Google analytics

Friday 15 January 2010

Storm in a Teacup?

I must admit I have never heard of Tim Minchin, but have to agree that his poetry is amusing.



H/T to Stu at Sharpes Opinion

Scientists only have themselves to blame for their bad reputation

scientist

Remember these "Predictions".

BSE/CJD:

Predictions that there would be 136,000 deaths. (How did they arrive at that figure anyway?)

Could infect 10 million Britons.

ANS: When the prediction proved wildly wrong, the government excused itself with a classic Rumsfeld-ism: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."

£5 Billion was the cost of that load of twaddle.

SARS:

WHO predicted that one in four Britons could die.

ANS: 800 died Worldwide.

Avian Flue:

Sir Liam Donaldson predicted 50,000 to 750,000 deaths.

When one dead swan slumped on a beach in Scotland, BBC reporters went crazy as inspectors stumbled through the seaweed, clad in anti-nuclear armour. Within a year the horror had passed.

ANS: The global mortality was put at 262, with not one death in Britain.

Swine flue:

Sir Liam Donaldson, (Yes, him again), bandied about any figure that came into his head, settling on "65,000 could die", peaking at 350 corpses a day.

This week the authorities admitted that, far from a winter upturn in swine flu, there has been a slump. From 100,000 a week at the peak, there were just 12,000 last week. After the coldest winter for decades, when deaths might be expected to rise, the rate is below that of seasonal flu.

ANS: In the UK, 360 people have died under its influence, most with prior "non-flu" conditions. Swine flu is not nice , but bears no relation to the government hysteria.

Climate change/Global warming:

"The science is settled"

We'll wait and see on that one. What with all that white global warming crap I had to shovel off my drive in the last few weeks.

Away with the Fairies.

FP9068TinkerbellPosters

Parents are not telling fairy stories to their Children as they are too frightening and are not Politically correct. Jeesus Christ.

A new survey suggests that they are! The poll, by TheBabyWebsite suggests that a quarter of parents have ditched classics such as Snow White and Hansel and Gretl in favour of more modern bedtime tales. Apparently they don't like the messages (leaving poor Hansel and his sister alone in the forest is a no no, as is sending Little Red Riding Hood on a journey alone through the woods - only to find out that granny has been eaten by a wolf!)

So lets Coccoon them in cotton wool, the poor lambs

A fifth of parents said the tales weren't politically correct (Cinders does too much cleaning up, I guess, while Jack climbs up a beanstalk and steals from the giant), and 17 percent worried about them giving their children nightmares (Snow White's wicked witch is said to be too scary). Sixty five percent of parents said that they preferred to read their children more "light-hearted" stories at bedtime.

Good education if they want to become H & S inspectors or the like.

I despair of these "Modern" parents and their new labour way of thinking. If its scary, ban it.

The rest of the article is over here at the Times

Climate change is natural

Some of the latest vids detailing why climate change is not our fault, or a problem.










Worth watching.

Source