Interesting Links for 22-9-2011

[andrewducker]

• ….and then there was silence. A traumatising story of what police officers sometimes have to deal with.
  (tags: police car traffic)
• A fascinating interview with the create of Community. Which you should be watching
  (tags: tv community DanHarmon)
• The four stages of happiness: anticipate, savor, express, and reflect.
  (tags: happiness life psychology)
• Humor as effective as medication in treating agitation in dementia
  (tags: humour healthcare elderly dementia)
• Canine 1.1 Patch Notes
  (tags: dogs funny)
• Julian Assange has possibly the world's first unauthorised autobiography
  (tags: JulianAssange wikileaks biography)
• Star Wars 3D AT-AT Walker Pancakes
  (tags: starwars pancakes food)
• Why do these traders get billions to play with, unchecked?
  (tags: money finance banking)
• You never, ever want to see this in real life. Awesome photo though
  (tags: wildlife rhino photos)
• Why do Windows functions all begin with a pointless MOV EDI, EDI instruction?
  (tags: programming microsoft windows)
• Smarties Are Not Vegetarian
  (tags: food vegetarian)
• Neal Stephenson Talks About Video Games, The Metaverse, And His New Book, REAMDE
  (tags: nealstephenson writing computer_games technology fiction)
• Redesigning an EULA to make it human-readable
  (tags: licensing law design)
• Why "I have insurance" isn't the answer to all of your healthcare problems
  (tags: healthcare usa insurance)
• Lion King 3D comes to the UK in October 2011. Who'se up for a trip?
  (tags: disney movies 3d lionking awesome)
• Milky Way above the Himalaya. Just gorgeous
  (tags: photos astronomy)
• What happens when you write your password down
  (tags: technology it passwords funny)
• Windows 8 logo requirements might preclude dual-booting with Linux (or anything else)
  (tags: linux windows security)

Comments

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

The banking article was fascinating, particularly given arbitrage is one of the things I play with in WoW (and it doesn't mean quite what I thought it meant).

[del-c.livejournal.com]

The article is a giant "No True Scotsman" argument, though. At work I identify and plan to mitigate risk in capital projects. A risk is something you don't intend should happen, you don't think will happen, but that might happen. I could declare all my projects 100% risk-free and take the rest of the day off if I defined events I don't intend to happen as "not really risks". On the evidence advanced by that article, the practice of arbitrage clearly isn't risk-free.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I thought the police constable's story about the road traffic accident was very moving until he started complaining at length about being harrassed by "elites".

After that point he broke the empathetic link he had created and I started to lose sympathy for him, and for Dave.

Which was a shame.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

On the Smarties vegetarian issue: the point appears to be whey in the chocolate, which is made with animal rennet. This is the same issue that comes up with cheese for vegetarians: at commercial scale, your only options are animal rennet, or rennet from GM bacteria.

For my money, it seems a bit inconsistent to have (commercial) dairy products in your diet, but balk at animal rennet. To produce milk at commercial scale, you have to slaughter most of the calves at some point. If you're Ok with that, making good use of a byproduct (rennet from the calves' stomach linings) makes sense.

Depending, of course, on why you're a vegetarian in the first place. For me the GM bacteria seem like a very neat solution, but I understand that not all vegetarians see it that way.

(My personal view at the moment is that vegan is the more morally consistent position, but I eat some dairy as a tradeoff for convenience, taste and diet balance. I prefer GMO-derived rennet but not enough to seriously restrict my cheese range.)