Reality is...

USA, Sports and Presidents

You better be good at sports if you want to be deemed a good president in America. Poor Mr. Obama's baseball pitching skills have come under scrutiny after this video

The video has prompted fairly amazing comments from some viewers such as "Why can people not see what this guy is , he is a fraud ,the sad thing is, we are a country without a leader"... Jeez harsh, just because he throws like a girl?

He can however shoot some hoops!

No more to take

Oldy but Goody - Stress at Work leads to... Penisectimy

Occasionally I get comments left on some of my older posts and it often reminds me of some of my funnier discoveries from days gone by. Some individual searched "Stress in the workplace" and came across this rather horrific article I had seen in Metro "news".

From January 07

This was in the classy free "metro" paper recently
Doctors' unions in Romania have criticised a decision to make a surgeon pay£100,000 in damages after he lost his temper and hacked off a patient's penisduring surgery. Surgeon Naum Ciomu, who had been suffering from stress atthe time, had been operating on patient Nelu Radonescu, 36, to correct a testicular malformation when he suddenly lost his temper. Grabbing a scalpel, he sliced off the penis in front of shocked nursing staff, and then placed it on the operating table where he chopped it into small pieces before storming out of the operating theatre at Bucharest hospital.

I hope this article gave the searcher all the information he needed to know about stress in the workplace... It's a bad, and occasionally life altering thing!

Graphing it up

My poor eyes have been subjected to a number of horrific graphs over the past few days, and I genuinely fear that they may never recover.

The Sunday Times produced a graph trying to explain to people how much food is being thrown away in the UK, however the graph was fantastically pointless and hard to understand as it's creator had the great idea of trying to depict numbers of - potatoes, loafs of bread etc - on the same scale as tons of others things... needless to say it looked fairly stupid and made little to no sense.

There have been others too, but the one below has been my favorite as it brought a little cheer to my day. Take a look for yourself (I know its small) and marvel at how

1. the colours are AWFUL

2. the graphs are blatantly too small

3. The fact that the figures have NOTHING to do with the corresponding bars in the back (esp on the top graph)

4. The fact that this was part of a promotional piece trying to sell something.

Poor show, thats all I have to say.

Irish pharmacists get cranky again

Well it would seem as though the Irish pharmacists union is kicking up an almighty fuss again about the governments attempts to reduce the somewhat absurd amounts of profits to be made in handing packets of pills to customers. The arguement being put forward by the IPU is that profit reduction will lead to closure of many pharmacies...

What isn't realised by most people is just how much money there is to be made in this line of business, and with this much money sloshing about, I do understand why the IPU don't want these cuts to go forward. Go to any mid sized town in Ireland and you will find 3 or 4 pharmacies... All selling the same things... To a small population.

Any industry that supports that many of the same business in small population centres is too profitable for my liking (when it's tax payers money anyway). It would be hard to name any other business that you could you open 4 identical outlets in the same small town and still make money (that isn't a pub)

I think the government are completely correct here and hope the cuts go through, snip snip snip.

From the phone - Fads

The photo below was taken at the Science Museum in Boston (in the "kiddies" learning centre), I thought it was pretty interesting... ah Rubik's cubes, where did they go...

Tampa Bay - Mugshot hell

It's bad enough that a search of your name on Google can throw up all sorts of unwanted bits and pieces from your past and present, from dodgy photos on your social network site to silly things you might have written about on your blog... but it can be much worse if you live in Florida. Seems in Tampa Bay, Florida, the St. Petersburg Times have teamed up with the local Sheriffs office to produce a fine website called www.mugshots.tampabay.com , where as the name suggests, they post up mugshots of the most recent criminals booked into their police stations.

Quite humorously you can even browse criminals by all sorts of metrics: weight, eye colour, height and age. The screenshot below shows "Shakara Tabira Waters", who turned up under my "300 pounds or more" search... It becomes even funnier when you realise he crime was... Food stamp fraud.

