Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-5-2010

[andrewducker]

• The brain has a negative bias. Making life altogether too easy for the shit-stirrers amongst us.
  (tags: psychology brain)
• A stock-take of Conservative and Liberal Democrat compromises
  (tags: libdem conservatives coalition government uk)
• Canadian couple give away 98% of their lottery winnings.
  (tags: canada ethics lottery)
• Without sleep, the brain dramatically overreacts to negative experiences
  (tags: emotion brain psychology)
• Fathers are happier when doing more housework. Fewer men than women believe raising a child is women's work.
  (tags: relationships parenting family society uk feminism)
• How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost the Midterms
  (tags: obama capitalism politics economics economy)
• Stephen Fry on the "women don't like sex" furore.
  (tags: sex stephenfry)
• Treasury confirms that buying one aircraft carrier would have cost £300m more than buying both of them.
  (tags: EpicFail military contracts business)
• Kinect has problems following dark-skinned users. Does nobody learn? Or at least watch Better Off Ted???
  (tags: racism technology EpicFail)
• Electrical stimulation of the brain boosts maths ability. Sign me up for three thousand volts!
  (tags: mathematics brain learning)
• UK copyright laws to be reviewed to make them fit for the internet age.
  (tags: copyright ip law uk)
• Lost Book Sales - a catalogue of publishing failure.
  (tags: books publishing EpicFail)
• Labour may rethink Trident replacement - Yay! Now, if they can rethink a bunch of other stuff I could actually vote for them...
  (tags: labour politics uk)
• Some info on the Virgin Tivo box. I cannot fucking wait. Miss my old Tivo _so much_.
  (tags: tivo television cable virgin)
• Does torture work?
  (tags: science psychology torture)
• I'm tired of seeing naked dinosaurs
  (tags: dinosaurs)
• BNP on the verge of bankruptcy - woohoo! This would ban Nick Griffin from being an MP!
  (tags: bnp politics EpicWin)
• BSkyB/Rupert Murdoch split cabinet down LD/Tory lines - bit of a victory there in getting it referred.
  (tags: RupertMurdoch libdem competition government uk)
• 74% of offenders return to crime. I'd like to see more breakdown of stats, and some international figures.
  (tags: uk crime)

Comments

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Treasury confirms that buying one aircraft carrier would have cost £300m more than cancelling one of them.

Er, the linked article is about confirmation that buying one aircraft carrier would have cost £300m more than not cancelling one of them (i.e. buying both of them).

[andrewducker]

Dammit, major brain-fart there. Thanks for catchign it, I'll fix it now.

The whole thing confuses me though - because presumably the £300m is less than the cost of actually maintaining/running the extra ship. Can you shed any light on this one?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I'll have to see if I can find out more details. But it's possible that sum included long-term support contracts, so part of the running cost could well have been included.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

The plan is to sell the second one as soon as it is completed, probably to the Indians or Australians. And I imagine they will manage to get more than £300m for it. So there is a small profit to be made.

Watch the UK sell an aircraft carrier that cost us £2.6BN to build for probably... a fifth of its value though.

Whichever Labour ministers signed that contract, seriously need to face criminal investigations.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

(Mind you, thinking about, they might have a lot of trouble finding a buyer for the carrier, given the extreme lack of aircraft that can actually operate from it...)

[andrewducker]

They're apparently being retrofitted to work with the aircraft used by the French...

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. That then makes a lot of sense of the recent UK/French military alliance discussions then, if we're lining them up to buy our white elephant.

And the French could probably do with retiring the Charles De Gualle sometime soon anyway.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

In re Fry, how awful would it be if it turned out that women genuinely have less desire for anonymous sex than men? I've seen arguments that heterosexual women are more careful because men are more physically dangerous, but so far as I know, there's no cruising scene for lesbians comparable to what gay men do.

I'm delighted to see the anti-torture comments on the guardian article, and note that the "lack of sleep amplifies the effect of negative experiences" connects to the subject.

The electrical stimulation of the brain experiment doesn't test actual math ability.

[andrewducker]

The cruising scene for lesbians may not involve standing about in parks, but the lesbians I know used (before they settled down) to be picking up people on websites and sleeping with them within hours of setting up a meeting. They were most definitely heading out to get laid. And straight women can effectively treat 99% of bars and clubs as cruising spots.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Nothing on the bizarre case of Lord Blackheath and Foundation X, aka "Did someone just try to buy the government"?

antipope.org - Hopi Sen (reposted at The Guardian) - Telegraph

People seem to have generally concluded that Lord Blackheath was misled or deluded, but nonetheless, it's an astonishing and interesting mini-saga.

[andrewducker]

It was all over the place before I realised people were actually interested in it, so I didn't bother.

If that kind of thing interests you then see webofevil who originated the story. They work for Hansard, and have endless amusing parliamentary stories.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Consumer Reports says that the Kinect "doesn't see black people" rumour is false. It says that Kinect has trouble with facial recognition in low-light conditions, but that's a factor of room illumination and not skin tone.

-- Steve wants to quash that wherever he finds it... because it's wrong, and because it's deeply troubling.

[andrewducker]

Already lined up for tomorrow (it hit Twitter about an hour ago.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The "HP Webcam" one was really dumb, too.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

The majority of those ConHome comments are terrifying.

[andrewducker]

This is what frustrates me about a lot of the backlash to the coalition. People seem to be summarily awful at both realising that coalitions mean compromise, and that things would be an awful lot worse with a Conservative-only government. Not to say that I approve of a lot of things that are going on, but if you look at what the Conservatives actually want...

[matgb]

Yup--there're a few people on the LDV forums who like going in there and quoting the most horrifed Tories. But ToryHome has never been a mainstream Conservative site, it's comment area has always been dominated by Cornerstone style idiots.

Is Montgomerie still "close friends" with Dorries do we know?

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

The Cornerstone Group = the British Tea Party.

No idea whether Tim and Nads still like to get jiggy jiggy these days, and haven't paid much attention; I'm not terribly au fait with the modern-day mating habits of the lesser spotted Tory :)