Exploding school kids? Have the climate change hysterics finally gone completely mad?

No doubt they will claim it is funny, (like a dose of clap), but this is just disturbing and deranged, leaving aside the obvious point that a 10% reduction in personal carbon emissions, (which is always going to be less for society as a whole, probably substantially so, as most people and organisations wont become involved), would have no discernable effect on the planet's climate. I think this poorly considered tactic is at least in part driven by an increasing sense of desperation amongst the alarmists that the boondoggle that has generated so much money for them, (often tax payers' money), is finally running out of steam (cue next green scare campaign - biodiversity crisis anyone?). From WUWT: My Inbox exploded with tips today, this one in particular. This unbelievably vile video from the 10:10 campaign takes the award for the most disgusting climate and carbon reduction video ever. It is in a class by itself, which is off the scale. See also Ryan Maue’s post below this one on the 350.org tie in for 10:10.   What were they thinking? They weren’t, because this is going to have the exact opposite effect they intended it to have. I don’t have words to describe my disgust with the video. RELATED STORIES: Lower Than This They Cannot Stoop   Global Work Party Day on 10/10/2010: come up with your own event

Forgive India for not being Club Med

Mr Bolt is getting tired of some of the criticism being dished out to India at the moment: CAN we give India a break? Stop squealing that it’s dirty, and not quite Club Med? What an embarrassing fuss we’re kicking up now that sports fans finally realise the Commonwealth Games is being held in what’s still - yuk! - a Third World country. Reporters are competing to find the most horrific evidence of dirt. See the dog prints on this bed? See the hole that the site’s dirt-poor construction workers used for a toilet? See the open drains and pools of stagnant water? The talk is not just of the understandable fear of terrorism or even dengue fever, but of Delhi belly, smells, defecation, child prostitutes, dirty handbasins, and 700 cleaners being deployed to scrub clean the athletes’ village. “Filthy,” sniffed the Commonwealth Games Federation. “Uninhabitable.” Olympic Committee president John Coates even complained the Games “shouldn’t have been awarded to Delhi in hindsight”. Gosh, who’d have thought India isn’t quite Sydney, or Melbourne? The rest here.

Popular British TV chef: please don't celebrate excessive thinness

I couldn't agree more. As I've said several times, the new class of puritanical health scolds have a lot to answer for, and it is indeed not surprising that increasing numbers of children are presenting to hospitals with eating disorders. We're are quite literally making them neurotic about their food. Nigella Lawson has championed an "anti-diet" philosophy and expressed concerned that increasing numbers of young people are suffering from eating disorders. The television cook, renowned for her indulgent recipes, said she worried that dieting had become "normalised" for teenagers. Seeing her late mother, Vanessa, struggle with eating disorders throughout her life has made her determined to have a positive relationship with food, Lawson said. "I think that's probably very much the basis of my anti-diet stance. "It's not that I think it's good to eat unheathily, I don't, but I can see how corrosive obsessive dieting can be. Via the Food & Health Skeptic

Scientific American - Generation X Loyaler to Religion Than Previous Generation

"Research published this week reveals a surprising trend among the American generation X—the group who came of age in the late 1980s and 1990s and are known for their rejection of all things conventional. It appears that in comparison to the baby boomers, Gen-Xers are significantly more loyal to religion." Full article here.

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Labor’s black hole is far deeper

Andrew Bolt: In ordinary times, this would be the final straw - and not just for the independents who claim to be so concerned with black holes and competent government: THERE is a multi-billion-dollar gap between what Labor expects its mineral resources rent tax to raise and what the miners expect to pay The ... three companies, which negotiated the revised deal and would supposedly pay the vast majority of the new tax, believe it will cost them only a few hundred million dollars extra each year. That adds up to only about $1bn a year in total from them in contrast to the $5bn to $6bn a year extra predicted by Treasury and promised by Labor… It also makes the arguments and accusations over Coalition costings look modest by comparison. The difference is that Labor can rely on official Treasury backing for its figurings. UPDATE Paul Kelly says it would be bizarre if the independents seize on Tony Abbott’s costings shortfall, as claimed by Treasury, as the reason to back Labor instead: Some of this ($10.6 billion costings “hole") reflects the inevitable “different models and data”, as Treasury concedes. But the Coalition has made mistakes that should have been avoided… And if Gillard wins she will lay this charge around Abbott’s head for the next three years to ruin him… The reality, however, is that the budget policy of Labor and the Coalition, measured by Treasury estimates, is near identical. Treasury says that over the forward estimates the Coalition improves the bottom line by $863m compared with Labor’s improvement of $106m, though in the final two years Labor’s surplus is bigger… The independents need to be careful: any effort to tie costings to the issue of confidence when both sides have a similar bottom line would seem bizarre and Labor’s first-term financial blunders have been so high profile. The real strategic blunder of the week was Gillard’s deal with the Greens: In a sense the deepest insight from the week is Gillard’s commitment to a Labor-Green alliance, precisely because it was so unnecessary… It is Gillard taking ownership of the Labor Party: a decision driven totally by politics, not any pro-Greens sentiment. Its motive is to show that Gillard is the arch interpreter of the new politics, prepared to compromise to secure the numbers. In this deal Gillard surrenders little of substance… (But) Gillard has invited the Australian public to see and judge Labor as the party in alliance with the Greens, a movement it cannot control, whose values are sharply different from Labor’s. If Abbott is consigned to opposition he will crusade on this strategic blunder for the next three years.

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Dear penis, I don't think I like you anymore

Words fail.

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Genetic excuse for obesity 'is a myth'?

Dr Ray comments: There's actually nothing new in the research below. That you can work off fat by exercising hard and regularly is no news at all. There is no denial below that some people are genetically predisposed to fat. Obesity researchers have dismissed as a "myth" the excuse that we are "slaves" to our genes. Academics found that people could work off around 40 per cent of the extra weight that "fat genes" laid on them by exercising. Although some people do have a predisposition to be overweight or even obese, scientists at the Medical Research Council's Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge discovered that having an active lifestyle could go a long way to countering a person's genetic inheritance.

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