Great site! and I would say that for some people who would consider undertaking small crimes this may be somewhat of a deterrent

Scientologists running ads on TV now...

As if the whole Scientology cult, sorry, religion thing couldn't get any weirder, it just has. Seems the nice folk as Scientology HQ have decided that in order to spread the good word of their intergalactic deity Xenu they need some flashy ads on US TV to improve how the public views them... here is one of them... its not that bad really, maybe we should all join up?

Easily Impressed

10 Business lessons - a presentation

This presentation is one of the best ones I've seen in a very very long time. Entered as part of the Slideshare "Tell a Story" competition, this presentation combines slick design, and some pretty nifty lessons too. Maybe I will be this good some day... (probably not)

10 Business Lessons Learned

View more OpenOffice presentations from rfashing.

Man has too much of the following - Post-its, Time

I came across this video while going through the many, many unread blogposts that I am going to catch up with today. This rather cool/bored guy has made a very impressive stop motion video with the aid of post-its.
Check it out

Silly figures from silly men

The recent local elections here in Ireland have brought with them a number of excessively silly figures being quoted from the opposition leaders. The most repeated, and foolish of these comments came from Enda Kenny...

I'm paraphrasing here, but he implied that as Fianna Fail had only secured 25% of the overall vote around the country- that therefore 75% of the population had shown - by their voting for others - that they had no confidence in the current governments ability to do their job...
At a first glance it might be easy to be taken in by this logic, beacuase if only a quarter voted for the incumbent government then the rest must be against them... right?

Well, Enda Kenny's party got a whopping 32% of the public vote, so by his same wonderful logic are 68% of the population against his party? To me this doesn't seem like too much more of a margin to be boasting about... but perhaps thats just me.

What made the situation even more farcical that Eamon Gilmore, leader of the Labour party also decided to use the same statistic, saying that 75% of the public hadn't voted for Fianna Fail, so they should therefore step down... Well Labour received 14% of the vote (4% less than random Independents) - 86% of the population didn't vote for them...

What I don't want deny is that the opposition party have clearly made large gains over the last few year, and probably rightly so, however the excessive usage of this utterly pointless statistic makes me worry for the general intellect of the class of people we have running/potentially running our country.

Controlling & Measuring

Taylorism - revisited

Well folks, as a special treat I have decided to revisit the first ever post that went up on this blog all the way back in January of 2007, I have slightly ammended a few sentances here and there but the post is for the most part identical.

I was recently involved in helping design an eCommerce website that is being put forward for a grant proposal. During the process of designing the interface, I noticed that above all - even more than complaining about things - I enjoy looking for the most efficient ways of doing things.

My task in assisting in the site layout was to create an interface where the most functionality could be fit around minimal and optimal amount of actions, and importantly aiming to reduce the “click distance” from place to place, and also how much space each item is allocated (most used function = most space allocated)

For me, the shining lights of the beauty of efficiency and simplicity have come from the works of Jonathan Ive. Mr Ive has won numerous awards for his product designs, based on their simplicity, beauty and ultimately their levels of efficiency in one regard or another. In the last decade the Englishman has brought you products such as the iMac, iPod and more recently the groundbreaking iPhone. In terms of devices such as the iPod and iPhone, efficiency is measured as the amount of processes it takes to achieve your end product and their simplicity. (E.g. to send a message do I need to press one button of 4 different ones) The modern iPod has five buttons (see this really was written in 2007) that will navigate you through simply laid out menus, which themselves never leave the user more than 4 clicks (click distance) away from the media they want to access.

- Enter Taylor -

We are now in an era where the quest is to create the most efficient way of using our technology, and this pursuit of efficiency can be attributed in a large part to one man. The end of the 19th century saw a push toward increasing the efficiency of industry and manufacturing, and at the forefront of this was a man named Frederick Taylor. Taylor was born in 1856 and was a huge proponent of the industrial efficiency movement, and is widely acknowledged as the “father of scientific management.”

