Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-17-2010

[andrewducker]

• Troops issues with armoured 'combat codpiece'
  (tags: military technology uk)
• Google Maps for Android phones is LEGEN....wait for it...DARY!
  (tags: google maps android mobile_phones)
• Dropbox hits 1.0! I'm very grateful for Dropbox. Keeps a whole bunch of my data safe.
  (tags: software dropbox backup)
• Physicists read data after storing them in atomic nuclei for 112 seconds. Goddamn, that's science-fictional.
  (tags: science technology computers)
• The year's best.TV media players (bookmarked because I get asked about this occasionally)
  (tags: tv media)
• On Syfy (and other networks) canceling beloved shows… (nice simple explanation)
  (tags: tv media)
• Child/teen sexual and physical abuse linked to fibroids in premenopausal women
  (tags: abuse health women)
• FeynTube - transform YouTube comments into Richard Feynman quotes.
  (tags: greasemonkey youtube feynman funny)
• The triumph of reason, as shown in a handy graph (not to be taken too seriously)
  (tags: graphs visualization funny)
• Awesome advert. Witn ninjas!
  (tags: youtube ninja video)
• Some fascinating responses to the question "what is it like to be a hot girl?"
  (tags: beauty age culture women)
• Yahoo is shutting down Delicious. Right - I need an alternative, stat. Otherwise these blog posts will be ending...
  (tags: yahoo del.icio.us internet fail web2.0 business delicious)
• Marvel cast black man as LokiHeimdall in the new Thor movie. Bigoted people are bigoted about it.
  (tags: movies race funny)
• Details on the changes in the electricity markets, to encourage low-carbon energy in the UK
  (tags: uk energy environment electricity government)
• UK will copy EU laws directly onto UK statute books to cut down red tape. I can see this causing...fuss.
  (tags: europe uk politics law)
• Liverpool's Labour and Lib Dems unite over £100m cuts. Glad to see differences being put aside to get things done.
  (tags: politics libdem labour uk)
• European court rules woman's abortion right violated by incredibly outdated Irish law.
  (tags: ireland abortion law europe)

Comments

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Love how they think they can make any link at all on a condition that affects 60% of all women, and boggled as to why they specify "premenopausal" when the condition only affects premenopausal women (it's oestrogen dependent).

[marrog.livejournal.com]

He's not Loki, he's Heimdall. I think this is a relevant point because casting a black man as Loki could easily be seen in the other camp as making the black guy the 'comedy sidekick' again.

Heimdall, on the other hand, is the guardian of the rainbow. Much more appropriate. ;-)

[andrewducker]

Sorry, yes, brain explosion on my part.

And, yes, casting a black guy as The Bad Guy (which tends to be Loki's role) would definitely be bad. As it is, I think it's awesome.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Well, although Loki being an out-and-out bad guy is sort of a Gaimanism, isn't it? Although he ends up at war with the gods and quite severely punished, in the mythology he also spends a long time just being mischievous and unhelpfully helpful - hence my comedy sidekick comment. The story I always remember about Loki is the one where he was basically being Thor's sidekick and talked Thor into dressing in drag and wooing a giant to get his hammer back.

[andrewducker]

Remember, this is the Marvel Comics version of Thor, where Loki has long been, well, evil.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Don't read Marvel, wouldn't know.

[andrewducker]

Well, basically he's a supervillain - Thor's nemesis. Very scheming, twisty-turny and power mad.

[matgb]

Aye, what Andrew said, I used to be heavily into the Thor comic, Loki was always a scheming villain in the comics.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

In various tellings and at various times Loki varies from a naughty child to ... basically Satan.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> The true costs of unabated fossil fuels, and the benefits of low-carbon electricity, must be captured in policy.

O_o. Coming from the Torygraph? I've often seen that paper put in snide little digs at climate change.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Oh it's op-ed... that explains it.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

That Google book search is fascinating. I've already wasted half an hour playing with it.

Science vs. God was fun too...

[0olong.livejournal.com]

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=god,science&year_start=1600&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3

[zz]

yeah, i really shouldn't be reading the hot girl thread immediately before going to the work xmas party, for multiple reasons.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Q: "What is it like to be a hot girl?"

A: "It is the opposite of the experience of the person asking the question. Also, if you're a guy asking this question, yes I think that you are creepy."

Idris Elba is absolutely great and I think he'll be awesome as Heimdal.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

The SyFy thing was interesting, sort of. I was expecting it to make the point that it's all well and good making a cult show, but it all the "loyal" fans who talk it up online just torrent it, well - the show isn't popular in its broadcast form, so of course it may well get cancelled. The money behind the show isn't there with the expectation that people will torrent it, it's there with the hope that people will watch it on a certain channel, quite possibly with ads (depending where it's broadcast, of course)

I really like Mad Men, but the way I consume it has absolutely zero bearing on the contiuation of the show. I might as well not be watching it, for all the effect my liking of it has.

[andrewducker]

I think that people know that torrenting a show makes its viewing figures lower - but they aren't necessarily aware that buying it on DVD might not affect whether the show gets picked up.

In the case of Man Men I've bought at least some of the DVDs, and I assumed that that would count towards the profitability of the show. But if the DVD rights are retained by the production company and not the channel then it's not going to make any difference.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

There's also the issue that we are not necessarily in the primary market for a show.

By the time a show is broadcast in the UK, or is available to buy on DVD here, the decision may already have been made.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Fantastic news about Dropbox. It's an awesome little utility, and my number 1 wishlist item was selective sync, which is a feature in v1.0 and seems to work perfectly!

From the discussion on deli.cio.us, it looks like Yahoo may be more likely to be selling it than shutting it down?

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I'm hoping so. I'm still going to see what the alternatives are though. Useful to have options. And it'll make a nice distraction over Christmas.