Interesting Links for 15-5-2011

[andrewducker]

• Why the UK doesn't need Superman
  (tags: uk superman doctorwho)
• Orgasms unlock altered consciousness (Not even slightly a surprise).
  (tags: sex orgasm brain consciousness)
• Rising wages in China (and falling ones in the US) make offshoring less worthwhile. Twas only a matter of time.
  (tags: china manufacturing economy usa)
• The World has passed the peak number of children!
  (tags: children population)
• How To Buy A Book
  (tags: books)
• Support the cheerleader kicked off her squad for refusing to cheer her rapist
  (tags: usa law EpicFail donations)
• Wine tasters know fuck all. Seriously.
  (tags: wine psychology funny food)
• Roger Waters and David Gilmour reunited on stage - the complete video. Camera phones have really come along...
  (tags: video PinkFloyd RogerWaters DaveGilmour TheWall music)
• This picture makes me very happy, for reasons I cannot readily explain
  (tags: pictures bunnies awesome)
• The best explanation you will ever get for why The War On Terror will go on for ever...
  (tags: comic funny life war)
• CCTV camera films own destruction (sadly, no record of it crying out for help)
  (tags: cctv camera crime uk)

Comments

[mair_in_grenderich]

peak number of children

I ... think it means peak proportion?

[andrewducker]

Yes, absolutely. It's that the weighting of the overall system will change, not that we're going to have less children. That's not due to happen for a while yet.

[soon_lee]

Re: the wine tasting

Not really a surprise, because humans are inconsistent & we are easily influenced (see: advertising). All of which makes a mockery of the 100 point scoring system.

I tend to treat wine ratings by wine judges like movie ratings by critics: it helps to know who did the rating & whether your tastes are similar or polar opposites to theirs.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. I actually prefer reviews which are as score-free as possible, and are more descriptions of what the thing does/is, so that I can decide myself whether I'd like that. Reviews which are based on absolute good/bad axes frustrate me.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Price and ease is all that really matters for most people, as regards buying products. People can talk all day long about supporting independent record/book/game stores, but most of them are lying through their teeth and are treating the shop as a social space while scoping out prices... but if a game is £5 on Steam, which I'm logged into anyway a lot of the time and £10 in the shop that's in danger of going out of business... or if the book is £15 on Amazon and delivered in a couple of days or £25 in a local bookstore that would have to order it in for me specially... well, I know who's going to get my money.

Amazon does so well because it's cheap, and has a great range of books. Yes, it's not your local store and yes, they take their cut and yes, it's in a position to leverage relationships in unpleasant ways, but when people talk about the halcyon days of local bookshops and whatever, they're generally forgetting that they went to those shops because they didn't have a choice. If all the people who talked about how local shops or physical stores in general should be saved in the face of supermarkets or retail giants like Amazon & Steam actually shopped in those stores, the situation wouldn't be like it is.