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His theories improved the efficiency, output, profitability and quality of life for workers, and set the basis for the modern day manufacturing processes seen all around us, and the reason why so many of our everyday consumables are relatively much cheaper than before his reforms were introduced. He claimed that all industrial processes should be standardised and based on scientific research rather than more unreliable rules of thumb or anecdotal evidence, by finding this “one right way” efficiency would be increased, this was achieved by bringing in mechanisation and assembly lines in which jobs were broken down into their simplest aspects and standardised. (Taylor was also the inventor of the “time – motion study” which breaks all the processes involved in a product down into seconds and allows accurate estimation of ideal output. I saw in a recent documentary that the modern day masters of this are Nike who measures their processes in terms of thousandths of seconds. 6.6 minutes is assigned to the production of each t-shirt, pay rate in Dominican Republic = 70c an hr = 8 c per t-shirt = 3/10ths of 1% of the retail price is labour costs!)

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It was also of the utmost importance for appropriate worker must be assigned to each task, it would seem that Taylor wasn’t all that interested in being politically correct.
“A man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work of this character. Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work."
-

Where's the incentive?

Linkage of wages to output was another key foundation on which his theory was based.Taylor observed that people, especially in monotonous jobs, will tend to work at the slowest rate at which they will not be punished, a condition known as “loafing” (I have seen this in action, and I would guess that anyone who has worked in a summer job as a student has either seen this loafing in action, or fully taken part)

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This is due to the fact that people tend to be inherently lazy unless motivated by some factor (not always money) to be otherwise, and, when paid the same people will tend to benchmark their productivity against that of the slowest worker.
I have worked in only one real job so far in my life and that was in Marks and Spencer, and I have witnessed the problem posed by lack of incentives first hand, Taylor from what I can see was entirely correct. For instance in this store we knew that if we just worked a little faster than the mentally dim guy who turned up about only half of his allotted days we’d be safe in our jobs.

Here a condition existed in which striving for to be the best did not exist, instead people strived to be slightly more acceptable than the worst.

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The simple fact is that in absence of an appropriate incentive staff will tend do the least work they can do for the same amount of money.

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Work breaks

Taylor was also one of the first advocators of regular breaks in the working period. Although at first giving workers time off every hour might seem counterproductive it was found that when tested scientifically, a ten minute break for every hour worked would increase productivity and efficiency hugely, and as an added bonus also led to happier workers.

Taylor undertook these studies in the 1930s and these were seen as pioneering findings for the progression of the industrial revolution, and brought with them a new era of critical and scientific thought on how things are done and how they can be improved for mutual benefit of management and employees alike.

-

The example that convinced me of the genius of Frederick Taylor was shown to me in a class I had last year and can be quite easily demonstrated by the following chart.

Taylor agreed to pay his staff far above what their peers were earning as long as they would unquestioningly abide by his new techniques, and as you can see the numbers speak for themselves.

I do apologise to have kept you this long and I realise that the chances are that this interests none of you in the slightest, but I do still think its important to know that the products you use and the price you have paid for them are often influenced directly by the theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor and the era of industrial improvement that he introduced over a century ago.

- Well there you go that was my first ever post. I recently received a comment from a reader that said the following: Thanks for your extensive analysis of Taylorism. I do believe that Taylor had a very cynical understanding of human beings and the Battery Hen mode of working is demeaning to workers. Workers cannot being new ideas and fresh insights to their workplace and a this rigid top-down structure throttles innovation and flexible and intelligent approaches to labour.

I guess I do mostly agree with what the reader says, Taylor did have a rather cynical view of workers, and the do as I say method does indeed throttle innovation. Firstly I suppose I am trying to express the business value of what his theories brought about, NOT whether his theories left a warm fuzzy feeling in the hearts of the workers. I suppose it is worth noting that when Taylor came up with these theories England was a major manufacturing nation, and of course in more recent time the more developed countries have seen their manufacturing industries move to the likes of China etc.

