Posts by Chris Waugh
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to BenWilson,
Too late for the edit: Anyway, it was my impression that poisonings from dodgy booze are more often from methanol contamination than excess ethanol.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to BenWilson,
if you distilled 90% pure ethanol
Apparently quite common in Norway, or at least that small corner of Norway in which I spent the summer of 2000. And yes, only drunk watered down, though often with cider.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Virginia Brooks,
They come from the same thinking that puts melamine in milk and ethanol in cocktails (as in the cases in Bali, which probably only came to our attention because westerners got hurt).
Ethanol is supposed to be in your cocktails. It's methanol (and presumably other alcohols, though methanol seems to be the most common cause of alcohol-other-than-ethanol related trouble) you don't want and that's caused the trouble in Bali and many other places. And yes, the fact that (pale skinned) Westerners got hurt explains a lot of the Western press coverage, but you don't have to look too hard to find news of tainted fake/cheap/home brew booze causing mass poisonings, often among poorer local consumers.
But what's with the hating on the Third World? How is this any different to your iPads and other fancy gadgetry? No First World demand, no Third World production. And "waste chemicals" (would you prefer them to be dumped?), "different manufacturing standards" (really? Or First World producers taking advantage of different enforcement regimes?) and whatnot.... Your previous comments have been useful and informative, but this one carries a whiff of the nastier side of Orientalism. I hope I'm misunderstanding you.
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Capture: Getting closer, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
No PhotoShop?
Just held my phone up close, then after I put it on the computer zoomed in closer and tweaked a couple of things like saturation. Otherwise, it is as it appeared outside. No idea what it is beyond "some kind of a bug". But it does seem to be floating over the stone, and the stone looks much cooller than the cheap concrete fake rock it really is.
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Found this on our way to lunch.
And apparently bathtime didn't go so well for this snail.
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Last night's rain finally brought some live snails back out.
And one decided to take a bath.
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Access: Defective, deficient, deviant…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
the students look on with bewilderment
People are great like that, aren't they? So great at seeing the absurdities of distant phenomena, so bad at seeing the exact same absurdities playing out in their everyday life.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to debunk,
And yet I see nothing in either thread or any of the media coverage I've read to support your "complicit with son and importing business".
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Closest I could get to a big, fat bumble bee at lunchtime today. It was sitting all nice and still, but as I was struggling to see where I had the phone aimed, thanks to the bright sunlight (where’s the smog filter when you need it?), it took off…
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to debunk,
Minister complacent and complicit with son and importing business.
You sure you want to make that accusation? Have you got evidence to back that statement up? If so, care to share it? Cos that's a pretty big claim, not one I'd want to make lightly.
