A few years ago, there used to be an event in high summer celebrating Albert Road in Southsea.
It was fun.
And it’s an event I’d like to see return.
There were reasons why it stopped.
Chiefly relating to policing costs.
But perhaps it’s time to re-consider.
There is a chemical (Diacetyl) sometimes found in the liquid that e-cigarettes use (or e-liquid for vaping), and there is a new “scare” about it’s presence in e-liquids. Which is hardly new news to serious vapers.
Nobody has demonstrated that diacetyl is dangerous in e-liquids.
What has been demonstrated is that diacetyl (which is very commonly used in the food industry as a flavouring) can potentially cause a condition called “popcorn lung” in people working with powdered diacetyl. It is obviously a very serious condition, but is also very rare.
Finding diacetyl in e-liquids is obviously not good, but it has been known about for at least a year and most respectable manufacturers are changing to alternative flavourings. What is not mentioned in the mainstream media is that smoking results in 10-100 times as much diacetyl being inhaled – if the potential for diacetyl in vaping is bad, then the certainty of diacetyl in smoke is worse.
Should e-liquid manufacturers stop using diacetyl? It is not certain that diacetyl in e-liquids is harmful, but it makes sense for manufacturers to remove it – which is what many of them have been doing!
Should vapers give up and risk going back to smoking? Well, no of course. Even ignoring all the other health risks associated with smoking, the risk associated with diacetyl is almost certainly far greater with smoking than with vaping.
Should vapers choose e-liquids that do not have diacetyl? That makes a great deal of sense, and there are plenty of choices out there.
To use a phrase used elsewhere: The safest way to vape is not to vape at all. But it doesn’t make sense to stop vaping if that puts you at risk of going back to smoking.
Bystanders? Worry about diesel pollution first.
And you don’t have to believe me; there are plenty of others suspicious of the new study :-
One of the worst examples of muddle-headed thinking you can come across on the interwebs in the wake of the latest terrorist attrocities is the notion that somehow Islam is a religion of terrorism. Now don't get me wrong; I'm no friend of any religion, and Islam has some particularly loathsome aspects (it's treatment of women amongst them).
But to claim that Islam is all about terrorism is to ignore the mathematics of the situation; there are 1.5 billion muslims in the world yet only a miniscule minority are terrorists. If Islam really is a religion of terrorism, then there are an immense number of poor muslims out there.
The critcis of Islam will point out that the Qu'ran has phrases like :-
…slay the pagans wherever ye find them
And that is true, but it also has phrases like :-
whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.
Most "holy" books are like this – you can pull out pretty much pull out a justification for anything you want. Any that applies to christians, hindus, sikhs, and just about anybody else. There are good and bad relgious people; bad religious people will support terrorism and good religious people will condemn it.
Yes there are some muslim terrorists and it would be helpful if moderate muslims would declare that the terrorists who commit acts in the name of Islam to be apostates. No other words are likely to have as large an effect as their co-religionists to formally kick them out of the mosque.
There are those who also claim that all terrorists are muslims which is just laughable; there have been many groups that have resorted to terrorism over the centuries. In fact if you analyse terrorist attacks in Europe up until the year 2010, the overwhelming majority were for causes other that Islam :-
Let us not dignify the mad psycho-killers who went on a rampage in Paris last night with the title of "terrorists"; there is very little dignity to the title of "terrorist" – they are after all scum of the earth, but these mad psycho-killers are too contemptible for even that status.
If as is likely that the mad psycho-killers were aligned with ISIS, let us not call them muslims; let us instead call them islamic apostates. There is nothing that will insult them and those who would follow in their footsteps more than to call them apostates.
And to those who would blame Syrian refugees (like the fascist I unfriended last night) :-
There was a story this morning about how normal people find a constant flood of emails very stressful because it is constantly interrupting whatever they are doing. As someone who has been emailing since 1987 (with a six month break), I find dealing with it less stressful than phone calls and desk visits because you can leave it until later.
It is definitely true that being interupted whilst trying to concentrate on some tricky piece of work can be somewhat stressful (and it is cumulative). One aspect that was not mentioned is that you have to discard everything you were thinking of and bring some other subject to mind; not always the easiest thing to do especially if you are deep in concentration.
Of course it is also unavoidable, and not always unwelcome. But back to emails,
Don't read emails when they arrive, and if you have a ping that announces each email that arrives, turn it off. Check your inbox regularly – on the hour, every half hour, or even every 15 minutes (although that is perhaps too frequent for when you are concentrating on something). You can change the frequency based on what you are doing – if you're concentrating on a project or for a deadline, check less often.
The point is you choose when to deal with emails.
Another source of stress is the amount of emails in your inbox; your inbox is not a "todo" list. Create a "todo" folder and move emails from your inbox into it, and concentrate on keeping that folder reasonably well processed. Your inbox becomes a cesspool of spam (there's always some that gets through), near-spam, and general information. Of course you can get much more organised than this!
And make your own decision on the priority of tasks given through emails. You may agree with the priority a sender sets on a task, or you may disagree, but you decide.
Ultimately the more control you take over your email, the less angst it causes you.