Taylorism in its raw form is obviously not applicable to some of the new more creative industries in operation in the western world – However as unpalatable as it may be, for manufacturing jobs this approach is probably as close to perfect as you are going to get. Mining, sewing pieces of fabric together, operations robots that make cars, packaging things etc etc do not require high levels of innovation from staff, Taylorism offered staff much higher wages than competitors could offer, and much better working conditions than competitors could offer, while making much greater profits than the competitors. And although his methods do not result in a workers paradise, all things are relative.

Natural Disasters - are we doomed? No

Among the numerous "nerdy" sites I visit on quite a regular basis is a gem named "Swivel", a site where users upload data captured from various databases and share it with Joe public. The more interesting charts tend to generate conversations as to the relevance of the data, and people often point out simple factors which might explain trends which at face value seem astonishing and miraculous. Imagine if we had this sort of analysis going on in mass media... (I wont get started on this right now)

One of the graphs featured on the website yesterday that I found to be very interesting is a bar chart showing the "the number of natural disasters by decade since 1900"... take a look and see what you can make of it.

So on first glance you might come to the conclusion that we are all doomed, and for the next few decades we will be incurring increasingly more natural disasters, after all that is what the trend on the graph is showing.

Now, while this may indeed be true, and there is evidence to show that tropical storms may increase with global warming, it is important to consider if there are any other factors at play.

A very valid, and often ignored, argument to bring up is that technological advancements have allowed us to increase our ability to detect hurricanes, earthquakes etc *to clarify, by detection I do not mean forecasting, or prevention, rather I mean recognition of past or current events* . On the weather website "Epicdisaster.com" one writer put it well when they said: "In 1931, there were only about 350 earthquake detecting seismograph stations in the world. Today, there are 8,000 stations. It only stands to reason that 8,000 stations are going to detect more seismic events. Further, our equipment now is more sensitive. Quakes that were undetectable—either because of intensity or distance—now are recorded"

Examples like this demonstrate aptly the importance of examining charts and data at more than face value, and to delay jumping to conclusions before you have considered all related factors.

It all shows the importance of visiting the site... which you should do now... by clicking here.

Canada logo - too boring for comfort

If you know me to any extent at all I am sure you know that I am a huge fan of all things Canadian. Having been there several times over the past few years I have a real liking for the place and I most certainly intend on returning to Canada in the near future.

However I do have one, albeit petty, gripe with the Canada, one thing I cant get out of my mind is how poor the Canada "logo" is, this "wordmark" accompanies all government documents, buildings etc. and is just... well... very boring. Behold the Canada logo in all its boringness:
According to Wikipedia: "Established in 1980, the Canada wordmark is essentially a logo for the government of Canada: it consists of the word "Canada" written in a serif font, a modified version of Baskerville, with a Canadian flag over the final 'a'"

I have to say, if first impressions are worth anything, this logo does not do a whole lot to allay the false conceptions that peoples have about Canada, primarily that it is the boring version of the USA, which it is most certainly not.

I suppose its a silly complaint to have, but the Canadian government should consider coming up with a logo that represents their country in a more exciting light than "we are slightly more exciting than times new roman".

New blog on the block

My friend Manuel has decided to start up a blog in an effort to put to text the undoubtedly strange and wonderful thoughts and ideas that bounce around his brain.
The blog, "Ireland via Chile", can be found here.

His first post brings up an interesting argument about the levels of customer service we enjoy (or not) here in Ireland. Well worth a look. So go. Now...

Where's the Beef?

While reading through an article on "Mad cow disease" (great name for a condition) yesterday I came across this data that shows the decline of grams of beef per person from 1974 to 1999, and accompanied rise of consumption of poultry.

Scares surrounding mad cow disease started in the late 80's and intensified in the early 90's, however the rise of poultry consumption could probably also be attributed to other factors such as cost and poultry being perceived as a healthier alternative.

