It’s loathsome and it comes around once every four years. No, I’m not talking about the Olympics. I’m on about American politics.

A lot of people get themselves really jazzed with American politics. I mean, I get it — the President of the USA is an important person, so it’s good to keep up with events. But some people actually seem to enjoy it. Are they sadists?

For the past two weeks my favourite radio programme Up All Night has been hijacked by these American politicos talking enormous amounts of horsey-poo. Dr Karl’s excellent science podcast was this week unbearably difficult to listen to because presenter Rhod Sharp was sitting there in Denver surrounded by lots of people cheering. (To add insult to injury, the podcast was less than half the length it normally is.)

The thing about these party conventions in America is that they always seem so detached from reality. I know this is not an original comparison, but it really is like pantomime. A politician can say the most banal, boring thing with a clumsy delivery, but the crowd will still cheer and applaud like crazy. Bring up the enemy and they boo and hiss. And at the end of the day you will still be no clearer about what anyone will actually do if they are elected.

And speaking of the applause, and the cheering and the whooping. What is with it? I wandered into a room that had the Democratic Convention on the television last week. All that was happening was some kind of upbeat music was playing, and the people were cheering and whooping and dancing. I must have been in the room for three or four minutes. I left before anyone actually uttered a single word. I mean, what is this? The world’s biggest laughter therapy class?

When I see stuff like that, it just makes me think everyone that is sitting in that room is delusional. John McCain is never just John McCain. He is always, always, “The Next President Of The United States Of America, John McCain”. What makes them so sure? That is just cocky. I would kind of get it if it was obvious he was going to win, but even then it is like tempting fate. When Neil Kinnock tried it here in 1992 he got hammered. So why does this stuff sit well in the USA? Perhaps it is one of those things where they think, “If I say it often enough it will become true.”

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I think politics should be about the issues. At least in Britain the parties pretend to talk about policies during their conferences. In America, party conventions just put too much emphasis on the razzmatazz. It’s all about the glitz and the glamour. Then there is the emotive nature of it all. Most of it seems to be about tugging on the heart-strings, and they’re not very subtle about it. It’s just too saccharine for me.

I am certainly glad I don’t live in America so that I have to actually face to prospect of having to pay attention to all of this nonsense. If you ask me, it is no surprise that turnout in the USA is so low. I would hardly be overjoyed by the prospect of choosing between the White Elephants Party and the Ridiculous Asses Party.

It is true that politicians can be quite off-putting here in Britain as well. But at least they put me off because of what they say. American politicians put me off because of what they do and how they present themselves.

What gets me is the fact that they think I would be impressed with any of the sort of silly things they do at conventions. It’s like when they get a group of people to stand behind the speaker. I think it’s meant to look like he’s so popular that he’s always got scores of people standing around him. In actual fact it looks like the speaker is facing the wrong way without realising it.

When Michelle Obama started speaking at the Democratic Convention, all of these placards suddenly appeared from within the audience. It looked like there were hundreds of them. “MICHELLE”, they said. Why was that? Were they worried she was going to forget her name? Why don’t they make her check the inside of her underpants like the rest of us have to?

I only include the video to prove the point about the placards. Don’t watch the whole video — it only encourages them. Incidentally, the first word is not even uttered until 1:19.

Here is The Scotsman in full scaremongering mode.

METEOROLOGISTS last night said Scots will need to learn to live with the extreme weather and the chaos it has brought to the country over the past few days, as the unpredictable effects of climate change begin to bite.

A bit of wind? Can anyone seriously look at yesterday’s weather events and describe it as an outlier; some kind of new-fangled mystical event?

For once, the (initial) comments in the Scotsman.com thread are sensible.

Clan-destine:

Has Scotland ever had anything else but bad weather?{especially in winter} I think after a few thousand years of bad weather we’re pretty much resigned to it by now and very much used to it….is this news? It’s a bit like a headline that says “Jings!Ice found in Iceland!!”

Statsman:

We never had bad weather in Scotland when I was a kid. It was all sunshine and magic love pixies. Damn this global warming!

DunCraig:

These meteorolgists must be babes in nappies!

Now, I believe that climate change is happening and is a problem. But some people are clearly in the business of creating fear. If the slightest gust of wind or wee puddle is going to be blamed on climate change, people will stop believing that climate change is a problem or even exists at all.

