Relax tubby, just quit boozing and smoking

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Healthy living 'can add 14 years'
Taking exercise, not drinking too much alcohol, eating enough fruit and vegetables and not smoking can add up to 14 years to your life, a study says. Research involving 20,000 people over a decade found those who failed on all criteria were four times more likely to have died than those who succeeded.

The findings held true regardless of how overweight or poor they were.
A perfectly timed report. I gave up cigarettes a few years back and my alcohol intake is now extremely moderate to say the least. I eat fruit every day and I think I get enough excercise.

And I was just about to embark on a weight-loss diet. Phew! That was close.

Common sense is not that common

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Secret Home Office memo orders officials to STOP deporting bogus foreign students
Immigration officers have been ordered to stop deporting foreign students who overstay their visas. A leaked memo obtained by the Daily Mail suggests they are not regarded as a high enough priority. The secret edict makes a mockery of Government claims to be running a "robust" immigration system.
Firstly, what does 'secret' mean in this context. When my wife sends a memo to her staff is it 'secret'? Well, it's not intended for publication in the local rag, that's for sure, but it's no more 'secret' than internal emails at the Daily Mail.

Secondly, where does the word 'bogus' fit in here? The student that this particular 'secret' memo (or 'edict' in Mailspeak) referred to was Chinese, had been studying here perfectly legitimately and had simply made an error on the extension application form. The officers were told, quite rightly, to use their common sense. The real scandal is that they had to be told to do that in the first place!

But on to the meat of the allegation. The Mail should be delighted that immigration officers are being told to concentrate their resources on those illegal immigrants who should be got rid of as quickly as possible rather than students who have technically overstayed because of administrative errors. Which of these groups do you think immigration officials (faced with targets and pressure to perform) would rather concentrate on? Students with passports who came here from confirmed home countries and live at known addresses and are therefore easy pickings or failed asylum seekers and convicted criminals who have gone AWOL, have no papers or passports and who are not forthcoming about their origins?

Try the boy scouts, chum

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MoD denies 'war glamour' claim
The government has denied claims the British armed forces are glamorising war to boost recruitment. The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust says recruits are unable to make informed choices about enlisting...
What bollocks! Any young person who signs up for the Army (and, let's face it, it's the army we are talking about, not the RAF or the Royal Navy) without fully understanding that they will almost certainly get sent to some godforsaken shithole, thousands of miles away to get shot at by swarthy men in robes and turbans determined to kill them must have just woken from a coma.

Barry Donnan was in the Army for six years and served in the first Gulf War, and thinks more should be done to highlight the life-threatening dangers (sic) that new recruits could face.
WTF? There's a big clue here somewhere. Could it be the fact that these new recruits are joining something called - THE FUCKING ARMY!


Jack Bauer, PJMs little willy stiffener

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Pajamas Media: A Few Words in Defense of Torture
When you get right down to it, torture takes many forms. For one man, it’s being dunked repeatedly in water, while for another it’s being forced to sit through a Sean Penn speech or a Dixie Chicks concert.
And for some others it's reading garbage like this from the cunts at Nightshirt Media (Wetdreams Section).

The problem I have with opposing torture is that it rather limits what I could do to these arseholes if I ever found myself with one of them chained to my cellar wall.

That's Infotainment!

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Pickled Politics » US news vs British 24 news
What strikes me about American broadcast news media is how great they are at repackaging the same stories over the course of the day in different ways to keep you hooked. You see, BBC News 24 or Sky News make this assumption that we watch them only for 15 min - 30 min bursts. Watch either for an hour and you can see the headlines, stories and transcripts repeat themselves. To avoid an overwhelming feeling of deja vu, you have to switch off after that.
Erm, yeah. And the problem with that is what exactly? US news coverage is better because they spice up old news to make it more palatable to sad fucks with nothing better to do all day than watch 24 hour news channels. WTF? Read the whole bizarre piece written, I suspect, after someone slipped something into Sunny's drink.

The shark meme**

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Nordquist: Spending less time in a Microsoft World


Windows is a now a commodity. With high speed internet and new web technologies, the days of “install, patch, patch, patch…” are over. Microsoft reminds me of AOL in the mid 90’s when many first-time interest users thought AOL was the internet. Once AOL customers realized what was available beyond the wall they wanted to participate and left AOL by the millions.

That’s what happening to Microsoft only the walled garden had been created with bloated, expensive software with hundreds of features most people don’t need. As people realize how easy, inexpensive and accessible web applications are, they won’t want to go back Microsoft and their way of doing things.

**The Shark Meme, via Calacanis


Major loss

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Tom Watson: A Blogging Soldier's Farewell
Blogger Andy Olmsted, an American Army Major who blogged from Iraq, was killed in action yesterday and posts his own eulogy at Obsidian Wings, where he blogged regularly under the name G'kar. Everybody with a soul should read the entire post and the comments.

"What I don't want this to be is a chance for me, or anyone else, to be maudlin. I'm dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren't going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss...I'm dead, but if you're reading this, you're not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact..."


Twittering, tumbling...oh what fun

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I'm not making any lists of stuff that happened in 2007 or predictions about stuff that will happen in 2008 but I will say one thing. Microblogging and Tumblelogging are going to take off in a big way this year.

So, get yourself to Twitter and join in the fun. Ignore people who think it's just about informing the world when you've had a shower or lunch (although there is that and why not?) and dive in. The limit is 140 characters per post and you'll be surprised at just how adequate that is in most cases. Here's my Twitter page

Then start a Tumblr site. Blogging at it's purest and simplest. Absolutely brilliant. I love Tumblr and I'm advising anyone who is contemplating blogging to start off there. I'm playing around with three sites at the moment one of which I've linked to from the side bar. It's an image dump. Just a bit of fun. And it really should be fun, shouldn't it?


50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007

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The BEAST: America's Best Fiend

It's that time of year again. Here is The Beast's number one spot (the President) and its number
17 spot (the next President?).

1. George W. Bush

Charges: Is it a civil rights milestone to have a retarded president? Maybe it would be, if he were ever legitimately elected. You can practically hear the whole nation holding its breath, hoping this guy will just fucking leave come January '09 and not declare martial law. Only supporters left are the ones who would worship a fucking turnip if it promised to kill foreigners. Is so clearly not in charge of his own White House that his feeble attempts to define himself as "decider" or "commander guy" are the equivalent of a five-year-old kid sitting on his dad's Harley and saying "vroom vroom!" Has lost so many disgusted staffers that all he's left with are the kids from Jesus Camp. The first president who is so visibly stupid he can say "I didn't know what was in the National Intelligence Estimate until last week" and sound plausible. Inarguably a major criminal and a much greater threat to the future of America than any Muslim terrorist.

Exhibit A: "And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it."

Sentence: Dismembered, limbs donated to injured veterans.


17. Hillary Clinton

Charges: Began in politics as a teenage Nixon supporter -- that's twisted. Moved on to corporate law, representing Wal-Mart and bravely defending Coca-Cola from disabled employees. Married out of ambition. Failed miserably as the first lady of health care. Has spent whole of senatorial career as a hawk and a panderer. Would have no shot at becoming president if she didn't just happen to be married to one already.

Exhibit A: Has deftly avoided the flip-flopper label -- by never, ever answering a question directly or committing to a position in the first place.

Sentence: Victim of vast right wing conspiracy to shove a brick up her ass.