guidance for muslim men on how they should beat their wives……

Fat and Happy: The Weight Story No One Wants to Talk About

 A new study about obesity by Katherine Flegal and colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Cancer Institute could do much to calm our growing national hysteria about obesity.

a sting in the tail

http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html

Oh Crikey, as if we needed even more proof…

Who is Reading Books (and who is not)

1/3 of US high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. Many do not even graduate from high school.

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.

42% of college graduates never read another book.

80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.

70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

57% of new books are not read to completion.
–Jerrold Jenkins.
http://www.JenkinsGroup.com

A FREE SPEECH! My First Audio Blog

The dulcid tones and opinionated voice of moi!

what price specialisation?

A friend of mine recently expressed his reluctance to go to his solicitor on a legal issue because he fretted “I’ll get a legal opinion.” He was afraid that the solicitor would give him a solicitors opinion and really he didnt want the offcial line, he wanted a broader approach. What he was really lamenting was the effects of specialisation.
“China is the next great empire” I’ve said it myself and I’ve read it in I don’t know how many business papers and magazines. Solicitors, economists and a plethora of other professions are operating within the confines of their own specialities. They kinda tend to examine the situations with a certian set of glasses. This was highlighted to me in a  rather astonishing article in the Australian by Mark Steyn who, in joining a debate about abortion revealed some staggering thoughts/statistics about the death or Europe, the rise of Islam and the answer to the question as to whether China will be the hyperpower of the 21st Century? His answer was a resounding ”no” and all because of another little speciality; demographics. Mark Steyn in The Australian.

bring back the test card

Rember when RTE1 (Irelands first National TV station) used to stop broadcasting around 11.30pm in the evening. Programing would stop, we’d get a blast of the national anthem and then the test card till the following lunch time. And we’d all head off to bed cause frankly there was feck all else to do but at least you’d get to bed at a reasonable hour.

Well I’m staring a petition, send an e-mail to info@rte.ie and ask them to switch off at 11 or 11.30 and show the owld test card. If we took all the dross out of the schedule and just broadcast between 6pm and midnight, we might actually get something worth watching.

whats that song about time in a bottle?

I first read this old chestnut a few years ago and just found the link again, its a Newsweek article about the environment and how we are facing a global ice age, all the rage apparently in 1975. The Cooling World