Lookalike.

Whilst looking up something about the Sami (Lapps) yesterday I discovered that one of Britain's worst newspaper columnists is actually a Sami woman:

If Doctors Make You Better Then Why Are Hospitals Full Of Sick People?

I saw this story a couple of days ago:

Patients with higher IQs are better at caring for their long-term health, new Scottish research has suggested.

A study involving 2000 Scots showed those with high intelligence are more likely to continue taking prescribed medication over a long period.

They were also able to consider the future of their health and to follow a course of preventative medication, even when there were no symptoms of illness.

This seems plausible, and one recent high profile celebrity death bears out the idea. However the reason I'm blogging about the story isn't because of any interest in the research, but because I remember seeing this same story a couple of months ago in the Daily Mail* and at the time thinking to myself that the comments demonstrate exactly why stupid people are a high risk group:

After my heart attack 4 years ago I have never missed taking my medication once ! does this mean I am now in the same category as Albert Einstein ?
what a load of Tosh ""

- omalley, glasgow scotland, 22/2/2009 1:45

I don't agree. IQ has nothing to do with being smart or intelligent or skilled or anything else. I don't need to go to 'doctors' because I am healthy and won't allow them to inject filth into my body in any form and become unhealthy.

- Phred, UK, 22/2/2009 5:22

Many of tose folk with a higher IQ live longer because they avoid anything to do with the medical profession preferring to diagnose to themselves as to keeping their fitness.

- hills, Aquitaine,

And the really intelligent amongst us stay away from doctors in the first place.

- Gill, Ramsgate, UK, 22/2/2009 8:29

What a load of rubbish. I would have thought that an intelligent person would look at all options not just do as the doctor says. Where is the intelligence in taking pills that you have been told to take by someone wearing a white coat?

- Life is sweet, Portugal, 22/2/2009 10:09

The whole thread continues in that style with the general consensus being that doctors and modern medicine make you ill.

* I don't usually go in for sneering at the 'Daily Mail', except for their health coverage which is aimed at hypochondriacs and idiots.

Quote Of The Day.

A defendant has been on the run for the past five years after wounding a man in Potterspury who had tried to stop him drink driving.

So where was this criminal mastermind when he was hiding from the law for half a decade?

Judge Richard Bray said: "A bizarre feature of this case is that in the meantime you have twice been dealt with at the magistrates' court".

We Must Understand The Root Causes Of Police Violence.

It is easy to rush to condemn the apparent assault by the police on Ian Tomlinson, however surely we as a society must ask ourselves what are the root causes of violent behaviour. A simplistic argument would be to place the blame on the person responsible but that would be to ignore the complex interactions that lead to violence such as poverty, inequality, US foreign policy, global warming and non organic food.

Seemingly common sense solutions serve to ignore what should be a wake up call to the problems faced by the policing community. Sure it is easier to demonise the individual police officer who hit Mr Tomlinson but .......... Stop.

I've just got the memo 'violence has root causes unless it is perpetrated by members of special oppressor groups' so forget what I just wrote.

Who Needs The Public?

Charities will lose public trust if they put political campaigning above helping the needy

Yes but so what? Who needs the public's trust when you can get free money from the government? I haven't checked but I bet most of the organisations listed in the article are fake charities.

Phony Peace Protests

Peace protesters are not really peace protesters when they only protest for peace when the bloodthirsty lunatics they support are losing.

There's no particular reason for the UK to take sides, both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers are fairly unpleasant.

The Jacqui Smith Porn Poll Result.

Astonishingly most people think that I am shameless exploiting the Jacqui Smith porn scandal!:

Are some bloggers covering the Jacqui Smith porn scandal excessively in order to bolster their site traffic?

A) Yes they are, the scandal mongerers. 3 (7%)
B) Yes YOU are, you shameless c**t: 24 (61%)
C) No they are covering it appropriately: 7 (17%)
D) What Jacqui Smith porn scandal?: 5 (12%)


Update; Jacqui Smith's porn obsession knows no bounds!

The Homeless.

Someone is complaining about homelessness, this time in Sacramento, California. It isn't a coincidence that homelessness is most common in left wing strongholds like Northern California because there are a set of policies that will invariably create a homeless problem:

• Onerous environmental restrictions on development.
• Rent control to remove the incentive to build more houses.
• Free money for homeless people, removing the incentive to get off the streets. Giving cash to drug addicts is about as good an idea as it sounds.
  
