Monthly Archives: February 2020

In the same piece the reader can discover that with the largest of gorillas, ones weighing around twice that of a human, they have a fully erect penis measuring just two and a half centimetres. No wonder they can be a bit feisty. And the chimp’s testes are so large because they are constantly at it and therefore require a large supply of well, you can read the article if you’re so interested – or go buy the author’s book called The Cradle of Humanity.

It’s possible to hold opinions on things, like a team’s chance of success or whether global warming is really a thing, but it all seems rather pointless to cling to the original opinion if it is proved to be wrong. There’s little point wandering about and telling strangers in the street that England possess the greatest international football side when every couple of years the pubs fill with depressed souls praying for the tournament to finish as painlessly as possible.

You might think that Mother Shipton was bang on with her prophesies. You might reckon that if she’d gone to Ye Olde Ladbrokes she’d have made a mint on her amazing predictions. “For those who live the century through In fear and trembling this shall do. Flee to the mountains and the dens To bog and forest and wild fens,” she said.

Which means that as we ticked over into the 21^st century we’d all be struck by some incredible fear and leg it off up hillsides and into forests to live there. But we didn’t and, unless you are in a tent reading this on your telephone, neither did you. She was wrong and her believers are misguided. Shiptonites everywhere should line up and apologise to us for we have read something and digested its contents – we know more today than we did yesterday and we can use that knowledge to help us lead our lives.

It’s what we all do. We make a mistake, we learn from the mistake and then we try very hard not to make that same mistake again. Science and technology wouldn’t be the brilliant things they are without over two thousand years of people learning through discovery and error.

So, public health experts: when you come across evidence that debunks the cornerstones of your arguments, whenever you see evidence that contradicts you views, embrace it. Swear at it, break things and hurl food out of the window by all means. Do whatever you do when you are annoyed, that’s fine, but just don’t continue to tell us that up is down, England won the last three football world cups, and that you have bigger balls than a monkey.

Yes, you are all fooling yourselves that you like your fancy flavours. Adults don’t like sweet things, adults never eat puddings. And even if you are enjoying those liquids, it means one thing – you are doing vaping wrong. You should be not enjoying tobacco flavours, you should be hating vaping.

That’s what people campaigning against vaping believe. Or, at least, pretend to believe when they’re out in public. Nobody knows if they actually fall for their own bunkum.

They are pushing to kill of flavours over in Canada and it has drawn a great response from vapers. “Flavours are marketed to me” images are spreading on social media with the tag #BillS5. Maybe you fancy adding yours in?

Landing in an even number gets the kid on a waiting list for a 6-month salary-free modern apprenticeship in Poundland. Any odd number automatically qualifies them for Higher Education, regardless of the likely GCSE results, and someone from the loan company pops out of a cupboard to harvest their kidneys.

Any double, treble or missed board moves them straight to the unemployment office, where they discover they were sanctioned while in Year 3 and can not receive any benefits until 2029. In the event the child faces more than one option, the worst one applies.

Bullseyes count for nothing, just like the promises to help fulfil their dreams the Head made at the start of Year 7 – before it became an academy, sacked all the staff, and replaced them with a second-hand floor-polishing machine from Azerbaijan. That said, Mr Polisher did achieve some spectacular exam results with 5C last year.

The one thing no career service ever told any child was that there are certain jobs, certain secret jobs, which contain the stuff of dreams. Nobody ever told me I could be a spaceman. Nobody mentioned Premier League multimillionaire football player was on the table. And not one word was spoken about the potential for me to work (ha! It’s funny to even use that word in reference to this) as a public health expert.

Somebody, somewhere thought ‘I know what, I’ll give a load of money to some people in Australia, Canada, the States and one in England to see if they can produce the most blindingly obvious study‘. So stunningly obvious it would be the equivalent of walking through a forest, pointing at every tree and shouting the words: “That is a tree”.

Thus, “Does the regulatory environment for e-cigarettes influence the effectiveness of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation?: Longitudinal findings from the ITC Four Country Survey” was born.

