Posts by ChrisW
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Regarding the referendum, firstly, it was a loaded and misleading question.
Secondly, 90% of 54% is 48%, which is not a majority.
Thirdly, it's sad that 48% of NZers are predicate child abusers. I think on that basis, it's ok to pick out random mainstream looking people, ask them how they voted and give them a bloody good kicking if they answered Yes.
Er, when you said Yes, I think you meant No. And several people didn't notice (surely not all of them too reticent to comment if they had). Thereby nicely illustrating a significant part of the problem with the shit question.
-
US 1, Grenada nil
Sorry Steve, was just a bit of hit and run smartarsery, doesn't bear too much analysis.
Although the question, "Has the US won any of its ill-conceived wars since 1945? does have a passing resemblance to "Should a smack as part of good parental correction ..." -
No wonder the US has lost every one of its ill conceived wars since WW2.
US 1, Grenada nil
-
Next week's Listener (29 Aug) has another 2+ pages of letters, including a fine professorial stoush - Emeritus Professor Colin Mantell (FRCOG) regrets that National Women's Hospital has disappeared, while Professor Ronald Jones writes as Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, National Women's Hospital. Professor Linda Bryder responds substantively to Professor Jones (ie more than "read the book"). And three others.
Overall I think you could say 5-1 in favour of the Bryder view of what happened. But couched in such terms that I would anticipate the story continuing to run.
-
Well I still call UniTech "Carrington". My parents met there, long before it was either a Uni or a Tech. Locals will know the significance of this.
Ah yes but there are more choices - Carrington was the replacement name post-1974 trying to get over the stigma of "Oakley Hospital", which was the new name ditto "Avondale Asylum" from which one of my great-great grandfathers graduated, and further back before all this PC nonsense started with the 1890s Liberals they called it the Whau Lunatic Asylum.
-
I'm pretty sure I didn't say it was his research, and I don't think he claimed it was his either. And I'm sure the journalist played no role in leading you to your interpretation that he wants to determine the law, bound as they are to report in a non-sensationalist fashion.
My reading of the ODT story you linked to included an O'Hare's we, in "why do we do research?", implying partial responsibility at least for the research under discussion. And the whole story is based on his frustration that the government was not also to ban use of hands-free cell-phones when research showed ..., so I'd say putting it that he wished to determine the policy/law is a reasonable short-hand version.
What really stimulated my response wasMr Joyce said allowing hands-free phones recognised many business and trades people depended on cellphones for their livelihood.
Prof O'Hare dismissed this as a "specious argument". "Either you are going to pay attention to what the science shows you or you are not."In the context of my affirming the role-clarity of Chief Science Advisor Gluckman, I saw this as a good illustration of the opposite. That considerations beyond safety should have no relevance to a policy decision? To point this out is not to bag scientists and their research and their input to policy, it concerns the manner of their input, in particular this binary all or nothing approach.
Could even be that we're getting an achievable first step on the way to a wider ban in some years, and in the meantime, surely formal ban on texting (send/receiving) and overall reduction in cell-phone use - surely progress? And a useful part of an educative process that good research will inform.
-
Hands-free cellphones -
shouldn't internationally recognised scientists and their research inform policy and law, which is exactly what he's asking for in the article?
Not exactly, he's asking that he and his research determine the policy and law, much more than inform it. It seems he can only imagine Government either ignoring his research, or doing his bidding.
But it is perfectly rational to pay careful attention to the results of his research, accept that it is the cell-phone conversation that is dangerous; then ban hand-held cell-phone use by drivers on the basis that this would be enforceable and effect a major reduction in cellphone-related distraction and resulting deaths, injuries and crash costs.__A ban on use of hands-free cell-phones while driving would be about as enforceable as a ban on thinking of sex while driving.__
Actually, I think his point is that that makes banning the use of non-handsfree headsets tokenism, but tokenism that looks good.
Can't see this - it would imply that all other forms of driver distraction were trivial alongside the huge problem of hands-free cell-phone use. That it's not worth making a useful reduction in driver-distraction unless we can stop it 100%.
I dislike much of what the current Government is doing, but it looks to me that Stephen Joyce has persuaded it to do something sensible instead of succumbing to the nanny-state bullshit that might have been expected.
-
Cell-phone use by drivers -
So slight diversion, an Otago psychologist, David O'Hare, ripped into the govt's cellphone ban exclusion on hands free headsets.
"Why do we do research? I mean, there's 15 or 20 years of science that show that the problem with cellphones is the conversation."Only a diversion back on-topic. Prof. O'Hare's classic piece of binary thinking "Either you are going to pay attention to what the science shows you or you are not" is an excellent illustration of Gluckman's emphasis that the scientists' role is to do good science and make it known, to inform policy, not to make policy.
A ban on use of hands-free cell-phones while driving would be about as enforceable as a ban on thinking of sex while driving.
-
On topic - The PM's Chief Science Advisor, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman interviewed over extended period this morning on Nine to Noon this morning, seemed to me very solid, a voice of reason and authority really. Not much on global climate change, but plenty else.
-
Peter Gluckman on Nine to Noon this morning commented on the folate in bread debacle - "the science became unstable because of its misuse in the media".