Interesting Links for 11-6-2011

[andrewducker]

• Who Had the Best Civil War Facial Hair?
  (tags: funny beards fashion photos civilwar poll)
• Apparently the word "nigger" is now unacceptable. Who knew?
  (tags: wwii history movies stephenfry)
• Amazing behind the scenes photographs from movies
  (tags: movies photography)
• There's an association between month of birth and a whole host of diseases, syndromes, etc.
  (tags: health time)
• An amusing account of trying to bring medical care to the needy in Haiti
  (tags: haiti medicine poverty education)

Comments

[birguslatro]

I doubt complaints about the dog's name change will be over with this, as it's new name could be problematical too. I got a laugh out of it, anyway!

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The Haiti link struck me as more painful than funny, but it did leave me wondering....I suspect there are things yet to be discovered which are as useful as making use of numerical filing. I wonder how quickly we'd adapt if our culture isn't the one to discover them?

[andrewducker]

Good question! Hopefully by picking them up quickly and finding new ways of using them. Massive competition should generally lead to that - but not always.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that how quickly good new ideas get picked up depend on how drastically new they are, and how much the changes needed to accept them are opposed to already-held beliefs.

I'm also guessing that the reason dealing with files is so difficult in Haiti is that there isn't a culture of filing carefully, so there's a substantial chance that a file is out of place and won't be found without an exhaustive search. Convincing people to do the prep work is a whole additional step.

I've also heard that it's very hard to convince people who've been on the edge of starvation that their fruit will sell better if it looks perfect. It doesn't make sense to them to care so much about how fruit looks-- they've never been able to afford to.

How easy is it to convince people that punishment isn't a reliable way of controlling behavior?

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Re. the facial hair, Burnside should win, just on appropriateness of name :D

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

That's where the name of sideburns comes from. So he has an unfair advantage!

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

The Star Wars crawl WAS NOT MADE LIKE THAT. They did with computers, they HAD TO HAVE DONE. (I refuse to believe otherwise. Computers. And lasers maybe. On the moon.)

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Somehow I doubt nature is aware of months, given that these are human inventions with at most a few thousand years of existence. But human ability to breed at any point in the year is something which distinguishes us from many / most animals, even if some points are perhaps still better than others survival wise.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The various problems that correlate with when people are born seem to spread across more than one month, and the chart would probably be better if it showed prevalence by the day of the year rather than by the month.

Nature is sensitive to seasons because conditions are different in different parts of the year.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

If it's true that some points of the year are better than others in which to be conceived, then I would like to test the hypothesis that climate/weather plays a part in that. Let's see if the results from a survey in the Southern hemisphere are rotated 6 months from the same survey in the Northern hemisphere.

[andrewducker]

From the article:
"Further evidence of the importance of sunshine comes from the finding that the risk of illness tends to be highest between March and May for those born in the northern hemisphere. However, for Antipodean births, the pattern is reversed."

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

I completely missed that line. AWESOME, though! Thanks!

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Re Dambusters: Why bother doing a remake at all? Why not reissue the original, as a classic, with a disclaimer stating that its use of language reflects the standards of the time? What would they do with a contemporary film of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for instance?

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I think there's a big difference between something like Huckleberry Finn, which is an important anti-racist work and every word of which cries out against racism and oppression, and Dambusters, where you have a bunch of white people who thought calling a black dog "nigger" was funny because they didn't know any better. Keeping the word in Huckleberry Finn is completely justified, but not in Dambusters.

(This kind of thing is very difficult, of course, because context, both good and bad, gets lost over decades. I know for example that a lot of people refuse to watch Duck Soup because of Groucho's line "The Headstrongs married the Armstrongs, and that's why darkies were born." because they consider it an example of casual racism. In fact "that's why darkies were born" was the title of a mildly popular anti-racist comedy song at the time, and Groucho was referencing that. Were anyone to go about the blasphemous project of remaking Duck Soup, removing this line would be the one thing about it that I *wouldn't* object to...)

[andrewducker]

Why bother doing a remake at all

Same as any other remake - someone wants to make it, and people will pay to see it.

[anef.livejournal.com]

"avoid having tarantulas drop on my head when I am asleep" has always been one of my major goals in life. Remind me never to go to Haiti.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. Or anywhere with bird-eating spiders.