It is not an original thought to say that public health crusaders often resemble religious zealots, but seldom is the comparison more literal than in the case of Mike Rayner, director of the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group.
[. . .]
So far, so mundane. Another illiberal battler against the free market with a heightened sense of his own importance and his nose in the trough. The only point of interest is that Mr Raynor is a Church of England priest who is guided by voices.
In all of this I see a sacred dimension. You may not believe that I have heard God aright but I think God is calling me to work towards the introduction of soft-drink taxes in this country and I am looking forward to the day when General Synod debates the ethical issues surrounding this type of tax rather than some of the other issues that august body seems obsessed by.
Golly. Where to begin? On a theological note, I do wonder whether Jesus would really be in favour of a deeply regressive stealth tax that would take from the poor to give to the rich. Perhaps the reason the General Synod does not debate tax policy is because they recall the old “render under to Caesar…” message and realise that it’s none of their business.
If we weren’t already sceptical about the documents coming from Mr Rayner’s team of would-be policy-makers, the fact that its director believes that God has told him to bring about a fat tax in this land should be enough to make us suspect that a tiny bit of research bias might have crept into his work. Considering that the Almighty has approved of the policy, what are the chances of his loyal servant producing evidence that would question its efficacy?
Christopher Snowdon, “Fat tax campaigner: ‘God told me to do it'”, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, 2012-05-21
February 9, 2013
QotD: When God sticks his nose into public health and taxation issues
February 2, 2013
Romania responds to British anti-immigration talk
Romania’s Gandul has a bit of fun at Britain’s expense:
Public fears in the UK over mass immigration by Eastern Europeans has prompted a peculiar response from Romania: One newspaper published a series of ads playing on British cultural stereotypes, and saying why people should move to Romania instead.
“Our draft beer is less expensive than your bottled water,” one of the ads proudly states, hinting at the high costs of living in the UK. Another ad made fun of British cuisine: “We serve more food groups than pies, sausage, fish and chips.”
Other ads touched upon politics, weather and even women: “Half of our women look like Kate. The other half, like her sister.”
The ‘Why don`t you come over?’ ad campaign was designed by the online Romanian newspaper Gandul and GMP Advertising firm in response to numerous reports in the British media about a possible government initiative to launch a negative ad campaign discouraging Romanians and Bulgarians from coming to work in Britain.
Update, 13 September: The campaign just won a Gold Award at AdStars.
February 1, 2013
Nicely played, Samsung
At Techdirt, Timothy Geigner tries to talk about something to do with football or advertising:
It’s almost that time of year again, when many of us lesser beings will gather together to watch super-human men on all manner of PEDs and deer antler urine sprays smack each other around while an oblong leather ball sits somewhere in the background. We’ll leap for the pizza and chili like salmon during mating season while, between whistles, obligatory commercials with Avatar-like production budgets glow at us. That’s right sports fans, it’s [editor redacted] time!
Wait, hey! What the hell? I said it’s [editor redacted] time! Oh, come on. I can’t say [editor redacted]? Fine, what about a euphemism, like [editor redacted]? No, can’t say that either? Maybe [editor redacted]? Damn it, this is stupid. I’m talking about something that rhymes with “Pooper Hole” (heh, got you, editor!).
Fortunately for our entertainment sensibilities, Samsung decided this year to combine a distaste for trademark stupidity and our concept of advertising being content in this gem of a spot.
January 29, 2013
January 25, 2013
The wrong maple leaf forever: the new $20 bill controversy
Oh, hang your heads in shame, Canadians: you put the wrong maple leaf on your new $20 bill. The entire rest of the civilized world is laughing and pointing:
The mix-up began a hundred-some years ago when Canada, a small club founded by French misfit children, decided to create its own currency. These bills and coins would function much the same as Chuck E. Cheese tickets at a modern-day Chuck E. Cheese, in that it would be tradeable for goods (and services). It would be valid in all of Canada.
For many years, the system was a success. Canadians used their Canadian money with ease. Every once in a while a Canadian penny or dime would slip down into the United States but that was no big deal because all the coins look about the same and everyone could just leave them in tip jars, like “not my problem.”
Then, in 2011, Canada decided to redesign their banknotes.
“Paper is out and polymer is IN!” Canada exclaimed in an email newsletter that the rest of the world deleted without reading.
The new bills were made out of plastic. They had fancy updated pictures and a holographic whoozy-whatsits and a big clear window to make them harder to counterfeit.
