The things you learn

Hunting out work stuff on the web uncovers a whole host of new information. As a would-be autodidact, vaping leads out through politics and public health policies into a wonderful world of philosophy, psychology and alien spheres of science. It’s an awesome jungle of discovery. And then, just to keep it fruity, I occasionally land on something like the article I read this week. The article explaining to me that a chimpanzee’s testicles weigh more than a third of its brain.

File Under Obvious

Do you remember going to see the careers guidance officer? At least that is what they were called when I was at school, I believe following continual cutbacks that the Department for Education has issued all institutions with a dartboard labelled up with all the options. Spotty hormonal teenagers now shuffle down a dank corridor, pick up a blunt set of arrows and have three opportunities to land one of the two placements in their town.

Media Bias

Life is not a bowl of cherries. All too frequently, when someone directs your attention to a vape story on a newspaper website, eyes are raised to the heavens and angry words might be uttered. People acted as though they’d never seen alternative facts before the recent US Presidential election – but we’ve been reading them for years. Are we paranoid? Do papers really keep reporting nonsense? A recent scientific study has looked into this very issue.

Lay Off The Headphones

It is probably best if, before this article goes any further, we point out that we have not received any money, favours or benefits in kind from Big Music. No CDs, no tickets for The Proms – not even the autographs of Little Mix. Nothing. We need to point this out because there will almost certainly be some public health expert or other decrying us as shills or indulging in astroturfing.

Etiquette

Do you put your hand up when you cough or sneeze? Do you lay and work from outside to in with your cutlery? How about kissing when greeting, do you go for the informal double from cheek to cheek or hide in the toilet till they’ve all gone home? Us Brits seem to be preoccupied with etiquette, well a sizeable number of us anyway. Heck, somebody gives Debrett’s money to tell people how they should dress and stand at parties.

Vape Yourself Happier

We Britons seem to be busier than ever, every year we are set tougher targets and higher goals than the year before. As we struggle by on a mix of luck and fudging of figures (it’s OK, you’re among friends, no one will tell), looking forward to retirement, some bright spark suggests that we should all continue working for even longer. No wonder people are shouting at each other across the lanes of the M25 and M6. We need to get happier.

Vaping Is

Vaping is better than smoking, everybody says so. Well, all the people who aren’t shovelling stacks of pharmaceutical dollars into their bank accounts or licking cold lampposts. Public Health England (PHE) believes it so. Then the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) called it. Ninety-five percent safer, top docs said, at least ninety-five bloomin’ percent. Then The Cochrane Review rubber-stamped the PHE and the RCP reports.

Storms

Not many of you will have noticed, but apparently there has been some weather happening recently. It is the kind of weather we only see on an annual basis, at this time of year, which will explain why so many thought it was a normal blustery winter day. Idiots. Not the media though, they managed to find every single thing that Storm Doris could impact upon.