Delicious LiveJournal Links for 1-27-2010

[andrewducker]

• Scientists recreate Maxwell's Demon
  Clarke's Third Law applies, obviously
  (tags: science TheFuture)
• This is why I was never any good at flirting
  (tags: comic funny flirting)
• Pure CSS 3D Coke Can
  Damn, that's impressive!
  (tags: 3d coke design programming html css)
• FT Alphaville » The bank problem in a single chart
• Whole Foods Offers Employee Discount Based On BMI
  And also campaigns against healthcare reform.
  (tags: health usa EpicFail)
• Blu-ray Maker Re-Boxes $500 Player, Charges $3,500
  Would you like some oxygen free cables to go with that?
  (tags: hardware marketing scam technology EpicFail)
• Teacher Anxieties May Subtract From Girlsâ™ Math Scores
  (tags: mathematics gender society psychology teaching)
• How the brain encodes memories at a cellular level
  (tags: brain science memory neuroscience psychology biology)
• German court finds parent liable for child's file-sharing
  (tags: law germany filesharing)
• Use Google Reader to follow changes to any website
  (tags: google rss)
• UK more liberal on homosexuality, says survey. Still 33% bigoted though.
  Some 36% thought homosexual acts were "always" or "mostly" wrong, down from 62% when the British Social Attitudes survey was first carried out, in 1983.
  (tags: gay politics uk society)

Comments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

The 'flirting' link was just an amusing comic, until the penultimate panel, when you see the empty chair has 'confidence' written on the back, and that brought a tear to my eye.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Oh I never saw that! Well spotted!

And yes, me too. :/

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Once I saw the title on the right hand chair, I really really wanted to see who the others were: I think confidence was the only one revealed, and yes, I felt the same way.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

"Impulsiveness" is the one the woman is sitting in -- you can see it in the panel where they're raising their hands to vote.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

The bit of that article I found most surprising was: "Some 56% of those questioned thought it was "everyone's duty to vote" - down from 68% in 1991."

[andrewducker]

There's a hell of a lot more apathy at the moment - a lack of belief that voting actually changes things. I'm actually surprised it's that high though.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

I've still yet to find an explanation of WHY amerkans are against the healthcare reform. Tons of them are against it, but I can't fathom their reasons.

[andrewducker]

Because then bureaucracy would be running your healthcare! Faceless bureaucrats would make decisions about your health! At least with businesses you can take your money to a different provider!

All of which is rubbish, but during the 50s America indoctrinated people so well against communism that government is still seen as being eeeeevil by a large chunk of the population.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Reasons? That's optimistic.

They're against it because death panels bureaucrats killing grandma aborted Mozart no freedom to choose.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Argh... why are people obsessed with choice? This despite increasing amounts of research that it's bad for us. It's like with the trend with the NHS: no, don't want choice of hospitals, just want A reasonably good hospital not too far away.

[broin.livejournal.com]

I don't get it either. I don't even want different kinds of cereal.

[andrewducker]

I get bored of eating the same thing every day, and I'm in the mood for different things at different times.

[broin.livejournal.com]

How many varieties of cornflakes do you need? :)

[andrewducker]

Cornflakes?

I like weetabix. Or Muesli.

Cornflakes are clearly for the Wrong Kind Of Person.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Hehe.

I think I told you about a friend who spent a year in a Nicaraguan village in 1980 or so, and then visited a supermarket. Freaked out.

[andrewducker]

Hal felt somewhat similar when he came back from Kenya. And I believe that people from the old USSR had the same kind of Future Shock when they came to the West.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I have much the same reaction when I visit Scotland and Gregg's. So. Many. Pies.