If you ever dream of beating me...

From the wonderful "Fistful of boomstick" blog:

Jo on the merits of Consumerism

After having disappeared to parts unknown for the last long while, today sees the return of every ones favorite guest poster: Johannes Boegershausen (nice surname huh?) from Germany. Read away at his wonderful thoughts below... DO IT

Recently while sorting the papers and folders that accumulated during my undergraduate studies, I rediscovered some older notes of mine that I prepared for an essay about consumerism and its critics in a course about globalization. As this topic has received reasonable attention amid the current crisis, this short blog entry will highlight some of the key ideas of this argument briefly.

“We all know that Coke “adds to life” and Toyota open our eyes to show as that “nothing is impossible”. Obviously we are living in a commercial age, but what’s this consumer culture about?
Consumption of goods and services as such is a typical human activity. However, some argue that most of today’s consumption in the Western world is consumption in excess of needs. Consumerism is associated with dysfunctional societies, in which shopaholics are bound together by shop-bought items rather than by cultural identity. Following this notion, most consumers buy products for the social identity they bestow on them (e.g. Adidas shoes, Rolex watches, BMW cars etc.). Moreover, the excessive consumerism may negatively affect the environment as well as the health of the consumers (just think about overeating fast food etc.). While there is undoubtedly some truth in this criticism of consumers, one may right ask what are the alternatives? Many of the critics of consumerism call for legislation and regulation to limit consumerism. But what are the consequences?

Libertarians tend to defend consumerism by stating that economic materialism is natural. However, there is a more convincing argument pro-consumerism: consumer behavior (and thus shopping and consumeristic behavior) is obviously driven by the personal decision making of each consumer. Subsequently, the only way to limit excessive consumption beyond needs is the personal decision of each individual. It should be noted, that the term “needs” itself is full of ambiguity, just think of luxury goods – are they per se waste or excessive consumption? Can needs be defined by an authority/state agency in democracy? Rather not. The only other model to eliminate consumerism is to introduce systems with centralized planning and sumptuary laws (welcome back GDR and Soviet Union) – a vision not even popular among the most persistent critics of consumerism…

Just do it.

Rather silly confessions of a Sales Rep

By way of Peter Rost's blog I came across an interview piece with a rather charming contestant off the hit US tv series "Survivor" pictured above. The person in question is Corinne Kaplan, who prior to the show was, according to her LinkedIn profile a "Senior Executive Sales Rep " for GSK. Her profile also states that "My goal is to excel at a challenging senior level sales position"

However I would imagine that the follow information might make future employers a little less likely to hire her.

According to the ex-sorority girl she is ultra competitive and admits with glee "I have no moral compass." But wait, her admissions become even more comical - "Selling drugs is a lie" she said, adding "I sold Vioxx for Merck before it got taken off the market for killing people. I knew damn well it was dangerous; I went around telling them to write it. There’s a lot of serious lying I’ve done in my life"

"It’s not for me to say. … Don’t listen to me. Read your fucking journals. Why the fuck are you listening to your rep? Just because I’m pretty? You think I know more about the drug? No."
..What a charming young lady... and to be fair she has a point, the doctors should not trust every attractive rep that marches into their practice, HOWEVER, if reps are going to start telling the doctors that there is essentially no point in seeing them, and insist on telling them to "read your fucking journals" they might find themselves being banned from seeing certain doctors (I think this happens quite regularly - certain doctors refuse to see reps altogether).

Necessary, not necessarily practiced

Veterinary woes

Last week my favorite podcast in the whole wide world ("More or Less") reported a rather shocking statistic last week regarding the employment situation of British vets.

It would seem that the veterinary community have fallen foul of troubling economic times. Believe it or not the number of unemployed vets claiming welfare have risen by 350%. So as of this week there are now 45 unemployed vets claiming welfare in England, yes that right... 45, not 45 thousand, or 45 hundred... just 45 - but seeing as the base number was a whopping TEN, it seems like an astronomical increase when you consider it in percentage terms.

