THE TROUBLE WITH RADIATION

A few weeks ago I detected that my right shoulder was sore. I had an initial diagnosis of calcific tendonitis (which I didn't believe because the pain was so reminiscent of the osteo-arthritis pain I have suffered in my hips before they both got replaced)

I had a X-Ray, funded by the public health system, which showed (you guessed it) osteoarthritis in one of the two joints in my shoulder. And a few days after that I fell off my stationary motorcycle whilst dismounting in heavy cold weather gear and on slippery ground. I hurt my shoulder and then had to ride 300km in freezing cold to get home. After two more days of excruciating pain I was worried I had exacerbated the condition and I wanted another X-Ray to see if I had broken split or chipped a bone.

My doctor just said "not necessary" ($38) "take more pain killer" so I headed off to the local hospital with my Visa Card to have my shoulder X-Rayed and assessed as a private patient.

Naive - well not exactly, but I wanted to test the theory that if I want to have my breasts enhanced I simply "apply" to a surgeon in private practice and in time and with the lubrication of the system with money, the job will be done, X-Rays and all, but if I want my shoulder X-Rayed I probably can't.

And so it proved to be true. Despite my willingness to pay whatever the price was - just like a boob job, I wasn't allowed to order and undergo an X-Ray, just because I wanted one.

And the reason . . . "Because we are dealing with radiation"

The heading of this blog is ingenuous because this official response isn't because of our anti-nuclear policy but it is connected with that unjustified fear of radiation which permeated society after Chernobyl (where it was justified) and Mururoa (where it was not) and Fukishima (where the jury may still be out) and the whole of NZ's anti-American cabal of fools who found Nirvana in the policy and the Law as a way of sticking it to the USA. Now the USA is not a perfect place but I would say that they are like the sleeping bear of the world, gross and overweight and uncouth and ugly but totally focused on not being ever fucked again!

My X-Ray - well I walked around the corner to A&E and told them my shoulder was very sore after falling off my (stationary) motorbike and the system then swung smoothly and effortlessly into action. ACC forms, lots of filling out personal details and accident details (were you on a public road tick yes, how fast were you going put 0km/hr in the box) but amazingly no questions about susceptibility to Rontgen radiation nor previous X-Rays, nor my political views and after that it was off to X-Ray to get three pictures and a nice talk to the doctor whilst looking at the scans together so I could see and understand what was going on in my shoulder and confirm I had not cracked a bone. For free!

Slipped my Visa card back into my wallet and headed home for a coffee - safe and sure in the knowledge that the system is stupid and that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

Bob Brockie's miserable view from the Laboratory

I copied this text from the source, which for the life of me I cannot now recall.

However Bob BROCKIE will be well known to Wellingtonians and readers of The DomPost so maybe that was where it came from, and I hope Bob approves of the wider dissemination of his views. You will note that there is nice accordance between his and mine. The rot is truly awful.

WORLD OF SCIENCE - BOB BROCKIE - The Dominion Post 13/09/2010

OPINION: LONG SHADOW OF PHILOSOPHERS

Scientists the world over are dismayed that so many people are turning against science.

OK - thalidomide, Chernobyl, Bhopal and mad cow disease didn't win science any friends but something else has set many citizens against scientists.

The distrust and badmouthing is mainly the work of two dead Frenchmen, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. In the 1960s and 1970s these two philosophers argued that everybody's opinions are of equal value - that the opinion of a rocket scientist and a Stone Age tribesman were equally valid.

It followed then, they said, that nobody is in a position to criticise or challenge anybody else.

The Frenchmen also argued that there is no such thing as a fact.

They believed that everybody sees things from a different perspective depending on their age, skin colour, sex, their social status, temperament and so on, and that everybody's personal take on the world is as valid as anybody else's.

Among other things, our philosophers tried to knock science off its authoritative perch. They claimed science is just a collection of myths on an equal footing with the rest of the world's myths.

To the Frenchmen, the myths of the Yanomamo in the Amazon, the Papuan highlander and Maori are as valid as science and must all be accorded equal respect.

These ideas, known broadly as post- modernism, spread like wildfire through the universities in the 80s and 90s, generating a vast literature of impenetrable complexity (for some fun see Google: Postmodernist Generator).

Like reef-fish, linguists, art teachers, political scientists, architects, historians, psychologists, musicians, sociologists and cultural anthropologists swam with the current.

Postmodernism empowered feminists, gays and minority groups of all stripes, and educationalists spread the word from universities to schools and the wider community.

In 1996, a clever hoax exposed Foucault and Derrida as pretentious impostors and postmodernism as a sham (see Google: Sokal Hoax). Since then, the trendy ideology has faded in the universities but it still flourishes in our schools and the wider community.

Today, looking around New Zealand, we see that everybody must be consulted before making decisions. No sooner have scientists suggested a rational way forward than authorities must ask everybody else for their views.

Irrational conspiracy theorists, scaremongers, eco and religious fundamentalists, mystics, tohungas, technophobes, chemophobes and anti-scientists must be afforded the same respect as the scientists.

Neither can we challenge a person's beliefs in these postmodernist days. Politicians, public servants and teachers can lose their jobs if they challenge the veracity of religious claptrap or Maori myth.

Although these views defy any rational underpinning, we're urged to respect their beliefs. You can also find yourself socially isolated if you speak up in favour of scientifically approved fluoridation and vaccination campaigns, genetic engineering, chemical fertilisers, cellphone towers, 1080 poison and nuclear power stations.

