Killer swine! Yes, those notoriously filthy beasts have been at it again, only unfortunately this time they've been mixing it up and cavorting with pigs would you believe? Hence, mutated viruses, yada yada, resulting in a human-contagious swine flu sweeping the world. To an extent at least. As yet, the World Health Organisation isn't declaring it a proper pandemic, but it has caused 6497 cases of illness including 65 confirmed deaths, spread between 33 countries as of yesterday apparently.

The UK Government even made a little booklet about it to send to every citizen, so it must be pretty much as serious as terrorism no less. And yes, the book is not all that far off being as pointless and patronising as the terrorism handbook was – suggesting such wacky concepts as not sneezing a nose full of infected bogies into your dearly beloved's face. Still, the previous Governmental advice to walk away from, not towards, a roaring fire in a building has kept the Poorhouse alive so far, so can't complain.

The Poorhouse is a big lover of pop-economics, the sort of stuff famously published in tomes such as The Undercover Economist or Freakonomics. The quantitative inter-relation of sometimes disparate-seeming topics, but mostly concentrating on cold hard money, is a fascinating insight into how the world really works. The more popularised writings on such topics may be a little dumbed down for the masses, but on the other hand they are actually interesting to read.

Nonetheless, there are some activities that at first it is hard to see that they would innately relate to financial incentives such as taxation in a consumer-driven way. The truly mortal stuff, births and deaths, one can see easily would relate strongly to wealth - if you have the money for good medical care, you'll likely live longer - but at the end of the day generally people don't have a lot of active choice over exactly which day they are born or die in a way that they can choose their brand of cola...or do they? Work by Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh indicates maybe there are more active - financially incentivisable - choices going on that one might expect.

As part of the not-particularly New Year's resolutions, and more importantly, because it is expensive plastic tat manufactured by Nintendo, the Poorhouse felt inclined to invest in a Wii Fit system some months ago. And guess what...the regime continues, with fairly-near daily usage. Impressive, no?! It has to be said that there haven't been new crowds of fan marvelling at the new He-Man like physique, but presumably it can't do any harm to try and fitten up a bit.

Well, clearly the above could be answered in a single word, with one syllable and two letters, but hey, let's give it a chance. A strange amount of tarnish has fallen from the pens of certain newspapers on "social networking websites". Often the example they use is Facebook, presumably because it's the biggest, baddest and all, with a population of considerably more than quite some countries using it.

There seem to be a couple of main stories, both of which could be plot-lines for a horror film.

The Poorhouse got all excited once his regular news search for perversions in Sheffield (the Poorhouse's special place, rather than a consequence of his deep love for ex-industrial spoon-making towns) popped up with a nice result or too. Who wouldn't read on and feel a level of local pride upon reading this?

...one of a range of odd items medics in Sheffield have had to remove from people's backsides or genitals.

It's good to be famous for something.

Funny product names are always to be included in the purile pit of juven-humour seen to be floating around the Poorhouse, but it's not always the case that they a) are not unfortunately-named foreign imports, b) have TV ads, and c) are related to some of the most sensitive of health subjects.

Check this:

We all know we're supposed to eat 5 portions of fruit n veg a day right? But do we know what fruit and vegetables actually are in order to actually give us a decent chance at fulfilling said obligation...? According to a recent survey, no we don't. Check it:

One in five [parents] thought that fruit-flavoured sweets, spaghetti hoops and orange squash counted towards the daily target.And although one in ten believed Jaffa Cakes, chips and cola contributed, one in 20 thought oranges or bananas didn't

Guess what story the Poorhouse has been saving up all these months? Surely something amazing after such a break, no? Well of course! It's time for a game of guess what bit of the body this is. Warning, from reactions gained from real-life associates upon mere discussions, the following may not be suitable for meal time.

Hard to know how to approach this product…is it a massive scam, the likes of which you’d need big big balls to even attempt, or a fascinating and medically beneficial play on the weirdness that is human psychology (and perhaps even physiology)?

Enter the cunning wonder that is… Obecalp. Yep, Obecalp. D’ya geddit?

Just to continue the sadly unsurprised-face theme of today's updates, let it now be declared that, according to a study by Norwich Union Healthcare, a sizeable amount of people turn up to work (well done)...hungover (not well done).

Their survey of 1000 employees and 250 companies found that about a third (32%) of respondents did own up to turning up to work in a hurty hurty hungover state.

"Own up" is about right, because the Poorhouse is rather surprised it's not more. Well, unless people are just taking ever more sick days...which it could well be. In the eyes of the employers themselves, more than three quarters consider alcohol to be the number one threat to employee's turning up and being healthy.