Posts by B Jones
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the No.1 Shoe Warehouse seems to supply the shoes
F'r real? Because the first thing I thought of when I read that was the Vimes "Boots" theory of social injustice. No 1 shoes are cheap and fashionable but are made of sweaty vinyl and don't last much longer than a season, leading to more shoe purchasing being necessary over the long run.
Then again, kids grow out of shoes pretty fast so it might not be worth getting actual leather ones now there's an alternative.
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But first we will have to send in the military. Because Durville Island doesn't belong to New Zealand anymore.
What?
Do you mean that furriners own the freehold title to D'Urville Island, because that's not the same as it not being part of New Zealand. Presumably there's a title in a Land Information office somewhere in New Zealand registering that ownership.
I hope you're not serious about renationalising private title by military force, at any rate. That sort of thing hasn't been done since the 1860-70s round here.
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I had a running debate with my partner over whether stovetop or microwave porridge was superior. I'm in favour of the microwave - porridge will stick to anything, but it will stick harder to a surface that heats up. Turns out the only reason I was losing was because the magnetron on the microwave was intermittently failing and it was taking 5-plus minutes to heat up. So we got a new microwave and now it will do two people's porridge in under 2 minutes. That's plain old oats, none of this linseed business. No detectable difference whatsoever to the stovetop sort.
I also have an aversion to things that bubble and spatter scalding liquid onto you as you cook, hence fast as I can polenta and microwave porridge.
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At risk of flogging a dead horse, women aren't in the possession of all the facts. It's hard, if not impossible, to be in possession of all the facts. Judging by some of the comment I've read, few people even among those who have a view on this issue know the basic facts of how much folate the general population needs, how much they get, how much fortification will deliver, how much is within demonstrably safe levels, and how much pregnant women need.
Even if you bombarded people with education to make sure people did know, you've still got the massive unknowable question of "will I be pregnant in a month's time?" Around half of pregnancies are unplanned, presumably the result of less-than-effective contraceptive use.
Informed choice is great, but choice without information is pointless. I don't see "anyone who doesn't have their ovaries under lockdown needs to take folate" as being much better than "let's put the equivalent of a serving of marmite into everyone's bread just in case".
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What do you mean, how? You go to your doctor or pharmacy and say "give me vitamins, please".
That's pretty much what you do now, with the additional step of handing over a few dollars. The point of the whole exercise is that it doesn't occur to enough people to do so.
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Quite true - I was only going on data I had access to. I understand that APO-folate is subsidised to get it down to about $15 for 90 tabs - certainly the other commercially available supplements are a lot more expensive.
It was only because I fossicked around deep in the MOH website when I first contemplated taking it, that I found out about the cheap sort. The whole issue is a monster fail in public health communications.
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According to CCS, NTDs are 70% preventable by taking folate supplements.
Mandatory folate fortification doesn't deliver enough folate to achieve the full effect (because if the level was raised to full protection, there would be more people getting more than the Upper Tolerable Limit, beyond which it can mask B12 deficiency), so it only prevents 12%. The job of FSANZ and associated other experts is to set the balance between providing some form of general protection and making sure it's not too much.
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Amy, how?
A survey? Who wants to answer a government-run survey on their chances of getting pregnant? How much more intrusive is that than general fortification? How likely is it to generate accurate results, and what's the turnout likely to be?
Take the latest citizens' initiated referendum as a benchmark as to how expensive these things are to organise. $9 million? And I'm not counting the costs of the free vitamins, which last time I checked was about $15 for three months' worth, so $60 per year per woman. There are about 900,000 women aged between 15 and 45 - assuming only 10% of these are in the potentially pregnant category, that's $5.4 million a year.
And why bother with the survey if you're going to deliver the supplement to both potentially pregnant and trying-not-to-be pregnant women?
I think the government could do a lot more to promote awareness of folate consumption, because about-to-be pregnant women need a lot more than they'll get through fortification, but there are real practical difficulties reaching an audience like that.
Oh, and talk about how things have changed. That's amazing.
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My only reason for raising the cost/benefit issue, and I should have made this clearer, is because I've been peeved with the "everyone's freedom from harmless additives is more important than a few people's health" vibe that comes through from many of the opponents of fortification. There are many ways to count the costs of health or suffering - if people are going to avoid a minimal cost to themselves while incurring an incalculable cost to others, then perhaps pointing out they pay a share of those costs in taxpayer dollar terms will persuade them. Hearing the voices of real people affected by NTDs may also do so.
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Bollocks, Matthew. Provocation has a long history of being used in the context of intimate partner violence, to further defame the recipient of long years of violence as having deserved it for one reason or another. There was a famous case in England in the 80s like this, I forget the name. But sexual jealousy is one of the classic provocation grounds.