Carlos

Evolution is potentially the most subtle thing we know about. Or to put it another way, if you see something now, there was an evolutionary reason for it, and it doesn't carry any disadvantage at the moment. If it did, natural selection would have taken care of it before now. http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/FAQs.shtml

^ Not sure if that is one for me or not, but I certainly am not trying to make light of weight problems caused by illness of whatever kind, just speaking from my own experience of deciding to loose weight, it was a big motivating factor that I did not need to go to a gym 4 hours a day and count every calorie, or that it was all pointless anyway because of some random chance of fate/genes, but just to know for me and for the majority of overweight people just eating a bit less will be enough in the end.

The other way of looking at it is that the gene is a predisposition to being a good endurance athlete, as it makes the body more efficient in it's energy uptake and conversion, but if that efficient body is not exercised and is given too much food, it is just as efficient at turning it into fat.

There is a rare genetic factor that can cause obesity directly. I think it is found in about 1 in 100,000 people, and another effect is that they will have red hair and blue eyes. Otherwise, it is down to people eating more calories than they use. If you have genes that give your body a particularly efficient use of calories then you will not need to eat as many as somebody who is not so efficient, even doing the same amount of work. If you ignore that and eat as much as the inefficient person does, eating more calories than you use, then you will gain weight, while they might not. There are certainly medical factors connected with gaining or loosing weight, but genetics are a side issue.

My discovery of the month, deserves to be selling 100x as many CDs. http://www.myspace.com/kattoo

And Brae coming from a corruption of dialect "broad isthmus" I remember reading.

I'm used to speaking a fairly gentle Shetland dialect when here, and as straight an English as I can without sounding like an impressionist when aboard (if not speaking their language) but I don't find any problem with me loosing Shetland dialect/accent.... it's just another "language" - switch about depending on the situation I actually find talking with people from other parts of Scotland more work a lot of the time, as you don't want to talk English to them, but if you ease that back towards something "more Scottish", you are suddenly having to try and think "is that a Shetland word or a Scottish one" all the time........

I think it was the 9 years of NOT agreeing that was the problem....

Yes, it's true, from 90 minutes of presentation of complex climate modeling for TV audience, the judge found 9 facts that he considered were presented more strongly than the scientific consensus. So now we can take our copies, edit out those 9 exact points, and know with confidence that the rest do meet the scientific consensus.

The Hospital is moving because....... the site is too small and there is no parking and poor access...... which would make it a good site for the council HQ........ If there is ever any serious thought about a single HQ, let's get the infrastructure sorted out first, or it'll be no better than any of the current sites.

We'll.... I'm in Portugal just now...... Actually I see it being reported much the same here.... just rehashing of the same rumored "facts" and discussions of different judicial systems. a mesma merde, um país differente

Not just oil, but the rare earth metals, topsoil, water.... they are all running at unsustainable levels.... likely we have this century to sort things out, or never recover - as you say all the easy stuff is being used up quickly.

I think we are certainly at the point where things will not be getting any easier, although with the rising price of oil you have to remember that more old/difficult wells become economical to use, and that will soften the blow to a degree and coal supplies are also a bit more plentiful so we can switch to those to some extent, at the cost of higher CO2 emissions.

Which of course raises the other point. How to control children. After all very few children are involved in collisions with motor vehicles except when the child has moved to a point of conflict with the vehicle. And not getting hit is a much better deal than having a "survivable" accident. Roads of course being the sole domain of cars, and not to be occupied at any time by anybody on foot

I suppose it's all supply and demand. The "offers over" price may be all that the house is really worth, so in that sense it is a valid figure for valuation, but if enough people want it then that is when you end up paying more than it is "worth". Second problem with this comes when the bank will only give you a mortgage for the valuation figure, or a little more.... Which is why there are so many new build houses I suppose, as you can at least build for less than the house is worth.... it is just that it will take you a couple of years at least for the whole process.

I can't say I've been involved in buying and selling too many house sites, but I had the impression that sites were often "sold" with an agreement that it was conditional on being granted planning permission - no permission = contract is not completed. Now of course depending which site you wanted and how much interest there was in it it might be harder to get that kind of a deal. Regarding planing permission again my outside impression is that it is not so bad..... compared with the building control process......

McEwan's sprint from the tail end to win the first road stage is my highlight so far.

I think a lot of the time a requirement for a "degree in a technical subject" is used as a shortcut to find people who have proven they can be dumped in a situation and pick up a lot of information as they go. Of course it doesn't mean that someone without the degree could not do that as well, but to find that out you'd have to have interviewers who knew something of the technical side of their own work..... I think the worst side is the new SIC policy that, for example, if a degree is listed as a "requirement" for a job (not just desired) then nobody without a degree will get an interview..... removing any chance that an interviewer might actually be able to have a chance to make the choice.

I know the "nothing below 5m contour" thing has been used as a general guideline, but the real policy should be "anything shown on SEPA's flood risk maps as having a annual flooding risk of 0.5% or higher (pretty much equivalent to being below 5m for Shetland) needs a flood risk assessment carried out" If they did a flood risk assessment and it made a good enough case it can get planning permission. So can any application. Flood risk assessments are not cheap though, and for most houses it'd make sense to site them a meter higher and avoid the time and money it'd take.

This is kind of what I was asking a few (?) pages back. Are there any useful "horse" routes that are physically possible to route? From memory I would only see much space available round Clickamin Loch / Staney Hill, would bridlepaths there be useful?

I'd agree that the situation does not look good, but I think the planning permission was always going to be given on appeal, because of the mistakes in the local plan rather than any political dimensions. I can understand both sides of the issue, as you'd be a pretty stupid property developer to sell somebody a building for £X knowing that they could turn round and sell it on for £5X. I don't think it's particularly fair, but if you want to guarantee that, you need to get yourself a contract.

Which "A"s and "B"s are the most used for horses? Is Cunningham Way / Staney hill a viable route?

Not been following this story enough to know but.... I am confused how Rushdie's book can be true blasphamy, since it would seem to contain only a fictional account of Muhammad's actions, and from my understanding muslims consider him to have been fully mortal..... I do understand that Pakistan's laws have been broadened to include any derogatory comments about the prophet though. It's also interesting to think about the full details of this "critisism" in the book, as that part of the story is based on one possible (widely accepted, scollarly) interpolation of the story of Muhammad, based on the oldest surviving texts, presented as a dream sequence, in the mind of one of the charactors, while he is suffering from a mental illness.....

I think that one of the problems is that the "whether or not is was blasphemous" question is mostly being debated by people who have not read the book....

I wonder if this is a designers design, or a "worst bits of a committee decision" that nobody actually wanted? I mean I know it was done by a design company and I am also sure that it went through about 20 layers of approval by various managers and officials (and ministers?).......