Delicious LiveJournal Links for 9-7-2010

[andrewducker]

• Walmart segregating books by race.
  (tags: racism walmart books usa)
• Retailers price Samsung 7in Android tablet at £600. They can, frankly, fuck off.
  (tags: technology android)
• Millions of years from now the world may be a tetrahedron! A science article from 1918
  (tags: weird geology science earth)
• The Pasty White Person Is King: Depictions of race in computer games
  (tags: computer_games race)
• The money/happiness correlation ends at £50k. Clearly taxes should rise dramatically at that level.
  (tags: money happiness psychology)
• Who can resist a miraculous drug tested on African inmates? That's not creepy at all!
  (tags: health medicine supplements)
• Nic Cage as Everyone
  (tags: phot photoshop niccage funny weird)
• 21st century Britain summed up in one front page
  (tags: newspapers media uk)
• Couple fined twice the cost of their tickets for getting off train early
  (tags: trains EpicFail uk)
• Doctor Who ratings for the last series were actually pretty good.
  (tags: doctorwho tv)
• 2010 Hugo Voting Report - the vote counts in full
  (tags: hugo awards voting scifi)

Comments

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

The rail ticket fine: Actually the couple were fined nearly ten times the cost of their tickets - they paid £6 each and were fined £57 each.

If that had happened to me I would be seriously thinking of suing SWT on the basis that such an element of their terms and conditions was either manifestly unreasonably under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations* or was so onerous as to require special notification under Lord Denning's 'Red Hand Rule'** of Spurling v Bradshaw.***

*Specifically, it seems to fall under example 1(e) of Schedule 2 to the Regulations, 'requiring any consumer who fails to fulfil his obligation to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation'.

**"I quite agree that the more unreasonable a clause is, the greater the notice which must be given of it. Some clauses which I have seen would need to be printed in red ink on the face of the document with a red hand pointing to it before the notice could be held to be sufficient."

***No relation that I am aware of.

[andrewducker]

It did seem barkingly mad to me. The idea that I was held captive on a train unless I paid the train company an extra amount of money feels tantamount to kidnapping.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I had the unfortunate experience of exactly the opposite; having to ride past the station (in my case, two stops beyond) I was scheduled to exit at. Fortunately my experience was more pleasant than the couple's above, possibly because I was riding past due to the train being delayed enough to miss my connection. (Not VIA Rail's fault, it was a mechanical problem with Amtrak's locomotive on the US side of the border.) All I had to do was purchase the extra distance onboard with the conductor.

Then again, this may have been because I didn't have much choice in riding past; my transfer was a commuter station with no facilities, and it was the last train for the night through there... there was no departure lounge to wait in overnight, and they weren't going to force me to crash out on the platform.

-- Steve had the value of his voided connection's ticket credited towards getting the next one, which was alas a local red-eye getting back home at nearly 3am.

[usmu.livejournal.com]

Actually the couple were fined nearly ten times the cost of their tickets .

The way I read the article they weren't. They were fined two times the cost of the ticket and ten times what they paid. The difference between the cost and what they paid being the discount they received. Not sure the law works that way though. I'd be very interested in hearing if it does or not. And what the law has to say about whether or not the company can base the fine on the original cost or what you actually paid for the ticket. If they actually could fine you for getting off early in the first place.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

This. They were charged a fixed penalty fare, in this case double the price of a normal ticket. That they had bought discounted tickets makes for an interesting headline, but isn't particularly relevant.

That said, that you can be fined for exiting a train before the final destination on your ticket is madness. I can understand not permitting them to leave the station, then return to catch a later train, to complete the journey, but if they had no intention to return, not letting them off the train seems crazy.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

It is relevant, because from the story it seems that had they bought normal tickets this penalty fare would not have arisen in the first place.

My point was that these passengers actually paid £6, and ended up paying nearly ten times that as a result of being charged twice the full fare. It seems to me that a discounted ticket which has as a condition of use that getting off early invokes such a disproportionate penalty is unfair and unjust.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I can see your point, and the fine does seem disproportionate as the train company presumably has not lost any revenue by these people getting off the train early. Although I suppose they would argue that they did lose revenue as they should have paid more for a more expensive, full price fare.

It gets a bit more complicated though, because they apparently bought tickets from a third party, Megatrain, which sells heavily discounted tickets but which are only available between a small number of destinations.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

That happiness / income research appears to have been done by Professor Angus Deaton. Who I'm sure is not Angus DeaYton, but still...

[andrewducker]

Freaked me out too!

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Books in the UK, in many shops, are segregated by nationality, sexual orientation and gender. I've seen women's sections in bookshops, gay interest sections and scottish sections. And most magazine retailers separate and mark men's and women's lifestyle magazines separately, and keep gay/lesbian magazines separate too. Why would segretating books by race be any more odd compared to that? When I wanted to buy a really interesting-sounding coming-of-age/rites-of-passage type film a few years back, I had to find it in the gay interest section in whichever store it was, because the main characters happened to be lesbians. If I want to buy a biography of someone scottish, I might not find it in the normal biography section but it could be in the scottish section.

Amazon.co.uk, just as a handy example that I don't have to go into town to look at, has for their books gay & lesbian section, a "lad lit" section and a "women writers & fiction" section. On Amazon.com, it separates out african-american, asian-american etc. Now amazon isn't a great example because due to the nature of the store (ie it's a website) things overlap, but they still see those categories as meaningful evidently.

Also, the Daily Record was giving away a free Gregg's YumYum today apparently :-p

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I'm not suggesting that it's good or bad to segregate books in such away, but it annoyed me that the article highlighted Wal-Mart when it's pretty clearly hardly uncommon.

[andrewducker]

Aaaah. In that case, yes, I agree that it's a general problem. I've seen similar things about gay writing in the UK.

[andrewducker]

They're totally within their rights to do that. But it leads to a continuing of the us/them divide. Where religious books go *here*, unless they're written by a black person, in which case they go over *there*. It means that white believers will never see the books by black people, and will quite possibly have no idea that there's a whole other experience happening that they have no idea about.