Posts by Bart Janssen
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Ok.
So why do you say this doesn't work? Canada and the US seem to have implemented (albeit at the flour level) a successful food supplement program that people seem to think has worked.
I'm not sure I understand why supplementing a common food product with a vitamin that has been shown to be harmless, but for a group of people is beneficial, is a bad thing at all.
Could we do better - um maybe sure. Supplementing RTDs and cola might work but I'm not sure the vitamin is stable in such solutions.
I still think arguing against this because it possibly isn't the complete solution is a weird argument.
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Even if they have other sources, it sounds to me as though it's still likely that the women for whom it's intended will get insufficient by this means.
So your logic is because we can't put as much in as we should we should put none in?
Or
Because we can't eliminate spina bifida babies and prevent abortions of spina bifida babies - let's instead have more.
Stupid analogy time - because some people don't wear seat belts we should repeal the seat belt law??
Thank you for putting the science links in but I fear stupidity has already won this fight.
Yes you can get B9 from veges but it is somewhat dependent on the soils the plants are grown in. Unfortunately NZ soils aren't great for promoting B9 accumulation.
It's worth noting Canada and the US fortify flour - which means all flour products get B9 supplementation. A lot of the flour in NZ is made elsewhere which makes B9 supplementation at this point more difficult.
Note this is a public health issue and an economic issue. Children with neural defects cost a fortune to help live reasonable lives. It is cheaper by far to prevent them developing the disease than to treat it.
Oh and for the silly woman on breakfast TV complaining about eating "chemicals" - you are made of chemicals and everything you eat is chemical you ignorant .... angry moi?
Final cynical point - I wonder how many lunches My Key has had with the manufacturers of B9 pills that are at the moment sold to all pregnant and planning women. A public health initiative like this would cut into their profits something awful.
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When someone you like* does something terrible, that creates a contradiction: how can I like this terrible person?
You're right Stephen. But I think there is another part to this as well. At least for me there is. If someone I know and like does something terrible - how can I be sure I can't also do something terrible?
In other words "what stops me being a wife or child beater?". For me simply asking that question of myself provides some of the answer.
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I'm still a little angry about the degree of enabling that went on around him
An awful lot of folks seemed to want to excuse his behaviour. Like you I was angry and disgusted by much of what was said.
Because they weren't even helping their friend when they did that.
Exactly! You don't help someone who has a problem with violence by excusing it. He needed the help of his friends to face his own failure and learn to never do it again. Instead they were excusing and cheering him.
"Empathise • verb understand and share the feelings of another"
Joe you can understand and share a feeling without acting on it the way someone else does. I can get some sense of the emotions that go with stress and anger, which are probably the emotions Veitch was feeling. That doesn't mean I go on to do violence to another person. I'm not trying to derail nor do I really want to argue this much. I think we are both disgusted by what Veitch did.
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She has, of course, had help in finding these words.
I suppose you are right, but as cynical as I am I think I prefer to believe that she has had to try and explain it to herself so many times that when she answered the interviewer the words were familiar and perhaps better thought out than for a question she hadn't asked herself a million times.
Having never hit my wife or children I am not able to empathise in any way.
That's not what empathy is about. Last time I hit anyone I was 16, but it doesn't mean I can't sense somehow what kind of screwed up life he was leading. There is no question that what he did was wrong. But empathy and understanding can help prevent others doing what he did. Understand his failure and you have a better chance of preventing anyone else hitting their loved ones.
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The old saw about putting a penny in a jar for every time you have sex in the first year of a marriage* and taking one out every time you have sex after the first year is kind of interesting.
Most folks read it as saying after a while marriage becomes stale and uninteresting - the evidence being the reduced frequency of sex.
But you can also look at it from another perspective. Happily married couples can be loving and care for each other without needing to boink constantly. Instead of being proof that marriage is boring it becomes proof that sex isn't all there is to love.
*please note marriage here should be replaced with "committed long term loving relationship" but the sentences become somewhat unwieldy.
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Fuck you! Dont hate me 'cause I dont screw! I'm a human too
This strikes me as plain weird. Why would anyone object to someone because they don't want to have sex with anyone???
Part of the problem has to be because we mostly equate Love with Fuck. And hence if you don't have sex then you don't love, which is of course complete and utter bollocks.
What is more complex is the idea that you could still love, with all the emotions associated, without loving any one person specifically.
As for evolution selecting for asexuals, it isn't that uncommon in nature. Lots of examples exist where asexual brothers or sisters care for the progeny and hence pass their genotype on. In some cases those brothers ad sisters turn out to not be as asexual as first thought. But the principle is still there. Islander's genes are continued in the lines of her relatives who prosper because of Islander's contributions.
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My personal feeling is there are two major and quite different issues.
The first is the one that most folks think about which is the idea that people brown or white should be able to wander along a beach in summer without anyone telling them to "F off my land". The reality of just how much or little of our beaches is already private has little or no bearing on people's feelings about that idea.
My sense is that Maori have no interest in denying kiwis the right to wander along a beach, be those kiwis of Maori, European or whatever decent.
It seems to me that it is the second part of the issue that is the difficult one for everyone. That is the right to use foreshore and seabed to make money. If anyone is going to be allowed to use the foreshore/seabed to make money, should Maori be given some specific and different right?
Personally I can see both sides to the discussion in that Maori have historical rights granted to them in The Treaty. Equally I don't feel it appropriate for Maori to be the only group allowed to make money. I don't see this as a simple decision and I have a horrible feeling that really each case is probably subtly different depending on the exact use, the history in that area, the environmental impacts and the other uses for a given area.
I suspect Russell's title is one of the understatements of the year.
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That is a very nice coat. Wonderful colour, just the right length to show off your boots but not so short as to cut your legs off.
And very importantly, when buttoned up, you have no idea what wonders are hidden from view :).
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I always find a spot on the ceiling and concentrate really hard on it.
Same here. Discovered my aversion to blood during a 4th form first aid film (yes film not video), apparently the pretty yellow stars were not part of the film.
I like it when there is enough dirt of the ceiling for me to focus on something. I also once had a dentist who had a really nice photo of Auckland Harbour on his ceiling.