Interesting Links for 22-12-2011

[andrewducker]

• The Silliest Things said to a group of SF editors, writers and academics
  (tags: funny scifi epicfail )
• Building new London homes is cheaper than providing temporary housing
  (tags: building housing london )
• All publicly-funded research data should be made freely accessible says UK government
  (tags: GOVERNMENT uk research data free )
• No payouts for damage during the summer "riots". Because they weren't riots. Apparently.
  (tags: riots police uk law )
• Dog+Ducks=CUTE
  (tags: dogs ducks cute photo )
• The biology behind severe PMS
  (tags: pms menstruation hormones emotion women biology )
• Judge says extradition from US quicker than from UK
  (tags: extradition uk usa law )
• A fantastic teacher shows her class that they don't have to conform to gender roles
  (tags: Education gender bullying children lgbt discrimination )
• Stupid Things the British Believe About Americans (and vice versa)
  (tags: usa uk beliefs culture )
• Microsoft Bringing HTML5 and JavaScript to Office 15
  (tags: office microsoft javascript html5 html )
• What really caused the eurozone crisis?
  (tags: euro europe finance )
• Want to know if you're depressed? Look at a picture of your mother.
  While lying in an MRI scanner, of course.
  (tags: psychology mother parents depression )

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Because there isn't enough red tape surrounding university funding already, and *of course* the only kind of research out there is business and technology focused.
Headdesk.

[andrewducker]

There are already plenty of places that mandate using open access journals, rather than closed ones. This would be taking research that's paid for by the government and saying that it should be available to everyone, for free. I totally agree with that ethos.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Certainly it needs to be accessible. What winds me up is the introduction of yet more bureaucracy (that cuts into student contact time) and the assumption that there is only one kind of research.

[andrewducker]

I'm not convinced that it's going to add much in the way of bureaucracy. The NIH in the US has a nice simple requirement - that all papers are uploaded to the PubMed library. Almost no overhead at all:
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

The assumption is annoying, certainly.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I wish I could share your hope, but so far, every move to codify research has led to even more red tape.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I'm very much in favour of this sort of requirement, but even with the best will in the world, it will be bureaucratic.

What about work that's jointly funded? What about a paper spanning work from more than one funder? (With possibly mutually-incompatible requirements?) What about re-analysis or meta-analysis by third parties? What about review articles? What about work written up after all funding has ceased? (Possibly temporarily.) What counts as peer-reviewed?

The NIH specifies some of this. Other public sector funders will have their own regulations and requirements. Commercial, charity and foundation funders are likely to take an entirely different line. (Some charities and foundations might well fall in with widespread public sector practice, but by no means all. Commercial research funders often have very hard-line policies about not publishing, at least for a certain length of time and/or only after scrutiny/veto.) Universities and subject bodies have their own requirements and/or traditional practices for paper depositing. Almost all researchers get funding from multiple bodies, so there will multiple regulations, which will differ. With luck and a lot of international coordination the amount of mutual incompatibility will be minimised, but I suspect it's unavoidable.

All of these requirements and compliance data will need to be logged, captured, reported and audited, on both funder and funding recipient side. Very little of which can be done by non-specialists.

I still think it's worthwhile, but to pretend it's cost-free is mistaken.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

that teacher is AWESOME!

Until I was 14 or so, anyone who didn't know me automatically called me "son". I was never the princess when the dressing up box came out. I played with bikes, knives, climbing trees and setting fire to stuff , music, judo and and later, computers and karate. Most of my friends were boys. On the rare occasions my mum put me in a dress/skirt I pretty much looked like a boy in drag [I had very short hair by 70's standards because it is *horrible* to look after]. Fortunately I was pretty oblivious as to whether anyone thought this was weird, and my parents never really subscribed to the whole boys toys/girls toys thing. I got microscopes, books, crystal growing kits, scalextrix (sp?) and toy soldiers and matchbox cars - and, yes, the odd baby/sindy doll.

I do joke that I didn't really grow up as a girl at all.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Konrad Lorenz, reincarnated as a dog.

[simont]

"Ducklings always travel in single file, to hide their numbers."

[andrewducker]

I like that.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Interesting recap of the eurozone crisis. I had no idea German unions had unilaterally agreed to keep wages down.

[andrewducker]

It's put them in a very good position. Because they didn't go up dramatically when the bubble happened they aren't having to come back down.

The UK, on the other hand, is saved from lowering wages because we can just inflate/devalue our way out of it.

Other Euro countries, on the other hand, not so much.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

saved from lowering wages

Hahahaha!

Wages in the UK went down 3.5% in the last year, and from memory they were down the year before as well, and possibly the one before that too. See e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/nov/23/uk-household-earnings-fall

Or did you mean saved from lowering nominal wages? Which is indeed an important thing - it's becoming increasingly apparent in the current eurocrisis that nominal wages are very, very hard to lower.

But that's rather different from an unqualified "wages". Inflation does matter!

[andrewducker]

That's why I said deflate... We get paid the same, but it's worth less.

[skington.livejournal.com]

About 5-10 years ago, Germany's economy was in the shitter. Government, businesses and the unions agreed on a painful package of austerity measures that eventually rescued the economy, but did in Gerhard Schröder's government. This is one of the reasons why Germany doesn't particularly want to bail out any of the southern European countries without strings attached - they went through pain, why shouldn't others?

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I find it odd as well the amount of complaining being done by countries moaning about all the strings that come attached. Like... they expected the Germans to just give them limitless free money?

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Realy makes me wonder why new council homes aren't being built? Sheer inertia and stupidity, or hidden reasons (like it would cause house prices to stop rising)?

[andrewducker]

Lack of cash. You'll note that the article recommends that central government builds the properties?

Personally, I think that the suggestion of "sell off old housing stock so long as the cash is used to build more housing" has potential, as it would at least increase the size of the housing available.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Central government should be able to borrow money for projects that will break even or better in the long term. (and avoid doing it for other things). This is well known, or at least it used to be.

For quite a long time, there was incentive for the UK government(s) to not encourage house-building in London - increasing the number of houses available would have stopped or slowed the rise in prices, and this rise made people feel wealthier (and gave them an asset to borrow against) and thus made them feel that their government was doing a good job, since they never had it so good. The only problem with this plan is that it was unsustainable.

[camies.livejournal.com]

the only problem with this plan is that it was stupid and unsustainable. What else is there, that most people need to buy, where prices going up is generally thought to be a Good Thing? I do not understand this. Yes, they would get more money if they sold, but they'll probably need to buy another one.

[andrewducker]

Oh, I agree that one of central government's main tasks should be to see what would improve the country in the long run that the private sector isn't taking care of, and make it happen. I'd love to see more of that.

[andrewducker]

Just bumped into this:
http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2011/december/government-has-published-details-on-the-build-now-pay-later-scheme/

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that letting the German banks who made the bad loans take part of the loss doesn't seem to be conceived of as part of dealing with the mess . . .
The Germans seem to think that everyone ought to go to a heavily export-oriented economy like they did. the Lake Woebegon solution.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I was amazed when I discovered that the agreements over Greece's debt only meant that private banks would take a loss, not the other government banks. Insanity!

And yes, you have to have places to export to - if everywhere is as good at it as Germany then nobody gets a positive balance!