Down and up on the farm

Posted on by August 16, 2017 4

I don’t know what happened yesterday.

Everything was running along smoothly as per normal, when one of my web sites sneezed.

Now it was a small sneeze – nothing that would warrant a day off work, let alone a doctor’s certificate – so I wiped its nose and forgot about it.

Then fuck me but all my sites suddenly went arse over tit.  Now I have quite a few and for them all to go at once meant something serious.  I checked the Interwebs but there was no mention of a nuclear attack so I assumed it was something else.

After a brief bit of testing I discovered the problem – no power in the server farm.  I can only presume that the cleaners had pulled out the plug to the servers so they could plug in the floor polisher.  I waited and sure enough after an hour and a half, they plugged the servers in again and all my sites reappeared.

The cleaners are now sacked.  It shouldn’t have taken that long to polish one fucking floor.

I thought that was the end of it, but it wasn’t.

A couple of sites sneezed.  Then a couple more had coughing fits.  There seemed to be some sort of contagious illness  running riot around the farm.  I won’t call it a virus because that would make all the other servers nervous, but there was something afoot.

There was little I could do as I wasn’t going to drive to the farm and it was getting late.  I decided to sacrifice a goat or two.  That didn’t work.  I disembowelled a kitten but that had no effect either.  I sacrificed one of the neighbour’s first-born and that seemed to do the trick.  All the sites stopped showing symptoms…..

…. except this one.

I tried everything else I could think of and a few things I hadn’t though of but poor old Rambles was in a potentially lethal coma.

I went to bed.

This morning it was back in the land of the living again.  But only just.  It had been in a coma for nearly ten hours, had only just woken up and was now muttering about seeing tunnels with bright lights at the end.

I don’t know how long it will last.  I don’t know if it has just gone into remission with plans to die later today.  Maybe it’s just doing the rounds of all the sites that link to it, saying a fond goodbye.

Or maybe it just needed a break.

I suppose now I had better go and apologise to the neighbour?

 

There is no safe level of research

Posted on by August 15, 2017 10

A phrase that is quite common these days is “there is no safe level of” followed by the target of the day.

Of course anyone with a modicum of sense will realise that this is bilge and that the dose makes the poison.

Tobacco Control have however managed to plumb new depths and are now claiming that a “social smoker” who may smoke three or four cigarettes a week runs the same risks as someone who gets through twenty or more a day.

Of course heavy smokers who are concerned about their health can take great solace from this – even if they cut back to one a day, they are running the same risks, therefore they may as well stick with the thirty or forty?

The article makes some rather strange claims and assumptions though – “To eliminate risks of cardiovascular disease, the only answer is not to ever start smoking or stop it completely.”  So smoking is the sole cause of cardiovascular disease?  Quitting smoking doesn’t reduce risks but eliminates them?  I don’t think there is a single doctor on the face of the planet who would agree with that?  [Unless of course they are a Tobacco Control fanatic].

One factor which the authors of this “study” seem to overlook is in the very title that they themselves apply to their victims subjects – social smokers.  I think most people would agree that social smokers are those who normally don’t partake unless they are socialising with friends at the pub or a party?  In fact there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that some have taken to having a cigarette or two outside a pub where the craic is, rather than stay inside with the dullards.  So these are people who are enjoying a relaxed atmosphere with friends, which is surely a good thing.  In fact the benefits of socialising far outweigh any imaginary harm from a cigarette or two.

One of the stated aims of Tobacco Control was to “exile smokers to the outdoors”.  In practice, all they succeeded in doing was to move smokers and their friends from indoors to outdoors, where naturally a few of the “non-smokers” became social smokers, because smoking became part of a social identity to which they wanted to belong.

Now Tobacco Control wants to stamp out even these occasional smokers by claiming that they are doing as much damage to themselves as “real” smokers.  This is not about truth or concern for people’s welfare: this is about control and a fanatical pursuit of a religious goal.

It’s certainly not about health.

Unpalatable truths

Posted on by August 14, 2017 8

Ho boy but there are a few ruffled feathers in Ireland today.

Some chap in the UK has written an obscure article in an obscure magazine lambasting Ireland as a land of “puppy farms, ratholes like Rathkeale and drug mule celebs“.

It is very doubtful that many people would have read the article and even fewer would have taken any notice, but with perfect loyalty to the Streisand Effect someone complained and now every fucking keyboard warrior in the country is up in arms.  Joe Duffy has enough material for his phone in radio show for a full week or more.

Unfortunately the original article has been removed from the Interwebs, and even more sadly, the author has apologised.  Wimp!

From the few snippets I have read, I have to generally agree with him.  No.  Strike that.  I have to completely agree with him.  Granted he has picked some of the negative points but then maybe they outweigh the positives.

All the things he mentions are as a result of crap governance or policing in the past and present, so I can’t see what people are complaining about.  However not only has the article been branded “racist” but has been officially reported to The Law as such.  Racist my fucking arse.  It’s about as racist as my being branded sexist for refusing to wear a skirt.  Racism is casting a slur on the race [the hint is in the name] not the way a country has been governed or policed.  But then everyone has to be an “ist” or a “phobe” these days?

Of course the problem is that people have been sucked into the idea that Ireland is one glorious theme park full of heritage centres, festivals and other tourist sucking devices and it’s not so nice when someone steps up to the mark and points out that all is not quite so squeaky clean.

People are so fucking touchy these days.