It's more than a year since I first scoffed at the notion that "third-hand smoke" was going to kill us all. And now I see that this nonsense is back. Over to you, Chris Snowdon:
The respondents were not told that the idea of "tobacco toxins" being harmful at ultra-low levels was no more than a "possibility" (in the words of the final study), nor that the researchers themselves referred to thirdhand smoke only as a "concept". If they had been told that the researchers believed that smokers spread disease "through contaminated dust and surfaces, including the
Granted, it's not quite as memorable as the unsurpassable Demon Sheep, but this ad for John Oxendine, who's running to be the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, has a certain zany-yet-quaint charm to it. Gotta love the gratuitous, thrown-in-for-fun Frog-bashing too. And the line that the Ox is "strong enough to oppose the special interest, graceful enough to care for the people." Take that Disney! Go on, watch it, you won't regret doing so. More like this, please.
This is one of those things that I don't quite understand. Gordon Brown is obsessed with dividing lines and this is supposed to be upsetting us? Sure, this need to draw a contrast (often a false one, but never mind) between his Virtuous Labour party and the Callous Toffs & Cads at Tory head office is frequently petty, prickly and pointless. But what of it? Pete's the latest Spectator gentleman to complain about the Dividing Lines Obsession:
So far as the government is concerned, it matters not that these pledges have been made before – what matters is
As a mild econo-sceptic, I enjoyed James Buchanan's short essay, Economists Have No Clothes:
Economists do not really understand what they are doing as they seem forced to make efforts to control aggregate variables that are not controllable in any direct sense. For example, the rate of employment (or unemployment) cannot readily be shifted by governmental mandate. At best, small and peripheral changes may be made while the emergent aggregate generated by the working of the large and complex economy remains stubbornly immune, or worse, to wrongly conceived reform efforts.
PALIN: I would. I would if I believe that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family. Certainly, I would do so.
WALLACE: And how do you make that decision over the next three years?
PALIN: It's going to be thankfully a lot of time to be able to make such a decision. Right now, I'm looking at, as I say, other potential candidates out there who are strong. They're in a position of having the
David Cameron's speech on "Rebuilding trust in politics" (good luck with that!) was the usual curate's egg: nice and appealling in theory but also vague and gimmicky. This part, for instance, was quite reassuring even if, like so much else, it has more than a hint og Googlism about it:
We are a new generation, come of age in the modern world of openness and accountability. And when we say we will take power from the political elite and give it to the man and woman in the street - it's not just because we believe it