I'd check out that podcast if I were you.

GQ expose more bad Army slides of a biblical proportion

The US military have a long and proud history of, among other things, producing the most woeful graphics and slide shows on the planet. There are some pretty famous examples out there such as this one: I often wonder how people can come up with slides that are this bad, and I suppose for the most part you can put it down to the fact that people's brains work in different ways, and some people are not particularly graphically minded, that's what I like to tell myself in order to calm down.

However what I just cant get into my mind is why in the US Army, where surely some of America's best and brightest reside, they cant get something like PowerPoint right, and with that in mind I bring you to exhibit B.

GQ, the men's lifestyle magazine has recently published an article and related slide show on their website (here) of some of the cover slides for the Department of Defence's "World intelligence update". Here's one of the beauty's below

Since the leaking of these seemingly top secret documents (shouldn't someone get in trouble for this?), there has been widespread condemnation about the fact that every cover slide seems to use a quote from the bible, accompanied by pictures of either combat, or freedom bringing troops - needless to say it is deemed a little inappropriate to indicate in any way that this is a holy war.

As for me, I don't think I mind all that much about the fact there are bible quotes on the cover slide, I find that it actually matches the complete shoddiness and shambolic nature of the slide overall. Again, who makes these slides? (again... shouldn't someone get in trouble for this?), I understand that in this case my gripes are solely of an aesthetic nature, but really if I were on the mailing list for this document I would probably bin it straight away.

Head over to the article here and amaze yourself as to just how ridiculous the US Army can be.
Apologies for the pun in the title.

The funniest moment in radio history?

I don't listen to the radio all that much these days, but maybe I would if I was assured such comical over the top political commentary as can be found on the American airwaves. While browsing Graham Linehen's blog I came across this beauty.
I would think that if an Irish host did this on radio they might very well be taken into some sort of special care.

Proposed tax on Soft drinks in the US: what about the fun?

It looks as though various states in the USA are considering bringing in a tax on soft drinks that contain sugar in an effort to curtail the somewhat ludicrous consumption habits of the American population. According to John Berman of World News “The average American drinks the equivalent of 50 cans of soda a month. And we drink more soda than bottled water, milk or coffee.”

This is quite clearly a problem, seeing as there are approximately 150 calories in every can. I suppose you might say that in reality this is not all that much, even if you drank nearly 2 cans per day, but I think its worth keeping in mind that this average figure of 50 probably has large deviation, I have been to America several times and seen the drinks sizes consumed at McDonalds and the like -WAY more than 2 cans - probably more like 4, and then we are talking of more like 600 calories.

“A 1 penny per ounce tax-on sugared beverages could lead to a bout a 10 percent reduction in population consumption which could be a public health home run.” is what Kelly Brownell of the Rudd Center Director for Obesity at Yale thinks about the matter, and most people would agree that additional taxation on products that cause health problems is entirely reasonable, especially in a country where the obesity problem is out of control.

This view is not held by the soft drinks industry, and I suppose in reality that is not all that surprising. Susan K. Neely, president of the American Beverage Association, recently appeared in an interview and had a slightly absurd contribution to make the issue. "Soft drinks don’t play any role in the obesity epidemic" said Neely, adding "Soft drinks are just a fun beverage along with a lot of other beverages and foods that we like to eat or drink. It’s eating too much of something that is a problem".

