Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-13-2009

[andrewducker]

• The powerful and mysterious brain circuitry that makes us love Google, Twitter, and texting.
  Plus World of Warcraft :->
  (tags: attention dopamine addiction pleasure psychology)
• Why MSG allergy is fake science
  Huzzah for myths and pseduoscience
  (tags: food allergies msg)
• The Beatles Make the Leap to Rock Band
  Very nice behind the scenes look at what it took to get the game made. With added Yoko Ono!
  (tags: beatles rockband games)
• This is why we still have IE6
  Read all the way to the bottom...
  (tags: ie6 internet EpicFail)
• Man's gotta know his limitations
  A view on the George Sodini shootings
  (tags: men women relationships dating)
• Mick Jagger's Adventures in Toyland
  A lovely little personal reminiscence
  (tags: RollingStones MickJagger story)
• Arranged marriage re-think call
  Damned kids want to meet their wives in advance!
  (tags: marriage religion sikh Edinburgh)
• Frank Darabont to adapt Walking Dead comic
  For TV!
  (tags: TV zombies FrankDarabont)
• Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire
  Anyone care to tell me if this is a reasonable/accurate assessment?
  (tags: history economics politics inflation)
• Microsoft Office Web Apps drop support for IE6
  They do support Firefox and Safari though.
  (tags: microsoft web2.0 office web silverlight)
• Study gives happiness techniques thumbs up
  Four different techniques to make you happy, a sample size of 26,000 people. What more could you want?
  (tags: happiness science psychology)
• Someday, A Tiny Subway Will Deliver Your Groceries
  Welcome to the world of Tomooooorrooooow!
  (tags: TheFuture architecture design technology delivery tunnels)
• How to hack a Sony Reader
  Not that you can do a vast amount extra with them - still pretty cool though.
  (tags: sony ebooks hacking prs-505 ereader)
• Airborne rabbis fight off swine flu
  Which is pretty much the headline of the day. And the video is full of crazy people!
  (tags: judaism funny religion EpicFail)
• Resetting the clock: successful bodyhacking
  Looks like a 12 hour fast before waking sorts you out (anecdotally at least). So if you want to be up at 8am then stop eating at 8pm. I'll be giving this one a go...
  (tags: food biology sleep)
• Brain-jacking fungus turns living victims into zombies
  Zombie ants in this case, but still.
  (tags: zombies fungus brains biology)
• The career choice that delivers
  (tags: jobs life slow)

Comments

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

Was it you who posted the link to the story about Apple censoring a dictionary with the words 'I'm never going to get an iPhone'? If so, you should read this, which might make you regard the company with a little more respect/a slightly higher opinion of their sanity.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a shame Schiller appears to be lying - or at least contradicting himself:

From the article:
Apple did not censor the content in this developer’s application and Apple did not reject this developer’s application for including references to common swear words.

but the feedback Matchstick software received from the App Store reviewers was very specific. They were flagged for the words c***, f***, and s***. Those three words are in other dictionaries, rated as low as 4+. (starred out by me as it's someone else's journal).

I believe the flagging of these words was also accompanied by screenshots of the offending words. That is very definitely rejection based on content.

It's a start that, for the first time, we're getting glimpses of how the App Store approval process works, but the rules still seem to be arbitrary and applied depending on the mood the app store approver is in that day. It's a bigger closed shop with it's own hidden agenda than Microsoft ever was. Fro example, Google Voice getting pulled (allegedly on the whim of AT&T) springs to mind.

Nope, never going to trust Apple and never going to by an iPhone.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

Schiller says, further down: "The issue that the App Store reviewers did find with the Ninjawords application is that it provided access to other more vulgar terms than those found in traditional and common dictionaries, words that many reasonable people might find upsetting or objectionable... Apple rejected the initial submission of Ninjawords for this reason...and suggested to the developer that they resubmit the application for approval once parental controls were implemented on the iPhone."

So either you didn't bother reading the whole article or you're deliberately misquoting it, neither of which makes me inclined to think I can win a rational argument against you...

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

No, not misquoting. My point was that the app was rejected with specific screenshots showing examples of S*** and F***, quite the opposite of what Schiller is claiming.

It was initially rejected on words commonly found in dictionaries (as well as the more vulgar street-slang terms in subsequent applications) highlighting the problem with the inconsistency of the App Store process. SChiller's trying to put a good spin on that with the subsequent changes but his initial statement about common swear words is simply not true.

[coughingbear]

'Damned kids want to meet their wives in advance!'

Or their husbands, presumably? Slightly surprised by quite how comprehensively male pov that article was, eg 'And, until now, not meeting your bride until the wedding day itself has been the norm.' At least, I'm assuming the Edinburgh Sikh community hasn't started celebrating same-sex marriages, but happy to be corrected on that!

[andrewducker]

Yup, all of the adults interviewed were men. Which just goes to show how different the culture is.

[coughingbear]

Not just that, I didn't have the impression that the journalist was Sikh but all the text assumed that default reader=male - as does 'kids' in your description, I think. (That's not meant as a major criticism, we all do it, but I just stumbled over the sentence in this particular case, which was partly what made me go and read the article to see what it was like.)

[marrog.livejournal.com]

It amazes me that this is an article quite explicitely about religious progressivenes, and is still entirely male-centric, and yet there are people who I know who I consider - or at least consider themselves - to be reasonably well-educated and progressive, who believe the fight for gender equality is anywhere near over,/i>

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

Or the limitations of the reporter's thinking, or the lack of time she had available to find more interviewees, or ...

[marrog.livejournal.com]

In my defense I think I'm hormonal, but I actually found that article on the Beatles Rock Band a little moving.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it docks you points for being too competent at the drums... ;)

[andrewducker]

I thought it was lovely too. I'm really looking forward to it.

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

So if MSG doesn't cause allergies does it still trigger migraines or was my Mum right about the headache and flashing lights and abdominal pain after eating chinese food being due to me eating it too fast because it's so damned tasty?

[andrewducker]

Easy way to find out - make two identical meals. Get a friend to put MSG in one of them. Eat both on different days and see if you get migraines from just the right one :->

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

Done that. Accidentally. A number of times. Most recent was when my boyfriend didn't read the ingredients on his parents' stock cubes. It was only when I got the symptoms that we thought to check them. MSG.

I'd love to do more experimentation but my boyfriend says no. Apparently he doesn't like me being ill especially when it's the doubled over in pain and unable to see properly kind of ill. It scares him.

From when I was 7 or 8 I was convinced that the reason I got a really bad tummy ache and headache after eating Chinese food was because I ate it too fast. To be honest I can't remember if that was my theory or my Mum's. Sounds like one of hers. Eating slowly didn't help but I stopped mentioning the pain because I really liked the taste and no one else got it was probably my own fault or I deserved it or something. I didn't hear about MSG until years later.

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire : Anyone care to tell me if this is a reasonable/accurate assessment?

swisstone is probably better placed to give you a detailed critique, but I'd make the following two points: (1) inflation and debasement of the coinage was part of the Third Century Military Crisis; and (2) the transcript has a very definite libertarian/monetarist slant, which gives it a strong whiff of someone working backwards from his conclusions rather than forwards from his evidence. (The speaker's stated affiliation to the Mises Institute at the head of the transcript certainly bears out his libertarian credentials.)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, swisstone would definitely be the expert here :->

And I'm taking it as a definite loaded/biased argument - but on the other hand constantly debasing their currency, constantly increasing taxes, not preventing counterfitting, and putting the state into the hands of the military does sound like a recipe for disaster!