Interesting Links for 8-6-2011

[andrewducker]

• Why You Can’t Get My Book in [Insert Country Here] (Scalzi on regionalisation)
  (tags: books publishing)
• Women warriors show psychological resilience similar to men
  (tags: psychology trauma military war gender)
• Frankenstein Superstar - a rather spiffy webcomic. Not suitable for reading in work, but well worth reading at home.
  (tags: frankenstein webcomic comic funny)
• A warning to Scottish separatists. If you're not careful you'll end up like Norway!
  (tags: norway scotland independence)
• Dr Who renewed for another 14 episodes with Matt Smith.
  (tags: DrWho StevenMoffat)
• Samsung Delivers Galaxy S II to CyanogenMod Dev, Says Get to Work
  (tags: android samsung opensource awesome)
• Russian President Proposes Creative Commons-Style Rules Baked Directly Into Copyright
  (tags: copyright russia)
• Jilted ex-boyfriend puts up abortion billboard.
  (tags: privacy freespeech abortion)
• Okay. Now I want a pirate cinema. Arrrrr!
  (tags: cinema design awesome)
• 12 Unusual and Creative Home Theaters. I want the Batman one.
  (tags: design movies awesome)

Comments

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

You have given the impression on your LJ that money is more important than achievement on occasion, but in a different context. Possibly you meant (on those previous occasions) that other people see money as more important, and I misinterpreted it.

It's like football. Are the top players worth that? Judging by club debts and the amount that is spent on players and the performance of some of them, not really, but that's the price players command so that's what gets paid and everyone else does it too.

[andrewducker]

Money _can_ be more important than achievement, if it's high enough to allow you to achieve things outside of work that you otherwise couldn't. Offer me a million pound salary to empty bins for a living and I'll do it, because that would allow me to do more outside of my work.

My priorities nowadays are largely to find something that keeps me amused during the day, allows me to pay the mortgage/bills, and leaves some cash over to go to the cinema/buy computer games. (Mortgage has the highest priority, obviously, but "not being bored/stressed" is also very important, because previous experience has shown that when too bored/stressed I do a godawful job).

I don't know if you recall, but I took a £3k pay cut to move to my current employer, because I was fed up with working for companies where I was constantly frustrated by lack of budget, no training, and feeling like I never achieved anything, and thought that a larger company might provide both training and a change of direction that was interesting. As it happens, my pay has gone up significantly since then, but I didn't actually know that the pay scales _went_ this high when I took the job.

It's like football. Are the top players worth that? Judging by club debts and the amount that is spent on players and the performance of some of them, not really, but that's the price players command so that's what gets paid and everyone else does it too.

It's only a price they command because paying it gets you the top players, which gets you the top viewing figures, which gets you the top income. They didn't used to command those salaries - until Sky stepped in, charged viewers to watch the matches, and started pumping lots of money to the clubs that provided said viewers.

True - they overpay, because they're desperate to get into the top few clubs that pull in those viewing figures/cash - but they know that not getting those top players cuts their earning potential, so they need to pay for them. If the players didn't bring in money then they could demand all the cash in the world, and they'd get fuck all.

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

I blame everything on Americans.