{"id":2915,"date":"2009-02-22T01:16:42","date_gmt":"2009-02-22T01:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=2915"},"modified":"2009-02-22T01:16:42","modified_gmt":"2009-02-22T01:16:42","slug":"weekend-reading-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=2915","title":{"rendered":"Weekend reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>* In Australia, there&#8217;s finally been an attempt to wrest the <a href = \"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/national\/midwifery-reborn-in-birth-review-20090220-8doh.html?page=-1\">over-medicalised birth process<\/a>  from the doctors. Predictably, they&#8217;re <a href = \"http:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/national\/furore-over-midwife-report-as-doctors-go-on-the-attack-20090221-8e9t.html?page=-1\">screaming<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>* Ben Goldacre in his always delightful Bad Science column, does <a href = \"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2009\/feb\/21\/heroin-seizures-bad-science\">complete dissection<\/a> of the claims of the value of drug seizures in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>* Sarah Vines in The Times notices how Labour men have <a href = \"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/comment\/columnists\/guest_contributors\/article5775939.ece\">turned on the women in the Cabinet<\/a>. Oddly enough, I don&#8217;t recall any of them holding an important economic ministry, yet somehow Labour&#8217;s mess is now their fault.<\/p>\n<p>* Some good news from Australia, where the <a href = \"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/national\/22-million-more-trips-on-public-transport-20090221-8e8s.html?page=-1\">grip of the car culture<\/a> is, every slightly, being loosened. (CLose to my heart this one &#8211; when I think of how in my youth we&#8217;d drive for a pint of milk, even though the shops were a 10-minute walk away, I shudder.)<\/p>\n<p>* Cheers for the Women&#8217;s Institute: its battle for <a href = \"http:\/\/women.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/life_and_style\/women\/article5760062.ece\">decriminalisation of prostitution<\/a> goes on.<\/p>\n<p>* Then the environmental bad news: there&#8217;s fringe group running round saying global warming is due to water vapour (and not humans). Well it seems they&#8217;rte half-right &#8211; water vapour is an <a href = \"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/blogs\/shortsharpscience\/2009\/02\/sauna-doubles-the-earths-tempe.html\">important factor<\/a>, but it is going up because the temperature is going up due to carbon dioxide and other human emissions.  And I don&#8217;t think it teaches us anything new, but this <a href = \"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/earth\/environment\/climatechange\/4734859\/Scientists-capture-dramatic-footage-of--Arctic-glaciers-melting-in-hours.html\">dramatic film<\/a> of the fate of Greenland meltwater is powerful stuff. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* In Australia, there&#8217;s finally been an attempt to wrest the over-medicalised birth process from the doctors. Predictably, they&#8217;re screaming. * Ben Goldacre in his always delightful Bad Science column, does complete dissection of the claims of the value of drug seizures in Afghanistan. * Sarah Vines in The Times notices how Labour men have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","author-natalieben"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2916,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2915\/revisions\/2916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}