“This is the first study to examine the impact of regulatory environment for electronic cigarettes (ECs) on their real-world effectiveness for smoking cessation,” writes the team. You can imagine their little faces all painted up with excitement as they discussed this during an online open conferencing session. The very first study to look at whether banning vaping had any effect on its success at helping smokers quit.

Hang on, it doesn’t sound so clever when I write it in my own words. In fact, it seems never mind, let’s find out what the team discovered: “Use of ECs in the real world during a quit attempt appears only effective for sustaining smoking abstinence in a less restrictive EC environment suggesting that the benefits of ECs for smoking cessation are likely highly dependent on the regulatory environment.”

For those of you who don’t speak ‘Academic’, that translates to: Blimey, we discovered that vaping only works well for fag smokers in countries that allow vaping.

Science seemed much more aloof when scientists were allowed to stub cigarettes out in the eyes of beagle puppies. I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but feel I could have contributed to this stunningly insightful paper. Contributed, and then gone to spend all of my easy money on Blackjack and stuff.

Come on careers guidance officers, up your game.

“What have I done to deserve this?” sing the Pet Shop Boys as I type away. And I stumble across the tale of Helen Twelvetrees, or Helen Marie Jurgens as her family in Brooklyn named her. Twelvetrees was a successful Hollywood star for Pathé, and then as an independent, as the industry spanned itself from silent films to talkies. Helen stepped into the hole left by those actors who couldn’t or wouldn’t add their voice to their craft. She went on to help forge the ‘Women’s Films’ genre, celluloid romps into tearful dramas covering issues facing the women of the day: domestic life, the family, motherhood, self-sacrifice, and romance. Not much has changed then, eh?

But Twelvetrees hid secrets behind those eyes, eyes described as being the saddest in Hollywood. Her first husband beat her and then tried to leap to his death from a window. She was coerced into making saucy snaps to make ends meet, and who knows what else in order to get the next paying job. Her life spiralled into bleakness and misery, culminating in just two people sitting at her funeral service.

So, filled with that drab story, part one of our mission is now complete. Your life is no longer Helen Twelvetrees levels of desolate. It’s dark outside, rain is hitting your panes and the office beckons you away from the duvet’s warmth – just tell yourself, “at least I’m not being expected to cry in front of a camera because dinner is ruined”.

No, it’s time to hunt out the Vapefest website. It’s time to get your vape act together and book that weekend off as holiday and sort out somewhere to sleep. It’s time to pick up that vape and remind yourself how good that flavour is. Why? Because when you have a sense of purpose your body produces dopamine. When you are sitting chatting with friends about vaping, and feeling part of a group, your body produces oxytocin. Plus, throughout this, your brain is chucking out serotonin that regulates long-term happiness.

Vaping isn’t just a tobacco replacement product, it’s not that clinical, it’s a passport to happiness and contentment. From the aesthetic of watching a plume of donut-flavoured vape curl and twist to the hormone-delivered sense of balance and tranquillity – you can literally vape yourself happier.

The Vapefest website can be found here, it’s on from Saturday 5th August 2017 10am-10pm & Sunday 6th August 2017 10am-8pm. Last year’s photos are in the video below. Here comes the summer!

The authors, from the Université de Bordeaux, have released a paper titled Poor replication validity of biomedical association studies reported by newspapers. In other words, from the research that newspapers give coverage to, did any of that research stack up in the long term?

Short answer even shorter: no.

Sort of.

The team “used a database of 4723 primary studies included in 306 meta-analysis articles. These studies associated a risk factor with a disease in three biomedical domains, psychiatry, neurology and four somatic diseases. They were classified into a lifestyle category (e.g. smoking) and a non-lifestyle category (e.g. genetic risk). Using the database Dow Jones Factiva, we investigated the newspaper coverage of each study. Their replication validity was assessed using a comparison with their corresponding meta-analyses.”

