Posts by Peter Ashby
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The whole medical cannabis thing is being undermined by the science. By which I mean the discovery of the cannabinoid family of receptors. The subtype blocker drug Rimonabant useful for losing weight (yes pot does give you the munchies and it is down to one subtype of receptor). So the future is specific drugs to stimulate or block specific receptor subtypes, not whole cannabis leaves. After all people who are seeking not to feel sick all the time don't actually need or want to get high as well.
The other strategy under investigation is boosting our own endogenous cannabinoids (why we have those receptors in the first place, the plant ones are just chemical analogues). It will soon become obvious who wants medical cannabis out of ignorance of this and who simply wants a backdoor legalisation.
I am btw in favour of front door legalisation. Drug policy is irrational and against all the evidence and we have the harm scale completely arse about tit. We need to start pressing our MPs and MP candidates about this. Nothing will change until we elect informed people on the right side of this issue.
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Re Brits buying up falling down European property for 'renovation'.
Well firstly there will be lots fewer of those to come as the pound continues to head south vs the Euro (We should have joined a decade ago Gordon).
Secondly when we were in Northern Italy we played a game as we drove around of spot the Brit-magnet ruin. Anything with a fully intact roof (broken ridge beam acceptable) was deemed off limits. There were lots of candidates.
One of the funniest of those programs I saw was one couple who had bought and done up a semi ruin in Spain including units to rent to tourists complained bitterly when the Spanish decided to build an airport essentially at the bottom of the hill. To cater for the very tourists they wanted. You just can't please some people. The ones who never bother to learn the local language really get to me.
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Further examples: one juror passed a note to his wife to say not to let go of their tickets for Stomp because it'd all be done and dusted by the Friday evening. Another said something similar to a worker at the coffee bar across the road. It was a troubling jury.
Come off it Russell, I have sat on a jury. You think they only discuss the case amongst themselves when they formally retire to consider the verdict? After 13 weeks it would have been apparent to everyone on the jury as to how everyone was going to vote. I don't think that I am giving anything away by saying that was the case in the jury I sat on, it was just that we didn't know who was going to vote 'not proven' vs 'guilty' because they didn't want jailing a man to be on their consciences. That was only a one week trial. There's plenty of time you are shut in the jury room waiting, for stuff like that.
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pigs are getting a sustained hammering at the moment
What? is swine 'flu affecting kiwi's ability to humanely slaughter pigs now? It's worse than we thought: maddened 'flu sufferers attack pigs with hammers, continually.
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@Gregor Ronald
It's not just the need for wharves, over the last few decades the railways have closed and sold off for development most of the large marshalling and goods yards as they lost trade to the truckers. That land is now all built over. I have no idea where they are going to marshall the necessary goods trains in the future either.
We have lost the art of planning for the medium term, the long term went a long time ago.
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Craig the evidence is that people are misconstruing your words. This and other threads constitute good evidence for it. If you are here to be clearly understood in your utterances rather than to insinuate stuff you need to look at your writing style.
It is up to you as to how you wish to be perceived, but you may wish to ponder on why your words are not given the benefit of the doubt. These things are cumulative.
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So after Peak Oil when people and goods can no longer afford to fly in and out of NZ and the only option is by sea whether that is on some sort of steamer or modern sailing type vessels, where are they going to dock? This is considering that transporting them from some dock elsewhere won't be cheap either, so right next to the train station and the ferries would be good.
That is all considering the sense in pouring money into a development on a waterfront when the word on expected sea level rises due to global warming get worse and worse as we see how well all that meltwater is lubricating the glaciers.
I'm not trying to rain on your party space Russ, but are you just going to party like there really is no tomorrow?
Just sayin'
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Re the vaccine, my understanding is that one has been designed. The problem is strategic wrt production and rollout. The world does not have enough vaccine production capability to produce an H1N1 vaccine as well as one for normal winter 'flu. So national health authorities and the WHO have a tough call.
If they decide to make H1N1 vaccine people will die in greater numbers if normal winter 'flu is the predominant strain, remember it kills too.
If they decide to make normal winter 'flu vaccines and H1N1 gets widespread and more deadly then lots of people will die.
There was supposed to have been a new facility here in Europe producing vaccine via tissue culture rather than using chicken eggs but it has languished. That may look like an expensive mistake.
Personally I am sad about that since the last 'flu vax I had a few years ago (I'm slightly asthmatic) caused an allergic reaction. The injected shoulder began to go very stiff and it spread up my throat. It was just getting to the point when I was becoming seriously worried about my future ability to breathe when it abated. I was working in a lab that did a lot of work with chick embryos so there eggs covered in chicken shit and feathers all over the place as well as the contents so it not surprising I am allergic. I can eat it and handle it without problem, both meat and eggs but I don't fancy having it injected into me.
BTW someone in Glasgow just became the first person to die of Swine flu outside of America. She had underlying health problems. The rate of death is low but normal flu sufferers don't get the intensity of care and Tamiflu prescriptions that H1N1 sufferers have had so I wouldn't read too much into that.
It could simply be the first time we have watched the genesis of a new 'flu (like how normal flu gets re jigged) which will turn out to be mild. That will not, Bill Ralston et al, be a bad thing. Neither will it be a bad thing if people are made more aware of how 'flu spreads by this. We are also testing our anti virals in a real world situation all over the world. These are useful things.
The operative thing is we don't know how this will pan out and neither do those crying media beat up. They would cry just as much if they and theirs were dying from it methinks.
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Sofie you don't have an aneurism as well as a stroke, not when the aneurism is in your brain anyway. There are two main ways to get a stroke, a blockage of an artery with a clot or plaque fragment or an aneurism: a burst blood vessel. Both result in a region of the brain being without or without sufficient blood supply.
You can of course get such blockages and aneurisms elsewhere in the body where they cause other problems. Methods vs results and results being given names before the underlying mechanisms having been worked out.
Good to hear you are not too much the worse for wear after yours. Stay well.
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@Craig
It is comforting in the sense that the failure of the labour vote is temporary. Before the poll there were dark worries about the BNP being used as a protest vote and that they would increase their vote. Neither happened, which is why people are somewhat relieved but doesn't stop parts of the press from coming over all hysterical. Also this has made the main parties finally sit up and at least make the right noises about the reasons for the BNP vote.
If those non voting former labour voters had voted BNP in significant numbers then there would definitely be a major problem to deal with. Watch the whole of the anti fascist Left hold their noses and turn out to canvas for Labour in some constituencies in the next General Election. I suspect it will be reminiscent of those Socialist Posters in France when Chirac went up against Le Pen in the final round: Vote For the Crook, Not the Nazi.