Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Done like a dinner, in reply to Thrash Cardiom,
Not to rain on anyone's parade but would anybody seriously consider placing a major data centre in the South Island with the Alpine fault ready to rumble at any time?
There are, apparently, 23 data co-lo centres in San Francisco, a city not at all unfamiliar with powerful earthquakes. A purpose-built data centre could take advantage of everything learned about seismic strengthening in the decades since Loma Prieta shake in 1989.
I'll also point out that I am aware at first hand of corporate data centres that operated all the way through both Christchurch earthquakes without missing a beat, other than struggling to keep generators running for several days without fuel deliveries by pump truck.
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Hard News: Violence in the streets, in reply to Jo Davidson,
may have gone outside and danced “prompting” the attack according to Stuff.
That's a mildly salient fact, though. Talking about the circumstances that lead to an attack can be useful education for the public. Her use of drugs, however, is completely irrelevant.
ETA: Dog attacks are rarely completely out of the blue and utterly unexpected, though what leads to them is often not readily apparent. We talk about teaching children how to interact with and behave around dogs for precisely this reason. It's not "victim blaming", it's recognising that dogs have their own instincts and we can't just talk to them about keeping those instincts in check.
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Hard News: Violence in the streets, in reply to TracyMac,
40-70 murders per annum in NZ, and the police “resolution rate” typically hovers around 90%
This thing. Our unsolved murder rate is vanishingly tiny. Some years we have none. Admittedly most murders are domestic in nature so the perpetrator is readily identified (and often confesses), but even the ones that aren't are generally solved. Sometimes it takes a while, but the cops normally track down the offender.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Russell Brown,
Why is having some objective measure of alcohol intake such a terrible thing?
Because, for the reasons Bart gave, it's not objective. It's vaguely, passably, kinda close to objective, but only inasmuch as it gives someone a very rough idea of how much they can drink without going over 0.08 if they know precisely how much alcohol (as in the actual alcohol content, not including all the water) they are consuming. But on any given day how they handle that alcohol could fluctuate wildly, for all the reasons Bart gave and also for things like forgetting or not noticing that the medication they took with dinner said "Limit alcohol intake".
When the limit is so high, people who think they're keeping within it by counting their drinks are still getting beyond the point of being able to make a good judgement about whether they should drive. Consider the tests the Herald did, where they plied a couple of their journalists with alcohol and then sent them out to do a lap of a race track, came back for another drink and a BAC measurement, rinse and repeat until they were blowing over the limit. They were both terrified by how much they could drink (reportedly light-weight female got to six glasses of wine, IIRC, and the male was something like 10 bottles of beer) before they were blowing over, and the driving of both was utterly awful long before they hit the limit. It's not precisely scientific, but it's pretty persuasive in terms of how far above safe our limit is. And somewhere in the cycle they both started thinking that their driving was getting better, that they were more in control. That point, based on what's been said to the government, doesn't come until after 0.05.
As for Russia, Ben, they're a pretty shit point of comparison. Their social relationship with the law and compliance is vastly different to ours. The countries with which we generally compare ourselves because of similar cultures are the ones we need to look at.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Russell Brown,
under 80 but over 50
Over 30, actually.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to BenWilson,
Yup, 0.08 is more impaired than stone cold sober, that’s for sure. Not sure entirely what you mean by “able to accurately assess risk”. When I’m at 0.08, I’m pretty much the same level of drunk as any other time I’m on 0.08, so knowing that I’m on 0.08 is a pretty accurate assessment of how impaired I am.
Are you actually as obtuse as you are making out?
1) Do you know, from repeated testing, what 0.08 feels like to you? In all circumstances? Could you accurately repeat that testing in a social situation and know when you'd had enough to put you at 0.08, accounting for the delayed effects? And even if you do, pretty much nobody else does. I've got no idea what it feels like when I'm at 0.08.2) The evidence the medical community has been producing to try and convince the current bunch of numpties that 0.08 is too high includes that between 0.05 and 0.08 most people stop being able to make a wise decision about being capable of driving. At 0.05 it's still possible for most, but by 0.08 it's incredibly difficult or impossible for most. I don't much care what you think is safe for you, I care what's safe for the majority. The evidence is also very, very firmly not in your favour.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to BenWilson,
But I don’t think I’d be so drunk that I couldn’t count, which would be the main way of assessing whether I was legal or not.
You would, however, be so drunk that your ability to accurately assess risk is significantly diminished. You might not use "I don't feel that drunk" as a yardstick for deciding if you can get behind the wheel, but the law isn't supposed to be aimed at those who're sensible.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Of course, someone fleeing police may not have any intent of injuring anyone, so treating that as murder kinda mucks up the rest of your position around intent.
Exercising force with the intent of evading lawful capture is generally treated more seriously than the use of the same force in other circumstances. Making it murder if you kill someone while fleeing police is a logical extension, IMO.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to FletcherB,
If on the other hand, you go out, fully intending to get a ride home with a sober driver… and then, your capacity to evaluate your own condition becomes impaired through use of substances
This is one of the big issues with NZ having a blood alcohol level of 0.8. By the time you’re at 0.8 you’re well past the point of being capable of deciding if you’re safe to drive. Your judgement has flown out the window while you’re still within the frame of “legal but dangerous”.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to DexterX,
The thing that both you and Chris have missed is that murder requires an intent to do harm, or at least an intent to do something so incredibly dangerous that a reasonable person ought to expect harm to result: firing a rifle at a house where people were known to be home, for example, is a classic NZ example where the resultant death was murder even though it was far from clear that the perpetrator intended to cause physical harm.
I'm firmly of the opinion that fatalities caused by a driver who is fleeing police ought to be murder, because a reasonable person should be able to equate intentional high-speed, low-quality driving with a significant risk of causing death. I'm iffier about death while DUI being murder, but quite happy for it to automatically be charged as manslaughter.
When you talk about "vehicular murder" you talk about using a vehicle as a weapon with intent to do harm. That is entirely possible, but to pursue all driving deaths as murder diminishes the crime of murder. Vehicular homicide is a crime in much of the US, being the offence of causing unlawful death with a vehicle, but it's not the same thing is murder.