Oh Yes.

A few nights without sleep can not only make people tired and emotional, but may actually put the brain into a primitive "fight or flight" state, researchers say.
Buuuut ... the most common response in fear situations is the same as that of that iconic of kiwi imports, the opossum - people freeze. Mostly without sleep people yawn a lot, are drowsy, slow, have poor concentration etc. 'More likely to fight' really is an artefact of teperament and how they are predisposed at the time.
The findings may shed light on psychiatric diseases ... but not really. It is quite widely known that ongoing sleep deprivation will cause racing thoughts, preoccupations/ruminative thinking and hallucinations .. particularly in the isolatory amongst us. The ability to differentiate between psychiatric illness and this phenomenon is simply not going to be possible - they are in all probability one and the same.

So no mitigatory factors here for Mr Mallard, nor here ... Murderers' provocation defence set to be scrapped. Now one might think that this is a little excessive but many a person has been known to have 'egg (shell) like' heads and qualities and I am sure that many have descrbed Tau Henare as having these qualities - so the risk was there ... and if provocation is removed as a defence for murder it must mean it is similarly removed for any act that could, just possibly... well remotely ... cause serious bodily harm.

Damn!

Cunliffe, the minister of immigration and communications, last night told the Herald on Sunday: "My 2-year-old was pulling at a little girl. I pulled his hand away," allegedly smacked him on the hand, "and calmly told him not to do that. If Families First cared about families, they would not be dragging the small children of MPs into a public debate like this."

And why not?? Does being an MP imply the ability to break the law with impunity ... particularly a law of which they have been a proponent in passing in to law... and then to exhibit a flagrant and public disregard for that same law?

That the smack was after the event must mean that it was entirely for 'the purpose of correction.'

Public situations almost always moderate behavioural excess in adults - hence children tend to perform more in these situations, because largely they can and without consequence ... until they get home. For this behaviour to be public could well imply a far greater occurrence in the home or other private situations, that it is characteristic.

"The guidelines released by police on Tuesday say people can smack children to prevent or minimise harm to a child but not to punish or correctit... zero tolerance."

The public nature of this, the observation that it was to correct, should mean the police have to act on the information published, investigate it as if it were a complaint and make notification to CYF. To do otherwise would seem to be a dereliction of duty and discrimination of the worst kind ... a test case??