Interesting Links for 30-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• Meet The Batman who visits sick kids in hospital
  (tags: hospital reality kids batman )
• Hezbollah’s Jihad-Themed Theme Park
  (tags: hezbollah lebanon )
• How the Daily Mail Conquered England
  (tags: uk media journalism dailymail )
• There is a simple 3-D grid structure underlying the complexity of the primate brain
  (tags: structure brains )
• The original Prince of Persia source code has been found!
  (tags: history programming code PrinceOfPersia )
• A Woman's Story
  (tags: computers sexism racism history canada )

Comments

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

Yesterday, at coffee, one of the people at work started an anecdote with "I was reading in the Daily Mail..." (something she does often). At this point, the head of research (pretty much 2nd in command) said "right, this is the time I leave". Admittedly he does leave rather abruptly pretty much every day at coffee, but this was clearly making the point that he didn't want to hear.

This is in fact the prevalent attitude, as I think the entire readership of the DM at work (comprised of mathematicians, statisticians, ecologists, biologists, programmers, and PhD students) is 1.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I read something in the daily mail 8 years ago and I'm still talking about it :)

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

three little plastic 3.5″ disk boxes .. containing source code for Prince of Persia

What are the odds that those disks are still readable?

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I love my tea and kittens block. It means I can't read the daily mail articles that would otherwise have me hissing and spitting in rage.

Several Women's story

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

There was a pattern in the 80's which I saw personally several times, and assume happened all over.
An office would get its first ever microcomputer. Since the word processor printed letters, they gave it to the secretary.
Three years later, she would either be the office manager or an independent consultant.

Re: Several Women's story

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

It didn't happen everywhere...

I remember my dad tearing his hair out because his department secretaries used to type a letter from scratch rather than re-use the document for a nearly identical one they'd sent to the previous student in the list.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

I find the Batman guy slightly disturbing, on two counts. Firstly, the reasons he gives himself for doing it seem a bit weird, and the whole thing seems like a weird obsession or crusade, albeit one that's benign. Second, it's the sort of thing I can imagine right-wingers jumping on and saying, 'See! Philanthropy works! Trickle-down effect! We don't need public money for hospitals!'