They featured a big ol’ maple leaf.
But not a Canadian maple leaf.
A Norwegian one.
“Big deal,” you say. “Leaves are leaves; who cares?”
The problem is that maple leaves are Canada’s thing. Like how some nations’ thing is communism, or being the world economic leader, or producing generation after generation of beautiful supermodels. Canada’s thing is that there are leaves there.
And they fucked it up.
H/T to David Akin for the link.
January 18, 2013
When sarcasm goes right over their heads…
Andrew Coyne parodied Toronto attitudes to winter in a Twitter update earlier this morning:
MY GOD IT’S -10 IN TORONTO HOLY MOTHER NO PLACE HAS EVER BEEN THIS COLD EVER EVER
— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) January 18, 2013
As often happens, the sarcasm went right past some folks:
Ummm… @norlaine: @acoyne Hahahahahaha! Ever spent the winter in Winnipeg?
— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) January 18, 2013
Ummm… @norlaine: @acoyne Hahahahahaha! Ever spent the winter in Winnipeg?
— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) January 18, 2013
Ummmm…. @altonabusiness: @acoyne Suck it up Princess! Come to MB, we’ll toughen you up!
— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) January 18, 2013
Ummmmmmmmmm….@cupedoll_500: So cute. -30 Winnipeg pats yer li’l heads. R@acoyne: MY GOD IT’S -10 IN TORONTO HOLY MOTHER NO..
— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) January 18, 2013
I’m from Winnipeg, morons.
— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) January 18, 2013
There is no joke so obvious that two-thirds of Twitter won’t get it.
— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) January 18, 2013
January 17, 2013
BargainBinBlasphemy
January 14, 2013
Inside Ottawa: NDP edition
I found this rather amusing:
NDP PROVINCIAL LEADERS TO MEET IN OTTAWA. ALL NINE ARE REQUIRED TO COMPLETE THE RITUAL SUMMONING OF J.S. WOODSWORTH. bit.ly/13wjEW5
— InfoAlerteBot (@InfoAlerteBot) January 14, 2013
ALSO, MULCAIR WILL BE GIVING THEM NINE RINGS OF POWER, PROMISING THEM THAT NOTHING NEFARIOUS WILL COME OF IT.
— InfoAlerteBot (@InfoAlerteBot) January 14, 2013
January 10, 2013
QotD: The mild, quiet, unassuming world of high-nitrogen compounds
When we last checked in with the Klapötke lab at Münich, it was to highlight their accomplishments in the field of nitrotetrazole oxides. Never forget, the biggest accomplishment in such work is not blowing out the lab windows. We’re talking high-nitrogen compounds here (a specialty of Klapötke’s group), and the question is not whether such things are going to be explosive hazards. (That’s been settled by their empirical formulas, which generally look like typographical errors). The question is whether you’re going to be able to get a long enough look at the material before it realizes its dream of turning into an expanding cloud of hot nitrogen gas.
It’s time for another dispatch from the land of spiderweb-cracked blast shields and “Oh well, I never liked that fume hood, anyway”. Today we have a fine compound from this line of work, part of a series derived from N-amino azidotetrazole. The reasonable response to that statement is “Now hold it right there”, because most chemists will take one look at that name and start making get-it-away-from-me gestures. I’m one of them. To me, that structure is a flashing red warning sign on a dead-end road, but then, I suffer from a lack of vision in these matters.
But remember, N-amino azidotetrazole (I can’t even type that name without wincing) is the starting material for the work I’m talking about today. It’s a base camp, familiar territory, merely a jumping-off point in the quest for still more energetic compounds. The most alarming of them has two carbons, fourteen nitrogens, and no hydrogens at all, a formula that even Klapötke himself, who clearly has refined sensibilities when it comes to hellishly unstable chemicals, calls “exciting”. Trust me, you don’t want to be around when someone who works with azidotetrazoles comes across something “exciting”.
Derek Lowe, “Things I Won’t Work With: Azidoazide Azides, More Or Less”, In the Pipeline, 2013-01-09
January 5, 2013
BBC forgets about original (BBC) series, asks for pilot of new Yes, Prime Minister
As a result, the remake will not be shown on the BBC:
The new series of Yes, Prime Minister was made for a rival channel because the BBC asked its creators to make a pilot episode, it has emerged.
Co-writer Jonathan Lynn said the BBC had been given first refusal on the revival out of “courtesy”, because it aired the award-winning original.
