Are your friends making you fat?
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
18/08/2010
2010
Category: Science, Health and Saving Things
|
|
A couple of months ago, about 80 people - some of whom knew each other and some of whom did not - gathered in a small lecture room at Nuffield College, Oxford, to hear a man give a lecture about how, if one of them suddenly got fat, the chances are that others would get fat, too. The same applied to happiness: if someone in the room spent the next week elated, that joy would probably become infectious. And the same for smoking: if a man in the room finally managed to quit, the chances were good that his friend sitting two rows in front of him would quit as well. And then, a short while later, a friend of his friend whom he didn't know would do the same thing.
Gordon Ramsay Seeks Reinvention
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
18/08/2010
2010
Category: Famous or Interesting People
|
|
Wherever he goes, Gordon Ramsay sees knives. Today they are at a photography studio in Clapham, a halo pointing inwards towards his head. At other times they are in the hands of rival chefs, or being sharpened by tabloid newspapers, or being stealthily drawn by financial institutions. Of late, Ramsay has employed two methods of self-defence: kick boxing ("I've had the shit kicked out of me for the last 18 months so why not?") and eating out. He says that in January he ate out 47 times, sometimes three meals a day in London and Paris. By eating out a lot he hopes to learn what other restaurants are up to ("chefs are very bad at gauging the customer change because they've always got their heads stuck inside a sweetbread") and finding inspiration for the next phase of his career, which involves a moderate image change and a quest to once again become the hottest chef in the country.
Sir Clive Sinclair Looks Forward
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
18/08/2010
2010
Category: Famous or Interesting People
|
|
At the beginning of 1980, Clive Sinclair launched a computer that he hoped would change the world. In the majority of cases it only changed the way people played primitive computer games, but it also turned a bespectacled, prematurely balding man into a hero for our times.
Catch it! Bin it! Profit from it!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
18/08/2010
2010
Category: Science, Health and Saving Things
|
|
On 30 September 2009, Professor David Salisbury, the Department of Health's Director of Immunisation, sent a detailed letter to the people who were responsible for our future wellbeing during this swine flu outbreak. The recipients included all "Flu Directors and Co-ordinators" and "Pandemic Influenza Leads" in every health authority and NHS primary care trust in England, a rigorously marshalled and prepared bunch, several hundred in total. The letter concerned the new flu vaccine, which was three weeks from being widely available and couldn't come soon enough. After a lull over the summer, the outbreak was on the rise again: within two weeks of Salisbury's letter, it rose to an estimated 27,000 new cases in a week, double the total of a fortnight before. The greatest rise had been seen in people below 25.
Mark Zuckerberg
Sunday, November 02, 2008
02/11/2008
2008
Category: Famous or Interesting People
|
|
I was told not to expect a human whirlwind, but when Mark Zuckerberg walks into the room there is barely a breeze. He is 24, on the short side, shy in the way that short, ginger-haired people often are, and he walks with his head down, as if he is carrying a heavy burden, such as being the richest young person in the world.
|
