#michael mosley

BALLARD Teaser

Set in the world of Bosch, BALLARD follows Detective Renée Ballard. Ballard now runs the LAPD's new cold case division, which is poorly funded and staffed by volunteers despite having the largest caseload in the city.

BALLARD stars Maggie Q (Renée Ballard), Titus Welliver (Harry Bosch), Courtney Taylor, John Carroll Lynch, Michael Mosley, Rebecca Field, Victoria Moroles, Amy Hill, Ricardo Chavera, Noah Bean, Alain Uy, and Hector Hugo. Bosch/Ballard novelist Michael Connelly is serving as an executive producer alongside Michael Alaimo & Kendall Sherwood and Henrik Bastin & Melissa Aouate.

European elections. I am so amused by the people we are sending to the European parliament. Regarding the general results of the European elections, I'd dare say we can observe some improvement compared to the horrors of recent years. Of course the results were still horrible but at least they weren't as horrible as they were previously or as horrible as they were in other European countries i.e France, Austria, Germany... But the people that were most voted lol I can't wait for us to lose the last drop of integrity we might have had in Europe. For context, amongst the elected MEPs are a) one of the two most hated, bootlicking journalists in the country, b) another journalist who started her career as edjy and denunciatory and now she's apparently the exact opposite, c) at least a couple relatives / descendants of well known politicians that have done nothing on their own, d) a gymnast and model who now claims he is against pre-marital sex but admits he is a sinner and continues sinning (lol) and now he says it still hasn't sunk in that he is an MEP, e) woman who has changed face due to 682746 plastic surgeries and her whole political rhetoric is turning against other women for not subscribing to traditional feminine roles, taking care of themselves, always shaving their body hair, being skinny etc f) a 76 year old shepherd and butcher???? that she joined the elections out of impulse and now she doesn't know how the hell she was elected?!?!?! Don't get me wrong, this woman might be decent but come on, let's be real, does she sound qualified for this position? And most of the others are like that because I heard almost everybody is ridiculous amongst the elected. But honestly well done guys, let's just go utterly destroy our already suffering image and whatever tiny political impact we might have had. I can't wait. Then again all of Europe elected pathetic MEPs this year. But I hope we can still shine as some of the most embarrassing!

Wind energy. If you follow this blog VERY closely, you might remember that the issue of the uncontrollable expansion of wind parks has been discussed before. The way wind parks are made in Greece is extremely problematic because Greece has too little - let's say - "expendable" space for the housing of the wind turbines, so the government which pushes for them for MANY reasons starts making them inside environmentally protected areas, Natura 2000 locations, big mountains and generally regions with a lot of wildlife and traditional culturally significant destinations of high aesthetic and intrinsic value. So, after planting like a gazillion of wind turbins, civilians were notified that the electricity bills are about to become more costly. The government's explanation for this literally was "well it wasn't as windy as we hoped :( so now we have to raise the electricity bills... sorry". For real. I can't wait for tourists to finally start blacklisting Greece due to extensive deterioration of the natural landscape due to the wind farms. Come on guys. (The only reason I want this is because they will never stop for the sake of the environment, the landscapes and the protesting civilians of this country. Only loss of immediate profit could ever make them reconsider.)

BBC doctor Michael Mosley's death and the disappearance of another Dutch tourist. I have said this before, I will say it again. A lot of people seem to underestimate the challenges of the Greek environment and landscape. Greece has indeed this thing of often looking sweetly unassuming to the inexperienced eye but make no mistake. Greece has a VERY treacherous landscape and terrain. Don't go into nature unprepared, without water, mobile phone, sun protection, proper attire and shoes. Don't take athletic initiatives on your own if you are on the older side, have health issues and also in general, especially if you are not familiar with such terrains as the Greek one. I see the news. 60-70 year old people from the UK and the Netherlands embarking on their own for hiking during Greek heatwave? Recipe for disaster. I mean, I almost died once and I was with a group, next to a city, 40 years younger than them, healthier I guess and it was February! Because some of you don't have the full picture; it's not just about the scorching sun. It's not just about the air temperature being in the 30-40+ degrees. Greece's terrain is extremely rugged, uneven, complex and rocky and it causes rockfalls all the freaking time. The southern terrain is often barren especially in the summer and the rocks and land can get temperatures in the 60-70 degrees. You can not even say "oh I am probably getting a heatstroke but there's no hope for me to find shade or find my way out of here so I will at least lie down until sunset or someone finds me". You cannot even lie down because the rocks are burning more than the sun! Furthermore, Greece has a truly, unbelievably blinding sunlight. The white and lightcoloured rocks and terrain reflect all this light back, which in such conditions can hinder totally your eyesight. Mosley had sunglasses, a hat and an umbrella but as you see even these weren't enough in an afternoon during a heatwave and far from the signaled path. I am sorry for him but what on earth was Mosley thinking??? As for why his body was not found earlier, we should never rule out incompetence, however in this case I believe he just fell among all those rocks and was sort of camouflaged let alone that nobody expected him to have managed to reach so close to safety and yet not make it. They apparently were checking mostly the more remote and dangerous areas, which is so ironic! RIP. I hope the Dutch tourist is found alive and well. Greece can be entirely safe but as long as you practice common sense, like in all places.

