Asda brings back pounds and ounces

If like me, you can remember the good old days when fruit and veg was sold using imperial measurements as opposed to metric, then you'll look back on those days with a sense of fondness and even nostalgia. Now, sixteen years after shops in the UK were required to display weights in grams, Asda has said it will return to the imperial measures of pounds and ounces.

From Monday, Asda shoppers can once again buy strawberries by the pound, with plans to roll this out to other fruit and vegetables if it proves popular.

"We have had a steady stream of shoppers asking us to put imperial measurements back on packs as they are still confused with how much they get in grams," explained Andy Jackson, Asda's strawberry buyer.

"We have taken the common-sense approach and are trialling putting pounds and ounces back on our strawberries this summer season and see what the response is. No one wants to order a litre of beer in the pub, so why do we have to buy 453.39g of strawberries?"

The UK moved over to metric units for most items in 1995, with the final switch — loose goods — being made on 1 January 2000. The only exceptions allowed being pints of beer, cider and milk (588ml) and the Troy ounce for precious metals (31.1g).

But the move proved highly unpopular. One grocer — Steve Thorburn — was found guilty of selling a pound of bananas using Imperial scales after the January 2000 cut off. The public rushed to his aid, sending more than £300,000 to his defence fund, however he was still found guilty of the offence despite several appeals — receiving a six-month conditional discharge.

Anyone for a punnet of strawberries?

Sad people live longer - Downside of being too happy

It can be quite annoying being constantly told by so-called experts or scientists that we are too fat, don't exercise enough, need to let our feelings out more bla, bla, bla. Now we hear that being happy all the time is not always a good thing as too much happiness can lead to an early death, a study found.

The study found that children rated as "highly cheerful" by teachers died younger than their less cheerful classmates. People who are extremely happy tend to indulge in more risky behaviour such as taking drugs, drinking too much, driving too fast or even using up their life savings without thinking through the consequences of their actions.

And that's not the only downside to being overly joyous. Writing in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, a team of psychologists say that people who are relentless in the pursuit of happiness can end up being worse off than when they started.

And people who read magazine articles with tips on how to be happy felt worse after watching a happy film, compared with those who were not given any mood boosting advice. This was probably because they had higher expectations of being happy, and when this did not happen, they felt cheated and disappointed, the researchers explained.

I wonder if I should mention this to my wife? Er...um...perhaps not. I don't want my life to become a misery!

'Black women are less attractive than others': Controversial LSE psychologist sparks backlash with his 'scientific' findings

What man could be so stupid as to slag off a race of women? It's hard enough for a man to find a good woman these days so why make it harder for yourself? Remember, never make a woman feel bad about herself. She'll find ways to make sure your life is hell!!

A controversial psychologist has caused outrage after publishing an article claiming black women are less attractive than those of other races. Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, attempts to justify his theory using scientific methods in an astonishing blog post on Psychology Today.

Using findings from a study of physical attractiveness by Add Health, he claims the results show that 'black women are... far less attractive than white, Asian, and Native American women. He then tries to come up with reasons for his perception of the report.

'Black women are on average much heavier than nonblack women,' he says. However, this is not the reason black women are less physically attractive than nonblack women.' Kanazawa also uses genetic reasoning to try to add some weight to his theory.

'Because they have existed much longer in human evolutionary history, Africans have more mutations in their genomes than other races,' he says.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1388313/LSE-psychologist-Satoshi-Kanazawa-claims-black-women-attractive.html#ixzz1MjF3p6cB

So, having attacked black women because he says they are too fat, he then goes on to say their unattractiveness is because of mutations in their genes. Um...er...time to find a quiet academic post in Chile methinks!!

Johnny Depp is revealed as the Queen's cousin (20 times removed)

You couldn't make this stuff up! Johnny Depp is revealed as the Queen's cousin (20 times removed). We've heard that Lady Gaga is related to Madonna, while Obama counts Brad Pitt amongst his unlikely distant cousins. Now it has been revealed that Johnny Depp shares his ancestors with none other than the Queen. The pair are cousins, 20 times removed, a genealogist researching Depp's family tree has revealed. Don't see much of a resemblance myself!



Hollywood actor Depp, 47, is descended from the Deppes family - French Huguenots living in 14th Century England. Dr Nick Barratt, who works on the British version of Who Do You Think You Are?, told the Sunday Mirror: 'You have to go back more than 500 years to reach the point where his ancestors become royal.'



So now we know!

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1387261/Johnny-Depp-revealed-Queens-cousin-20-times-removed.html#ixzz1Mh8WDKFE

New smartphone privacy alert as Android handsets found to be prone to leaking data

More fears about privacy have surfaced this week. Millions of smartphones which use the Android software promoted by Google are a security risk, it was claimed yesterday. Researchers found that criminals can tap into the transfer of information between the phones and the internet, gaining access to personal data. The discovery was made by security experts at the University of Ulm in Germany.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1388107/New-smartphone-privacy-alert-Android-handsets-prone-leaking-data.html#ixzz1Mgs2FFgd

500million Facebook users 'may have had information leaked to advertisers'

As if it wasn't bad enough that Sony recently notified customers of a breach in its security where the company admitted 100m users had their personal details stolen by hackers, we now hear that 500 million Facebook users' personal information has been leaked to third-party companies, it has been claimed.

The apparent data breach includes profile information, photographs and chat logs from the more than 500million people who use the social networking website. Third parties, such as advertisers, would even have had the ability to post messages, computer security company Symantec said in its official blog.

Now you have to ask the question: how safe is any of your private information these days?