new year, new decade

Happy New Year people, if anyone is still reading this! It has been a while since I posted regularly, sorry about that. Sometimes life gets in the way of internets!

Well, I hope the new year and the new decade bring happiness to people. The last year, and in fact the last decade have not been very good for many of the people I care about, so I hope that the start of a new decade helps people to draw a line under the crap and move on from here.

How futuristic does 2010 sound though? I am starting to feel old...

Well, my plans/resolutions for the new year include:
floss daily
pass my college course
exercise more often
eat fewer sweets.

That seems manageable, doesn't it?

Well, hopefully most people are seeing the new year in in the way they want to and with the people they wan to be with (and not reading my internet blog as the clock strikes!)
I am seeing the new year in with a game of scrabble and a christmas cracker. Oh yeah...

STOP BREEDING!

I just watched the "horizon" programme on the BBC "How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?" and I think it was well worth a watch
Here is the link to it on iPlayer
If you are not in the UK, or if you are and you are lazy, then the basic upshot as I understand it is:

Increase access to education, particularly for women in developing nations
Increase access and availability of contraception throughout the world
Stop providing state funded fertility treatment (that's one of my own btw)

It really is all quite disturbing. Go and give it a watch.

Fact: the worlds population increases by roughly 9000 every hour.

it is possible that I am being dense here, but...

According to media articles today the world's ice sheets are melting and causing a rise in sea levels. Now, I am sure I am missing something here, because I always thought that ice expanded when it froze, so surely if the ice were to all melt the sea level would actually drop? I mean, if I get a glass of water and pop a couple of ice cubes into it, when those ice cubes have melted, the overall level of water in the glass will drop slightly, and if I were to freeze the glass of water the water would expand as it froze. So why will sea ice melting cause a rise in sea levels?
Like I say, I must be missing something here, anybody care to enlighten me please?

the highs and the lows

Well it is one of those weird kinda days for me today. I still haven't quite adjusted to the "new" time since clocks last week, and I really don't like the short winter days anyway. Plus there are many not-great things at the moment such as:

Serious illness in the family (not me)
Not-so-serious illness (that is me)
My body's capacity to fill my head with snot, particularly when I want to breathe in. Or out.
The fast approaching should-be birthday of someone who died many years (decades) too young.
The ridiculous price of gas that makes me worried about putting the heating on even though I am cold.
Himself being unwell and miserable, and the worry that brings me.
The fact that I have still not completed my homework and am unlikely to do so before college in the morning.
The idiot next door who keeps blocking the drive with his car.
The fact that the car seems to have died (possibly the battery?)
The fact that it seems to be dark all the time, and cold and miserable.
Several of my friends are going through hard times and there is very little I can do for them
Christmas is fast approaching and I am skint.
I still haven't got the electrics fixed so I am mostly in the dark

And many other crappy things too, I am sure, but I can't remember them because my brain cells have been temporarily replaced with mucus.

So I have tried, in the interests of balance, to think of some good things at the moment, such as:

Russet apples are in season again and they are my favourites.
Winter is a good excuse to eat lots of cake and not worry about putting on a bit if weight because I need the fat to keep warm.
The library has lots of new books in that I want to read.
I am doing a course and learning something new.
Christmas is approaching and people might buy me presents.
My health, although not improving, isn't really getting much worse (barring the cold that is)
HIGNFY and Never Mind the Buzzcocks are back on TV, and they make me smile.
I found someone who sings even worse than I do:
Really bad singing man
and the video had me laughing more than I have in a long time.
Himself is really quite lovely.
The cats are being very nice.
I have many friends (who have been neglected somewhat this last year)

Again, I am sure there are lots more good things in my life at the moment, but when you're sat wearing 5 layers of clothing (including two dressing gowns) and you are still freezing, with a streaming cold, a headache and an overall feeling of melancholy it is hard to think what they are.

ETA
these vids also make me smile:
electro gyspy
amazing horse (NSFW)

do we have any say in this?

I find this article from the guardian incredibly worrying.
We do seem to be heading towards some kind of police state and what are we doing? Nothing it would seem.
It makes me wonder if I am stored on this database? Probably. That does disturb me somewhat. So now we have all these databases, we have all these extended terrorism based laws, we have all our email and phone calls monitored, we potentially have unmanned spy planes monitoring us silently from 50000 feet, we have CCTV cameras recording us every time we leave the house, we have the DNA of hundreds of thousands of this country's citizens on a database, including many innocent peoples, we have more police than ever before, we have pretty much lost the right to protest, the police can get away with killing people, police in London may soon be armed - with sub machine guns capable of firing 800 rounds a minute...and we are STILL meant to be afraid of terrorism?
Well, I am afraid, but perhaps not for the reasons I am supposed to be scared. This government scares the hell out of me.

I was going to read 1984 again soon, but I don't think there is much need. I'll just read the news instead. And take up biting my nails and calling my friends by code names.

maybe...maybe not...we won't let that get in the way though

Well, I just read an article in...yep, the torygraph yet again this time with the rather dubious title of

"long term use of mobile phones may be linked to cancer"

with a subheading of

"long term use of phones may be linked to some cancers, a landmark international study will conclude later this year"

Now, I have a problem with this article, and I have a problem with the title. lets break it down shall we?
long term use of phones may be linked to some cancers, a landmark international study will conclude later this year
May be linked. OK, yes they may be linked. They also may not. There is a 50/50 chance you will be right with that statement.
Some cancers. Which cancers specifically? Don't just say "brain tumours" there are many different sorts you know.
The study will conclude later this year? How do you know that, since it has not yet been published?

This all seems like dubious reporting to me.
OK, so let's assume there is a risk and the study, not yet published or even concluded does show a link. How significant is the risk? What is the mechanism by which the use of mobile phones can cause the growth of cancerous cells? Is the link a significant and clearly defined one, or is it more that the vast majority of people now use a mobile phone, so it therefore would stand to reason that more cancer sufferers have used a mobile phone than they would have done say 15 years ago? Is the risk also increased for people who used early mobile phones that could emit ionising radiation or is the risk the same for all mobile phone usage? Is there an increase in cancers among those who have used military radio equipment or CB radios which operate on similar radio frequencies of modern mobile phones? How accurate is the study considering that the memories of anyone asked to recall their activities a decade ago are hardly likely to be spot on, let alone those suffering with a brain tumour of some kind? What kind of study was this?

These, to me, are all important questions that go unanswered, presumably because the study is not yet concluded or published. It may well be that we discover a proven link between mobile phones and cancer, then again we might not. We don't know yet. Which is why I think it is irresponsible to print non-stories such as this, that basically boil down to "a study is being carried out", because people will not necessarily read the article and understand that there is no story yet - they may not even read beyond the subheading, and that can cause unnecessary stress and worry to many.
I wonder if the media will be so quick to print the results if it does not show what they are expecting it to show.
As Ben Goldacre points out on the Bad Science website, on the 3rd October there were

" 1,592 articles on Google News about one poor girl who died unexpectedly after receiving the cervical vaccine, and only 363 explaining that the post mortem found a massive and previously undiagnosed tumour in her chest. "

I just worry that this kind of bad reporting by the mainstream media can do more harm than good. And it pisses me off.

So Cool!

Just watch this pianist, she plays so fast. And I am not a bit jealous. Nope, not at all. I didn't fall out with my piano the other day when I couldn't get my fingers to play properly (because it was totally the pianos fault and not mine). Yep, surely with enough practice, even I could do that (ahem). Still, totally brilliant, check it out.