On the Beat

Ben Goldacre has done an excellent job of debunking the various news stories surrounding Facebook, such as "Social websites harm children's brains", and "How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer".

Yesterday, I succumbed to an outright piece of marketing - rare for ,I think. I chose to buy the Saturday edition of the Independent purely on the basis that they were giving away a free CD of Sigur Ros. Although I read the Independent most weekdays, the Grauniad is my Saturday paper of choice - on the basis of its magazine and, I think their listings (which are tailored for Scotland).

Friends of mine have raved about Sigur Ros, so I thought I'd see what they were like. Advertising music so far: but it isn't their fault that their tunes get picked up by advertisers. And I am sure Iceland is grateful for the hard currency!

The Economist published this world map of failed states:



It shows Columbia, Nigeria, Congo, Somalia, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Iraq... and Netherlands.

I am sure it makes sense in the context of the article, but I was slightly surprised to see our close, tolerant neighbours highlighted like that!

In the Observer today, there is a supplement on crime novels from their list of 1000 books "everyone must read". (Should perhaps - not must. I mean, really...)

The first page has the URL for the list - www.guardian.co.uk/1000books - so I went ot have a look.

"Sorry, we haven't been able to serve the page you asked for."

That is because the URL should have been www.guardian.co.uk/1000novels.

Clever subeditors!

Gordon Brown says he saved the world!.

A really entertaining gaffe. I heard it on the BBC, but it isn't on their website - I found it on Sky. Sorry!

In the Indie today, two stories caught my funny bone:

• Science journal mistakenly uses flyer for Macau brothel to illustrate report on China. They thought it was a poem. It reminds me of a story a couple of years ago a girl who had a Chinese swearword tattooed on her (by mistake) (about and some similar stoires)
  
• Bank offers Kaylie Coomber £84.5m overdraft. Yes, 84.5 million pounds. She had asked for £50. The story isn't on the Indie website (god knows why not!) - only the print edition - but it is all over the place. Maybe Alliance & Leicester aren't suffering like the other banks.

BBC radio has been running a news story all afternoon - Life in UK 'has become lonelier'.

The city I live in, Edinburgh, is apparently the loneliest place in the UK.

Except… The survey didn’t measure “loneliness”. The tab marked “Isolation Map” details what they did measure:

1. Non-married adults multiplied by a weight of 0.18
   
2. One-person households multiplied by a weight 0.50
   
3. People who have moved to their current address within the last year multiplied by 0.38
   
4. People renting privately multiplied by 0.80

So unmarried people living by themselves living in rented accommodation are more isolated and lonely. And they measured it by looking at census data – they didn’t interview people at all.

I disagree with these findings. There may be a connection: but I bet that those living in rural Scotland can feel isolated.

Clearly spurious findings – which is a shame, because they may have been looking at – or for –some interesting things.

From the Scotsman: "Reasons to be cheerful: Scots are among Europe's happiest"....

Also on Boing Boing was this horrific story of a "Man whose US immigration notice was sent to the wrong address is detained with untreated spinal cancer until he dies, denied access to his wife and children".

There is more on the New York Times website: Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands.

It is just a horrible, shocking story.

Back on April 1st, I was convinced that the Independent's story of Gordon Ramsey being banned by the Australian government for swearing on TV was an April Fool's joke.

Clearly not. Because last week, he got given the all-clear!

D'oh!