But he called the request for a test episode “extraordinary”, as “there were 38 pilots available on DVD”.
The first new episodes for 25 years will be aired on digital channel Gold.
Lynn told comedy website Chortle that the BBC “said it was policy” to order a pilot episode before commissioning a full series.
“So we said our policy was to not write a pilot.”
The original Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister tell you more about the actual workings of parliamentary democracy than a full semester undergraduate course. I hope the new series can recapture the magic (if you can call showing the awful workings of government bureaucrats and politicians “magic”).
The new series was filmed last summer and is based on a recent stage production, which launched in 2010.
Digital network Gold said the Rt Hon Jim Hacker would return as the leader of a coalition government, with plots focussing on the economic crisis, a leadership crisis with his coalition partners and a Scottish independence referendum.
David Haig will take the lead role, with Henry Goodman as Sir Humphrey. Both have appeared in the stage version of the show.
They will be joined by Dame Maggie Smith’s son, Chris Larkin, as Bernard Woolley, and Robbie Coltrane as a guest star.
January 3, 2013
Comitology and the EU
Alexandra Swann notes that the great C. Northcote Parkinson predicted the EU’s decision-making mechanics with great accuracy:
If we listen to Daniel Guéguen, Professor of European Political and Administrative studies at the College of Europe, the Europhile madrassa, the equation spells the downfall of the European Union.
Guéguen has worked as a Brussels lobbyist for 35 years; he is a full time federast and one of the remaining true believers in the EU. Given his commitment to the EU project, when he deems its system of governance, comitology, “an infernal system” perhaps it’s time to listen.
The concept of Comitology was invented by the incomparable Professor C Northcote-Parkinson in his seminal work Parkinson’s law of 1958. It was meant as a satire but, like many of the best jokes, they either get elected or, in this case, embedded in the bureaucracy. Here is the Professor explaining the comitology and his equation:
x=(mo(a-d))/(y+p b1/2)
Where m = the average number of members actually present; o = the number of members influenced by outside pressure groups; a = the average age of the members; d = the distance in centimetres between the two members who are seated farthest from each other; y = the number of years since the cabinet or committee was first formed; p = the patience of the chairman, as measured on the Peabody scale; b = the average blood pressure of the three oldest members, taken shortly before the time of meeting. Then x = the number of members effectively present at the moment when the efficient working of the cabinet or other committee has become manifestly impossible. This is the coefficient of inefficiency and it is found to lie between 19.9 and 22.4. (The decimals represent partial attendance; those absent for a part of the meeting.)
This beautifully encapsulates the terrifying silliness of what is going on in the tubular steel and stripped Swedish pine chairs of Brussels, and for anyone with an interest in transparency or good governance, it is a serious concern. After all, under various estimates upwards of 75 per cent of our laws, the laws that govern the minutiae of our lives are made in the sterile Committee rooms of the Breydel, Berlyamont, Justis Lupsius and other buildings in the EU quarter of Brussels. That this cosmic joke now governs our lives is just a factor of the brobdingnagian reality of our membership of the EU.
December 27, 2012
“We had no idea how to handle them without offending our agonised liberal consciences”
George “The Great Moonbat” Monbiot has an unscheduled trip down memory lane:
A group of us had occupied a piece of land on St George’s Hill in Surrey, 70 miles from where we now sat. In 1649, the Diggers had built their settlement there, in the hope of establishing a “common treasury for all”. Our aim had been to rekindle interest in land reform. It had been going well — we had placated the police, started to generate plenty of public interest — when two young lads with brindled staffordshire bull terriers arrived in an old removals van.
Everyone was welcome at the site and, as they were travellers, one of the groups marginalised by the concentration of control and ownership of land in Britain, we went out of our way to accommodate them. They must have thought they had died and gone to heaven.
Almost as soon as they arrived they began twocking stuff. A radio journalist left his equipment in his hire car. They smashed the side window. Someone saw them bundling the kit, wrapped in a stolen sleeping bag, into their lorry. There was a confrontation — handwringing appeals to reason on one side, pugnacious defiance on the other — which eventually led to the equipment being handed back.
They wound their dogs up, making them snap and snarl at the other occupiers. At night they roamed the camp, staffies straining at the leash, cans of Special Brew in their free hands, shouting “fucking hippies, we’re going to burn you in your tents!”
