11
Mar
Published by MacDoctor on March 11th, 2010
1 Comment »
Though many people are highly critical of the columns of Garth George, I often find that, past the general curmudgeonly nature of his columns, he often makes a great deal of sense. Unfortunately, he tends to couch his points in a fashion designed to bring out the worst in the blogosphere. It is not simply [...]
04
Mar
Published by MacDoctor on March 4th, 2010
No Comments »
Looks like the government is set to reduce the legal blood alcohol limit from 0.08 to 0.05 for driving. I have blogged quite extensively about this already so I am not going to add much more. It is not a matter of great note, but the lawyers who are saying that it is the law-abiding [...]
28
Feb
Published by MacDoctor on February 28th, 2010
4 Comments »
Yes, I know it is almost impossible to fathom such depravity, but some pharmaceutical advertisers make unsubstantiated claims in medical journals! (/SARCASM OFF) Such is the conclusion of Ben Goldacre of the Guardian, writing on the Bad Science Blog. Goldacre is writing about a recent research article in the Netherlands Journal of Medicine “Are claims of [...]
25
Feb
Published by MacDoctor on February 25th, 2010
2 Comments »
Not much time for blogging tonight but I could resist a quick comment on the low-hanging fruit offered by ScrubOne in this comment. The Yahoo “news” item reads:
I feed my son marijuana
While most parents are focussed on warning their children about the dangers of drugs, mum-of-three Mieko Hester-Perez is happily dishing up marijuana to her [...]
10
Feb
Published by MacDoctor on February 10th, 2010
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The Auckland DHB say that Labtests has improved significantly over the past few months.
The Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia had come in to assess areas of concern, the health board itself had instigated intensive monitoring and there had been a “radical reduction” in complaints about the service, both from the public and the clinical [...]
09
Feb
Published by MacDoctor on February 9th, 2010
2 Comments »
In what has to be the most bizarre over-reaction I have heard in a long time, the Herald reports that a 12-year-old girl was arrested for scrawling on her desk. That is: properly arrested in handcuffs and dragged off to the police station and given eight hours of community service as her sentence.
Wow.
I realise this [...]
08
Feb
Published by MacDoctor on February 8th, 2010
5 Comments »
Apparently, Mr Obama would now like to talk to to Republicans about health care. The man is really a laugh riot. After trying to ram a highly divisive, partisan health bill through the senate and failing, Mr. Obama would like a televised bipartisan summit for half a day to break the impasse.
I suspect you are [...]
08
Feb
Published by MacDoctor on February 8th, 2010
5 Comments »
The Herald is running this demented campaign at the moment to change the New Zealand flag. Clearly, anyone with a halfway-decent-functioning brain cell would realise that the best time to design a new flag would be if and when we decide to become a republic. Redesigning a flag at the moment is a meaningless exercise [...]
04
Feb
Published by MacDoctor on February 4th, 2010
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An Australian court ruling has brought the entire basis of section 92a of the copyright act into doubt. In a dispute between Australian ISP iiNet and Australia’s copyright watchdog, AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft), the judge has found in favour of the ISP saying, essentially that the ISP is not responsible for the copyright [...]
02
Feb
Published by MacDoctor on February 2nd, 2010
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Obama announces.
President Barack Obama sent Congress his new budget overnight, a plan that forecasts the government spending a record US$1.66 trillion ($2.37 trillion) more than it takes in through taxes.
1.66 TRILLION deficit in a single year…
If you laid every dollar bill end to end you could walk on them through the centre of the sun [...]