Posts by B Jones
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I've never seen a shred of evidence that the world is actually a more dangerous place for children now than it was 20 years ago,
Twenty years ago was 1990, and the memories of Teresa Cormack and Karla Cardno were pretty fresh back then. 20 years is a frighteningly short space of time - I remember stranger danger and self defence courses well before that. In fact, wasn't 1990ish the peak of the satanic abuse panic?
Come to think of it, it was around then that the parental units first started having issues with me, aged 12 or 13, playing in the park unsupervised or accompanied.
In any case, you have to go back more than 30 years if you're looking for a golden age of child safety. Even if it's a fake one.
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Saw Avatar last night in 3d and loved it. More vibrant and terrifying and interesting than the middle part of King Kong, more realistic than the dreamy puppet flora and fauna of the Dark Crystal, the plot clearer and pacier than Dances With Wolves, but with elements of all of these. Only a few moments of cheese - Michelle Rodriguez' line "I didn't sign up for this shit" could have appeared in any number of military blockbusters.
To me, it's exactly what an effects movie should be - you don't get bounced out of the story to think omg how did they do that, you just think "god, that's so beautiful" - human creativity is the only limit, rather than the technology at our hands. The difference between Avatar and District 9 is that the former prioritises spectacle, the latter story and character.
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My baby girl and her dad - caring for someone you love, with someone you love, has led me to a new understanding of the concept of family.
Clausthaler featured significantly in the development phase of this project - it tastes better than a lot of full strength beers, and isn't sweet, unlike just about every other non-alcoholic drink there is. I suspect the difference between the 0% version and the 0.5% version is only labelling - the latter says "no more than 0.5%", which I've also seen on Phoenix Ginger Beer in the past - no ID required for that. It's the sort of thing you'd say just in case the yeast got away on you in a particular batch and you didn't want to be sued by anyone determined not to drink a single drop of alcohol. It would functionally be pretty much the same.
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I didn't know about Halfmen, but I can't say I'm surprised, given the success of other YA fantasy adaptations made around here.
Childhood dreams coming true there.
Yes, but you know it's never going to look as good as it does in your head. Halfmen is such a vividly written series that it's going to take work to replace my own mental images of the bloodcat, Jimmy Jaspers et al. Goodness knows how they'll film the completely pitch black underground bits.
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Dr Brash said on the radio yesterday that it wasn't a partisan thing, and one of the other members of the panel was a former finance minister and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party under Helen Clark (or words to that effect) - it took ages of boggling at the thought of Michael Cullen abolishing the super fund that I realised he meant David Caygill. And sure enough, on the telly pictures, there he was.
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That just makes me think of the Light of Day Institute.
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All the stuff on the internet looks crazy because it's written to discredit the conspiracy theorist by associating them with paranoid nutcases. Or so I hear.
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God knows derision is tempting, but it's not an answer.
Hell no, and that's the main reason I part company with the Skeptical OB - I don't think she uses appropriate language to persuade people to her point of view.
Although I recently read, probably there, that there's no way you should trust a GP over the peer-reviewed research they're supposed to implement. They're busy generalists and don't necessarily keep up. And there are GPs profitting from selling chelation agents to parents of kids with autism, according to the awful Mercury Falling/Rising documentary I saw a while back.
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I've been invited to make a lot of health choices in the last couple of months - they're all like, it's your choice but here's what the medical profession as a collective whole recommends. It doesn't really feel like a choice to pick the default option, and if choice is the important thing, it's tempting to take the perverse option. Especially if you're in a demographic that prizes being at the leading edge of trends. I can't stand the top ten Resene colours for exactly that reason. Whooping cough isn't in the same league as Half Spanish White, though.
For some reason they left it entirely up to me to book the Joneslet in for her six week shots, although I'm sure someone will be along to make sure I've done it. I wonder if there's some public health psychology that could be applied to the issue.
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The Skeptical Obstetrician, who's an interesting read although I disagree with her on a number of points, has some particularly scathing words for the alternative health sector, and about the extent to which laypeople can make informed decisions about complex subjects:
When a vaccine rejectionist or natural childbirth advocate claims to be "educated" on a topic they don't mean that they have any education on the topic at all. They simply mean that they are defying authority. In their world, trusting experts is a mark of credulity, while ignoring expert advice is a sign of independent thinking and self-education. But, of course, since they don't really know anything about the topic, they are inevitably forced to rely on the advice of propagandists, charlatans and quacks.
It's a sentiment bound to annoy a hell of a lot of people, but when you think about it, you have the options of following your doctor's advice, or reading up on the internet and do something different. The latter feels like making a choice, whereas the former feels like just going with the flow. The latter is harder, therefore feels like better in the implicit economy we assign to things.