Foucault, Derrida and their hierophants have cast a baleful shadow over New Zealand.

They dismiss the hard-won advances of the European intellectual enlightenment and return us to the Stone Age, with its superstition, touchy-feelism, anecdotal, nature-knows- best, seat-of-the-pants thinking.

My first post. And all about something most people here in New Zealand find boring .

RMA. That's the Resource Management Act - a piece of legislation that was, in its time, ground breaking and world leading but which has by now become a stone around our necks.

I have just sat through nearly 140 days of public hearings - a process under the Act, by means of which the citizens of New Zealand but more particularly the citizens of Oamaru (where I live) can have an influence on an application by Holcim to build a cement manufacturing plant in a nearby rural valley. The Waiareka Valley is a delightful fully rural valley that has a pastoral and cropping history going back maybe 150 years. During the early periods of this history it was owned by just a few landowners who built a few magnificent houses and out-buildings. About three of those homesteads survive and they are in the hands of capable caring owners with a fine sense of the history of the valley and its inhabitants.

Much has changed in 140 years. The valley is now home to a number of big and generally intensive dairy farms and it has become a favoured location for many life-style property owners.

The trouble is that it is in a geologically rich area with significant coal deposits, plenty of silica sand and huge resources of soft and very pure limestone.

The most significant and accessible source of the limestone (which is the main ingredient of cement) is also a very prominent landscape feature but it is also a place that our local town council has deemed a suitable place for a cement factory and all the planning maps have shown this quite clearly for decades. There is much legal debate over the status of the planning maps and their content and legality but essentially the land at the foot of the escarpment which contains millions of tons of limestone and where a quarry can legally be located, is the preferred location for Holcim (a Swiss company) and this long and drawn out clash of land use and landscape has resulted in the formation of a Valley Preservation Society with an objective of preventing the development ( a power they can legally exercise through the Resource Management hearings process)

The consents for the plant and its associated quarries were granted last year but they have been appealed (another perfectly legal and reasonable avenue available to the people who do not want the cement plant in their valley) and here we come to the big crunch, for me.

Here in New Zealand we have an indigenous race of people generally called Maori. They are numerous but sometimes quite invisible both because they are not always physically obvious (no distinct facial or other distinguishing characteristics) but also because they mostly have a low-key approach to complex issues like this and don't or haven't until recently, been empowered to have an input into development issues.

That has changed.

All over the world, indigenous people have taken the opportunity presented by liberal and enlightened governments to manage their affairs more aggressively and engage with government and in local politics where in the past they did not. Much new legislation has encouraged this and as legislation has been interpreted in the Courts, the power and the opportunities have grown.

One of the outcomes has been that a degree of favouritism seems to many people to have developed. It isn't unusual and there is reference to this "effect" in and on all media in all corners of the globe. In some places like Kurdistan and Northern China it has led to bloodshed and repression - down here, so far, it's just leading to confusion.

The confusion arises, it seems to me because RMA is a legal process and a very complex one. Local Councils are required to have extensive planning provisions operating in their districts and although RMA has been "with us" for two decades now it is still being interpreted and refined through the hearing and appeal processes.

In our sort of (Western) jurisdictions, legal processes hinge around evidence.

RMA processes, which essentially examine the proposition "is it OK to build a cement factory here" require extensive examination of evidence brought to bear on the decision makers (who are officers of specialist courts) by applicants objectors and supporters. In addition local councils and even government, can be involved as either objectors or supporters

When Holcim is seeking approval to discharge substances through its smokestack, it has to prove scientifically what is going up the smokestack, how much, when and where it is blowing to and where it might fall onto the ground. Then it has to prove scientifically through hard evidence, that these substances will not make the washing on the clothes line dirty or pit the paint on your car or make your cat or your children sick. Lots of numbers, lots of measurements, lots of hard won data, lots of experts and lots of money.

When Holcim seeks approval to deliver coal to the plant by train and take the cement away by truck, it has to measure noise and vibrations and air pollution and schedules and traffic hazards and the impact on roadside and trackside communities including psychological effects and phobias and fears.

When Holcim wants to mine coal it has to measure the ground and the streams and the hills and manage the run-off and the contours and the frogs and snails and it has to do this scientifically and in great detail and at huge expense.

When Holcim wants to build the factory it has to demonstrate the effect on the landscape the views the landform the trees the nearby houses and the roads and the way it will look when painted in any one of a range of "neutral or earth toned" colours.

Now by contrast, when a Maori wants to submit evidence (and we are talking about evidence here, not just an opinion or a fear or a myth) then fear, myth and opinion are accepted by the courts, as is hearsay, old wives tales and bedtime stories.

I'm not decrying all these mechanisms for passing on information and possibly even for transmitting facts in a society that had no written language until Captain Cook arrived, but as far as evidence in a court of law goes it is untenable, would never be accepted as evidence in a criminal court and unfairly biases the process away from Holcim who had no similar opportunity to "describe" to the court, what the good people of Switzerland "think" about cement production, or "feel" about it or describe how their ancestors might, if information passed down for 15 generations without ever having been written down is to be taken into account, view the use of a patch of rural land in the Waiareka Valley for a modern factory.

There seems to be no way out of this dilemma, to me, except for vigilance for the worst of the possible abuses!