Yesterday Steven Joyce finally announced he was raising the driving age. Unfortunately, he is only raising it to a timid 16 years. Still, at least we won’t have the lowest driving age in the developed world and one of the highest youth fatality rates. I find it hard to believe that there is so much [...]
Freakonomics cites a recent paper on road fatalities: According to a recent paper by Lee S. Friedman, Donald Hedeker, and Elihu D. Richter, the lifting of the federal 55 mph speed limit in 1995 was responsible for 12,545 deaths between 1995 and 2005. That’s about 45 percent more American fatalities than we have suffered in 9/11, Iraq [...]
The only thing that saves the stupid headline below from joining my Spam Journalism collection is the fact that the article it heads is not trivial: Govt’s tough line on violence isn’t working – police Police say the Government’s policies to reduce violent crime have had little effect, as such offending is still on the [...]
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 [...]
An article on Stuff asks the question “Are blogs for old people?” The article then goes on to say: The study, released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that 14 per cent of internet youths in the US, ages 12 to 17, now say they blog, compared with just over a [...]
It is time to lay the myth that cellphone use causes cancer to rest. In a Scandinavian study not yet published (but available online), the authors have gathered all the cancer registry data from four countries with similar registry requirements (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and have determined the trends in brain tumour incidence over [...]
I see the thrill of Phil is fading fast. The latest Colmar Brunton poll sees him sliding down four points to 5%. That’s barely above the margin of error. I don’t think I recall even Bill English ever dipping below double figures in a Colmar Brunton poll. And Labour is now on 31%, which is [...]
Stillbirths are traumatic. I am a seasoned provider of terminal care, so the dying process does not phase me, like it phases many of my colleagues. Even so, the death of a baby is horribly unpleasant and even more so when the baby is stillborn or dies soon after birth. All that expectation of happiness [...]
Sometimes you just shake you head in wonder at the complete pointlessness of some research… There is a prime example in the Herald today which declares Heavy drinking can cut risk of heart disease, says study. Drinking a bottle of wine a day, or half a dozen beers, cuts the risk of heart disease by [...]
The Guardian has an article from their resident marxist environmentalist, Fred Pearce, that has the cheek to slag off New Zealand as not being very green because of the UN report on our emissions record. Depressingly the NZPA repeats his drivel, instead of ignoring it as they should have done. Pearce quotes statistics from the [...]
