Interesting Links for 28-11-2011
Nov. 28th, 2011 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Women now earning more than men up until the point they have children.
- Youth Employment and the Lib Dems (a note of disapproval)
- How real security violations happen
- The most terrifying picture ever drawn by a 9-year-old
- Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice
- Why conservatives can't get people to work hard
- Quality Is Overrated: The Mechanics of Excellence
- I hadn't actually realised that HTML was as flexible as it is about what tags are necessary...
- Awesome minimalist art inspired by DrWho
- Scalzi livetweets the LOTR movies
- Reuters best photos of the year 2011
I guess they hope that no good photos will happen in the next month...
- Brick Swarm - a glimpse into the future of construction - or just awesome techno-art?
- This is my real dad (i.e. the person that raised him, not the one who supplied a few sperm)
- Smeagol Fish Battering Song Dubstep Remix
- Hedy Lamarr: 'Most Beautiful Woman' By Day, Inventor By Night
Cue Blazing Saddles reference in 3...2...1...
- Air Passengers Still Must Turn Off Devices, but It's Not Clear Why
- Why I'm Returning My Kindle Fire (too locked down and Amazon focussed)
- The Trouble With Bright Kids.
- LiveJournal under DDOS since 9:25am GMT. Joy.
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 01:07 pm (UTC)It's also, according to bit.ly my biggest ever success - 3,563 clicks so far. However, most of that seems to have happened with tweeting of the link only, not with my original tweet. Shame, really :->
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 01:29 am (UTC)Films like Alien and Insidious [which is Daughter's favourite film] are totally fine.
I will happily never let her know Human Centipede exists, though I have not seen it [and have no great interest in doing so]
currently on the 'should probably let her watch list is Season Of The Witch - which *suggests* that sexual violence may have occurred, but shows absolutely nothing.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 01:08 pm (UTC)I assume it's to do with the Russian elections next week.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 02:48 pm (UTC)The CAA and the FAA actually give this as the real reason for the ban; but they don't make a big point of it because everyone knows that they are a special snowflake who can be trusted to do the right thing. Whereas the "interference" story gives them a plausible excuse for a "no exceptions, turn it OFF" rule.
(Me, I don't bother to switch off. But I do put the ebook reader down and take off the headphones during the most dangerous periods of any flight. Because I don't want to die ...)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 02:54 pm (UTC)Because apparently I can have the paper version of Quicksilver in my hand during takeoff, but not a Kindle with the same book, and I know which one would slow me down more in an emergency.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 03:32 pm (UTC)Laptops, not so much.
Most people are lousy at making split-second priority trade-offs, and some will die to keep their laptop in preference to fleeing from the wreckage of a burning plane.
(At least, that's the theory AIUI.)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 03:43 pm (UTC)This doesn't explain why Julie was allowed to sit there with her Kindle in her lap, turned to off, but it's a better explanation than "turning the page might cause the plane to crash".
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 05:18 pm (UTC)*Alarm goes off, attendants tell people to evacuate, Julie's kindle is allowed on*
Julie: "Wait, I've just got to find out if he escapes!"
*Alarm goes off, attendants tell people to evacuate, Julie's kindle is off*
Julie: "Oh well, I'm not going to find out anyway, I might as well toss the Kindle away..."
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 01:32 am (UTC)my first proper journey as an adult. These matters are a total mystery to me.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 03:16 pm (UTC)I mean, personally I'm happy enough to do stuff that makes my code more maintainable, even if it makes it slightly slower/less efficient. But for simple things I tend to swing the other way.
The conversation started because of Google's 404 page, which does exactly this. See http://www.google.com/CauseA404 for an example.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 04:06 pm (UTC)For that matter, ignoring for the moment the fact that the two images are inlined as Base64, that 404 page would probably have saved as many bytes by omitting unnecessary newlines and spaces.
I can vaguely see the point of omitting closing tags, or tags you don't even need at all, like head or body, in an HTML minifier. But telling people to actually write and think about code like this is just daft. (Especially when the web inspector in Safari/Chrome, or Firebug's equivalent in Firefox, puts all of the omitted tags back in.)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 06:32 pm (UTC)1. It's important for new code to be consistent with existing code.