The team discovered that papers (they didn’t include television news, but believe it’s led by the print coverage) never covered studies reporting null findings. Unless the research had a juicy attention grabbing ‘these things make this happen to you!’ they simply aren’t interested. Also, if a follow up study fails to demonstrate the same shock results (thereby casting doubt on the initial findings) journalists almost never mention it in follow up pieces. The team write: “This is correlated to an even larger coverage of initial studies in psychiatry. Whereas 234 newspaper articles covered 35 initial studies that were later disconfirmed, only 4 press articles covered a subsequent null finding and mentioned refutation of an initial claim”.

The paper goes on to highlight the bias within the bias: “Newspapers preferentially reported lifestyle association studies linking a pathology to a risk factor on which each reader can act. Non-lifestyle studies related to brain imaging, genetic factor or other inescapable risk factors were less often echoed.”

What does this mean? Well, as we all thought, the coverage of scientific studies (including vape-related ones) only get into newspapers if there is a strong enough commercial pull. The strength of the story, the importance of the value of the science, is discounted when weighed up against the value of the advertising revenue it stands to generate.

The team state as part of the conclusion: “journalists preferentially cover initial findings although they are often contradicted by meta-analyses and rarely inform the public when they are disconfirmed.”

It is all about the shock value or stories that beg the question “What can I do to avoid this awful thing happening to me?” People have attacked journalists such as The Telegraph’s science editor Sarah Knapton on social media, justifiably, for some woeful coverage. The Bordeaux study adds credence to the concerns held by vaping advocates, even if it doesn’t lend a lot of hope for the future.

In a throwback to the controlling standards of the 1930s, busybodies are very concerned about how and where you vape. OK, the cynics out there would say that this is nothing more than a marketing exercise by Vype eCigarettes, but the newspapers have had a field day.

Vype, in conjunction with Debrett’s have decided that it’s time to tell us all what we should be doing. So, like the deferential serfs we are, it’s probably best if we familiarized ourselves with their codes of conduct.

“Decisions about where or where not to vape, and where to allow vaping, are largely discretionary, and civilised vaping is dependent on good manners, from vapers and non-vapers alike. However, there is some confusion about vaping best practice. In the same survey, 57 per cent of respondents said that they were baffled by the social rules of vaping, and nearly half agreed that it is unclear where you can and cannot vape.”

Yes, almost two thirds of us are baffled by the social rules of vaping. Stop sniggering at the back.

“Almost half of the survey respondents considered vaping in a confined space such as a lift or waiting room to be the most serious breach of etiquette a vaper could commit.”

Oh good, so that time our friend Johnny 2Vapes was toking away on a nice custard while performing open-heart surgery is OK. And Glenda the Undertaker, her cloud chasing while taking the body to the mortuary was fine as well. I’m glad we cleared those up.

“Vaping in a restaurant was considered the second worst vaping faux pas.”

Hear that Darren? Your wife was totally wrong. It was fine for you to be recoiling and filling up while carrying out your husbandly bedroom duties. It would only be what she said if you’d been doing it in Frankie & Benny’s.

“[Travel] policies can be frustrating for vapers, especially on long journeys, but travelling can be a stressful experience generally, with delays, overcrowding and traffic jams all putting a strain on good manners. For your own benefit as much as for those around you, accept any restrictions with as much good humour as possible.  You can always take advantage of designated smoking areas.”

Oh that’s wonderful and dandy, thank you Debrett’s. Thank you for wanting to shove us all back into a designated smoking area. Has anybody told you where to stick your hang on, I need to find my good humour.

“It is of course possible to vape discreetly, with minimal exhalation of vapour. But nobody wants to be ‘outed’ in a non-vaping zone, and stealth vaping was considered a faux pas by our survey respondents. It’s best to wait until you’re somewhere where it’s acceptable to vape so that you can do so openly.”

OK, sorry Debrett’s, but my good manners vanished when you begin attacking the stealth vape. You and Vype can go stick your fauxs in your pases. Do you pay heed to this kind of stuff? Are there vaping boundaries you think it is really wrong to cross?

Their full guide can be found here.

The thing is we have always stood up for what is correct, regardless of the risk or consequences. When the vaping community looked for guidance on the big issues (like the time nobody knew which Britain’s Got Talent person to vote for), we were there. We’ve always been there for you.

