Posts by B Jones
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I wouldn't count on all opponents to irradiation knowing the difference between ionising and non-ionising. There's a definite community of distrusters of microwave ovens - I know people still waiting for the long term safety evidence to be produced. The guy I bought my latest microwave off told me it was better than the old ones which irradiated food, that was what the standing time was for, to allow the radiation to disperse. I was tempted to cancel the sale on principle at that point, but it's not like the guy made the appliance.
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Carol - I think there's an anti-science vein to the anti-vaxers, especially the greenish ones, but it's not the whole picture. In the case of the NZCPR and TR, it's more to do with distrust of the people wielding a particular technology than a mystical rejection of the theoretical basis for the technology. Although I think there's a populist "what good are all these experts, I know what I know" element to it all.
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Members of both the NZCPR and the Tino Rangatiratanga* crowd have bees in their bonnet over vaccination, which I think is interesting. I guess one lot hate the state's involvement and the others hate the Crown/big companies' involvement.
*Sometimes this list is publicly accessible, sometimes they shut it down to members only. Apologies if the link doesn't work - it's to essentially the same article.
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several of my final-year group were busted big time consuming hard drugs. And they weren't particularly hard up either.
Of course not. They don't grow on trees* - you need to have money to pay for them. It's a bit hard to develop an expensive habit of anything when you're using all your student loan on rent and fees. I don't know if anyone's studied this, but I reckon you'd get two groups with higher levels of drug (including alcohol) consumption - those with lots of money from legitimate sources, and those with lots of money from illegitimate sources.
*well, obviously some do.
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Indeed, in some cases (I'm now arguing from anecdotal evidence), the students from the 'better schools' often perform worse at Stage I than their rivals because they think that, having been to a better school, they can coast at uni.
That's what I saw when I was at varsity. If I had a dollar for every kid I knew who started off doing law with a 400+ bursary grade from a top ranked hothouse school and ended up taking five years to get a BA in Classics, I'd have three or four dollars at least.
Not so much the coasting, I think. Just adjusting to having the freedom to screw up after having been coached by their league-table conscious school. Also greater access to excessive drugs and alcohol but that's a whole other story.
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Weeell, my chances of getting smallpox today are tiny in comparison to my chances of getting a reaction to a smallpox vaccine (which was quite a reacty one, I understand). Which is why they don't give it out routinely now it's eradicated. But measles and whooping cough, yeah.
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I've been having moon arguments on the internets for nearly ten years now. First time around was with someone who said you couldn't deny the moon's influence, look at the human menstrual cycle. Ok, I thought, it might average out at 28 days but you have a huge variation between individuals and even when the cycle's the same length, we're not all in sync with any particular moon phase. Big old myth though.
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This is horribly late to the party, but for those readers wondering when Terry Pratchett came to New Zealand, I can date it - I went straight from my first year philosophy exam in June 1994 to a talk he gave. He was back again at least once, probably around 97.
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I've just read Feast: Why Humans Share Food and it has some lovely stuff about big showy displays of public food ("exocuisine") and private family food stewed up in pots ("endocuisine"). It puts the big slab of meat at the barbecue into a new light (apparently our distant ancestors would have traded food for sex right on site), and perhaps even sheds light on the bugger who brings sizzlers but eats three salmon kebabs.
Anyway, I think barbecue chef title goes to the top ranking male rather than the host, in this context.
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I liked those links, Rich. A big study came out in early 2009 about low alcohol consumption, not finding any link between 1 standard drink a week and rates among 3 year olds of behavioural disorders and the like.
I remember hearing that Naomi Lange had lost a fetus very late in pregnancy to listeriosis, and renewing my cheese-avoidance. Nothing like one anecdote to demolish good statistics.