The Balance Is Shifting?

Interesting comment on the latest British Gas energy price increases from jockyscot

Globesity Is Here

I heard the term Globesity used on the news last night.Obviously describing the rise in global obesity. It’s intriguing how these new hybrid words come into being and into popular use. The car-crashing together of two existing words to make a new bastardised word. This latest little miracle of language came from The World Health Organisation, no less.

It would seem that the UK is not that keen in giving up its love of junk food. Personally I think the belligerent Brits just have a knee jerk reaction to being told what to do by central government (No matter what political shade of beige they are).

Parliament should really play the reverse psychology card and announce that junk food is now compulsory and that healthy food should only be eaten in limited quantities and there would very rapidly be a campaign in the Daily Mail spouting outrage and rallying against it.Britain would be scoffing healthy options and eschewing junk food at a surprisingly rapid rate soon after.

My previous favourite hybrid word from a year or so ago was celebutard aimed at a certain genre of celebrity who may not be especially blessed in the brains department.

I look forward to hearing more blended words enter our vocabulary.

 

Random post__Blogs I Read__What is social bookmarking?

Green PC Is An Old Friend With A Makeover

There’s a lot of ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ across many western value governments and no sooner had I commented about one such solution on the Conversations with Brit and Grit blog which was to do with adopting thin client computing within the US Government and highlighting its green credentials then the UK Gov makes noises about the same thing.

They don’t say ‘thin client’- a technology I trained in many moons ago, but apply a bit of re-branding to call it green PC , a term that even Google is keen to promote as possibly a means to focus it’s range of Internet based applications.

In essence it’s a return to the ‘dumb terminals’ of old. All it means is that a central sever which could even be accessed via an internet connection has all the processing power and memory whilst what sits on a worker’s desk is really a scaled down PC with no hard drive, little memory and low power consumption. Apart from size savings (in some cases the ‘thin’ pc can be as small as a domestic household electric plug ), thin computers are often silent and fanless and the system itself makes it easy to access your work desktop securely from home (flexible working anyone?). This model of computing also frees the department or company from the relentless need to upgrade every few years as only the central server needs upgrading. It’s a system that’s been around a long while but curiously has been resisted by many computer system administrators (sticking with what they know?) due to the solid state thin clients often being as expensive as traditional fat computers but you need to take into account of what’s called TCO and thin PC costs have fallen as demand has increased.

This model is often very reliable ,flexible, long lasting, has lower support costs, is secure and now with the emphasis on energy and resource friendliness.

The only downside of the UK specific initiative is that it’s under the wing of MP Ruth Kelly so maybe I shouldn’t hold my breath over the likely the success selling this solution.

Rupert Murdoch – Eco Warrior

Surprising as that statement may seem Rupert Murdoch is a green convert and that means that the green message is going to be filtering down through his media empire. Whatever the reason for Uncle Rupert’s conversion on the road to Damascus be it genuine concern or shrewd commercial bandwagon jumping, critics of Murdoch, myself included, will have to admit that he will be a pretty powerful advocate for an aspect of green issues and a very visible example of how a global scale business such as his tackles the commercial,economic, practical and public relations aspects of attempting to be a bit more eco friendly.

Admittedly the plans I’ve heard about concentrate more on his businesses being carbon neutral by 2010 which can be criticised as not whole heartedly being truly eco friendly per se as buying into carbon offsetting projects is a bit of a snakes and ladders solution akin to visiting a confessional to be absolved of your sins only to then re commit the sins in the sure knowledge that you can always be forgiven again next time.

Many of you will be cock-a-hoop to hear that RM plans “to change the way the public thinks about these issues” and wants “to inspire people to change their behaviour” by informing them through his various media outlets.

He also says “Imagine if we succeed in inspiring our audiences to reduce their own impacts on climate change by just 1 per cent. That would be like turning the state of California off for almost two months.” You never know Governor Sharzenegger may already be planning that as a possible solution anyway.

Murdoch’s News Corporation has a carbon footprint of at 641,150 tons a year and will now aim to be carbon neutral by 2010. Murdoch’s son James had already taken BSkyB carbon neutral around a year ago.

Further reading

:: :: :: :: :: ::
Rupert Murdoch – Eco Warrior « Stuffem-Up the hill backwards