Running low on food?

I’ve been having a creeping suspicion that food prices in the supermarket have been increasing over the past few months and other friends seem to share this opinion. We have also been warned that some food prices might double of triple in the next few months due to shortages. These hikes for vegetables and dairy [...]

Crap “health” products

This morning in the news we read that Professor Campbell from the Diabetes Centre at St Vincents Hospital in Sydney is seeking to have Woolworths remove weight loss products from it’s shelves. All I can say is good luck.
Although we live in the 21 st century and have seen fantastic breakthroughs in medicine and health [...]

Misleading advertising part 2

The Fruit Loops were delicious, to the extent the carton found the bin before I could cut out the nutrition panels. The kids cleaned them up, as you would expect as this product is clearly marketed for children. However at first appearances Kellogg somehow seem to be unaware of this as you can see below. [...]

Misleading advertising?

The other morning I was trying a new breakfast cereal, Kellogg mini-wheats, and the sweetness of these struck me. Shredded wheat cereal usually isn’t sweet, for those who are not aware. So I started looking at the box and reading the nutrition information. Before I go on I’ll explain this strange consumer behaviour.
Having [...]

Andy Thomas article…must read

It took me a while to get around to reading this article,  originally in the Bulletin, and it is excellent. Here’s the last two paragraphs:
“That is why federal education policies are so important to the country’s future. That is why it was never smart to suggest that not everyone need have the chance [...]

Oooooh, how exiting, an election…. (not)

With an election looming we now have to pander/tolerate a pile egocentric politicians clambering over each other like rabid monkeys near a banana truck roll-over. Just can’t wait. Expect the usual crap, the usual blatant bribes for the masses and the total lack of reality over various issues. I’m sure there will be more than [...]

The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is …”.
Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
*You can leave them exactly as is.
*You can delete any one question.
*You [...]

BOTE #1 – Efficiency of running…?

I have always been interested in working things out roughly from first principles. These so called “back of the envelope” BOTE calculations are pretty good ways of a)making sure you understand how something is derived and b) good for checking what other people are claiming. I first came across this in high school science and [...]

When memories go bad..

Everyone knows the moon is visible in the sky each night, don’t they? Surprisingly many people will think this simple statement to be true when in fact it is true only half the time. Although not as harmful as thinking Iraq was behind 9/11 or that aliens kidnap you for weird experiments every so often, [...]

Study: Fake acupuncture finds no evidence for Chi!

The above is the sort of headline that hasn’t been in the media in the last month after the flurry of announcements about a German study into acupuncture. The general trend has been:

“Study: Acupuncture works for back pain”
“Research: Acupuncture works better than Western medicine”
“News” Acupuncture most successful back treatment”

If you want to find the news [...]