Foxy versus Shiny.

I've been using Mozilla Firefox for about six years. It's a very good browser, but it occasionally annoys me by acting like a Giant Panda i.e. it becomes very sluggish. It's possible to speed-up Firefox by going to about:memory and clicking on the "Minimise memory usage" button, but occasionally, I have to shut down Firefox, wait (sometimes for quite a long time) for it to disappear from memory, then restart.
I therefore decided to have an affair with Google Chrome.

First impressions were good. Chrome installed quickly and it imported all of my Firefox bookmarks correctly, although it didn't import any website user-names & passwords (probably because they are protected).

Chrome has an extensive range of add-ons available. I was able to install Adblock Element Hiding Helper (which had all of the functionality of Adblock Plus, plus some extra features), Script No and Flag. With all of these installed, Chrome loaded pages very quickly.

Then cracks started to appear in the relationship.

Chrome has a grey bar at the top of the page which obscures things on the page. Double-clicking on it makes it disappear. Reloading the page makes it reappear. Using Adblock Element Hiding Helper, I could hide the grey bar (Alt+B, click on grey bar, Enter) on any particular site, but it occasionally reappears, requiring re-hiding.

Right-clicking on a link and selecting "Open link in new tab" opens a new tab but doesn't display it, requiring the user to click on the new tab. Firefox used to do this, but has worked correctly for a long time.

Watching videos on ITVPlayer, I noticed that the resolution appeared much lower than when played on Firefox. On Firefox, there's pixel interpolation which produces a much higher apparent resolution.

And the killer blow:-

When I created a new blog post, I couldn't set hyperlink text colour and the Html editor revealed a large number of spurious div & span tags.

That's it, Google Chrome. You're dumped!

EDIT: P.S. Firefox has been running faster.

Mmm. These oxymorons are absolutely delicious!

I like the word oxymoron. I just saw it in Richard's Blog. As you've probably figured out from reading my Blog, the phrase "healthy low-fat" (usually found just before the word "diet") is to me, a presumptuous oxymoron.

If I type the phrase "healthy low-fat" into Google, I get about 148,000 results. Oh, dear! However...

If I type the phrase "healthy low-carb" into Google, I get about 64,400 results. Yee-haw!

So low-fat may be winning the diet war right now, but the tide is definitely turning. Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey.

Ignorance, apathy & bone-idleness...

...are not attractive traits in people. But do you know what? I don't know, I don't care and quite frankly, I can't be bothered!

Each day, I surf a lot of message boards and I read a lot of messages. People who post messages on message boards obviously have access to the Internet. So when I saw:
"Didn't Atkins die from a heart attack with high cholesterol?", I just had to reply:
"Yeah! Course he did. Everybody knows that. See Everybody knows.........Part 1" to which I got the reply:
"There's no need for your sarcasm, Nigeepoo - pack it in. I was only asking a question" to which I replied:
"Sorry. Did I come across as sarcastic? This is sarcasm Let me Google that for you"

When I saw "Asparagus. How good is it for you and why?", I just had to reply:
"Let me Google that for you"

And when I saw "What is PSMF?", well I'm sure you can guess what I replied. I am such a bad boy!

So, next time you want to find out something, try Google, Wikipedia or (if it's a study) PubMed.

Anyway, here is a picture with a caption that makes me wet myself laughing.

Elvis lives!

This bloke said he saw Elvis down the chip shop. What? You mean he was mistaken or lying? Surely not!
Regularly, you read or hear:- "Aspartame gives you cancer!" "Meat gives you cancer!" "Crisps give you cancer!" "Coffee gives you cancer!" "Coffee doesn't give you cancer!" "Coffee gives you cancer!" and so on and so forth...... What are we to believe?

In terms of Diet & Nutritional information, there's a hierarchy of credibility. Here's a rough list of credibility, starting with least credible and ending with most credible.

Inexpert opinion. Basically, anyone can say anything (especially on the internet) but that doesn't make it true. This includes anything that I say, which is why I try to back up what I say with evidence from higher up the pile.

Anecdotal data/testimonials. Just because it worked for Joe or Josephine doesn't mean that it'll work for anyone else. There's also the placebo effect e.g. Nothing acts faster than Anadin (so I use nothing!)

Expert opinion. Even "experts" with lots of letters after their names get things wrong and have personal biases, hence the controversies over MMR, HIV/AIDS, Cholesterol etc.

In Vitro (in glass) studies. What happens in Petri dishes/test-tubes etc doesn't necessarily happen in humans.

In Vivo (in life) animal studies. What happens in rats/monkeys etc doesn't necessarily happen in humans.

Epidemiological (population) studies. A being associated with B doesn't necessarily mean that A caused B, as the association may have been due to random chance or due to both being caused by C, D, E........Z etc.

Case studies. The number of subjects is usually quite small and sometimes just 1.

Small and/or non-randomised and/or unblinded and/or non-placebo-controlled and/or non-crossover trials.

Large, randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled crossover trials.

Meta-studies of large, randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled crossover trials.

Even the last 2 items aren't perfect. Study outcomes can be manipulated by tweaking the methodology (e.g. using pre-trial screening) so if a trial is funded by a drugs company, the methods used and results obtained need to be examined very carefully. In addition, the abstract can misrepresent the full study. Here's an example: Intensive lipid lowering with atorvastatin in patients with coronary heart disease and chronic kidney disease: the TNT (Treating to New Targets) study. The Conclusion reads: "Aggressive lipid lowering with atorvastatin 80 mg was both safe and effective in reducing the excess of cardiovascular events in a high-risk population with CKD and CHD." because there was a 15-32% reduction in major cardiovascular events. Wow, that's impressive! What the abstract failed to mention was the fact that there were 26 more deaths in the 80mg group than in the 10mg group. What's worse? Having a major cardiovascular event or being dead?

In conclusion, when you read something in the media, do some research of your own before accepting it as fact. Use Google, Wikipedia, PubMed and the Cochrane Library.