Now excuse me if I am being overly harsh, but to say soft drinks "don't play any role" in the obesity problem seems like incredibly wishful thinking, perhaps you could say they play a small role, a minor role, something - just don't say they have nothing to do with it. Secondly I don't think I have ever heard anyone come to the defence of a product by citing its "FUNness", that sounds like the sort of arguments a 8 year old might make.
The whole "FUN" theme seems to be a constant feature rolled out by the American Beverage Association, they say in their blog:

"Like we often tell you, we’re a fun industry with a fun history full of fun stories that happens to make fun beverages meant to be enjoyed"

I like what comedian Stephen Colbert had to say about this importance the organisation is putting on "fun": "Yeh... things that are fun are never bad for you, we learned that from unprotected sex"

Although soft drinks are clearly not the only factor to blame for obesity they are however a large contributor, and an easy target to start the reform off, I think that taxing (and btw the proposed tax isn't all that high) sugar laden soft drinks makes complete sense, and if it leads to better health for the population, and tax revenue that can be spent on the health system I say go for it.

Bad Science: What a book

At the moment I am reading the book "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre, a regular columnist for The Guardian for a section by the same name - Bad Science.

This book is unreasonably good and preposterously funny, furthermore it also manages to give you a very good education about the basics of science and thinking in a more scientific way.

Mr. Goldacre seems to share a great many of the pet peeves that make me a little angry from time to time, and has entire chapters dedicated to, among other things, the likes of Homeopathic "Medicine", how the media contorts & misrepresents data, how journalists get it wrong and much more.
My favorite chapter to date is the one concerning his views towards "Dr" Gillian McKeith, every one's favorite television nutritionist.

Goldacre records his first introduction to McKeiths existence by way of an a letter from a reader of his column informing him of her TV series, Goldacre writes:
"She was also quoted saying something a 14 year old doing GSCE biology could have identified as pure nonsense: recommending spinach, and the darker leaves on plants, because they contain more chlorophyll. According to McKeith these are "high in oxygen" and will "really oxygenate your blood"
He goes on...
"Is chlorophyll "high in oxygen"? No. It helps make oxygen. In sunlight. And its pretty dark in your bowels: in fact, if there's any light in there at all then something's gone badly wrong"

My favorite part of the chapter is Goldacre's analysis of McKeith's "professional qualifications", it turns out that her PhD was obtained from "Clayton College" which offered a non-accredited correspondence course for a mere $6,400 in fees, furthermore. McKeith's defence of also being a member of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants is also questioned by Goldacre: "Well. My dead cat Hettie is also a "certified professional member of the AANC. I have the certificate hanging in my loo"

I could go on about this book forever, so for my own safety I won't, all I can say is that you should try and get hold of a copy of this book... or at the very least have a look at this video of him... and then get the book.

FDA: Cheerios being marketed as a drug

It would appear that General Mills, the manufacturers of Cheerios among other things, are in a bit of hot water at the moment with the FDA.

The FDA which regulates the production and promotion of food and drugs in the US has taken particular exception to the strong health related claims made by the manufacturers regarding the health benefits of including the cereal in your diet.

"You can lower your cholesterol by 4 per cent in six weeks"

In a letter sent to Ken Powell, CEO of Gen Mills, the FDA claim that "Based on claims made on your product's label, we have determined that your Cheerios® Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal is promoted for conditions that cause it to be a drug because the product is intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease"

It would seem that the marketing team behind the cereal chose to essentially ignore the "Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act" and have landed themselves in some trouble.

I'm sure that General Mills will find a creative way to rephrase the meesage they are trying to send out regarding the health effects of consuming their cereal, but part of me hope that that don't because "Failure to promptly correct the violations specified above may result in enforcement action without further notice. Enforcement action may include seizure of violative products and/or injunction against the manufacturers and distributors of violative products"... Part of me likes the image of FDA agents storming in through the front doors of a Wallmart and energetically removing all offending "violative products" off the shelves in a very over the top manner.

H/T Pharmagossip

Hans Rosling on Swine Flu reporting

Great video posted on YouTube by my favorite stats man Hans Rosling. He decided to take a look at the recent occurrence, and subsequent coverage of, the swine flu compared to another disease Tuberculosis.
I wont quote all the figures in the video because it would ruin the video, but the one stat that I will quote is Deaths over the same 13 day period: (from swine flu = 31)(from tuberculosis = 63,066)