Hapless band of staff and regulars

Archive for the Other category

Saturday 14th October 2006

Young binge drinkers

Bombardier Bottle As the government launches it’s new TV adverts, the press are quoting these figures

Latest government figures show that young people are more likely than any other age group to drink heavily [binge drink]. Among 16- to 24-year-olds in England, 33% of men drank more than eight units on at least one day a week and 24% of women drank more than six units on at least one day.

Source: Guardian
Now I can’t believe these figures. Are they really saying that two-thirds of young men don’t drink 3-4 pints in a night at least once a week? I had a look at a bottle of Bombardier this morning and it contains 3 units of alcohol. Which means as I’m just finishing off the third bottle I become a binge drinker.
Only recently was I asked how much I had drunk. It was two pints (4.544 units) and three large Baileys (3.57 units), therefore making it a binge. However I had started at 6pm having a pint with my dinner and was asked at 2am in the morning.
I think the definition is just too low, I always believed that someone who binged was drinking nearer 6 pints in a night if not 8. Maybe someone from the health profession can correct me.

Saturday 30th September 2006

Test Posts

Please ignore me, I’m just a test post

Wednesday 27th September 2006

Misleading Stats

Earlier this month the BBC reported this story Second lottery win for US woman.
The woman had won the $1m jackpot on two scratch cards in the last 4 years.
The odds of winning the first card were 1 in 5.2 million, whilst the odds of winning the second card was 1 in 705,600, so experts claim that the chances of her winning both games were an incredible 1 in 3,669,120,000,000. However these experts (or BBC researchers) are wrong. Yes if she had walked in to her newsagents and said can I have one Cool Million scratch card and can I also have a Jubilee one too, then the odds would have been that high. However I pretty sure that she will have purchased more than one of each of the scratch card, and for each time she purchase another one from the same game he odd drop.
For example the odds of winning a small lottery which only has 10 outcomes is 1 in 10. However if I purchase two different tickets for the same draw my odds half to 1 in 5. If I purchased all 10 combinations I must win. And the same goes for this woman. Lets assume that she loves scratch cards and that she had purchased 200 of each before she won the jackpot. Her odds would change from 1 in 3,669,120,000,000 to 40,000 in 3,669,120,000,000 or 1 in 91,728,000 which is a slightly smaller number (but still impressive).

Thursday 7th September 2006

Marriage ‘keeps families united’

The BBC and reporting that Marriage ‘keeps families united’

Couples with young children are five times more likely to split up if they are unmarried compared to those who have had weddings, the Tories claim.

Or is it that those who decided to get married were already in a strong relationship and more committed to each other, so already less likely to break up?

Thursday 7th September 2006

Brown to stand down?

Texture like sun Now if I was Gordon Brown, the moment Tony announces the date, I too would announce that I was standing and possibly retiring from the house at the next election. Why would you want to run the country after the mess Tony has left it in. If he’s lucky he might win one election, and even that could be with a minuet majority and whilst unlikely imagine the embarrassment if he actually lost the next leadership election, it would destroy his political career. Instead Brown’s legacy would be a great economy, one of the best chancellors the country ever had.
I’d rather leave it at that myself.

YouGov

Monday 4th September 2006

Answers on a postcard

Whilst I wish the couple all the best of luck, why is Keating widower weds weather girl being reported as news?

Monday 4th September 2006

Healthy eating at school - unhealthy eating outside?

Today Breakfast on the BBC had one big story which was the new regulations with regards to School Dinners, they had every kind of commentator, and the BBC website have collection of articles about the issue.
McDonalds / Echo PosterSo I was rather shocked when driving to work today to see this poster against one of the newsagents around the corner. Our local paper The Lincolnshire Echo seems to be giving away free McDonalds all week long.
Unfortunately we only get the Echo on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at the moment so I can’t read the small print, but I’m guessing they won’t be stopping school kids from buying them.
However that’s the only fault I have with the paper. It’s now the only paper I actually read, they’re quite nice to me and they were the ones who caught out Jim Speechley. I’ve also found myself listening to Lincs FM since I began my boycott of Radio 1, and discovered that whilst local radio has a lot of adverts, it doesn’t have either Chris Moyles or Scott Mills talking forever and also includes rather useful stuff like traffic updates and relevant news.

GooSync

Saturday 2nd September 2006

Google Image Labeler

Tag pictures for points with Google Image Labeler.
By playing the game, you can help Google build a better image search engine, as unlike flickr Google doesn’t have any real way of knowing what’s actually in the pictures it indexes.

My-Symbian

Saturday 19th August 2006

Where I’ve been meme

As everyone else is doing this
Countries Visited
Like Will it’s pointless showing the rest of the world as I haven’t been there yet. Also I too have been to the Canaries (twice) which isn’t shown on the map.
And looking at the red, it seems that I haven’t really got that far away from England yet.

Friday 4th August 2006

Betting against Chelsea

I’ve been with Betfair.com for some years now, and I think this is the first time I’ve bet against something.
Looking at the odds for the Premiership it seemed that the best bet was against Chelsea. I think they’ll come second or third this year, but just have no idea who’ll win. So by betting against them if any of the other 19 teams win I’m £20 up.