Dr Michael Mosley

Popular celebrity medic who offered health advice to millions through his TV and radio roles, most notably on fasting

Dr Michael Mosley, who has died aged 67 on the Greek island of Symi, explored health and fitness issues of interest to big audiences. He was a versatile communicator, whether as a television diet guru, newspaper columnist or podcaster.

He became a household name for diet books promoting calorie reduction and fasting, including The Fast Diet (2013), written with the journalist Mimi Spencer. His work gained in popularity from his self-experimentation, which included swallowing tapeworms, magic mushrooms, internal cameras and – most famously – fasting to cure his own type 2 diabetes, diagnosed in 2012. He became a well known TV and radio celebrity medic, regularly appearing on The One Show for the BBC and This Morning for ITV. On BBC Radio 4’s Just One Thing podcast he offered health tips to the nation, from the benefits of daily spoonfuls of olive oil to the usefulness of the plank position.

Yet his own medical career was brief. Mosley, who studied philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at New College, Oxford, trained in medicine at the Royal Free hospital, north London, after two years of working as a banker. He wanted to become a psychiatrist, saying that he found people more interesting than finance, but was disappointed to find that “there were severe limitations to what you could do”, he told the British Medical Journal in 2004.

He opted instead to exert influence through the medium of television, joining the BBC training scheme as an assistant producer in 1985, and going on to produce documentaries based mostly in science, mathematics and history.

His most glorious moment arguably came with the Horizon programme Ulcer Wars, which he made in 1994 about the work of Barry Marshall of the University of Western Australia, who was convinced that the bacteria he had identified called Helicobacter pylori was responsible for most gastric cancers and ulcers.

The story appealed to Mosley and inspired his own self-experimentation: Marshall had drunk a solution of H pylori from a beaker in the 1980s and his stomach had been colonised by the bacteria, which disappeared when he took antibiotics.

Marshall was right and later, with his colleague Robin Warren, won a Nobel prize. Mosley received more than 20,000 letters from people cured of their ulcer pain by antibiotics. The film brought him awards. “I probably did, in a funny way, more good with that one programme than if I had stayed in medicine for 30 years,” said Mosley in the BMJ.

In 2002, Mosley was nominated for an Emmy as executive producer on the documentary featuring John Cleese, The Human Face. In 2013, he began to host the series Trust Me, I’m a Doctor for the BBC. His most recent TV series were for Channel 4: Who Made Britain Fat? (2022) and Secrets of Your Big Shop (2024).

The Fast Diet book, which launched the 5:2 diet, also came out of a Horizon documentary. Eat, Fast and Live Longer (2012) was inspired by Mosley’s own diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to excess weight. The disease ran in the family. His father, Bill, had died of the complications at the age of 74. Mosley came across the American neuroscientist Mark Mattson’s work on intermittent fasting, and adopted the pattern he advocated of normal eating for five days and consumption of just 500-600 calories on the other two.

He claimed to have lost 20lbs and reversed his own type 2 diabetes. Mattson appeared in the documentary, which is credited with popularising the 5:2 diet. In 2021, Mosley published The Fast 800 Keto, which combines fasting with a ketogenic diet, high in fat and low in carbohydrates, but in its later stages allows carbohydrates back in.

Mosley’s diet work was controversial because of its focus on calorie reduction to lose weight. In 2021, the eating disorder charity Beat said of his Channel 4 series Lose a Stone in 21 Days that “the programme caused enough stress and anxiety to our beneficiaries that we extended our helpline hours to support anyone affected and received 51% more contact during that time”.

He said he had suffered from chronic insomnia from his late 30s. That became the subject of another BBC documentary and also a book published in 2019, called Fast Asleep.

Born in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, Michael was the son of a banker, Bill Mosley, and his wife, Joan. At the age of seven he was sent to boarding school in Britain. Mosley said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald that his mother was heartbroken to send him away to school, but that his father worked in Hong Kong and the Philippines, wanted Michael and his other son, John, to become bankers as he had, and that sending children to boarding school back in Britain was part of the culture of that time.

His maternal grandfather was an Anglican bishop. Mosley said he came from a long line of missionaries, but “the closest I get to religion is incorporating fasting in my diet”.

Mosley met Clare Bailey at the Royal Free hospital medical school, now part of UCL medical school, and they married in 1987. Bailey, who became a GP, was an active partner in Mosley’s dietary work and wrote recipe books for people embarking on the Fast 800 diet as well as newspaper columns in her own right. She told interviewers that she did not fast, because she had never needed to lose weight, and that she would hide chocolate from Mosley, who had a sweet tooth.

She survives him, along with their three sons, Alex, Jack and Daniel, and a daughter, Kate.

🔔 Michael Mosley, doctor, writer and broadcaster, born 22 March 1957; found dead 9 June 2024

Sorry, spoilers ahead 😬

We watched this movie because my sister was absolutely obsessed with Jeffery Dean Morgan at the time (honestly, understandable). It’s actually one of my favorite tropes. They’re married, but they don’t want to be, but they end up staying together. I love that storyline! Yes, it’s a bit cliche and corny, but that’s what makes a good romcom. Well, that and actual good actors and dialogue. This one is worth the watch.

Sex/nudity: 3/10 (kissing, a couple sexual topics of conversation, implied sex)

Language: 3/10 (one f word I believe, some other milder language)

Violence: 1/10 (I don’t remember any but I’m giving it a one just in case)

Overall rating: 7/10

Thoughts are with your family.