One feature of winter is walking home in the dark (near-dark today), and talking about the moon and stars ( Read more... )

I once read a theory that people who get depressed remember events for longer and in more detail than others - in particular how they felt at the time. The emotional impact of, say, being told off, then doesn't fade with time as it does for most people, so when they have another negative experience, it sits on top of this ever-growing mountain of ( Read more... )

Graph showing Mumsnetters' voting intentions over the last few months (self selected responses, non representative of the wider world etc)
( Read more... )

Horoscopes for E.coli...
http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume3/v3i6/bact.htm

Given my previous work experience (at NIMR where they study pandemic flu, and working on animal disease outbreaks), people keep asking me what I think about the Mexican swine flu.

My expert opinion:( Read more... )

Nice to see the BBC trying to tackle wild media claims: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7542886.stmRead more... )

Good news ( Read more... )

Proposed as the ‘first law of bullshit dynamics’ but I think it might need a new name before being taught in all schools: ‘there is no imaginable proposition so absurd that you cannot find at least one person, somewhere in the world with a PhD or professional post, who is happy to endorse it ( Read more... )

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/02/terror_idiocy_outbreak/Read more... )

Ibuprofen normal - 200mg, take 2 every 4 hours.
'Maximum strength' ibuprofen 'for extra pain relief' - 400mg, take 1 every 4 hours.

I can only assume the extra strength derives from the neon-pink placebo-effect-enhancing coating.

Given the normal ones were 12 for £1 and the extra strong were 12 for £1.20, I got the latter.