[andrewducker]

I'm generally in favour of it when it comes to non-essentials (pies, computer games and yachts) because who am I to tell someone that they have to play Doom, not C&C, or eat a steak pie rather than a bridie. When it comes to hospitals, having unnecessary hospitals just so they can compete seems like a massive waste of resources.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Up to a point, cereal choice makes sense ;)
Crunchy / nutty / fruity / pencil shavings (aka bran flakes): these are tangible differences that you can have a preference for. But a lot of things (toothpaste, say, or headphones where I am currently paralyzed by the options), the choice is meaningless. I have no way of rating the different headphones, and there are dozens upon dozens of models at all manner of prices. I can't fathom what the choice represents and so I shirk from it, and have been doing so for over a year now since my iPod headphones broke.

[andrewducker]

Headphones - ask friends to recomend some, and try them out if you can (after a good wipe, of course). I recommend Sennheiser CX 300's, which are about £20 and great sound quality. When I'm out and about I use Koss Sparkplugs because they keep sounds out better (being basically an ear plug with a hole drilled through the middle).

As for toothpaste - I hate really minty toothpaste, and don't like the texture of whitening toothpaste that Julie uses, so we have different toothpastes. If you don't care which kind you use then just buy the cheapest one - and then if you don't like it throw it away and buy a different one.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Yup, for toothpaste, I can see there's a mintiness scale, and orthogonal to that is features like whitening / sensitive / regular. That still produces a grid of at most 9 types, and even allowing a few more if toothpastes came in non-mint flavours, it's not the array you see in Tesco.

BTW the whitening ones wear away your enamel.

Thanks for the tips. These would be exclusively for being out, so better noise reduction would be better. I tried Katie's which were maybe the Sennheiser.

[andrewducker]

Well, I'm not sure you get more than 9 types of toothpaste per manufacturer - but what you do get is different container types. Plus, of course, different manufacturers. I'll be intrigued next time I'm in Sainsburies!

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

Just to back up Andrew: every piece of headphone-buying advice I have read, plus my own limited experience and that of my friends, boils down to this: decide your budget, then buy whatever set of Sennheisers most comfortably matches it.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Very good! I had written a post about the CX300s (15 quid if you look around).

Whereas I'm stuck trying to find a laptop for a friend. Needs to run Windows 7, minimal use - surfing, some movies. 15 inch. Keyboard with lots of travel and depth. Cheap shipping. €400. Not easy, as it turns out.

[andrewducker]

This looks like an updated version of my laptop:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/179694
£350 - 15", comes with Windows 7. My keyboard is fine for me, but it's hard to know without trying it what this one is like. It has a ATI Radeon Mobility in it, which isn't up to Modern Warfare (I'd imagine) but happily plays World of Warcraft.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Ebuyer don't ship to Ireland. =)

This is one of the many places it gets interesting. Now, Laptops Direct have it, but I'd really like to scrape off that excess €34.79.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Oh hang on. Ebuyer do deliver.

How was your keyboard? Lots of depth and movement?

[broin.livejournal.com]

I ordered these a couple of weeks ago. Astounding bass, excellent range, great noise-dampening. I couldn't hear a bin lorry go past, but I could hear Wagner.

[andrewducker]

Ooh, thanks!

Similar to the ones I have, but I'll give them a go when these wear out :->

[broin.livejournal.com]

That's exactly the thing - for 15 quid, they're very nearly disposable. For when you snag one on your shirt, on a door handle, underfoot... You do amass a great colelction of little rubber ear squishies, though.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip!

And they work well for Wagner you say... that's good to know. Some speakers sound great for pop but at soon as you put classical through them they're crap.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Well, they're better than the previous ones I had, certainly (CX 300s, but an older design with a firmer cable that recently snapped), but there could well be something amazingly better out there. They do conduct a little sound from your footsteps when you're walking.

But for £15...

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Much of the NHS is incredibly inefficient and run in very old-fashioned ways. The culture amongst many staff is one of resistance to advancement, efficiency improvements or change in general. Reforming that culture is pretty much impossible, not least due to resistance from staff and/or unions to change. Making hospitals compete financially, the argument goes, is pretty much the only way that you can force that change to take place.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

It confuses patients, and actually there was research that showed passing choice over to the patient slows the whole process down significantly and wastes resources.

