Interesting Links for 14-12-2011

[andrewducker]

• A female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire
  (tags: military rape women usa )
• Why Skyrim Is Bad for the Economy
  (tags: games economy economics )
• Why I Love to Code
  (tags: coding development passion computers )
• The tensions between Cameron and Clegg over EU
  (tags: europe davidcameron NickClegg uk politics )
• Strictly Come Dancing in 3D: the facts
  (tags: dancing tv 3d )
• Chris Nolan explains that 8-year gap between Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises
  (tags: batman ChristopherNolan movies )
• Massive methane releases from the arctic seabed. Turn the dial to "completely fucked".
  (tags: methane environment globalwarming )
• The Day I Saw Van Gogh's Genius in a New Light - fascinating analysis
  (tags: art ColourBlind VincentVanGogh )
• The pros and cons of making a pros and cons list
  (tags: funny lists TheOatmeal )
• Different people express emotions differently. I know, I was shocked too.
  (tags: emotion psychology )
• Louis CK's experiment with selling videos reasonably priced without DRM is a massive success.
  (tags: louisck video comedy drm epicwin )

Comments

[andrewducker]

A friend over on Twitter informs me that the paper behind the "Different people express emotions differently" link isn't terribly convincing. Happy to hear from people with dissenting opinions...

[joexnz.livejournal.com]

I've not read the paper. But life experience has taught me the people respond differently for whatever biological or psychological reason.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

When do you ever see somebody pout in sadness? When it's a symbol," she says. "Like in cartoons or very bad movies." People pout when they want to look sad, not necessarily when they actually feel sad, she says.

The last time I saw someone pout was when spending time with a family that had a toddler. It's popular with the under-5s. Whether they just wanted to look sad I can't really say.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Is the first one a very careful choice of statistic? The wording suggests it to me... Enemy fire suggests a ruling out of suicide and roadside bombs. I wonder how many that actually leaves in US military personel -- especially if we take it as female soldiers only (who are less likely to be front line).

100 female soldiers have died in iraq to date but only 61 of these have been due to hostile action. The best figure I can find is that as of 2007 160500 female soldiers had served in "Iraq afghanistan and middle east". Estimate that 100,000 till now in Iraq -- unless I slipped a digit that's a 0.06% chance of being killed in Iraq. In the UK I think 0.5% of women are sexually assualted a year (it's that order of magnitude I can't exactly recall). From those figures might start to appear that they're *less* likely to be raped in the military than out and about in the US in civilian life. Of course it's not a fair comparison since you might be raped by a non soldier.

Not to say that it's not a terrible thing -- what I'd like to know though is is it a much higher rate than in civilian life. It's annoying to find a headline grabbing stat like this without wider context.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

According to some kind of DoD report in 2009, apparently 6.8% of women (and 1.8% of men) in the US military had been sexually assaulted in some way, with most of them not reporting it. Link to af.mil

[steer.livejournal.com]

Hmm... we need to know the time they were there for to draw a decent conclusion... It is a shockingly high figure but it still doesn't answer "would they be safer staying at home" -- almost 20% of women in the US are sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime (a really shocking figure). But the 20% figure is over their whole lifetime so far obviously most women serving in Iraq would not be there more than a few years.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-14/almost-1-in-5-women-in-u-s-have-been-sexually-assaulted.html

So I guess it's indicative but not proof that you're more likely to get sexually assaulted as a woman soldier in Iraq for a year than a woman civilian in the US for a year.

Grim stats either way.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

If you can't trust your military to commit spectacularly less sexual assaults within their own ranks than happen out in the civilian world, I would suggest that's indicative that your military certainly can't be trusted with things like rules of engagement or looking after enemy prisoners.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Also, I guess both those links are still only people admitting that it happened. I'd imagine the real figures are somewhat higher for both and women, in and out of the military.

[steer.livejournal.com]

That's a fair point -- they should be acting to a higher standard. In fact, I'm a pacifist and somewhat expect them to act to a lower standard. Unfortuantely, from the data we have, we can't tell which is correct here.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was reading about that methane gas thing yesterday. If that is true, and there is every reason to suppose it is, then we are indeed completely fucked.

Maybe what. 30 or 40 years until the world wars start over dwindling resources?

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

People use helium for filling balloons and giving them to kids. At some point in the future, this is probably going to seem insane.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling at some point in the not so distant future they'll be looking back at the shit we pulled in this era and there will be a lot of head shaking.

Just like. The sheer amount of food our society throws out, if nothing else.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It's just occurred to me that I may make pro/con lists differently to everyone else. (I do so very rarely, but I do sometimes think things through in terms of what unmentioned pros and cons exist).

For me the primary experience is (a) realising that when I've written them down, one or two factors are usually more important than everything else, and I should make the decision based on them and not get distracted by the little perks or niggles of the other factors and (b) often there's something I was embarrassed to admit was as important to me as it was, and when I explicitly call it out, it suddenly becomes clear to see that it's less important that the other factors, or it's actually more important and I should just go ahead and do it.

But from other people, I hear descriptions like "a way of rationalising a bad decision" or "and then you count up the number of pros and cons and choose the one with the most", which is obviously bad.

I assumed people were being unnescessarily negative towards the technique. But now I wonder, maybe I've got some flaw which the technique helps compensate for, and everyone else doesn't have that or doesn't realise it, so maybe lists really are useless for them..?

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

I like the vagueness and waffley language of "attacked" in the first.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

The Skyrim article is a great example of why I have problems with journalists and critics. It's a crap article built on a crap premise, written by someone who is trying to disguise opinion as fact and wouldn't even bother doing basic research to try to cover up their wrongness.

[andrewducker]

I thought it was a very funny joke.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

That would be nice, but I've gotten the impression from other articles from the same group that it's meant to be taken seriously.

[andrewducker]

I find the thought of the Geek Dad section of Wired magazine calling fire regulation of video games to be beyond silly.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I agree, since it's quite clear that the author is quite enamored of the game in question. :)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The one thing I wonder about with the van Gogh piece is whether the paint has faded or darkened, so that we still don't know how the paintings would have looked to van Gogh.

Still, taking out that raw green does seem to help.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire
(tags: military rape women usa )
*RASPBERRY* The title alone pisses me off beyond endurance. WTF? US Military should be ashamed.