Delicious LiveJournal Links for 9-14-2009

• Is Happiness Catching?
  Not just happiness, apparently - pretty much any attitude.
  (tags: memetics psychology)
• Can you see time?
  A form of synaesthesia I hadn't heard of before.
  (tags: psychology synaesthesia neuroscience time)
• Video Card Superlatives
  I'll be going back here next time I want to buy a graphics card
  (tags: graphics hardware video)
• "Advertising at the End of the World" by Keffy R.M. Kehrli
  (tags: advertising fiction scifi)
• Intelligence In Men And Women Is A Gray And White Matter
  In general, men have approximately 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence than women, and women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence than men. Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the networking of â“ or connections between â“ these processing centers.
  (tags: brain gender intelligence science psychology)
• Cholestrol levels not strictly correlated to arteriosclerosis.
  Resarch in mice, more research needed in people...
  (tags: diet health)
• Product placement for TV approved
  well, it's not like I watched ITV anyway.
  (tags: advertising business money UK television)
• "Hello John. It's Gordon Brown."
  The man behind the Alan Turing petition posts about how it all ended.
  (tags: politics UK government turing GordonBrown)
• Why education is about more than jobs
  A fantastic post about what university education actually does for people.
  (tags: education life)
• Even Babies Discriminate
  Children discriminate naturally - and they need to be taught _not_ to. Ignoring gender or ethnicity doesn't teach them to ignore it - it just leaves them confused and writing their own interpretations of what they mean.
  (tags: race children education psychology racism parenting kids culture)

Flat update

I had the plumber round last week to look at my radiators and solve my damp problem.  He told me that there wasn't anything wrong with the radiator, and that the problem was coming from somewhere else - but he didn't know where.

So I got in touch with my insurers who then put me through to their assessment company, who are sending me an expert to find out what the source of the problem is tomorrow.  If they will pay for it then that's me vastly happier.  Fingers crossed all round.

In the meantime, Julie and I spent Saturday going out to Seafield to look at tiles, then off to B&Q to look at showers, then to Ikea to look at sofa beds.  We found some amazing tiles - including some that were made of thing slices of slate, complete with embedded fossil plant shadows - but these wouldn't suit the bathroom at all, so we're going for cheap matt white ones.  And while we found a sofa bed we like, it's not going to work for the moment. 

We're currently sleeping in the study (where the sofa-bed will be) because the damp in the bedroom plays hell with Julie's asthma - and while the sofa bed will be fine for sleeping on for one person, or for a couple of nights, it's slimmer than the king-size mattress we're currently sleeping on, and we'd end up having to touch each other at night - a fate worse than death.  Still, once the damp is sorted we'll be able to get that sorted.

A victory of sorts has occurred with the bathroom - when we went to B&Q for a quote they said any bathroom would cost at least £4,500.  We now seem to have everything budgeted in/ordered for about £2,400.  And without actually cutting any corners!

Other than that the weekend was quite quiet - good time at bracknellexile's flatwarming, where I engaged in chat with pretty much everyone, and only took a dislike to one person :-> Sunday was spent nursing a pair of hangovers (Julie's was worse than mine), doing some tidying, watching the first season of Secret Diary of a Call Girl and then playing a bit of Peggle (belated birthday present from bracknellexile - I got him Braid, which Steam had on special offer over the weekend).

Tonight is the BSG board game, which I'm rather looking forward to. And then tomorrow I'm off work, helping Julie recruit first years for Mad! Science! experiments on their tasty, tasty brains.