• A thriving homelessness industry, whose adherents will do anything they can to avoid the cash cow problem actually being dealt with.

Despite this whenever left wingers raise the problem it is always blamed on the right (hence the Wall Street Journal's "Homelessness Rediscovery Watch" which ran throughout the Bush administration).

Quote Of The Day.

Laban Tall looks at some recently convicted criminals:

Yaw Darko-Kwakye ?

If you shouted his name at him in the street you'd be jailed for racist abuse.

Told You So.

Remember what I was saying about spree killings inspring copycat events in the following days and weeks? Well I told you so.

Update: The shooter appears to be Vietnamese, so perhaps I should make a tenuous connection to Vietnamese incarceration rates in the UK and make it a double I told you so.

Lost & Found.

I lent my hang glider to my old mate Fred the Leper last week and I haven't seen him or it since.

Hypocrite Of The Day- Sunny Hundal.

Following on from my previous post- Sunny Hundal, today:

It's worth stressing that the police decision to form a cordon and not allow people free movement started becoming a focus point for their annoyance. For a while the chanting was their only form of protest. But we felt like we were in a pressure cooker.

So he doesnt like being cooped up and not allowed to leave. Quite understandable, so you'd expect he would have condemned outright the idiots who kept passengers stuck in Stansted Airport a few months back right? Er no:

Well Done Plane Stupid.

Honestly, I love these guys. It does somewhat worry me that Plane Stupid is so unwilling to have a constitution or an organisational structure that soon enough someone malicious will try something violent and claim he/she was doing it as part of Plane Stupid to save the planet.

Otherwise, fully supportive of yesterday’s occupation of Stansted.

Obviously detaining the ghastly chavvy holiday makers is a price worth paying whereas stopping important people like Sunny who explained to the stupid police officers who they were is an outrageous violation of civil liberties.

Hypocrisy Thy Name Is Crusty.

One of the G20 protests yesterday was the Climate Camp, who set up their tents in the middle of London's streets.

Now what happens if there is an ad hoc camp site in the middle of the road? The roads become unusable for ordinary people trying to come in and out.

So the climate campers blocked other people's free movement.

So does anyone want to have a guess at what there bitching about in relation to the police's treatment of them? The police prevented them from going in or out of the protest zone.

Their free movement was blocked.

Diddums.

(See also Julia and LfaT).

The Sincerity Of A Greeting Card.

Gordon Brown is pleased by the effusive praise for his 'extraordinary leadership' he received by the US president Barack Oprompta, which is understandable given the latter's impressive popularity.

It certainly sounds impressive until you realise that he says something similar about everyone, even Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, whose leadership he also praised, which is akin to praising Kermit the Frog for his stewardship of the Muppet show whilst not mentioning Jim Henson.

Maths: Chicks Versus Children.

Two stories:

Baby chicks do basic arithmetic

And:

Pupils 'not performing' in maths

I'm not criticising our hard working teachers, but surely if our avian friends, with brains the size of walnuts are outperforming British schoolchildren, then maybe there are flaws in our teaching system.

Get Ahead.

I'm no detective but I think I could do a better job than Leicestershire constabulary. A head has been discovered in a field:

"In the meantime we're looking into the circumstances surrounding the discovery, but are keeping an open mind as to why and how the head came to be in the field.

Are there really that many possibilities as to how a head, sans body, came to be in a field? Is it really likely that it just fell off spontaneously and the body made it's way home separately?

Quote Of The Day.

Can you guess who is being discussed here?:

The executive summary: he drives like a cunt, and it's the Tories' fault.

G-20- Why?

Is it me or is the G20 basically the G8 with Affirmative Action, in which we pretend that a bunch of large third world countries are of critical importance on the world stage? Does anyone really believe that it matters whether or not Argentina or Indonesia go along with whatever is proposed or not?

There was a leaked paper a couple of weeks ago suggesting that the British government had divided the countries into two tiers based on their importance, Canadians were surprised to discover that their country was 2nd tier, whilst South Africa with an economy about a quarter the size of Canada's was first tier. It isn't as if the world is awaiting the deep insight of third world leaders.

While all sorts of countries that simply don't matter that much clog up the space, important economic players like Spain and the Netherlands aren't even in the G20 (although are represented this time, so it's really the G22).

Of course given that the chances of the G20 summit accomplishing anything except allow anti-globalisation protesters demonstrate what tossers they are, let alone Broon's "Global New Deal" (what we want to prolong the downturn for a decade?), it doesn't really matter who attends.