There are a ton of useful CK Conditional functions, properties and constants - IsShieldOut, IsSwimming, isStaggered, isHorseStolen ,etc - is there a way for Papyrus to access these?

I found a snippet from someone claiming to be able to do this but his description is so sketchy that I cannot make it work: http://www.creationkit.com/Passing_Conditions_to_Papyrus

His logic at least makes sense - you make a scripted magical ability that only fires when the Conditional in question is true (eg isSwimming==1) and put code into the onEffectStart and onEffectEnd that sets Papyrus globals which in turn can be picked up from other scripts.

But I'm a programmer, not a CK expert.