Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to JackElder,
The research that he references in the second paragraph is best demonstrated by the following video (a classic in the study of visual awareness):
I saw the original of this at a lecture by Maryanne Garry at a Skeptics conference. Wouldn't want to give it away, but I was really quite interested in what I (correctly) perceived.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Cool Return, in reply to Simon Bennett,
New Bowie now streaming on iTunes…
Here, to be precise.
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Hard News: First, admit it's broken, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Indeed. There may not be another big crash like 1929, but all the same the West is probably in for something like Japan’s Lost Decade.
That's his conclusion.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Kumara Republic,
The future of organised labour? (HT Bernard Hickey, scroll to #3 on page)
Very interesting, and quite applicable to the Equity dispute.
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Hard News: When the drug warriors turn, in reply to BenWilson,
In 10 years of smoking dope in large quantities, nothing like that had ever happened to him.
The crazy thing is that it might not have been the same Kronic he smoked a month before. The active ingredients get banned and swapped out whack-a-mole style.
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Hard News: When the drug warriors turn, in reply to Konrad Kurta,
All good points. I still think there’s a knee-jerk, “drugs are bad, mmmkay?”, bent to strongly opinionated and poorly researched voters. I can’t see National tackling this issue if it alienates their core voters (fairly conservative older white folk)
Judith Collins is a particular offender. She's cynical to the core on this one. I don't know if she actually believes what she says, but she'll keep on saying it out of sheer political calculation.
Peter Dunne, on the other hand, probably cops more stick than he deserves.
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Hard News: When the drug warriors turn, in reply to Stephen Judd,
I think the war has different drivers here, and I don’t know that it’s the same war. For example, concern from leaders in poorer communities about the effects of drugs on their young people. It’s genuine, not posturing, and if we believe in decriminalisation/legalisation we need to communicate better the harm that current policy has on their young people as they become enmeshed in the “justice” system.
Quite so. On the other hand, it may well be that major reform in other places will help make reform more politically palatable here.
The new Psychoactive Substances Bill is actually world-leading -- reformers the world over are watching to see how it goes. Unfortunately, for the foreseeable future it's also critically flawed in ruling out of its process anything that's already illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Given the mounting evidence that synthetic cannabinoids are potentially much more risky than actual cannabis, that doesn't make any bloody sense.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to BenWilson,
Not really. It’s a really crap test, actually, as you say, unscientific. 6 standard glasses of wine would have put the woman on 0.11, well over the limit, just by counting measures, if she was really big, like 110kg. If she was average sized, say 75kg, she’d have been pushing 0.17, as in more than twice the legal limit.
Another issue is surely the timing of the tests. If you test very shortly after consumption, the alcohol most recently consumed won't have been absorbed into the bloodstream. Subjects could test negative after 5 mins and positive after 30, without drinking any more.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Matthew Poole,
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.
That's usually printed on the label of what they're drinking, in standard drinks.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Rob Stowell,
But the actors basic position wasn’t (in my rather biased opinion) unreasonable. Nor, since both books are widely followed, would it have been terribly disruptive for them to become codified.
I don't disagree with any of that.