Interesting Links for 21-03-2012
Mar. 21st, 2012 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Why is this program erroneously rejected by three C++ compilers? (I laughed)
- Boris hijacks official Mayor Twitter account
- Why we're finding less and less miracle drugs
- Cheaper, quieter and fuel-efficient biplanes could put supersonic travel on the horizon
- How many hours would you have to work to rent a one-bedroom flat (for different areas of England)
- Change to Sunday trading laws would force us into shops against our will, warn Christians
I hadn't realised that England still had Sunday trading laws. WTF England?
- A Doctor speaks up on Transvaginal Ultrasounds
- Why some taxpayers effectively pay a 60 per cent marginal rate on income tax.
OF course, even including employer's NI the total tax rate is nowhere near that high.
- Excerpt of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: True Stories from the dark side of HR
- An explanation for Roger Penrose
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:12 am (UTC)And these regulations were only recently brought in. Until 1994 it was illegal for large shops to open at all on Sundays. I remember when the Major government brought in the reforms, there was a lot of opposition from religious groups which is why the regulations were not completely removed.
Another oddity of these regulations is that it is illegal for large shops to open at all on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:36 am (UTC)What we need is better laws ensuring that all employees get a reasonable amount of time off work, which should include at least one full day a week; more importantly these laws should actually be enforced.
But having everyone have their day off on the SAME DAY just doesn't work at all! If I have only one day off a week I need to do my shopping on that day; but I can't if everywhere is shut because everyone has to have the same day...
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:14 pm (UTC)Totally agreed.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:29 pm (UTC)Though it might be unfair if one religious group gets more marginal utility out of their special day than others, or has more holy days/holidays than another. I think there's something about this in John Rawls Theory of Justice...
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 03:19 pm (UTC)(I also admit that the idea of having a day of "rest" is reasonably appealing, but that I wouldn't actually do that myself, and that I don't think having less than half of the shops shut actually helps in any meaningful way.)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 09:29 pm (UTC)(And that's my normal test for laws - if things were different, would we pass laws to change them to their current state. And if shops were open on Sunday at the moment, nobody would be clamouring for Sunday trading laws to be created.)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:53 pm (UTC)I took this to mean that if we had been in a position to know the harm smoking does and alcohol does in excess, would we prefer that we had never allowed them in the first place?
Obviously we can't because we know that prohibition would only make things worse.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 11:20 am (UTC)Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:28 pm (UTC)that was my first guess, but I immediately thought... no. No-one can possibly be that fucking stupid
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:38 pm (UTC)There's no _direct_ evidence that the post was a parody, but I would say it's certain. I literally can't imagine someone reading and understanding the C spec without ever having written a program in a text editor, and if someone were genuinely confused, I'd expect a lot more incoherent comments complaining about the answers :)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:43 pm (UTC)And if you look at the command line it specifies a png file.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:17 pm (UTC)(Sorry. *ducks*)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:32 pm (UTC)On the one hand I can see that if you only have one day to run your messages then having all the shops shut on that day is difficult.
Also, it is arguably not my business to stand between a willing seller of labour and a willing buyer of labour and between a willing retailer and a willing purchaser.
But…
… I quite like the idea that we have days when as many people as possible have a day off and we spend the day not working.
Also, I suspect there is a reason why a day of rest every half dozen days or so is a cultural norm.
How would people’s live work if instead of 52 fixed weekends, a dozen fixed long weekends and 4-6 flexible weeks of holiday everyone got 134 – 144 days of holiday to take whenever they could arrange it with their employer and Saturday and Sunday were just ordinary days?
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:41 pm (UTC)an uninterrupted 24 hours clear of work each week
an uninterrupted 48 hours clear each fortnight
That being what the law currently states.
Personally, I get bank holidays (other than Christmas Eve/Day and New Year's Day) added to my holiday bank, to take when I like. I like that system, it means that when all the parents take bank holidays to spend with their kids I get a nice quiet office.
Edit: Details: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/WorkingHoursAndTimeOff/DG_10029451
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 12:55 pm (UTC)I think there are genuine health and safety issues about people working longer than certain shifts. Not just the danger of tired people making mistakes but also we shouldn’t be exhausting people.
I used to be able to swop bank holidays on an informal basis. This was because bank holidays in the UK were not the same as bank holidays in the US and tended to clash with month end. This was useful.
I’m currently on flexi-time so I have much the same ability to shift my work patterns around to suit myself.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:21 pm (UTC)My tolerance personally for 4 longer days is mixed and rather depends on how I'm feeling about work.
I quite like flexi-time.
I think one advantage of everyone shifting to 4*10 hour weeks would be then being able to reduce the working day and end up with 4*8 hour days.
but then I think we work too hard in the West.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:25 pm (UTC)My Production Manager disagrees. He's from India where a 6-day week is the norm. It's the same in many Asian countries.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:25 pm (UTC)I think Asians work too hard too.
6 day weeks would have been the norm for us 100 or so years ago.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:53 pm (UTC)Many of the ways I wish to spend my days off involve other people working on that day if not at the moment I wish to be doing the thing (and many of the things that can be arranged to not involve other people working require a great deal more planning if such arranging is needed). More importantly many of the things I want to do that need to be done on my days off (because I can't do them on days I go to work) involve other people working on those days.
Personally I see no virtue at all in having the same day off as everyone else in the country. I see increasing benefit in having the same regular days off as specific other people as my closeness to those people increases.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:09 pm (UTC)I'm still waiting for gasoline made from turkey guts.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 04:20 pm (UTC)Coupled with the supersonic bi-plane I will be expecting my personal jet-car in the post from Amazon any day now.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:17 pm (UTC)It’ll be the Scolds’ Bridal for talking about abortion next.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:23 pm (UTC)I was reserving my practical anger for things closer to home and where I vote for the people passing the legislation.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 05:34 pm (UTC)So I read others' comments after my own.
I was amused by the misspelling of shibboleth, though... ;)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 05:55 pm (UTC)Although it does conform to the internet rule that anyone correcting grammar will make a grammatical error.