Throughout the sanctions imposed on Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, continued because of failure of the Iraqi regime to submit to UN inspections, concern had grown about their ill effects on the population of Iraq. In addition, Saddam had deliberately hoarded funds excerbating their adverse effects, in order to generate sympathy for the removal of the sanctions. [...]
Orac has a great post up on the difference between the two:
Scientific skepticism looks at the totality of evidence and evaluates each piece of it for its quality. Cranks are very selective about the data they choose to present, often vastly overselling its quality and vastly exaggerating flaws in current theory, in turn vastly overestimating [...]
The BBC reports on an NHS poll (which is a clever publicity stunt) for a public vote on whether their new website should depict the human body as is, or leave out rather crucial bits of the body:
The NHS is asking patients whether a new interactive body map should be correct in every detail – [...]
Craig Brown writes:
A reader of my parodic A-Z of Eth!cal PR column by Su Barking has kindly sent in a cutting from the magazine PR Week, dated November 9, 2007.
“Clew Communications is to provide PR support for the relaunch of the controversial drug Thalidomide,” it reads.
A photograph of the MD of Clew Communications, Mary Hicks, [...]
The Guardian have asked artists to re-invent the Snowman, with mixed results.
In March of 2005 I wondered if I should submit my Snowman project to for the Turner prize. I’m obviously 2.5 years ahead of my time.
Johann Hari has a surprisingly good article on vaccination on his site today, tackling the Daily Mail’s campaign to kill children, and manages to lump Melanie Phillips in with Nigerian Islamic fundamentalists on the subject of vaccination. Something that I’m sure she won’t like given her “barbarians are at the gate” mentality when it comes [...]
The attack on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) offices in Algeria, claimed by an Al Qaeda “franchise”, has led to the deaths of ten UN workers. A bus of law students was also incinerated in a second attack on Algerian Supreme Court. One might understand the reasoning of terrorists for a symbolic attack on [...]
Lunatic Adj.
1. an archaic word for insane.
2. foolish, eccentric; crazy.
3. Noun. Person who is insane.
4. Person who lies in the Arizona desert to bath in the moonlight in order to heal a disease.
History C13: Via Old French from Late Latin Lunaticus crazy, moonstruck, from Latin Luna Moon.
Genius Noun.
1. A person with exceptional ability, esp. of [...]
The above picture is of one of my friends, Andy Blowers, soloing a short rock climb of 6m called Dog-leg Crack. It is not graded as a particularly hard route, yet it would stop most novice climbers – reducing them to trembling piles of physically exhausted jelly. Dog-leg crack is the quintessential Peak District jamming [...]