Delicious LiveJournal Links for 6-26-2009

[andrewducker]

• Evil Robot Monkey
  A lovely little sad story. Well worth 5 minutes of your time.
  (tags: story sf free fiction scifi hugo)
• Jewish school admissions unlawful
  Shock, horror, disciminating by race is illegal.
  (tags: religion race education UK)
• Neil Gaimain talks about why there isn't a 20th anniversary comic.
  I wanted to do a 20th anniversary story and it broke mostly because DC Comics would have loved me to do a 20th anniversary story at the same terms that were agreed upon in 1987 when I was a 26-year-old unknown. And my thought was, 'You know what guys, it really doesn't work like that.' I wasn't going to do a deal at the same terms we had in 1987 and they were not willing to do any better than that.
  (tags: sandman NeilGaiman EpicFail)
• Spotify making 14p per user per month
  That's from advertising. £80,000 in total. Plus £170,000 in premium subscriber fees. So an average of 45p per user coming in. I'm not sure that's terribly economic...
  (tags: online music spotify advertising)
• Among Many Peoples, Little Genomic Variety
  There ya go, something to knock racist arguments on the head with.
  
  Also - the differentiation into three main groups is interesting.
  (tags: biology genetics anthropology life)
• Optogenetics
  A Stanford researcher has spliced light-sensitive algae genes into human brain cells to fire neurons when activated by a laser.
  (tags: science brain neuroscience genetics)

Comments

[meihua.livejournal.com]

I loved the monkey story - thank you.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Also - the differentiation into three main groups is interesting.

Which racists would surely claim supported their views. So, no knock on the head at all.

[andrewducker]

Only if the differences between the outcomes in the groups are measurable and distinct.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

But racists, generally speaking, (and measurably and distinctly), are pseudo-scientists, and 'three main groups' is a good starting point for them to find the answers they're looking for. Africans, Europeans and Asians? Well, duh!

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I listened to the two sides on the radio about the Jewish school. It didn't seem that unreasonable to me (or at least not as unreasonable as the headlines indicated).

The issue was that the school is an orthodox Jewish school, and the child is not Jewish according to how orthodox Jews determine who is Jewish (the mother has to be Jewish or convert through a particular process). Discrimination on the basis of religion for religious schools is legal in the UK, and they argued that they were discriminating on that basis.

I only got a small bit of the story of course because there was only about 4 or 5 minutes allocated to the story.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

DC Comics would have loved me to do a 20th anniversary story at the same terms that were agreed upon in 1987 when I was a 26-year-old unknown.
Stupid, stupid, BAD DC Comics!!!

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, on the 'three groups' issue, I have read that Australian aboriginal populations are closer genetically to the European than the East Asian group. The hypothesis was that there was one wave of immigration, which spread north and south becoming european and australian and then a second wave which spread to asia and america, dividing the original wave.

ETA - I should add, though it's probably obvious, that I am talking about nothing but random genetic noise and a few minor physical traits as indicators of genetic similarity. I'm with you in denying the existence of the traditional victorian 'races'.