The Green GP.
In another incarnation, I'm a moderator on a writing site (some of you had guessed, I suspect). Faced with the occasional lunatic member, we mods fantasise about a machine called the Slap-O-Matic. It doesn't exist but here's a really good reason to invent one. Doctors should give patients advice on climate change, a leading body of medical experts has claimed.Place a cushion on the desk in front of you. You are about to develop an irresistible urge to bang your head on it.The Climate and Health Council, a collaborati

There are those who do not want us to speak...
There's this.And this.All because of this.No wonder the Mandelsnake is doing his damndest to control the Internet.

Electrofag - the three month evaluation.
The picture has nothing to do with Electrofag. I just put it there to give any passing Righteous the experience of simultaneous heart and bowel failure. Those were great sweets, but I don't remember getting 'Dixon of Dock Green' ones. They did not start me smoking. Sugar and nicotine don't taste the same, and smoking is nothing like eating sugar sticks. Actually they weren't even my favourite sweet. I preferred aniseed balls - and sucking those didn't make me gay either.

I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas.
Some time back there was a story about a man who bet on the weather. I can't remember the details, it was one of those 'and finally...' type stories. He claimed he could predict the weather so well that he'd place bets at the bookies. He was making a profit at that time.When the reporter talked to the bookie, something interesting came to light. All bets were 1 to 1. A simple arrangement where the man put up a tenner, the bookie put up a tenner and the winner left with twenty. Just like those pool games for money. The reason was simple. The amateur forecaster would bet, for example, that it would rain in a certain place on a certain date. The bookie's calculation of odds was ins

Rock on, Raccoon.
A stripy rodent blogger has ceased. Apparently this is, at least partly, due to some authoritarian libertarians (we can force you to be free) but also to ill health.Let's hope she comes back one day. The Internet needs all the literate commenters it can get.