We had no idea how to handle them without offending our agonised liberal consciences. They saw this and exploited it ruthlessly. Eventually the police solved the problem for us. Most of the cars parked at a nearby attraction had had their windows smashed and radios stolen, and someone had followed their lorry back to our site. As they were led away, my anarchist beliefs battled my bourgeois instincts, and lost.
December 25, 2012
Repost: ‘Tis the season to hate the senders of boastful holiday letters
Gregg Easterbrook receives the perfect, perfect holiday letter:
Don’t you hate boastful holidays letters about other people’s fascinating lives and perfect children? Below is one Nan and I received last week.
Dear Friends,
What a lucky break the CEO sent his personal jet to pick me up from Istanbul; there’s plenty of room, since I have the entire aircraft to myself, to take out the laptop and write our annual holiday letter. Just let me ask the attendant for a better vintage of champagne, and I’ll begin.
It’s been another utterly hectic year for Chad and I and our remarkable children, yet nurturing and horizon-expanding. It’s hard to know where the time goes. Well, a lot of it is spent in the car.
Rachel is in her senior year at Pinnacle-Upon-Hilltop Academy, and it seems just yesterday she was being pushed around in the stroller by our British nanny. Rachel placed first this fall in the state operatic arias competition. Chad was skeptical when I proposed hiring a live-in voice tutor on leave from the Lyric Opera, but it sure paid off! Rachel’s girls’ volleyball team lost in the semifinals owing to totally unfair officiating, but as I have told her, she must learn to overcome incredible hardship in life.
Now the Big Decision looms — whether to take the early admission offer from Harvard or spend a year at Julliard. Plus the whole back of her Mercedes is full of dance-company brochures as she tries to decide about the summer.
Nicholas is his same old self, juggling the karate lessons plus basketball, soccer, French horn, debate club, archeology field trips, poetry-writing classes and his volunteer work. He just got the Yondan belt, which usually requires nine years of training after the Shodan belt, but prodigies can do it faster, especially if (not that I really believe this!) they are reincarnated deities.
Modeling for Gap cuts into Nick’s schoolwork, but how could I deprive others of the chance to see him? His summer with Outward Bound in the Andes was a big thrill, especially when all the expert guides became disoriented and he had to lead the party out. But you probably read about that in the newspapers.
What can I say regarding our Emily? She’s just been reclassified as EVVSUG&T — “Extremely Very Very Super Ultra Gifted and Talented.” The preschool retained a full-time teacher solely for her, to keep her challenged. Educational institutions are not allowed to discriminate against the gifted anymore, not like when I was young.
Yesterday Rachel sold her first still-life. It was shown at one of the leading galleries without the age of the artist disclosed. The buyers were thrilled when they learned!
Then there was the arrival of our purebred owczarek nizinny puppy. He’s the little furry guy in the enclosed family holiday portrait by Annie Leibovitz. Because our family mission statement lists cultural diversity as a core value, we named him Mandela.
Chad continues to prosper and blossom. He works a few hours a day and spends the rest of the time supervising restoration of the house — National Trust for Historic Preservation rules are quite strict. Corporate denial consulting is a perfect career niche for Chad. Fortune 500 companies call him all the time. There’s a lot to deny, and Chad is good at it.
Me? Oh, I do this and that. I feel myself growing and flowering as a change agent. I yearn to empower the stakeholders. This year I was promoted to COO and invited to the White House twice, but honestly, beading in the evening means just as much to me. I was sorry I had to let Carmen go on the same day I brought home my $14.6 million bonus, but she had broken a Flora Danica platter and I caught her making a personal call.
Chad and I got away for a week for a celebration of my promotion. We rented this quaint five-star villa on the Corsican coast. Just to ourselves — we bought out all 40 rooms so it would be quiet and contemplative and we could ponder rising above materialism.
Our family looks to the New Year for rejuvenation and enrichment. Chad and I will be taking the children to Steamboat Springs over spring break, then in June I take the girls to Paris, Rome and Seville while Chad and Nicholas accompany Richard Gere to Tibet.
Then the kids are off to camps in Maine, and before we know it, we will be packing two cars to drive Rachel’s things to college. And of course I don’t count Davos or Sundance or all the routine excursions.
I hope your year has been as interesting as ours.
Love,
Jennifer, Chad, Rachel, Nicholas & Emily(The above is inspired by a satirical Christmas letter I did for The New Republic a decade ago. I figure it’s OK to recycle a joke once every 10 years.)
