scottsdad

I was quoting something GordonS said, not anything you said. Exercise can indeed help people's wellbeing. But it isn't a cure for depression.

Just checked my emails to see - they asked me in March to review a paper and wanted my comments within 10 days. It is quick indeed, and they have absolutely no flexibility with it. I've stopped even clicking the 'reject' link as they then ask you why you can't, and who else should they approach. I reviewed a paper for Scientific Reports in October last year, a much more reputable journal from Nature. Their email said that they wanted the comments ideally within 10 days, but I could have up to one month more than this.

No, that's not what I'm saying. A statement was made that hinted that if depressed people got some exercise, they would no longer be depressed. I'm saying that this isn't the case. You can have all the exercise in the world and still have depression.

Folk like Michael Phelps and Serena Williams? These folk have publicly stated that they have battled depression. I'd say they get a fair amount of exercise.

In my old job, the policy for overnight travel used to be that staff were paid a blanket rate. A few of our guys would go up north in the van and take tents and sleeping bags with them, and take the £70 "hotel allowance". Then someone had the bright idea to change the system that basically supplemented folks income for years. Now they had to pre-book a B&B, and have a receipt, and have managers and finance people check the receipts and so on. This change made it worse.

I love Eden Camp. Went there on holiday as a kid, and again a few years ago.

I was eating lunch in the cafeteria one day when this guy went off on one. Picked up a knife and started waving it about and shouting. Me and a mate managed to subdue him but he did end up cutting himself. I felt really off afterwards. I was sweaty, nervous and agitated. I couldn't even stay at work, so went for a walk to try to take the edge off. I'm not sure what came over me but I went home and picked up a foil and headed back to work. On seeing me with it, some guys just ran away. I started talking to a co-worker who I fancied but out of nowhere two of my bosses attacked me and knocked me clean out. I woke up a little later in a nurse's office. I'd been given an injection and started to feel a lot better. I got back to work a few minutes later and things calmed down a bit.

Having worked flat out for a long time, yesterday I found I had (literally) nothing to do. Students all squared away after exam boards. Grant proposal submitted, papers submitted...all I do work-wise now is answer the odd email. Hence, I'm on here posting nonsense. It's Friday. Who cares?

Forced, aye?

I read a story a while back about Hubert H. Humphrey, the Democratic candidate for president in 1968. Someone in Nixon's team found out he had been having an affair and suggested to Nixon that they leak the story. Nixon said no because he was worried it would make voters switch to Humphrey.

A couple of weeks ago I has a disagreement with @oaksoft about the use of statistics in science. With that in mind I came across a scientific article that made this somewhat bold claim in its abstract. Wow, I thought. That's a claim and a half. So I read the article. The statistics used in it are unbelievable. Let's take one example. They use vaccination data from Israel as they had the big early roll out. Then they compared the number of vaccinations against the recorded incidence of side effects from the Netherlands. Why the Netherlands? Because they reported the highest level of side effects (701 per 100,000). Or, to put it another way, 5 and a half times the EU average. The Dutch number is an utter outlier; the next highest is Estonia at 412 per 100,000. EU average is ~120 per 100,000. The bad statistics continue, but this is the basis of their claim. All their later statistical analysis is based on this initial assumption. The NNTV figure is based on a letter to the BMJ rather than a separate peer-reviewed article, and ignores the fact that NNTV isn't a much used indicator of anything. The figure is from back of the fag packet maths by a retired paediatrician. A take-down of this nonsensical figure is given here I did wonder how they ever got published, and then realised it was in Vaccines, an MDPI publication. I have published with MDPI in the past, but no longer do. Their business model is open access - authors pay about £1400 to get their articles published. This is standard across all journal types but MDPI only do this. And the quality of what they publish is a very low bar; I stopped publishing or reviewing with them when I saw that they were letting anything through. I'd review a paper for them, suggest it be rejected, and find it published online the next week. But that line in the quote above...it has appeared in social media replies to the likes of Jason Leitch and others. This is just anti-vax nonsense. You can read the paper here: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/693/htm - it is riddled with bad maths, poor assumptions and weak statistics.

