Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. Sometimes, the spam headline is so laughable, that it detracts from the sensationalistic value of it. Could anything sound dumber than this? Theft fears as smacking ballot hits letterboxes A record roll of just over 3 million New Zealanders [...]

Just in case you thought that we might have learned something from the 1975 Swine Flu debacle, where the vaccine killed more people than the flu itself, comes the news that Europe is “fast-tracking” the Swine Flu vaccine. “Fast-tracking” means that, when we give the vaccine, we won’t know the proper dose, any of the [...]

Forget smacking. If you want to understand the real causes of child and spousal abuse, look no further than the murder manslaughter of Jasmatbhai Patel, the 78 year old beaten to death by 28-year-old Bio O’Brien for putting a minor dent in his car. This trivial accident caused O’Brien to drag Mr. Patel out of [...]

Man convicted for breaking son’s leg A man whose kick broke his three-year-old son’s leg was convicted when he appeared in Blenheim District Court yesterday. Otto Lereiti Misivila, 51, had admitted kicking out at his son with a socked foot to halt boisterous play with his one-year-old daughter. The Marlborough Express reported that as soon as [...]

Such an interesting range of reactions in the blogosphere to Paula Bennett’s revealing of the amount of benefit the two ladies who features the the Herald over the weekend are receiving. Natasha Fuller and Jennifer Johnston appear in the article entitled Govt axe destroys dreams, claiming that Bennet’s removal of the allowance for sole parent [...]

I see that New Zealand is clearly no nearer a comprehensive nationwide electronic health record than we were 10 years ago. The Dom post reports on one initiative involving 7 DHBs, but even that one seems to have a substantial undercurrent of squabbling and jockeying for  position. That is only one third of all DHBs [...]

In what has to be the most high tech example of junk science validation of global warming, Reuters reports a Canadian Scientist looked out of the window of the international space station and commented: “This is probably just a perception, but I just have the feeling that the glaciers are melting, the snow capping the [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. A post on Whale-oil’s site reminded me that I haven’t produced a spam post for a week. Not that there has been a lack of material, but there is another egregious example of the art of truly appalling, opportunistic spam [...]

Frogblog has a long post by Kevin Hague entitled Outsourcing Health No Solution arguing that public hospitals should be used to maximum capacity before outsourcing operations to the private sector. Superficially, this sounds like a reasonable argument but, as we look in more depth at Hague’s discussion, it is easy to see that his arguments [...]

Some of the week’s blogs that are worth a look… Liberty Scott castigates journalists for rehashing press releases without thought and illustrates with an article apparently quoting Helen Clark advocating aid to developed nations. All contributions gratefully received, Helen… Editing the Herald takes Garth George to task for ranting about something he does not have [...]