Posts by linger
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There was a little more detail on the drug trial findings in this week's edition of the BBC radio series More or Less.
In addition to the overall finding that there was a significant (average) difference in improvement between drugs and placebos only for cases of severe depression, the programme makes the point that an average response might not be such a useful measure of drug effectiveness in this case: different drugs seem to work to different extents for different people; so the fact that one drug might not work for you doesn't mean that there isn't some alternative drug available that will have a clinically significant effect. (The published trials tend to focus on average responses, and do not all cite the amount of variation in response, so there isn't enough evidence to eliminate this as a possibility.) -
Didn't Martin Phillipps write a song about it?
I'm sure he's written several on that theme, but "Don't Be ... Memory" off Submarine Bells is the one that immediately springs to mind.
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improbable piles of information
Which is what you get from sitting on a throne.
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As Pamela Stephenson was later to say in Not the Nine O'Clock News, "Nice video, shame about the song"...
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I was far too busy gagging at ballocks
--"When Blow Jobs Go Wrong"
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Was there any extent to which the "stressed state" was artificially exaggerated? e.g. did those plants all need to be down for maintenance simultaneously, or could maintenance have been staggered more?
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DR: Wow. One well-placed hyphen and the mysteries (and internal class struggles) of the music industry are revealed: Commo-ditties.
Emma: I suppose taking someone up on that etchings line is one quick way to distinguish real from bullshit artists.
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Not so different from beer then.
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the purpose of a meeting in Japan is to arrange the next meeting
In my darker moments, I incline to the view that the purpose of a meeting (anywhere in the world) is primarily as an anaesthetic, numbing the senses so that decisions can be enacted that would never be entertained by any sane individual.
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Mark Taslov: I'm simply contending that; those antagonized by free media into presuming those administered state media suffer the same media addiction and wholesale unsophisitication, could consider increasing their salt intake before espousing the malignancy of state media.
Kyle Matthews: Way to make little sense through excessive use of big wordage.
I think what Mark's saying is that
(i) Having "free media" is no guarantee of having truthful or trustworthy media, and we should take media messages about [Chinese] state media with a pinch of salt.
(ii) [Chinese] state media saying something is no guarantee that the [Chinese] people necessarily believe it or are even listening.But putting it in those words seems to expose a disconnect between (i) and (ii); how do they form a coherent argument?
I can't quite see the point of setting up an opposition between, on the one hand, having a media that is potentially able to tell the truth about almost anything, and that is therefore given some credence by its audience (even though it may be mistaken or wrong or biassed), and on the other hand, having a media that may not be allowed to tell the truth about some things, and which therefore may be viewed with more suspicion by its audience. The more important point is perhaps that in the second case, the audience doesn't get any easily available choice.