Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-14-2010

[andrewducker]

• Increase in localism leads to increased social stratficiation and nimbyism
  (tags: government housing)
• Amazing (large) image showing worldwide connections on Facebook. Fascinating to note the lack of Russia
  (tags: facebook visualization maps)
• Video of police pulling protester from wheelchair
  (tags: bbc police video)
• Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection (in only one patient so far, but it's a start!)
  (tags: hiv medicine science health aids disease)
• Economic growth not correlated with happiness. Not terribly shocking, that.
  (tags: economics money happiness)
• Bea Arthur Was A Truck-Driving Marine
  (tags: history wwii)
• A useful page to tell if you Gawker account was leaked?
  (tags: security)
• Washing machine industry set for massive paradigm shift? I'm sceptical - anyone got more?
  (tags: technology washing clothes)
• Lipstick On My Colar, a discussion of Susan and Narnia
  (tags: Narnia writing sexuality religion)

Comments

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> even though they are happy to go to a DRY CLEANER."

Well I'm not. As far as I can tell, dry cleaners just make your clothes smell funny...

I'm curious as to how the thing works. But like you, I'm sceptical. Remember Dyson's attempt? They don't even sell that any more from what I can tell!

[khoth.livejournal.com]

The DRY CLEANER thing is misleading anyway - dry cleaners still clean your clothes by covering them in a liquid, it's just not water-based.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

The water-free washing story is seriously shite, in any case. 'We've had a major offer from an established washing machine manufacturer to bury the technology but we turned it down' is just an obvious, obvious lie, right up there with 'the lurkers support me in email'. They don't have working technology, they want vc and can't get it, they therefore issue press releases, and gormless 'science' journalists print it.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's all very iffy. It sounds like a lot of effort for saving an amount of water that few people will care about. If water was metered (and expensive) I can see possibilities, but frankly, how many people care that much?

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I'm quite taken with the nearly waterless washing machine. My mum uses some kind of nylon ball instead of detergent.

Potentially big benefits if it works although I suspect that it will be out of patent before it acheives widespread acceptance. A lot will depend on water mettering and charges.

I agree that the turning down a large cash sum sounds like puff.

Given the way the patent system works you could only bury the technology for twenty years.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I think the misogyny of the Narnia books is arguable, or at least far less certain that the racism with the dark-skinned evil Muslim-analog Calormenes.

[andrewducker]

Yup, for a start, the fact that they effectively worship Satan really isn't good.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

Rilstone has a great review of the movie _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_. Describes a common Hollywood formula that was added to it.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

According to this analysis, Russia's top three social networks are V Kontakte (In Touch), Odnoklassniki (Classmates), and LiveJournal.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

The media in the UK and US tend to present facebook as the social network site that everyone is on. That is not true in other parts of the world. There are plenty of other social networking sites that are big in other countries, but because they're not big in English-speaking countries, the mainstream media here tends to just make the assumption that people are all using facebook. Orkut and whatever the heck that really big Chinese one is called spring to mind.

[andrewducker]

You might find this useful/interesting:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/10/world-map-of-social-networks-shows-facebooks-ever-increasing-dominance/

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

My point exactly. Although it's weird that you linked me to an article about an article, not the (slightly more useful and detailed) article itself.

There's interesting discrepancies, in much the same way as with MMOs, as to what different networks refer to as "active users". Some MMOs used to be quite cagey about that sort of thing, for obvious reasons.

[andrewducker]

I hadn't seen the article itself. Serves me right for skim-reading.

I'd love to know how many people check in to FB 1/month, week, day and hour :->

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I saw FB claiming that half the users log in every day, but it wasn't clear if they meant that, of their users, there are half of them who always use it daily, or that every day around half of their total users log in.

FB is also a games/scheduling platform, so knowing the frequency of people using it doesn't tell you precisely what they're using it for, which other networks would be awfully interested in. If, of those 500 million, half of them were JUST playing games, well, that'd put a very different spin on the network's dominance.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

Lipstick On My Colar, a discussion of Susan and Narnia
Well huh.

Now to me, and this is just me, when I first read Narnia I was 12-13. Yes I did indeed enjoy the books because the girls actually go to do something. And for me, Susan being kept of Narnia was feministic because if all she cared about was being a stereotypical woman who wants to forever be 20 and think only of her looks and men, well then why bother with her.

Now I do totally understand where everyone else is coming from. My biggest problems with the Narnia books is the hatred of female spiritual power. (Yes, I'm tired of witches being the villains.)

Fun reading and sharing. :)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's a shame that both of the magical villains are women.