Author Archives: mrd

Search www.startpage.com from the address bar

If you type words into the address bar of Mozilla Firefox, and the words do not look like a valid URL, then the words will be passed to the default search engine (Google in the case of Firefox) as search … Continue reading

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Scoring the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth (VIA-Youth)

The Values in Action Inventory for Youth (VIA-Youth) is a 198 item self-report questionnaire that is very similar to the better known VIA Survey of Character. It was developed by Nansoon Park and Christopher Peterson who first described it, I … Continue reading

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Targeting Skills Needs in Regions

Targeting Skills Needs in Regions was the name given by the Australian Government to a program that was intended to alleviate a critical shortage of skilled labour in some regions of Australia. A report on the evaluation of the program … Continue reading

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Multidose vials of influenza vaccine: views on risk

Australian Doctor recently published a discussion article on the use of multidose vials for influenza vaccine. The discussion follows on from the publication in the Medical Journal of Australia of an article by Angela O’Brien-Malone and me regarding some of … Continue reading

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Preventing a line hang-up: how often must you speak?

Consider the following problem. You have made a connection to a machine to which you want to transfer some data. You know that if you are silent for some finite, but unknown time, then the machine will hang-up on you. … Continue reading

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Multiplicative persistence: new null results

Multiply together all the digits of a positive integer, n. Using the result, repeat the digit-multiplication process to obtain a new result. Continue until a single digit result is obtained. The number of steps, p, that it takes for n … Continue reading

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Gaming your way to non-trivial results

In 2005, in a posting on Reality War Games, I suggested the possibility that a well equipped military might create an on-line game that recruited gamers from around the world to participate in the simulation of a planned, real-life, military … Continue reading

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VIA Strengths—scoring key

For a measure that has obtained so much publicity, it is remarkable that the VIA Strengths scale has, so far, and as far as I can tell, no published scoring key. In fact, using a variety of search engines, the … Continue reading

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The immoderately long arm of the Psychology Board of Australia

On 11 November 2010 the Psychology Board of Australia issued Consultation Paper 6: Proposed registration standard—Limited Registration for Teaching or Research. In the paper the Board outlines a definition of psychological practice that was approved by the Australian Health Workforce … Continue reading

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Senate Inquiry into the Reform of Australian Government Administration

The original enquiry into the Reform of Australian Government Administration (ROAGA) began back in September 2009 with the issue of a discussion paper. In May 2010, a report with the cumbersome title of Ahead of the Game: Blueprint for the … Continue reading

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