I started watching in the mid-90s, after Senna's death. I'm restricting my list to those I've watched since, so no Prost, Senna, Lauda, etc. 1. Michael Schumacher. Ruthless, brilliant and never, ever gave up. He could be running in 16th with 15 laps to go and you'd still fancy his chances. The English hate him because he collided with Damon Hill in 94. But he was the best I've seen, including... 2. Lewis Hamilton. Only in the last couple of seasons have I warmed to him. He has always been talented but now is in his peak. It would be wonderful to see 2019 Hamilton vs 2002 Schumacher. One difference though - Schumacher was never beaten to a world title by a team-mate. 3. Fernando Alonso. The man makes the worst ever career choices, and denied himself countless titles by moving teams to the wrong ones. That he has 2 titles while Vettel has 4 is unbelievable. But he can drive. 4. Mika Hakkinen. He ran Schumacher closer than anyone. My favourite ever season is still 2000 - Hakkinen and Schumacher both going for their 3rd titles, in fairly even cars. And my favourite race - Belgium 2000. The overtake itself always generates excitement but there was lap after lap of Hakkinen catching him until he made the pass. He had a kid in 2001 and it just took something from him. He lost half a second a lap and retired. 5. I thought about Raikkonen, Rosberg and Vettel, but I'm going for Jacques Villeneuve. Came in in 1996 to a good Williams team, and won the title in just his second season (like Hamilton). Williams changed engines in 98 (from Renault to a sewing machine I think) but he still out-drove it. He helped set up the BAR team and started off out-driving that as well. But with him you look before and after 2001. At Australia in 2001 he was in a bad accident with Ralf Schumacher. Part of his car came off and hit a marshal, killing him. After this race, Villeneuve never recovered and lost about a second a lap and his career fizzled away quickly after this. Until that, he was a very fast, very dangerous driver.

The 2014 World Cup was wonderful. I watched most games and there was no shortage of bonkers scorelines, right from the start. It was very refreshing after 2010, which was dull, boring and the vuvuzelas made it sound like you were watching from a beehive. The Champions League shot itself in the foot by going 100% to BT sport. Without terrestrial TV, competitions vanish from the public consciousness (like golf - the world's top 10 golfers could walk in to my living room right now and I wouldn't have a scooby who they are; a far cry from the days of Faldo, Ballesteros, Torrance, etc). Since the fortnightly games came off STV, people have cared less and less about it. Who won it this time? Chelsea? To absolutely no fanfare. The FA cup never recovered from Man U ducking it in 2000. That mortally wounded the competition. That, and they now play the final at 5 pm and put it up against other matches. It's no longer an event.

So restrictions in your local area are based not on Covid rates, but on what Covid rates were a little over 3 weeks ago. You can have a wedding with 100 people in East Lothian but not in Stirling. Surely someone, somewhere should say to those in charge that this is just nonsense now.

Nichelle Nichols was about to quit playing Uhura in the 60s Star Trek TV series. She was talked out of quitting by Martin Luther King.

Look beyond "cases" and it isn't so bad. Yes things are creeping up slowly (hospitalisations, deaths) but outcomes are orders of magnitude better than the winter wave.

Best currently available.

What happened to the monarchy thread? Was it deleted?

BBC article today covers the weakened relationship between infections, hospitalisations and deaths. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-57581952 We just do know!

Consider me a roaster. I am not denying an increase. It is there. But I see it as an acceptable level. I posted a link earlier. Deaths from flu and pneumonia outnumber covid deaths by a factor of ten to one. If we are happy to live with these other deaths without killing businesses and people's lives, why not for covid?

20 years ago I shared an office with a girl (there were 6 of us in the office in total). This girl, though, was funny, smart and very laid back. We were friendly at the time (not in that way). We stopped working together in 2003 when I moved away and lost contact fairly soon afterwards. Last night my wife is on Twitter, and showed me a profile. It was her (she and my wife had always got on as well). No idea what happened to her but the twitter timeline is endless anti-Trans stuff, ALBA party guff and conspiracy theories.

Looks like the politics forum has caught a dose of something blue...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/23/nhs-alarm-rise-number-uk-covid-patients-ventilators