Posts by Roger
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I'm all for the Warrior baby getting to Oz for the final...
Am I just being a grinch or is taking a 2 week old baby on a trans Tasman flight unless you really really have to just a touch unwise? And I really do hope that they are not contemplating taking it to the final!
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Oh oh oh (picture me squirming in my seat with excitement). See this here - GM has such potential it is amazing
Thanks Bart... I do so like passion! And informative too.
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As well as the science being complicated, our understanding and response to risk is even more complicated. Not only do we naturally respond differently to different risks (often with similar outcomes), some risks we choose to ignore completely.
We know, for example that many people are scared of flying, while very, very few are scared of traveling in a car, even though travel by commercial airline is 10 to 40 times safer than car travel. If we were to put a product on the market that had a toxin in it that could kill one person in a 1,000,000, people would be outraged. However we know that car accidents kill one person in 10,000 per year and we are quite nonchalant about that (unless of course if affects us directly).
In the case that started international concern over power lines (Denver), because of a potential link to childhood leukemia; no one commented on the fact that while the disease cases were statistically on the main roads where 'big' wires were, that was also where the high traffic densities were with accompanying automotive exhaust containing things like benzene, a known carcinogen.
So we react strongly to some risks while ignoring others, which is why when a scientist says that he or she is not completely sure... people leap onto the 0.0001% uncertainly. It is also why we have a dilemma because from a statistical point of view in the chaotic real world there is almost no such thing as certainty.
But then this is further complicated because we have a level of risk that we are comfortable with and in some ways actually demand:"For example, in a Munich study, half a fleet of taxicabs were equipped with anti-lock brakes (ABS), while the other half had conventional brake systems. The crash rate was the same for both types of cab, and Wild concludes this was owing to drivers of ABS-equipped cabs taking more risks, assuming that ABS would take care of them, while the non-ABS drivers drove more carefully since ABS would not be there to help in case of a dangerous situation."
Which kind of complicates efforts to make the world 'safer'!
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Joe Wylie,
crops contaminated with patented strains
That is about the only way that exchange can happen... when pollen from a GE crop blows across to, and pollenates a member of the same type of plant.
Eating GE corn is about as likely to contaminate people with 'foreign' DNA as it is for us to be contaminated by 'normal' corn DNA
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Bart Janssen,
If anything it is this kind of "scientist" vs "scientist" conflict that is one of the most complex to understand when you are outside the specialist field being debated.
And then there are those that are just involved because they like a good argument!
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I just don't get the deafening silence from almost all quarters.
The reason I think is, that notwithstanding the comments on this thread.... no one is surprised.
I see it clearly now, the savings of a Super city only made sense only if you hid the true cost of making it happen.
That was always the strategy (as far as strategy projected beyond cock-up).
The reform was also argued for using errant nonsense, such as 'we need one Council in order to compete with the large cities of Australia'. Ignoring the fact that NZ's councils were already huge by Australian, UK and US standards. Just try telling someone that the population of Sydney City Council is about 110,000 people, that the population of Perth City Council is about 15,000 people, or that there are around 28 councils in Melbourne, plus a State government with an upper and lower house! We seem to have forgotten that the purpose of local government was to be, you know, local!
There was never any intention of allowing facts to get in the way of this argument.
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I must admit to being amused when supposed official and knowledgeable organisations (often) use ä instead of ā because they do not appear to know to scroll down another two clicks in the Microsoft Word 'insert symbol' menu.
On OBL; I quite enjoyed Boris Johnson's contribution in this morning's NZ Herald (from the UK Telegraph), that no one else seems to have mentioned.
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Done and done... Thank you!!
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I think Paralympic NZ needs to invite him to a few sports
Ross, "as the coach of the NZ Paralympic Shooting Team", do you have a vacancy for a target?