And competition is inherently wasteful anyway.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

It's very complicated, and I am sure there are a 1,000 different reasons. Here are only 3. Culturally the US is very different to Europe. To start with, the US is essentially 50 small countries, each with its own identity and government. Many people want their own state to be governed from within and dislike any interference on a Federal level - the so-caled "big government". Healthcare reform falls into this category.

Also much of the US is very much a society where you are responsible for everything about your life. Every man for him/herself would be an apt description. Can't afford healthcare, then you should get a better job.

Finally, an awful lot of people are already wealthy enough to have healthcare insurance, usually through their employer, and simply don't want to pay taxes to provide it to those less fortunate.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Healthcare reform would not only allow more people to get insured, it would also reduce costs and improve service for those already with insurance. Plus it would actually save $132 billion in taxes over 10 years. So that last item goes under the general ignorance heading with all the other made up reasons liek death panels that people don't like the idea of reform.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

You can file it under selfish, but I don't think it can be put down to ignorance. Healthcare reform would undoubtedly provide better heathcare for those currently without insurance. But I'm not sure it would improve the service received by those currently insured. Nobody is suggesting that there should be state-provided healthcare, only some sort of state-funded insurance policy.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

By service I don't mean the medical care itself but access to it; the service you get from your insurance company. So, for example, reducing discrimination for pre-existing conditions, deductibles and other out of pocket expenses (on top of the insurance), caps on what insurance companies will cover.

And people with insurance may not always have it, particularly since it is often tied to employment, which again is addressed by the public option (which isn't the same as a state-funded insurance policy, merely a universal, affordable private insurance scheme).

[erindubitably.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I have heard people give is that they don't want "[their] children paying for the healthcare of lazy people today".

Note: not that I agree in any way, just trying to answer a good question.

[andrewducker]

They don't seem to realise that those people get healthcare anyway - once the situation becomes life threatening. And then it cost a hell of a lot more. There's a reason (or 6) why America has the highest healthcare costs in the world, per person.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Of course, if the boss of Whole Foods market really thought the products on offer were healthy, he'd be offering the discount to those employees who would benefit from using them.

Whilst they're a useful source of veggie food in Nowheresville, USA, the quality is terrible. Their organic dates taste of precisely nothing - an excellent way of putting someone (me) off a healthy snacking habit.

What the holy effing f*&%?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That's what I was going to say: I thought the policy was ill-thought out and potentially insulting and disastrous for all the usual reasons when I read the title, and then I saw that, in order to encourage healthy lifestyles, he proposes to offer greater discounts to people whose BMI is lower. WTF?

The advantages of offering a further discount to people who _may_ need to eat more healthily are potentially troublesome, but at least they COULD be seen as a non-judgemental helping hand. And would work EQUALLY WELL in terms of setting targets. (If you want to lose weight as an achievement, then LOSING your discount is equally an achievement. Unless there are people who are sufficiently-money tight that they can be FORCED into losing weight by holding their fiscal solvency hostage.)

I'm not great at helping people who have some (benign or serious) addiction, but I've seen both the approaches of "YOU SUCK! HERE, HAVE SOME MORE PAIN JUST TO RUB IN HOW MUCH YOU SUCK!" and "No big deal, hey, wanna hang out doing X," and I think the second works better.

Of course, I'm basing this impression mainly on the name of the company and that the products are supposed to be healthy -- assuming they're lying about the quality of their foods, then this is possibly only insulting, not necessarily worse than useless.

Re: What the holy effing f*&%?

[feorag.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that, being in a bit of a bitchy mood earlier today, I suggested to my partner that if the boss of Whole Foods Market wants to reward his skinny staff, he should give them a discount on cosmetics to put some colour back into their cheeks.