Rotundus.com

• "20 per cent had been produced by people who were not qualified at all"
• "A further fifth had been carried out by people who were writing reports in areas entirely beyond their knowledge and qualifications."
• "as many as 90 per cent of the reports had been produced by ‘expert’ witnesses who were no longer in current practice at all, but were simply working as ‘professional expert witnesses’. Often, these professional experts – who rake in thousands of pounds in fees from the chaotic family courts system – have not practised for years, leaving them out of touch with developments in their field."
• "In the past, parents have bitterly complained that they have not even been allowed to know the names of the paid expert witnesses who testified against them. That has now changed but Professor Ireland, of the University of Central Lancashire, said 65 of the 100 reports she examined were ‘poorly’ or ‘very poorly’ carried out."
• "One was even found to have ‘completed an assessment on the mother without actually seeing her’. ... One mother involved in family court proceedings told how a psychiatrist who had never seen her wrote a 14-page report on her and her family. The day after the psychiatrist signed off his report he was suspended by the General Medical Council for a separate offence. Despite this, his report was still used by the courts."

(Excerpts from here. HT: F&F)

'You can't bring that axe on a plane' politician told

"'It was not a real axe, rather it was for a live role-playing game and improvisational theatre,' he said later. It was not even his own, he added hastily – rather, he was bringing it from Berlin to Stuttgart for a friend. "

Could nursery rhymes cause violent behaviour? A comparison with television viewing

"Television has 4.8 violent scenes per hour and nursery rhymes have 52.2 violent scenes per hour."

33-year-old man has 30 kids by 11 different women

Surprise, surprise... apparently he doesn't have enough money for child support.

Ageing and asset prices

A paper from the Bank for International Settlements: "demographic factors affect real house prices significantly. Combining the results with UN population projections suggests that ageing will lower real house prices substantially over the next forty years. The headwind is around 80 basis points per annum in the United States and much stronger in Europe and Japan. Based on the analysis, global asset prices are likely to face substantial headwinds from ageing."

Minute Maid wins 'Pomegranate Blueberry' case

"Minute Maid can keep labeling one of its beverages 'Pomegranate Blueberry' even though it's made up almost entirely of apple and grape juices and contains only 0.3 percent pomegranate juice and 0.2 percent blueberry juice."

Pa. Couple Tired of Cars Crashing Into Home

"A Pennsylvania couple has found themselves in an all-too-familiar situation this week when a car crashed into their home for the fourth time, the third time in the past six months." Also: "The couple has wanted to put a boulder in front of their house to prevent accidents from damaging their home, but they said they have been told that such an obstacle would make them liable for any damage to a rogue driver."

The Physics of Spilled Coffee

Good to see that researchers are paying attention to important problems. One interesting bit: "A fluid's back-and-forth movement has a certain natural frequency, and this is determined by the size of its container. ... everyday mug sizes produce natural frequencies that just happen to match those of a person's leg movements during walking. This means that walking alone, without any other interference, is tuned to drive coffee to oscillate in a mug. But the researchers also found that even small irregularities in a person's walking are important: These amplify the wilder oscillations, or sloshing, which bumps up the chance of a spillage."

Junia amongst the apostles

"So how did the idea get around that the female Junia was really a male Junias? ... despite Luther’s influence, with only one exception, Greek New Testaments down to 1927 continued to give her the feminine accent. ... Who, then, is guilty of the sex change? Stand up the thirteenth (1927) edition of Nestle: the standard Greek Testament beloved of twentieth-century “scientific” and “modern” biblical scholarship! Again—Yes! Not Dark Age monks; not obscurantist popes; not medieval misogynist conspirators; not pre-Enlightenment bigots; it is the brightest and the best of liberal European and North American modern scholarship that took a reconstructive scalpel to Junia’s groin."

Can Timeouts Change the Outcome of Basketball Games?

Their answer: "here we show timeouts have no significant effect on the final outcomes of games. Moreover, we find that the timeout factor only appears to reinforce the game of dominant teams"

NASA apparently is 0.4% of the US federal budget - how much of an impact does it have though?

(The clip claims that the $850 billion bank bailout was more than all 50 years of NASA funding put together - looks like NASA got about $57 billion between 1960-1973. Not sure what that'd work out to on an inflation adjusted basis).

HT: Andrey