Day: October 21, 2010

It is probably still sadly true that John Maynard Keynes is the world’s most important economist.

But that doesn’t mean he is right, or ever was right.

More and more governments are waking up to the fact that you cannot spend your way out of debt, and that the responsible thing for government to do in the face of a recession is nothing.

Meanwhile, in a kind of psycho-keynesian effort to stimulate the economy and secure their jobs and pension payments, protestors in France occupy oil refineries, block roads, vandalise fuel depots, and generally do everything they can to disrupt the supply of energy on which industry and employment depends.

Good thinking guys.

I’m not sure that ‘dill’ is the right word. But I can’t think of a polite synonym.

Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer don’t like James Cameron.

They accepted his challenge to global warming sceptics to a ‘high noon’ debate.

He kept changing the rules. They kept agreeing to his new conditions. Finally he pulled out completely.

Now Ann and Phelim have produced a crabby and amusing video about the depth of James Cameron’s hypocrisy on AGW.

Incidentally, I don’t mind James Cameron owning three huge houses, a ranch, a collection of dirt bikes, a humvee firetruck and a few submarines. He is a great film maker, one who loves special effects but never forgets that a good story must be character driven.

It is just the sheer, mind boggling hypocrisy of telling all us lesser folk that we have to learn to get by with less:

My wife has been telling me for some time, and not very kindly, that the picture to the left looks nothing like me, since I am now so old and grey and wrinkly.

So here is a self portrait I took with my new Sigma DP1s a few days ago:

Grey and Grumpy

And this is a more pleasant shot from the same camera, at Destrees Bay on KI:

Destrees Bay, Kangaroo Island

But which parent?

Two articles from the UK’s Telegraph.

Fat Women Have Fat Daughters. No surprises there. Whether being fat is genetic or (my God, surely not!) related to diet and activity, what your mum does is going to have a significant influence. So why is this worth a headline?

What makes it interesting is that the same study found that fat fathers have fat sons, but that a child’s obesity was not correlated to the weight of the opposite sex parent.

Second headline: Diabetic Fathers With Poor Diets More Likely to Pass Condition to Daughters. Ah, what? Not the clearest headline in the history of journalism. But possibly one of the dumbest.

The study that was the basis for this article was a study of rats.

Male rats fed a high fat diet developed obesity and glucose intolerance. When those male rats were mated with normal females the female offspring were more likely develop impaired glucose tolerance and insulin secretion as they grew up.

My first thought on reaidng this was ‘Maybe that Lysenko guy was onto something after all.’ But I doubt it.

But really? A few rats are force fed fatty diets and their female offspring are marginally more likely to develop diabetes, and this means human fathers who eat too many chips are going to have diabetic daughters?

No. Being fat is your fault. The only way to stop being fat is to eat less and do more. Having pineapple enemas won’t do it, no matter what Britney Spears says.

But being diabetic probably isn’t anyone’s fault.