Posts by Neil Morrison
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What's being used is the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) criteria for clinical effectiveness. I think NICE's criteria take into account cost effectiveness.
weighted mean improvement was 9.60 points on the HRSD in the drug groups and 7.80 in the placebo groups, yielding a mean drug–placebo difference of 1.80 on HRSD improvement scores...the standardized mean difference, d, mean change for drug groups was 1.24 and that for placebo 0.92, both of extremely large magnitude according to conventional standards. Thus, the difference between improvement in the drug groups and improvement in the placebo groups was 0.32, which falls below the 0.50 standardized mean difference criterion that NICE suggested.
so, a bit complicated.
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that should be Anderton.
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I wouldn't think they'd fabricate a quote either.
i wasn't trying to suggest that but relying on a Labour Party press release without having the full conversation is a bit dicey. but if he was making extravagent promises then fair enough.
I agree about Labour's sucess economically. they have a good team that have on the whole worked well. Anderson's been very good.
It makes life difficult for opposition parties the world over - a good economy plus fairly middle of the road econmic policies leaves little for Governments to be attacked on. It's the electorate's weariness with incumbents that gets to be a problem.
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I gather the person asking Key the questions was not a journalist. A journalist you would think would have done a follow-up question to clarify what Key was saying. The article itself looks poorly written.
I'm a bit mystified by the line -
Mr Key would like to see the opposite occur.
This appears, but that’s not clear, to be referring to NZers being lured to Oz by higher wages. So if the writer believed that Key wants to see the opposite happen then you would think that Key's apparent desire to see wages in NZ drop would have raised an eyebrow.
It can be very difficult to do transcripts as quite a bit of meaning is contained in tone and body language. You have to rely on the ability of the writer to accurately convey what they thought the person intended to say – which may not necessarily correspond to just the exact wording. In this case I'm not convinced they did this.
Similarly with the Southland Times piece - was this just a bit of banter?
And I wouldn't take a Labour Party press release about what Key might or might not have said on KiwiFM as gospel.
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What is meant by 'image'? Are you talking about tracking brain activity during various tasks?
Yes, there's been quite a bit of development in brain imaging techniques.
This is a bit old now, but the fact that we can observe people making a decision before they become conscious of making that decision is just fascinating.
The sense of consciousness as a separate entity distinct from the physical process of brain function, hence dualism, is just a convenient mirage. A story our brain tells us.
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And appeal to my experience of it to suggest it isn't a physical thing and certainly isn't the same as brain activity.
That experience is being mediated by your mind which may just want you to think that.
...the things being so different you can't form a syllogism or make a scientific investigation. Maybe.
There's plenty of scientific investigation going on into the brain/mind. There's still a region of experience that is only accessible through internal reflection but that's been getting smaller.
With the ability now to image in real time thoughts as they occur in the brain there's lots of interesting stuff being discovered.
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I would have voted for it but McCain has particular reasons not to which don't include support for torture.
The Harvard Human Rights Journal has a critique of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 which McCain sponsored and which is the basis for McCain's argument that torture is already illegal.
Section 1003 explicitly states that no government agency can use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. The article pints out how an administration can get round this (which is what happened).
So McCain has a point - apply existing legislation as it was intended.
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So McCain doesn't vote against the waterboarding ban.
don't rely on Sullivan's interpretation - have a read of what McCain actually says which is at the bottom of the post. His view is that torure is already illegal under current statutes. (which is what many critics of Bush have been saying). He wants current legislation which bans torture to be interpreted and enforced they way it was intended. There's little point in having new legislation if that isn't going to be adhered to either.
he's got a point and he is definitely not arguing for torture. He could still have voted for this new legisation but his reasons for not voting for it have merit.
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...pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules.
This is a little misleading. The issue would have to be put before the rules committee who would then make a decision. It's not in defiance of any rules to do that - that's just what people can do. It's an appeals process.
As far as I can gather Clinton will not have to put this forward - the Florida Dems will do that. It's tricky, they bucked the rules and paid a price - no delegates - but then gaining the wroth of 1.7 million voters in Florida may be a high price as well.
There's quite a good backgrounder on Obama's stance on the Iraq war here. He's been a bit more nuanced on this than his speeches often indicate.
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Krugman has some interesting observations on the dyamics of the campaign.