miners.
Now today, there are reports of a serious mine disaster in Turkey.
When I was in Poland, I shared a train compartment with a lady going to Katowice. I remember the city for a mining disaster in the 1950s, which was nearby.
Isn’t it about time, we stopped mining the filthy stuff, as it just creates grief for the miners and their families? And of course there’s always the issue of global warming.
The Anonymous Widower 