2. It's important for code to be readable by people who do not have the same level of knowledge as you.
3. It's a leaky abstraction. [/hr] and [/br] have surprising effects.
4. IMHO, it's useful for HTML to approximate well-formed XML as many tools may assume it is.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 04:01 pm (UTC)My parents divorced when I was 2, and until I left for university, I lived with my mother and step father. I still see them frequently, and they've been there throughout my formative years. As for my biological father, I stayed with him maybe once every year or two, but apart from that he has had no influence on my life.
Except he has. I look like him, I sound like him, I act like him, and we have the same sense of humour. 3 months after he died of cancer, I was at my grandmother's funeral, and relatives who hadn't seen my since I was a baby commented on how similar we were. I got to see photos that I had never seen before, and we were the spitting image as children.
So, my dad may not have had any influence on my upbringing (although perhaps more than the guy in the article), but he's a very real part of who I am.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 01:40 am (UTC)I am told I look almost exactly like a man I don't know at all. I do feel something is missing from my life there, perhaps because I really didn't get on with my stepfather - who was rather abusive towards my sister.
I could have made moves to contact him over the last few years, but haven't, mostly because I'm not sure why I would.
My sister, who missed him massively and went to live with him for a year or so in her late teens, told me he's basically an asshole and not really worth the effort. Among other rather creepy things, she learned just enough Dutch to catch him telling a friend that she was his new girlfriend. Even as a joke, it made her basically not want to know him.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-28 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 01:53 am (UTC)it totally fucking isn't.
most people are wage slaves. They go to work, do some shit for The Man, then try and find things to make it seem worthwhile during their time off. This is a /shite/ motivator. Especially when you find yourself working in a system designed by total idiots who've never actually had to do the tasks they're assigning to their staff.
it's a deep rooted irony that the stuff that really needs done tends to be underpaid and socially stigmatised. Being a cleaner, for example: a job that needs done, and done well, constantly. Retail: total daily grind unless you feverently believe in the products you're selling. Nursing is massively respected, but also politicised to the point of driving a huge percentage of the workforce to depression.
then there's the stuff that's just grossly underrespected like civil engineering - there's money in it, but also a bizarre battle against the wishes of people who have no understanding of the job they want done.
in short: it's a lack of understanding of industry and labour by people who have very little involvement with it.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 06:43 pm (UTC)Work is currently a means for getting money in order to survive.
Whereas what it ought to be is a system for human civilization to collectively get stuff done.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 07:20 pm (UTC)this is why a lot of very bright people either end up in shit jobs, permanent academia or unemployed. There are disgustingly few jobs that feel worth doing, and don't involve criminally sleazy / incompetent middle-managers.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-29 09:14 am (UTC)fosteringadoption article struck a chord with me. Years and years ago (possibly univ) I saw a banner ad for fostering services in the US. It said: "There's more to being a Dad than just being the father."How true.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 06:41 pm (UTC)I suspect I may fuck up Caractacus in this respect. I just can't get my head round it. I can't say to her 'you worked really hard at making that lego giraffe', or 'at learning that song'.
Admittedly, as two years old, I'm not sure there is a concept of 'working really hard'. She just does stuff.
But there is a large part of me that really rails against 'working really hard' It says, 'fuck that. any idiot can work really hard. being *good* or *smart* or *talented* is better and deeper than that'.
Heh. :/
no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 09:36 pm (UTC)That does actually remind me of how some months ago I considered the question of whether C was born smart, ie had received some good genes from her parents who arguably are both smart in an intellectual way.
And I ended up concluding that it's mostly down to what her parents encourage and value rather than anything innate: we talk to her and interact with her a lot; we've been giving her books since she could hold her head up; I play musical instruments to (and with) her and so on.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 09:38 pm (UTC)And, after all, you can't encourage her to "be smarter". You can encourage her to persevere, or to be inquiring, or to be playful. But saying "Be smarter" doesn't really encourage much :->
no subject
Date: 2011-11-30 07:30 pm (UTC)when my daughter does something impressive, I'll tell her the thing she's done is exactly that. Impressive. I'll tell her I'm very proud of her for doing it and discovering a new talent, and encourage her to keep experimenting. I may explain to her how her new discovery can be useful elsewhere, or how other very clever people have done something similar.
her eyes light up at these moments, and she has a real passion to learn more. I have, at times, taken that too far and just overloaded her. Sometimes it's best just to give her access to more information, to resources, and leave it there.