Posts by Kevin McCready
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Hard News: The long road to Hit and Run, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Now you're being silly Matthew. It looks like war crimes have been committed and you joke about it?
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Hard News: The long road to Hit and Run, in reply to Neil,
positive contribution of the NZ PRT to the Bamyan Province.
Scene of the Crime chapter of Hager/Stephenson shows the absurdity or this and documents NZDF people saying so. Our presence there was for purely political reasons (flying flag with USA) and to blood the SAS who hadn't seen combat for a while.
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Hard News: The long road to Hit and Run, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Matthew. Yes, possibly efficient killers if that's how respect is earned. Some SAS are clearly liars without honour who don't perform to their own standards integrity. Read the last paragraph of Hager's book. Some SAS are clearly courageous enough to call for a war crimes investigation, others, not so much.
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Yes the sources for Hit and Run included NZ SAS who were on the ground. Wayne Mapp was very unconvicing on RNZ this morning. I wondered if Guyon has yet read the book or understands the basic weaponry. A young school teacher was shot four times in the chest apparently by a NZ SAS sniper 30 metres away. Sniper weapons are capable of killing at a distance of 1000 metres. Guyon needed to ask "At 30 metres and given the technology available, wouldn't it have been possible to see that the young teacher was unarmed?"
It seems clear that the government has no control now over its media response. Guyon's interview with the SAS officer shows this. It was risible for the SAS guy to say let's not have an enquiry unless it clears us.
BTW I was disappointed with Guyon saying the SAS was a respected institution. They are a law unto themselves and have no honour.
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Maybe the SAS guy I met was a bad egg. But if he's representative, the cultural problem which Danyl alludes to ("almost comic obsession among defence officials to “get in on the game” and engage in combat operations") runs much deeper.
The SAS fellow I met was a believer in what he called the "warrior culture". On further examination of his thinking it was clear that he saw society divided, almost like an ant colony, into different castes of people: warriors, technocrats etc. Of course he reserved the highest place for warriors.
Interesting also was his total acceptance of mercenaries who should be free to sell their services to the highest bidder. He believed in the irredeemable and essential violence of some humans and argued that they needed an outlet (war) while the peaceful humans got on with what peaceful humans do.
The most scary part of my meeting with him was the pure joy he took in combat. It was an adrenalin rush like no other. It was his reason for being.
Perhaps this guy was an outlier in his extremism, but I think the "warrior" issue needs to be explored further.
I also give you soldier Bob Buick (he's not who I'm talking about BTW) who said re someone impersonating a soldier "You have tarnished the man's reputation by falsely stating what you did, and, subsequently belittled his integrity amongst fellow warriors.."
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Thanks Carol for emailing me the paper.
I've reviewed the de Jong article (I've spent my whole bloody afternoon on this issue, grrrrr). I don't find de Jong persuasive. In particular his discussion of the exercise substitution possibility is brief and possibly problematic. His Equation 8 is said to deal with that plus environmental costs (perhaps we can discount them further given better public transport) in one.
BTW his paper says re Sydney hospital data "2/3 of patients have minor bumps and scratches, and go home after a dressing or patch" Jeez, what of concussion?
Alarm bells rang for me when de Jong said three studies show that legislation reduces participation. In checking the footnotes I see they are all by Dorothy Robinson who I have dealt with before. Dorothy is passionate and likes to make the point that her numerous academic credentials are enough to win an argument.
Further googling, and an email from de Jong, who gets points for sharing, found the work of Jake Olivier. His injurystats blog is worth a look. His 2014 paper "Anti-helmet arguments: lies, damned lies and flawed statistics" covered additional problems in the de Jong/Robinson papers.
So if the Robinson stuff fails, so does de Jong.
Of interest also was Olivier's information about the links to the anti-helmet brigade. He comes to the same conclusion that I did in an earlier post above about the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation aka cyclehelmets.org
Some of the anti-helmet brigade are unhinged, which is not a clincher in the argument, but certainly doesn't help their case.
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4259939.htmMy conclusion is still that we should all wear helmets and that legislation should back that up.
Bart, have you got anything after Jake's 2014 paper that you think clinches the argument?
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Unless you assume helmets completely eliminate head injuries
AND
the law causes a 100% uptake of helmets (from 0 to 100%)
AND
there is no effect on cycling numbers from the lawthen in all cases the model shows a negative health outcome from the helmet law
Bart, no one has emailed me the whole paper (please do on: kevin 1 mccready at gmail dot com). So let me comment on the assumptions you posit for the model to work.
1. Helmets end all head injuries? I agree - it's mad to assume that.
2. Helmet uptake goes from 0 to 100%. I agree that's a crazy assumption.
3. Law has no effect on cycling numbers. Doesn't that raise a self-referential problem in the model?BTW I'm happy to be lectured and happy to learn, but if you are serious about relying on the model in this discussion and serious about having other people test your assumptions, then I think you should email it to me.
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Bart I'm happy to be wrong, if I'm wrong. Please email me the paper.
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kevin 1 mccready at gmail dot com -
Moz I think you misunderstand how science works. It's a series of probability statements. You don't REALLY get to pick and choose. You can pick and choose only according to the probability values you prefer. So you get to say "The probability that gravity will plummet me to the bottom of the cliff if I step off is 99.9999999999%, but I'm going to step off anyway because it's still not a certainty and my extremely high standards of 100% haven't been met yeeeeeetttt - splatttt!!!" The probability that the de Jong model represents reality is about zero according to my back of the envelope calculation. So, ummm, I think I'll keep wearing my cycling helmet.
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BTW I don't regard the cyclinghelmet.org site as a reliable source. It seems that every time a cycle hire business goes bust AND that business is in a jurisdiction that has mandatory helmet laws the website says "See I told you, it proves helmet laws are bad." FFS.
eg =
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1207.html?NKey=5