Posts by George Darroch
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In New Zealand, you more than likely know the friends or family of an actor in question (that is if you don't know them directly). Does that make fancying them even more wrong?
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Warmly remembered indeed. Just take a look at this swagger.
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if alternative treatments are so great, why is it that despite fairly massive amounts of money being poured into testing by places like the NIH, there has never been clear-cut evidence of a direct, better-than-placebo effect?
If you use the word never in a statement, you can guarantee the statement will never be true.
[yes, I'm aware that the statement invalidates itself].
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Doh! I managed to jumble a few things there, Time on Earth was released two years ago.
These problems eventuate when you're overseas and not paying much attention...
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I'm surprised that Crowded House weren't nominated for anything. Time on Earth was a very solid album, in my opinion. And if being recognised Overseas is important, they probably did better than Pip Brown, as much as I wish her well and like her saccharine pop.
However, with the lack of a best 'pop' album category, they're slightly harder to pigeonhole into the album categories. The lack of best male/female songwriter categories is just ridiculous.
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No comment here on 7's becoming an Olympic Sport? This has to be one of the biggest moments for rugby as a sport in its history.
On topic, I doubt that Jed and the ARC would be able to commentate the Olympics with full legality. The IOC have been pretty feudal about their copyright. Witness this takedown letter for pics of Beijing.
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Immigrants are self selected, to some extent, of course. It takes a certain type of person to move across the world.
But Governments ultimately make decisions about what people will cross their borders, and in NZ's case if you don't make the requisite points (some of which are rather arbitrary) then it doesn't matter what your personality is.
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Lucy, it's not unreasonable to say that scientific understanding of electricity in human bodies is highly incomplete. You don't need to invoke woo ("vitalism" here) to agree with that point.
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I'd only trust them if a body of sound trials shows they work, at which point we are leaving woo behind and back in science territory.
I'm with you on this.
But when the alternatives are medicines or techniques that have a body of sound trials between them which aren't working to solve my problem, or are causing very serious side effects, then it becomes more likely that I'll start looking over the fence. And that seems to be what people in this thread are saying (I hope I'm not mischaracterising anyone here).
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Bumblebees cannot fly—or so physical models are said to have shown. That the insects routinely become airborne demonstrates the shortcomings of some theoretical accounts of the world.But one of the strengths of the scientific method is that, when presented with evidence that discredits their theories, scientists are forced to concede that their models are wrong and endeavour to learn from the failure. In science, observation always trumps theory, no matter how elegant the theory might be.
Emphasis added. From a recent article in the Economist. I'm not inclined to get into an argument with Peter Ashby, but I find it immensely frustrating when people argue that theory trumps observation, or that scientific theories invalidate what has been observed.
We just need to avoid pretending that it's because of qi energy or some magic other form of knowledge or whatever, because that leaves the door open to the idea that scientific medicine can be replaced with alternative medicine. And that's when you get people refusing to have their kid with cancer go through chemotherapy.
That's the tragic thing; those medical practitioners that refuse to admit the fallibility of their practice, and overstate benefits and understate side-effects are often the ones that drive people into the arms of those whose treatments have failed to deliver in even more consistent ways.