And so, when we now speak up in defence of headphone manufacturers everywhere you know it is coming from a place of truth and honesty. A place where nobody here has been visited by a representative from the Performing Right Society clutching a fat brown envelope.

Firstly, and we need to make this expressly clear, headphones do not just explode. There are at least hundreds of people who have a set of headphones, probably more, and none of them have ever experienced a head-based November 5^th.

The music community is quite clear on this, the user must have been fiddling with the unit and not fully aware of the ramifications of changing certain settings. Did she play them too loud? Had she done her homework and studied musical notation? It’s easy to say that this all happened because she didn’t know a crotchet from a semibreve – so that’s what we’re going to say.

In a recent piece of research, Music Lovers England pointed out that headphones have aided many a tune lover to escape from the harmful effects of going to live concerts. Traditional live music poses a genuine health risk, not least for the close proximity of many coughing, spluttering and generally grubby other tune lovers. Headphones have helped all of us here and probably helped you too.

Typically, ignorant anti-headphone campaigners have leapt on this event to cry out that bangs a mile up should be restricted to airplane toilets. “Headphones are too unsafe,” they holler, “and need to be restricted by law.”

“You see these people wandering around with headphones on,” explained one chubby, red-faced zealot. “You don’t know where they were purchased, you don’t know what they were made from and (unless you are sharing public transport with the user) you have no idea what music’s in them.”

What nonsense.

Any audiophile will tell you that it’s far safer to listen to music through headphones than hang around with Keith Richards for a morning. The campaigners know this too, that’s why they’ll quickly move on to tell you that the people making headphones are pushing them at children.

“They are available in colours that have obviously been designed to attract kids,” the zealot added, frothing at the mouth. “Not only do these headphones renormalise listening to bad music but they have been proven to be a gateway to get children hooked on Nickleback.”

Gateway? What absolute guff. Once you’ve tasted a set of headphones you’ll never go back to licking The Levellers or Rage Against The Machine. The message is simple: headphones work and we enjoy using them. If you are unsure how to use headphones safely, then ask for help from the person who sold them to you or get onto a headphone-lover’s forum.

Of course you do, you would love to be able to form a long-term relationship with another vaper – or maybe just have a weekly dalliance – and now you can thanks to Stealthvape’s Date Vape Vaper Dating Service [SDVVDS].

Obviously, after Ashley Madison, many people looking for relationship introductions online have some reservations. The first question will be: “I’m looking for confidentiality, how do I know that my data will be safe?”

We have always taken security seriously. If you were to visit the toilet at Stealthvape Towers you’d see that you need to enter a 64-bit encrypted password for the toilet paper dispenser. This needs to be done for every three sheets, and so toilet breaks can run on for quite a bit of time, but there’s not been one incident of toilet paper theft since the new protocol was put in place.

For SDVVDS date vapers, we will be using an OTP encryption algorithm where an artificial intelligence program generates a key. The Artificial Intelligent Data System [AIDS]™ is as good as uncrackable. And it doesn’t matter anyway as we will not store your data on our computer – for double safety, we will sell all data off to a third party. Good luck hacking our network, hackers, there’s nothing there.

The second question on the minds of SDVVDS date vapers is: “How are you going to match me up with the vaper of my dreams?”

In conjunction with the world’s leading software developers, we have created the Customer Organisational Numerical Decision Option Matrix [CONDOM]™. This foolproof program measures up the compatibility of two vapers by using all the supplied information, a handful of assumptions and a random number generator picking zero or one.

Plus, the data collecting probably undergoes the most stringent process in the online dating industry. Vapers will be asked to provide honest and accurate information about themselves. SDVVDS members will have to tick a box stating that they have been honest which will ensure all photos are current, and all claims to weight/height/quantity of hair and employment are valid. A final checkbox will ensure than nobody joining SDVVDS is an axe murderer.

“What kind of things will I be able to get up to on my dates?”

