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I’m a pretty big fan of Jurassic Park movies. At least as far as “man meets dinosaur” movies go.

But, as someone who actually read the original novel, something has bothered me from day one. The matter of small arms. No, not on the T-Rex. I mean the distinct lack of big guns. Let me get this off my chest…

In the first movie, the game warden Muldoon, rocks about with a shotgun. Just a shotgun. We later see this is loaded with shot rather then slugs when Grant shoots at the raptors in the control room. This might be adequate for anything up to a really big dog at short range. Problem is, for most of the smaller, dangerous dinos, short range is way too late. The larger dinos… might as well be throwing rocks.

In the first book, Muldoon at least insists on a rocket launcher, which proves to be highly effective (Muldoon survives). We also learn that Hammond has, naturally, effectively banned weapons on the island. At least the book features the right tools for the job. Sadly, this is never picked up in the movies.

Fast forward to Jurassic World and the “Asset Containment Unit” is running around with mostly non-lethal weapons you wouldn’t even try on a polar bear. Again, one has a shotgun. They do have a minigun, which would probably be highly effective with clear line of sight and a fortified position, but instead they put it on a helicopter and fly over a jungle with thick canopy. Derp.

Even the various groups of poachers and mercenaries show up with an assortment of assault rifles and shotguns. Except for two guys. Roland, the big game hunter in The Lost World. He’s got an elephant gun. Big tick. The other is a guy you’d barely remember from Jurassic Park 3, who has a Barrett .50 caliber rifle.

This seems much more like it to me, although I am no firearms expert. While it doesn’t do JP3 guy much good (he is wandering around the jungle with it), .50 caliber weapons are surely the way to go. A lot of watchtowers with rifle-armed guards, a few discretely hidden fixed heavy machine gun emplacements and a few of the same mounted on vehicles. I feel like that meets the minimum for worst case scenario. Hell, if I had the choice, there’d be armoured vehicles and I’d have the Costa Rican airforce on speed dial.

However, I get that the core theme of the franchise is human-kind’s hubris and not having the proper equipment is a big part of that. It still bugs me, though, in a “why didn’t the eagles just fly them there” kind of a way, you know?

“I’m only doing this on the precondition that I can lie, and no-one will call me out,” is definitely the way to run a democracy.

Hang on, so Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine is definitely an invasion but Israel’s “limited, localised and targeted ground raids” in Lebanon are… not?

Did this “common sense” survey.

With hindsight, I feel like there is a critical distinction between common sense and common knowledge. Most of these questions were related to common knowledge, so a statement of fact, which you may or may not know, or might disagree with.

To me, common sense is the ability to predict an outcome based on a broad awareness of previous outcomes. For example, if I am careless with a knife, the knife could cut me. Or, you can’t carry water (very far) in a sieve.

Common knowledge is something else altogether. For example, “the sky is usually blue during the day”, I would say is common knowledge. An example from the survey, “a grizzly bear is larger than a dog”, I would say is neither common sense or common knowledge. You may not know what a a grizzly bear is. “Water is a liquid” is probably common knowledge but, still, don’t you have to know what liquid means?

Either way, I don’t think you can apply any previous experience to these questions and predict the answer, so I don’t see how they could be described as common sense.

My co-workers want my collaboration on “a thing”, with no notice, today. They don’t like it if they don’t get it.

I want a yes/no answer from my co-workers on a simple question, that I have to ask them every month. Do you think I can ever get that one word answer?

My pitch for a new social media platform:

Our app will allow children of any age (but we’ll put 13 in the T&Cs), to engage in completely unmoderated chat with total strangers of all ages from all over the world! They’ll be able to freely exchanged photos, videos and any kind of file without restriction!

Can you imagine pitching that and getting investment? The current situation with kids and social media is ludicrous.

The rules for “branded content” on Instagram are very clear but there is no way to report Posts that don’t meet the requirements. Funny that.

Read Teenagers will always get drunk – so why don’t we just serve them in pubs? by Zoe Williams

Several things:

Firstly, how has this article been written without reference to Hot Fuzz?

Secondly, it’s not a bad idea. Especially considering:

If you’re 16 or 17 and accompanied by an adult, you can [already] drink beer, wine or cider with a meal.

Seems reasonable, right?

But, the major problem is that this does not remove the need for ID checks. Set the age at 16, you’ll get 13-14 year olds trying it on.

What we, in the UK, really need is culture shift where being falling down drunk is not tolerated and for landlords to abide by their license and stop serving such persons alchohol.

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I “do” data stuff for work. We look at patient experience in health and social care services. When I first joined, I (and colleagues) genuinely believed there was some revelatory nugget of insight (or even scandal) hidden away in the data. Now I’m just happy when our results affirm things everyone already assumes to be true, like working people would like increased access to evening and weekend appointments. Findings like people in poorer areas rely more on public transport, validates our research approach and methods. So, when we do find something slightly unexpected, it has a lot more credibility.