Saturday 1 January 2011

Link Tank 01/01

Plink plink fizz, then get on with it for God's sake. New year, same drill.

London hosts the first annual boredom conference

The iPhone-controlled beer cannon - now you need never walk to the fridge again

Forcing restaurants to display calorific information has no effect on reducing fast food consumption

Maldives politician says "everyone including foreigners should respect the laws of the country" by not celebrating Christmas

A UK-based New Zealander's top 10 wishes for British politics in 2011

Now ex-smokers are banned from employment in Florida hospitals

Women: Get in the kitchen ... and drink some whiskey

Happy Christmas (global warming is over)

Fisking 'Gordon Brown The Hero'

Nigeria's first porn movie 'selling out fast'


6 comments:

Woman on a Raft said...

Jack Daniels have presumably discontinued their cake which was sent to me as a present. It was a rich almond and butter base but not like marzipan, and I'm afraid I ate all of it and put on half a stone.

It was delicious and I would recommend it to anyone going to polar explorers for being able to fit the maximum number of calories in to the smallest space, with added fun.

Unfortunately, I've never seen it since and it came from the Jack Daniels factory direct. I expect these days they would confiscate it and imprison you for trying to bring it in.

Dick Puddlecote said...

They may not be there yet, WoaR, but it won't be long. :(

SadButMadLad said...

Re the calorie in restaurant story. It's actually good business practise to not serve big portions as you want customers to order all courses including starter and desert which have better profit margins.

Alan Bates said...

I followed through on one of the links on the obesity article to find the cost of obesity in the US is $147 billion p.a.

I was impressed by the ability to estimate the figure so accurately*. So I did the right thing and looked up the full text of the source of this to see how they got that figure.

Was I surprised to find it was behind a paywall**. So only a press release and a limited abstract was available which prevented the hoi polloi from finding out anything useful to support their ridiculous claim!

So, we are left with a news release trumpeting a nonsense figure found by a route they are not prepared to make available to the public. Where did SCIENCE go***?

Alan

* By citing the third figure it means that their estimate is somewhere between 146.5 and 147.5 Obviously, this precision is impossible, even assuming their method of calculation is realistic.

** No, I wasn't!

*** Yes, I am aware that their figures for smoking are bad too. What I cannot tell is which is the most nonsensical!

Alan Bates said...

re: Nigeria's first porn movie.

A direct quote from the link (but my emphasis):

"Retailers are raking in heavy profits from the film due largely to a widespread marketing campaign that includes bust stop posters showing the two co-stars cuddling."

Freudian slip??

Alan

(your site doesn't allow HTML blockquote?)

Alan Bates said...

Was my second post deleted or did it get lost in the ether?

It's ether one thing or the other ...