waider

Someone measured. Of course, this doesn't quite address the reality of the situation: our consumption this year is rising, so a 1.5% reduction for one hour isn't going to make the slightest dent in our consumption for the year. It'd be better if the government devoted more effort to meaningful energy-saving initiatives and alternative power sources (such as ESB's announcement last week that they were planning on a €22bn investment in alternative energy over the next 12 years) than to this showmanship that serves only to make people feel good about themselves because they're "doing something".

Tune in next no-car-day when once again Dublin experiences its worst gridlock of the year.

There was something-or-other - more than one something-or-other, if I recall correctly - floating around in the last few months about how all the "exercise to lose weight" advisories were based on some utterly flawed research in the first half of the 20th century. To be honest, I forget the specifics, but the key argument was that if you go and do some exercise, you burn energy, and your body raises the HUNGRY flag in order to get some fuel to replace that energy. And once you start eating, you'll probably overdo it, and thus Exercise Makes You Fat (or so went the something-or-other, at least).

Which fails to account for the fact that on gym nights I often find myself with no real appetite for any food, much less more food than usual.

Mind you, anyone who watches the dial on the treadmill will be aware that your non-professional exercise isn't particularly great at burning off calories anyway. I'll typically burn 300 in 25 minutes of cardio, which is replaced by a pint and a half of guinness...

It's election season over here: the longest running Dáil in Irish history is shutting down and being replaced on May 24th. Various parties are, as expected, promising to do more and more for less and less: more police, more hospital beds, more investment in education, all with lower taxes and increased tax relief for various things. The Progressive Democrats, the current "junior" party in the incumbent coalition, are claiming in their election manifesto that every time they've been in power, tax rates have gone down dramatically, and therefore the right thing to do for lower taxes is to put them back in power again. They've even got a nice graph to illustrate their point. Of couse, what they're not mentioning is that they've never actually held the Finance portfolio at any point.