Delicious LiveJournal Links for 6-5-2010

[andrewducker]

• The way most people stretch before exercise? Not right at all...
  (tags: exercise health fitness sports science)
• Don't Call The Guatemala Sinkhole a Sinkhole - the entire city is on a layer of ash and pumice that could be washed away at any point...
  (tags: science geology nature environment sinkhole guatemala)
• When your gaming session ends in a real-life arrest...
  (tags: police gaming EpicFail)
• Calif. students apologize for 'Beat the Jew' chase game
  Well, I was amused.
  (tags: Jews bigotry EpicFail funny)
• Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!
  (tags: feminism crime rape funny satire)
• Three Simple Rules for life
  (tags: life advice)
• Shofar Hero
  (tags: funny game music)
• The Value of Ideas
  (tags: business inspiration ideas)
• Debrahlee Lorenzana sues Citigroup, claims bank fired her for being too sexy
  (tags: sexism society)

Comments

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

Didn't read the exercise article (some sort of registration required), but I've read something very like it before. Scientists measured people's strength or recovery or something depending on whether or not they had warmed up first, and found that those who stretched further got less out of the exercise. This always grated when I was doing fencing, because one of the instructors seemed to think that if you weren't stretching like a yoga master, you weren't doing it right.

Having said that gentle stretching is okay, but you can get that extremely well from doing things like spider crawling around the room.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Annoyingly there isn't very much information about dynamic stretching on the Internet, at least as relates to martial arts.

(plus, of course, even the legit MA information often looks dodgy because it's trying too hard to sell itself)

However, thinking about it, I believe that nearly all Pilates exercises are either dynamic or isometric.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

The real shock of that Citigroup story was that in that part of the city there were enough heterosexual men working in that bank for it to be a problem.

[andrewducker]

Something special about Citigroup?

Because banks are generally known to be hotheads of testosterone poisoning.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

There's something very fishy about that case... I got a strong whiff of narcisism coming from Ms. Lorenzana's statements to the reporter. I suspect that there's more to the dismissal than her choice of wardrobe; that could just be my left-over misanthropy from a mostly-sleepless night after food poisoning, though.

-- Steve knows of several dismissals for poor deportment at his job, though those were generally in the "repeatedly poor hygiene" or "insisting upon wearing excessive perfume/cologne" categories.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about head offices, but I think bank branches tend to have more women than men employees in Canada.

[andrewducker]

Branches, possibly. But investment bankers tend to be more male, in my experience. And it's been shown that this actually tends to make them rasher, and less likely to make good decisions.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Hehe.

Mike from MST3K said on Facebook 'Sure, and I was fired from KFC for caring too much'.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Dear me, that was some astonishing level of stupidity in the PsychoDM story. Now I know it's in the US, but as far as I am aware the law re trespass is the same as it is in England (not sure about Scotland*) - all it takes to turn someone from an invited guest to a trespasser you are entitled to remove via reasonable force is to say "you must leave now". The guy did the right thing though - calling the police and then very politely asking them to ask the jerk to go.

I suspect what really freaked PsychoDM out was the breach of one of the Geek Social Fallacies - that you never, ever, ostracise someone. I've seek geeks and fans get very upset when they are actually told plainly that they are out of order, because in their view of the world that never happens.

*Scotland's legal system is actually more different from England's than that of most US states. The exception is Louisiana, which has substantially French-based law.

[miramon.livejournal.com]

Looks like it was Canada rather than the US, but I guess the same applies

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

breach of one of the Geek Social Fallacies

I loved the way that most of the article is talking about the details of the character and the game stuff, rather than more details about the whole refusing to leave and the police turning up business. Admittedly it's in a gaming forum so the audience almost certainly appreciated it (I know I did) but it is a cheeringly geeky way to write it up.

(BTW, the followup stories are interesting too, and shed a little light:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93633
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95189)

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Calif. students apologize for 'Beat the Jew' chase game -- Well, I was amused.

why was this amusing and funny, and not horrific to you?

[andrewducker]

It's not horrific to me because it seems to have happened without malice. They were playing a silly game that they stupidly associated with a real world event/people. They got stopped by the police (rightly) and I'm glad they aren't doing it any more, but no actual bigotry seems to have been intended. I'm glad that they've been told that they were being insensitive. I was amused by the whole situation because of its sheer ridiculousness - it reminded me of things like the "Throw the Jew Down The Well" song in Borat. Had they been a bunch of racists who were deliberately trying to cause distress then my feelings would have been much stronger.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

It's not horrific to me because it seems to have happened without malice. [...] ... but no actual bigotry seems to have been intended.

wut

(question: are you jewish?)

[andrewducker]

Yes, I am.

If you read the article there are the two quotes:
"Many of the students, all of whom participated willingly, said they played without knowing the name of the game; others didn't think about its insensitive nature."
and
"They just played a game that had an ugly, insensitive, stupid name."

That pretty much sums it up for me.

Lots of people do stupid things because they don't think about the meaning/consequence of them. I get a lot more offended by people who are acting maliciously.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

you do know that the part of california (where i'm from and where i lived) is a hotbed of racism and white supremacy, right?

maybe it's because i know what's going on there and the racial climate in this country that i take it more seriously than you and don't just think of it as "fun and games"

[neuralbuddha.livejournal.com]

Oh great, more 'women shouldn't take any responsibility for social problems that affect them' crap. We're taking the piss out of carrying whistles now? What's the positive takeaway from this article? That women should take no action to protect themselves at all and if they do get attacked, simply cry "But it wasn't my fault" ? Cross reference this with the "3 simple rules" article. If you have to be told this stuff, you're a lost cause.

[andrewducker]

Awww. You really are having a grumpy day today, aren't you?

[neuralbuddha.livejournal.com]

Maybe. Some stuff makes me grumpy. Doesn't necessarily make me wrong. "Give a dog a bad name".