Common sense prevails

Hurrah for Simon Singh!

Having won his appeal (at great expense, it must be said) against the Chiropractic Association surely the UK's "supreme court" must now turn its attention to the libel laws and overturn them? For a respected scientist such as Singh to be gagged for trying to point out quackery in the first place surely highlights the ridiculousness of the legal system.
Hopefully Justice Eady will rethink things as well, otherwise... well...

They could do a lot worse than appoint Judge Nutmeg!

Spin, spin, spin the wheel of justice...
See how fast the bastard turns...

Ha ha ha

A crusty old Marine Sergeant Major found himself at a gala event hosted by a local liberal arts college. There was no shortage of extremely young idealistic liberal ladies in attendance, one of whom approached the Sergeant Major for conversation.

"Excuse me, Sergeant Major, but you seem to be a very serious man.. Is something bothering you?"

"Negative, ma'am. Just serious by nature."

The young lady looked at his awards and decorations and said, "It looks like you have seen a lot of action."

"Yes, ma'am, a lot of action."

The young lady, tiring of trying to start up a conversation, said, "You know, you should lighten up a little. Relax and enjoy yourself."

The Sergeant Major just stared at her in his serious manner. Finally the young lady said, "You know, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but when was the last time you had sex?"

"1955, ma'am."

"Well, there you are. No wonder you're so serious. You really need to chill out and relax! I mean, no sex since 1955! Come with me."

She took his hand and led him to a private room where she proceeded to "relax" him several times.

Afterwards, panting for breath, she leaned against his grizzled bare chest and said, "Wow, you sure didn't forget much since 1955."

The Sergeant Major said in his serious voice, after glancing at his watch, "I hope not; it's only 2130 now."

Oh yeah, this was the football thing I was referring to.

That is all.

Healthcare

Just a quick one before I sign off. Those rather splendid chaps over at MediaLens raise an interesting observation about all this Healthcare stuff. I must admit I was rather taken in by all the pro-Obama frenzy, thinking "finally, the USA is starting to wake up to all this!" However, the article goes on to wonder whether this is actually a far more right-wing policy than the Republicans could ever come up with, pandering to the needs of the Big Pharma mob and suchlike: not bad for a Liberal.

Anyway, read it and make your own mind up.

Oh, the horror!

Well, it seems a man who is quite good at kicking a ball has been injured, and so a nation grinds to a collective halt. What is it with our football / soccer obsession? Absolutely ridiculous.

While I'm on the subject (kind of) there was a fun debate on Reddit some months ago explaining football and the differing views on the name between Americans and Brits. Football for example involves a foot and a ball, whereas the American football involves a hand and an egg: Handegg.

What amused me most was cricket: Stickballstickglove or something like that. Nobody ever really got to grips with what cricket actually is. The answer of course is simple: God's Chosen Game, at least according to Dr Grace.

Anyway, on a more important note, 7TeV collisions have taken place somewhere under Switzerland and we're all still alive, which is nice.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Well... duh!

This was published yesterday. Just in case you have a "too long, didn't read" moment, here's the story in a nutshell.

Rats were fed normal diet, but some were given sugar (sucrose) in the drinking water, some given high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in their water. The HFCS group became obese, the sucrose group remained pretty much the same.

HFCS is used extensively in a lot of foods, mainly processed stuff, because it is very cheap to manufacture. A bit like hydrogenated vegetable fats, it creeps into the daily diet of a lot of people, from those who need a microwave meal because it's quick and easy, to those who stuff their faces with crap from McDonalds.

What most people fail to realise is that although the calorific content of the two sugar types is virtually identical, HFCS bypasses the satiety response completely. Ordinarily, sucrose (one molecule of glucose joined up to one of fructose) triggers a negative feedback response: the body senses the high-energy source and eventually does a Mr Creosote ("**** off, I'm full.") This is caused by the metabolism of glucose to glucose-1-phosphate and then to glucose-6 phosphate as part of the glycolysis pathway down to pyruvate.

Fructose misses out this step and joins the pathway further down - the same endpoint, but a different entry point. However, all the metabolic sensors for glycolysis are based at the glucose-6-phosphate step. What this means is that food containing glucose makes the brain and body realise that it's had enough to eat but fructose doesn't.

People who eat this processed junk basically don't realise that they've already eaten enough calories, and as such about an hour after stuffing their faces with a Big Mac they fancy a nice tasty snack. Probably Doritos or some other rubbish. Why? Because they don't actually feel full.

So: one of the many problems with fast food. The trouble is that it's so cheap: so many calories for so little money. Unfortunately buying food that doesn't contain HFCS and other such junk costs more, hence the problems with obesity in the Western world, and until the food lobbyists are rapped on the knuckles this problem is going to continue, much to the detriment of world health.

Which brings me on to a final point: congrats to Obama for getting the USA healthcare bill pushed through, but the wankers that voted against it do have a point: the USA cannot afford the increased cost to the nation simply because the big businesses are still pushing bad diets down the necks of the taxpayers. The fatter they get, the bigger the burden on the tax bill. Obama was right to get the bill pushed through, but needs to tackle the tobacco and food lobbies before any real benefit will ever be seen.

Ta-Dah!

I've finally finished my book. Which is why I've not been posting on here.

The trouble is, now I'm going through the editing phase, and it's even more knackering than the actual writing. I've done the first three chapters so they're ready to send off to whoever , I need to rewrite the synopsis, yada yada yada...

The problem now is my ever so short attention span: I've already started on another book. Not a science-y one though, that will come later. The new one is all about Constantine the Great, nothing to do with Keanu Reeves thankfully.

whoa dude, totally awesome

In the meantime, far too many really interesting things have happened between then and now to mention, so I'll just leave this here, seeing as it follows on from my last post in a way. Pretty cool, huh?