Posts by Bart Janssen
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
see me in Wellington in March
That would require precise timing. Will be passing through wtgn twice on the way to and from driving around the Sth Island in the first two weeks of March.
-
Thoughts?
It's just democracy in action.
One man one vote, in this case Mr Hide is the one man.
On a serious note - it is kind of amazing that people think Auckland politics isn't important enough to have proper oversight. Over a million people and a budget bigger than a bunch of democratic countries.
But don't worry we'll just let one right wing arse make all the decisions and trust him implicitly to be fair honest and reasonable. Oversight? Who needs it that would just slow the one man down right? Who cares if he appoints his buddies to all the positions of authority, he's just choosing good blokes who he knows will do a good job - depressing really.
-
Oh and to be randomly on thread
Wonderful post Jolisa. Scary and sad at the same time.
-
Where's everybody gone?
They went to Foo camp.
The basterds!
They didn't invite all of us - I'd've helped wash dishes honest.
And they've been back a whole day and haven't spilled any of the goss'
makes ya think they don't love us no more.
-
Late last year Steven Pinker pwned Gladwell
Thank you for that Russell!
Igon value ... snort
-
To be deliberately insulting and dismissive...
I suppose when you value feelings so much
I doubt it has much to do with valuing feelings, it has more to do with valuing minimum effort and knocking off work early.
-
I particularly liked Ms Hill-Cone's dismissal of all the work done by Autism researchers.
To me she sounds simply lazy. She is ignorant of the knowledge gained in the field thus far and rather than do some work (heaven forfend) she decides to listen to the feelings of the general public.
That us scientists work to find the facts does not mean we ignore the opinions and feelings of the public - most of us spend the time and effort to listen to our friends and family, unlike Ms Hill-Cone we aren't that lazy.
-
the most socially accepted and omnipresent drug in our culture -- alcohol -- is also the most widely abused and the most damaging
It's also one of the oldest and because of it's ability to make water drinkable (kills bugs dead) one of the important parts of most civilisations.
The point I was making was that most folks use alcohol to alter their mood. And yet the problem is that alcohol doesn't alter mood very well and it has a nasty tendency to amplify whatever mood you are currently in ... feeling down? have a drink ... good chance you'll feel worse.
It's a crap mood altering drug. But folks really really want mood altering drugs so they use alcohol even though they know it's crap.
With research, we should be able to make really quality mood altering drugs - but because altering brain chemistry with drugs is universally illegal, prohibited, verboten there is stuff all research. Well to be truthful there is some research done by the medical research community but nothing like the amount of research done by the beer companies.
The policy is decided by politicians whose interest is in getting re-elected not in doing what might be best for society.
Now I'm depressed - where is that cider?
-
It's more like "if you smoked 20 joints a day lung cancer would be the least of your worries".
mmmkay I see what you are saying but somehow you guys seem to have the idea that there is some kind of "safe" tobacco/cannabis consumption with respect to lung cancer. That isn't true. The scareverts on TV saying every cigarette is killing you are right.
But that's not the topic and I didn't really mean to derail.
As for "safe drug" - it's an interesting concept. The whole prohibition policy has prevented anyone doing real research into the possibility of actually designing safe drugs. Part of that is because the science of brain chemistry and brain biology hasn't really been up to the task of figuring out what might be safe. But realistically the random taste stuff and see if it makes you feel good approach that is promoted by prohibition is hardly likely to produce "safe drugs".
Apart from the proven public health benefits of decriminalizing our current drugs - the removal of the stupid puritanical attitude to using drugs to alter your mind would surely foster the development of, if not safe, then at least safer drugs.
-
who's smoking enough
boggle - you are kidding right Sacha - do you really believe there is a safe amount of smoke?