http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080721/tsc-austria-sweden-animals-horses-scienc-c2ff8aa.html

I can remember being fascinated by these horses as a little girl and grown ups explaining to me that the horses were just going grey prematurely the way some adults do. Now we all know that going grey early runs in families thus it is genetic and coat colour in animals was shown by Mendell several centuries back to be genetic. Also it will come as no surprise that those with low levels of melanin in their skin are more predisposed to skin cancer. Ok let me try to be more positive for a moment, I suppose it might be helpful if they have isolated the specific gene IF it is going to help combat skin cancer in some way. But that is not what the headline or the article says. Perhaps the fault lies not with the research but the way the headline is written. BUT I am sick of reading about research which has been carried out to prove something that was already well known or completely understood and presenting it as a breakthrough when it seems to me that there are lots of things which are worth investigating as they are still a complete mystery such as why, when a telephone company disconnects someone in error (and one of the staff admits that the procedure was not followed correctly) it takes so long for them to reconnect the line and that an apology is not immediately forthcoming. ;)

Now another thing that is completely irritating is that we are just about to start a 3 day heatwave after a weekend of crap weather but we are back at work. No doubt next week when I am not at work it will piss down again. :(

I will leave you with one last thought. This time it is about the value of statistics. I see it is reported in the news that the statistics for injury due to alchol have increased by 6%. Well alcohol does cause people to make errors and makes you more clumsy but I wonder is it really that people are drinking more or are people just going to hospital more with minor injuries or is it just that years ago when people went to hospital with a minor injury no one recorded whether or not alcohol might have played a part in it. What constitutes an alcohol related injury and do they actually measure the blood alcohol levels as when there has been a car accident or do they just decide that someone has been drinking or not? I would say it is someone injuring themselves because alcohol has impaired their judgement, but if you slip on a wet floor and you have had a glass of wine would you have slipped on the same wet floor if you had not had that drink. This may or may not matter, but it matters if you are on holiday. The reason being that most holiday insurance policies (if you read the small print) do NOT cover you if you have an accident related to alcohol, so before you have that small glass of wine on holiday better do that health and safety risk assessment. ;)

Anyway off to roast to death on a hot overcrowded tube train.

Catch you later maybe?

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