Interesting Links for 27-11-2011

[andrewducker]

• US giving the president the power to demand indefinite detention without charge for any civilian anywhere in the world.
  (tags: military law usa )
• Why our brains make us laugh - I don't entirely agree, but some interesting ideas
  (tags: psychology humour )
• Fantastic article on what makes top performers better, and how we could all use coaching.
  (tags: Coaching education teaching practice experience medicine )
• How to use a regex to parse HTML
  (tags: regex html funny )
• Occupy Edinburgh gains backing from Edinburgh Council
  (tags: politics edinburgh )
• When big companies are a good idea
  (tags: companies business economics )
• Whistleblowers working for mortgage companies were ignored and then punished for finding fraud.
  (tags: fraud EpicFail business )
• Victims of press hacking have a support meeting - press turns up uninvited, and then makes shit up about it.
  You know, every time someone tells me the media is dying, I think of things like this. And then I think "Good."
  (tags: media journalism uk )
• Scientists create killer flu virus in the lab.
  (tags: virus H5N1 )

Comments

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

You have to understand that in the American system, the Senate passing that law has exactly zero effect at all. It would then have to get passed by the House of Representatives and then passed a third time by a joint session. Then, it would have to signed into law by the president - which is not something Obama would even consider doing during an election year.

It's a totally symbolic vote.

[andrewducker]

Aaah, gotcha. Thanks, that makes more sense. Still despicable, right enough.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

The house and senate each pass many weirdo laws that they know the other house won't ratify every year just to score political points.

One reason you know it won't pass is that the current House of Representatives hates the current president and would never give him these kinds of powers.

One of the downsides of the myriad checks and balances in the American system is that it allows lawmakers to vote on silly laws while safely knowing that they won't pass.

There is a very amusing short video about this that gets shown to all schoolchildren in America called "I'm Just A Bill."

It's well worth watching.

[andrewducker]

Cheers, that was fascinating. I suspect that the closest thing we have in the UK is a private members bill:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_of_parliament%27s_legislative_motion#House_of_Commons_procedure

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Schoolhouse Rock was one of the few really good ideas to come out of the Nixon administration - short funny videos that were able to explain complex things to kids in a way they would actually remember.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Yeah, I imagined it was something like that.

Although it still seems a terrible, terrible practice. It seems like if you habitually propose horribly human-rights violating or economy-destroying bills to make rhetorical points, it's only a matter of time before the other house and the president accidentally pass one because they think it will look good to their electorate and that "surely, it won't really cause any problems".

And then everyone says "oh well you should have objected earlier if you have a problem"...

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

The thing is though that even after the president signs it, if it's clearly a bad idea then the Federal Court can put the law on hold indefinitely - and federal judges are appointed for life, so they have no political considerations to worry about. It just takes one judge to issue an injunction and the law is pretty much dead in the water.

It's not a perfect system and sometimes bad idea laws do get through (The Patriot Act comes to mind) but it is really, really difficult for it to happen and the really bad laws only tend to get passed during extreme situations like two airplanes taking out skyscrapers.

But, in general, there are so many, many checks and balances that stupid laws only make it into actual enforcement once every generation or so.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

I suppose we'll just have to hope the Federal Court does indeed put it on hold, then... :-/

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

That article on coaching is *fascinating*. It strikes me that it's connected to the reasons that pair-programming works so well - and pair-other-stuff, too (I'm currently pair-programming the production on DKLS, and it's working sensationally well).

I may look into finding a coach for my filmmaking - in a career where a 5% improvement in performance can result in a 1000% increase in salary, it'd be a good investment.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I like working in that way, when I have someone that I'm on a similar level with. It's a shame I don't get to do that more often.

How to use a regex to parse HTML

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I thought that was one of the best answers I've ever seen. I kept meaning to link to it, but never got round to it. It's great because it's not just funny: it does explain why it's a bad idea, explain that you should care about that, and make constructive suggestions. And also teaches something about writing unicode :)

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

That US law is quite funny because it's a law to allow something they're already doing, but some of the reports about it are presenting it as a law to allow them to do something new.