Monthly Archives: May 2011

Back when I was a student, some 40 years ago, I worked out that there would be quite considerable reductions in heat losses from houses if they had several inches of insulation in their walls and roofs. Within a few … Continue reading →

Occasionally one or two of the words I read jump out at me, maybe just because I encountered them two or three times in a day. “Unacceptable” was one of those words for me a few years back. I read … Continue reading →

I bought a pipe today. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, in case the only tobacco I could get hold of was pipe tobacco. So I went into a tobaconnist (they’re getting quite hard to find), and … Continue reading →

Well, no, Denmark is denying that it has banned Marmite. It says that Marmite imports were never cleared with the authorities. But the BBC is reporting that: A shop in Copenhagen was recently asked to remove its supplies of Marmite … Continue reading →

I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve been sneezing all day. I thought it might have been something in the air in my flat, so I opened the windows wide. It made no difference at all. Finally, I went … Continue reading →

New York’s outdoor smoking ban: Will the world follow? Of course it will. It’s the fashionable thing. They all take their lead from each other. None of them want to be left behind. That’s how fashion works, whether it’s hats … Continue reading →

I suppose that more or less everybody must know by now that it was Judgment Day yesterday. Even Czech physicist Lubos Motl gave it a mention. And also Rush Limbaugh, who said that the prediction reminded him of global warming, … Continue reading →

One of the surprising things about this blog, for me at least, is how few antismokers post any comments. In a world in which the public discourse is relentlessly antismoking, I would have expected a lot more than I actually … Continue reading →