Posts by Rebecca Gray
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Hard News: An interview with Ben Goldacre, in reply to Hilary Stace,
It's true that NZ and the USA are the only countries that allow this kind of advertising, but from what I've seen it's not as simple as re-banning them; the issue is that they were never banned in the first place. Apparently the New Zealand Medicines Act 1981 didn't include a provision about this issue (it simply wasn't happening much at the time). They didn't anticipate that when the US relaxed laws around drug advertising, companies here would go heeey, we can do this in NZ too!
Not sure if you can access this full thing but some researchers have been looking at the NZ situation:
http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/read-the-journal/all-issues/2010-2019/2014/vol-127-no-1401/6278 -
Speaker: I am a Really Useful Engine, in reply to Sacha,
That would be great, though I have a horrible suspicion that any effort to get such people an extra pension would be met with objections about how they had CHOSEN to forgo earnings by (looking after family/ doing community work/ starting up arts programmes, whatever). They could have just chosen to go into finance, and then they wouldn't be looking for a handout, would they?!
(I hope I am being way too cynical here) -
Speaker: I am a Really Useful Engine, in reply to Sacha,
Yeah seriously, those people who agree do the barely-recognised community and caring work are probably the unseen glue holding society together. Which is really nice of them, but doesn't exactly make the situation ok.
It's also unfortunate that certain types of caring/ voluntary/ creative work can only be done long-term by people who have a high-earning partner and can therefore handle the fluctuations in income or periods of working without earning. That leads to a noticeable demographic skew in those industries - which makes me wonder how many voices are not being heard.
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Speaker: I am a Really Useful Engine, in reply to Emma Hart,
Emma, that link is heartbreaking (quite similar in some ways to what Sarah Wilson, who I mentioned earlier, has been writing).
I’m sure you’re not here looking for assurance from some internet random, but I will say I know you wrote that Missing Stair piece among all sorts of other great stuff, and that looks like pretty bloody useful/valuable work from where I’m sitting. -
Hard News: The media awards are dead –…, in reply to Russell Brown,
What a lovely comment from the judges. Nice one!
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to B Jones,
You know I'd say that "experimenting with your diet to see what makes you feel better" is one instance in which it's perfectly valid to make calls based on a n=1 sample. You are the number one expert on how certain things make you feel. And of course it's helpful to have some advice from people who know the broader area (help you make informed choices) but ultimately nobody can tell how things affect you better than you can. And nobody knows your priorities and comfort zones better than you do.
If I can tentatively relate this discussion back to where things got to earlier... this is partly why discussions gets fraught when diet is involved, because even the best-intentioned "experts" sometimes don't realise that they're conveying an offensive message about "if only YOU PEOPLE would make better choices". The realities of how and why we relate to our environments and eat certain things at certain times are more complex than that.
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Oh this is a nicer diversion topic.
I find the microbiome stuff fascinating too. Be really interested to see where this research goes in the next few years.
We've had some fermented vegetable experiments in our kitchen lately and I have no idea whether there have been health benefits, but I will say the home-fermented pickles are really tasty so, hell, why not.Prof Julian Crane gave a talk about developments in microbiome research a couple of years ago, and the one slide that I'm sure he KNEW we'd be unable to forget was about how there are DIY kits for carrying out faecal transplantation at home. Apparently the moral of this story may be "don't buy secondhand blenders if you don't know where they've been" :-s
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to linger,
I'm doing the virtual internet equivalent of popping back into the room in order to throw you a high five for that earlier comment, and then running away.
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
An audience member of the same (middle aged white male) demographic made the same (tax people by the amount they are considered overweight) suggestion at the NZ Initiative event. Seemed really pleased with himself and his hilariously original idea :-(
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Ironic that we posted at the same time… but I hope we can manage to want different things sometimes while still acknowledging each other as "good and reasonable". That’s more or less why I had decided to experiment with giving libertarians the benefit of the doubt in the first place.