If you want to sit in a café and talk about the benefits of stainless steel over Kanthal-type coils then that is up to you and your Date Vape vape date. Or maybe you fancy getting personal as soon as possible and swapping juices? We aren’t going to dictate how consenting adults spend their time; all we ask is that you pay your ridiculously high monthly membership as part of an industry leading binding 24-month contract.

In consecutive weeks of the New Year, three papers have been published that deal with the subject of a gateway effect. The first, published in the Addictive Behaviours journal, is called Electronic cigarette use and uptake of cigarette smoking: A longitudinal examination of U.S. college students.

Although the study discovered that there is an increased likelihood of vaping teens going on to experiment with cigarettes, it revealed the simple truth that teens vaping does not mean they go on to become full-time smokers: “Current e-cigarette users at baseline were no more likely to progress to current smoking than young adults who were not using e-cigarettes.”

It’s the weakest of the three studies, but it still confirms that vaping is no predictor of future smoking behaviour. The second offers much stronger affirmation, and comes from The Centre for Substance Use Research in Scotland.

Visible Vaping: E-Cigarettes and the Further De-Normalization of Smoking was published in the International Archives of Addiction Research and Medicine.

96% of the young people taking part in the study were able to distinguish between vaping devices and traditional tobacco cigarettes, and expressed absolutely no desire to smoke. Is there a gateway? “If anything,” said the lead researcher, “the results of this study show the opposite is true. Vaping is making smoking less interesting for non-smokers.”

The third study was conducted in Canada, where public vaping has been under attack. Clearing the Air: A systematic review on the harms and benefits of e-cigarettes and vapour devices is available online from the University of Victoria website.

The researchers were unambiguous in their findings: “There is no evidence of any gateway effect whereby youth who experiment with vapour devices are, as a result, more likely to take up tobacco use. The available evidence is that tobacco use by youth has been declining while use of vapour devices has been increasing”.

One of the two lead researchers went on to add: “Fears of a gateway effect are unjustified and overblown. From a public health perspective, it’s positive to see youth moving towards a less harmful substitute to tobacco smoking’.

There’s only one gateway involved with vaping – and that’s the one-way route away from tobacco smoking.

That is correct: running low on juice or suddenly seeing your only battery is almost out of charge, and you can’t get to replacements. Let’s be clear here, this isn’t the same as actually being out of juice or power. When you are out it’s all over, the job is done, there’s nothing you can do. It’s the difference between playing a game on your tablet when the ship’s shield are getting low and the waves of aliens are pummelling you – and game over. The anxiety is all in the anticipation.

Do I turn down the power for a poorer vape, just to eek some extra life out of this cell? Do I take fewer and shallower puffs to make the juice last? Do stop for the moment and save it all for when I’m gagging? All these questions flood the mind – as well as the nagging anger that you failed to bring a spare for the spare. Something this trivial has the potential to ruin a perfectly good day, turning a Friday afternoon into a Monday morning.

This is why we thought about creating the Stealthvape Vape Booth™.

That’s correct, it’s a solution for everybody who experiences a time out with his or her vaping equipment. When the atty begins to gurgle, when the red light replaces the green one on the power bar, hasten yourself to the nearest Stealthvape Vape Booth™ operator.

For busy localities in town and city centres, we have an operator-controlled unit that comes with a variety of mouthpieces, each one sterilised after use. It caters for fussy vapers by incorporating an extensive range of flavours and nicotine strengths. Settle in, vape and relax.

For quieter places, a self-operated Stealthvape Vape Booth™ will be placed in a convenient location such as a village hall. You will need to insert a prepayment card and make your selection on the keypad. Prepayment cards can be topped up online or using the debit card slot on the booth.

Both types of units hold a capacity to last for over eighteen months. Vapers can pay per visit (by the puff or hour) or, for your convenience, take out a monthly subscription. With the latter option you’ll never have to worry about taking kit out with you ever again. Pocket spaces will be freed up, and bags will be able to fit in at least three more hairbrushes and a packet of tissues. Your life will be your own again, not tied to the fear of a vapeless planet.

As ever, Stealthvape is doing the thinking so you don’t have to.