We're not in the business of having people hate our films

[alexsarll]

I may have spent Friday night walking with gods and monsters, and yesterday on the psychoactive lemonade with the chattering classes, but it's still 'Time Crash' for which I'll remember the weekend so far. Hell, even remembering it's getting me all misty-eyed. 'You were my Doctor.' Sniff.

I've had a great idea for a film, except because I watched it in a dream, now I'm vaguely concerned it might already have been done: Father Christmas invades the USA. I don't know what happens with Canada - non-aggression pact, presumably - but he sweeps down from the North Pole and soon subjugates the majority of the US (I didn't see this bit, but presume that with his manufactories on a war footing, and the FTL superstealth sleigh, it wouldn't be too hard). And I have no idea why he was doing it - was the film a 'real meaning of christmas' story, a political satire, or just crazy for the sake of it? I don't know, I didn't see the whole film. I just remember him in a khaki camouflage version of his outfit, in a Patton stance.

Why I shall not be going to the Tutankhamun exhibition.

Much-hailed talk of a 17% fall in heart attacks in Scotland since the smoking ban revealed as at best exaggeration, at worst another outright lie by the neo-puritans:
"It is conceivable, although perhaps unlikely, that the smoking ban had no effect at all...what appeared to be hard medical evidence now looks more like over-hasty and over-confident research, coupled with wishful political thinking and uncritical journalism."

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Not really. The main contention is that 'heart attack rates had fallen by around 5% in several previous years, so an 8% fall this year is only really a 3% fall'.

The question this fails to address is, what was causing the 5% fall. If it was magic heartmending pixies who are still at work, then yes, it's only a 3% real fall.

If on the other hand it's caused by, y'know, public health measures such as this one and healthy eating advice and so on, then it's entirely possible to hypothesise that the marginal return of these other measures falls over time, whereas the contribution of a new one is greater.

Once you have a hypothesised correlation, you need to look for whether there's a transmission mechanism, otherwise it could indeed be a coincidence. In this case, we know that smokers are twice as likely to have a heart attack as non-smokers, and smokers under 40 four times more likely than non-smokers under 40.

Since we know that around 50,000 smokers in Scotland gave up for at least some period of time in the year following the ban, it would be remarkable indeed if this didn't make some contribution to falling rates of heart attacks. The rates due to passive smoking will of course be harder to measure given greater numbers and more 'noise'.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

I had some cigarettes on Friday and I'm not dead. Therefore....ah - it's your birthday - I'll let you have this one.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Again, though - how many people were already giving up year on year? How many of those 50,000 lasted the distance? Was the figure worse than for people giving up in response to other, less draconian initiatives? Without that information it's an eye-catching but basically useless figure.