I have written before about the fact that the slightest abnormal weather event is being blamed on climate change. I am beginning to see this sort of thing with increasing regularity. This has severe implications for the credibility of the “scientists” who lunge in, blaming everything on climate change with no data to prove it. Climate change is damn close to turning into a religion.

People are not bloody idiots. Keep a lid on it and tell us about the icecaps melting, not a pissy wee gale the like of which we see every year!

So I thought when I started reading this article. Turns out they were talking about the Ming dynasty.

There is this spinning woman who is doing the rounds on the internet at the moment. Thinks she’s really clever by looking like she’s turning clockwise when she’s actually turning anti-clockwise, while in actual fact she was turning clockwise all along! And anti-clockwise. At the same time.

Apparently, whether you perceive the woman to be turning clockwise or anti-clockwise tells you which side of your brain you use the most. Immediately it was obvious to me that the woman was turning clockwise. I felt a bit smug. After all, clockwise must be the side of the brain that makes me intelligent, witty, good looking and a mathematical genius.

Err.

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain…

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
“big picture” oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can “get it” (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

Are they calling me a girl or something?

Seriously. Looking at the lists, I would have always guessed that I would have been the left side of the brain. Not that I wish to blow my own trumpet, but I always consider myself to use logic, have attention to detail, reasonably good numerical skills and reality based. I am far to strategic for my own good, in the sense that I always spend so long thinking about things that I miss the boat.

Not that the skills for the right side of the brain are that bad. But I just don’t see it. I have less spatial awareness than Stevie Wonder, a dire imagination and I’m apathetic about symbolism. I am only religious in the sense that I am a Pastafarian. As for risk-taking, I can’t climb a ladder without completely crapping myself beforehand.

As if to compound the matter, the the article states that most people see the woman turning anti-clockwise. Brilliant! Other people are mathematical genii. I do little more than believe.

I believe, and I also live in a fantasy land. So what if I believe that I am a left-brainer? Or is that just a fantasy? This was all getting a bit too much for me.

I struggled to comprehend the situation. When I first loaded the page it was patently obvious to me that the woman was turning clockwise — there were no two ways about it. But I knew that she could turn anti-clockwise as well. In order to regain a modicum of self esteem, I strained my hardest to get the woman to turn anti-clockwise. It’s Magic Eye for the noughties.

And blow me down. It worked! It happened when I began to lose my focus while staring at her neck. I started to feel a little bit sick. It’s quite earth-shattering to see someone who has only ever turned clockwise suddenly decide to turn anti-clockwise. What’s more, I was now just as adamant that the woman could only possibly ever turn anti-clockwise, and surely never clockwise.

But soon enough I was able to switch between clockwise woman and anti-clockwise woman at will, as though I was flicking between The God Channel and BBC Four. My tip: look at the shadow that the sticky-out foot makes on the floor.

Now I feel much better. I can switch between clockwise and anti-clockwise at will. This must mean that I am brilliant at everything.

Also: Hehehehe. Boobs.

Seriously though. Does the illusion fail to work if it is a boobless man? What about that funny pose she is pulling? She doesn’t know if she’s slipping on a banana or if she is a little teapot, short and stout.

Flashboy was similarly freaked out by the strange levitating woman.

Aaaannyway. How did they decide that clockwise equals the right side and vice-versa? I have not seen any solid science on this — just a crappy Digg-magnetic article on an Australian newspaper. Part of me suspects that this article either

1. Is a pile of horseshit
2. Got the lists for the left and right sides of the brain the wrong way round

I’ll have my eye on Ben Goldacre’s blog for this!

I am a huge fan of the radio programme Up All Night. On Wednesday nights / Thursday mornings — if I am awake — I like to listen to Dr Karl’s science phone in. The man is smart and enthusiastic. He’s one of those people that can explain everything in layman’s terms.

But one day he said something that I could never agree with. It might be sound advice, but I cannot take it. Something like, say, “try to take five portions of fruit and veg a day” is fine enough advice for me. But what Dr Karl said on this occasion defies all common sense. He said: “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dine like a pauper.” Never will I do this!

Mike Flynn says, Down with breakfast. I agree. I know that breakfast is meant to be the most important meal of the day, because it breaks your fast and all that. But if I must eat breakfast, at least allow me to have a sufficiently small breakfast. Preferably one that won’t turn my backside into a drainpipe.

It’s true. I can’t just get up and eat breakfast then go about my business. I don’t think I have a very strong stomach. Eating breakfast early in the morning makes me a bit ill you see. If I have a free morning then I will almost always leave about half an hour or an hour before eating. This is fine.

But if I have something to do early in the morning I obviously just have to eat my breakfast pretty much as soon as I get up. But I simply don’t have the appetite if I have just got up. It takes at least half an hour for me to feel like wanting to eat something.

Now you smartarse responsible adults reading this will just be thinking, “why don’t you just get up half an hour earlier then?” Don’t be so preposterous. I need every last wink of sleep I can get, particularly if I’m going to stay up all night listening to worthy science phone-ins.

Besides, I once heard on the Thursday night / Friday morning sleep phone in that it is natural for people my age not to get up until about midday. One time, when we were being forced to play some rubbish ball game in the freezing cold at 10am, my PE teacher was obviously concerned at our breathless gasping. She did a straw poll, asking how many of us had eaten breakfast. Less than half had eaten breakfast. Do you know why? Because we need our sleep damnit!

The idea that I need my breakfast in order to function during the day goes against all of my real life experiences. Sure, if I don’t eat my breakfast I might get a rumble in my tummy by about 11 o’clock, but I get that even if I’ve had breakfast. I must have gone to school dozens of times without ever eating a bean until lunch, and look at me — I’m still alive.

I don’t need my breakfast. I need to sleep in the mornings! I don’t want to be forcing fibre down my gullet only for it to be ejected within the space of a train journey (20 pence piece at the ready for entry to the loos at Waverley Station).

This morning I woke up on my friend’s sofa in Dundee having spent the night over. There was no breakfast for me to have. I thought, well I’d better have breakfast because it’s the most important meal of the day apparently and I have to breakfast like a king. So I popped into the Spar. I couldn’t find anything that didn’t have to be heated in the microwave.

Knowing that having such an early breakfast would only make me ill anyway, I just hopped on the train home. My first food came an hour and a half after I woke up. Sure, I was starving when I got home. But boy, it was a great breakfast. I appreciated it much more than I would have appreciated any soggy sandwich I might have bought from a convenience store. And there was no need for a sloppy poop toilet trip.

Sometimes I’m lucky in that I won’t need to dispose of my waste following an early breakfast. But I will still have an unsettled stomach. It’s no wonder nobody will sit next to me during lectures because at some point during that first lesson I will have to unleash a gastric gas catastrophe. It isn’t pleasant. I can’t imagine what must be going on in my innards for such foul smells to be created.

Maybe you think I’m ill or I have some sort of allergy, but I doubt it. As I said, if I leave a bit of time after waking up before eating then I have no problems whatsoever. I can wolf down as much cereal as I like during the evening with no dire(-rhoea) consequences. If I have an allergy to anything, it’s to the morning.

I certainly don’t have an aversion to traditional breakfast-time foods. Infact I have at least one bowl of cereal per day — but always at around 9pm. Additionally I had some toast this evening. Yesterday lunchtime I had a bowl of fruity porridge. I’m not averse to the odd afternoon fry-up either. Even croissants are for lunchtime as far as I’m concerned.

So, if breakfast isn’t the best meal of the day, what is? Well, unlike Mike Flynn, I don’t think it’s lunch. Sandwiches might be good, but I’ve had some awful sandwiches in my time. It’s pretty hit and miss. Also, I have to pace myself when having lunch. I’ve got to be careful not to eat too much in case I don’t have enough room for a later meal that must be eaten with the family round the table.

The best meal of the day certainly isn’t anything called “tea”. Tea is not a meal. It is a hot drink that tastes like compost if you leave the bag in for too long.

You’ve guessed it, mostly because it’s in the title of this post: The best meal is dinner. The most diverse of the meals, dinner also usually provides you with the only hot meal of the day. Possibly the only decent slab of meat of the day. A nice mountain of filling carbohydrates. And I don’t care if I’m meant to eat like a pauper at this time. This is the biggest meal of the day. Fact.

Dinner is also a gateway into the evening, a period of freedom. Breakfast is usually just leading up to a hellish train journey and a bleary-eyed morning of work. Even lunch heralds the beginning of more work. Dinner links the end of work to the start of a relaxing, restful evening.

So down with breakfast indeed. Let’s hear it for dinner, the proper most important meal of the day.