Interesting Links for 17-04-2012

[andrewducker]

• Sceptic debunks "miracle", is arrested for blasphemy
  (tags: religion scepticism india law )
• Majority of England now declared to be in drought - may last until Christmas
  (tags: water england uk )
• When your non-patented drugs are spontaneously converted into patents ones. I love nanotech.
  (tags: replication drugs patents nanotech )
• The conviction rate for rape is 58%, higher than the average. Reporting it as 6% just puts people off reporting it.
  (tags: rape law uk )
• Greece,Portugal and Spain all fucked. They can't devalue, and they can't be competitive _and_ pay debts off.
  (tags: greece spain portugal euro debt money )
• When Eton and Goldman Sachs run charities, the system needs reform
  (tags: charity uk tax )
• Volcano eruptions follow Benford's Law
  (tags: volcano mathematics patterns )
• North Korean Press Bus Takes a Wrong Turn, Gets Some Unauthorised Pictures
  (tags: NorthKorea )
• Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all
  (tags: war intelligence WMD Iraq )
• Abuse At Scale: How GMail deals with outgoing spam.
  (tags: gmail email spam technology google )
• Most people not aware how much sugar there is in "healthy" drinks (like fruit juice).
  (tags: sugar diet health food )
• Can a stroke change someone's sexuality?
  (tags: lgbt sexuality stroke brains )
• The Official Doctor Who Fan Club - the story of how the BBC handed Who fandom to a 13-year-old
  (tags: drwho bbc )
• Ann Widdecombe can fuck off. "Bring back the concept of shame" my arse. (Tories trying to clamp down on drunk people)
  (tags: alcohol society AnnWiddecombe Conservatives )

Comments

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

Either I've got a virus or odwfc.com has been hijacked so that it redirects to advertising pages.

[andrewducker]

It works fine for me if you include the www. - did you retype it?

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

Link works fine for me. Could be a problem at your end.

[andrewducker]

If I go to it without the www. on the beginning then I get redirected to SEO things.

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

Seems to be a Google Chrome problem then. Maybe it auto-removes the www or something (tried even with typing the full thing in).

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

Benfords Law is all well and good, but the only reason it works at a tool for detecting fraud is that fraudsters are unaware of how random numbers *should* be distributed. The more potential fraudsters are made aware of it, the more they'll pick realistically distributed random numbers, nullifying the utility of Benford's Law as a fraud detection tool.

Oh well.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Re the last link - so she wants to try to make it socially unacceptable to go out and deliberately get falling-down drunk and end up in A&E and waste NHS resources, and you oppose this? Why?

She compares it to the way smoking is becoming less socially acceptable. Do you oppose that too? Why or why not?

(Also, the link about rape goes to a Page Not Found page.)

[naath.livejournal.com]

I object to the use of the word "shame" (with it's attached connotations). I approve of a desire to make the behaviour less socially acceptable/normal but I don't think "shame" is the right way to go about it.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

What about making people feel guilty about being drunk? As in shame / guilt cultures?

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

horrible notion.

[andrewducker]

She wants to make it illegal to be drunk in public. It is _none of her business_ what my state is, unless I am causing destruction of property or harassing people. Should I wish to get horribly drunk then that is _my_ choice.

Are we also going to criminalise people skiing and breaking a leg, as a waste of NHS resources?

And to use _shame_, an emotion that generally causes people to behave worse, rather than better, is just the icing on the cake.

If you want to set a bunch of sociologists and psychologists to find out why people enjoy getting that drunk, and then help them with whatever is causing them to feel that's the only way they can be happy, then go for it.

But if people want to shame people into acting the way they want them to, rather than the way they choose, then they can fuck off.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

True, shame is not a helpful emotion.

So what is the state of mind that, rather than what I would feel if I did go get blind drunk and throw up in the street, causes me to avoid going that far in the first place?

[andrewducker]

Not wanting to be that drunk? Enjoying a night out without that state? Being comfortable enough having fun while sober that you don't need alcohol to numb you enough to do the things you really wanted to?

[marrog.livejournal.com]

See my comment below.

You need to feel like you don't need to be drunk to have a good time.

You need to feel like you could choose to get up and dance - or not dance, if you prefer - based not on how hammered you are but whether you enjoy it.

You need to feel like if you saw a fit bloke, it didn't make you a slut if you went home with him, just for fun, if you were sober.

You need to feel like it's not going to be a mark of pride for you to tell your mates how many pints you kept down before the last one that broke the camel's back.

You need to feel like you're not a poof if you only fancy two pints, enjoyed slowly over the course of the evening, instead of seven or eight crammed into a two or three hour period.

You probably also need to be immune to the idiocy of your mates' behaviour when they're all hammered and you're not - you need to be able to walk down the street with them at kicking-out time wincing at their rendition of O Flower of Scotland at the top of their lungs and not be thinking "What a shower of wankers... this is the last time I stay sober with this lot."

It would probably also help if you were sure you could afford next month's mortgage/car insurance/council tax, you hadn't just had your working tax credits cut and you knew you'd still be in a job come the summer. But we can't expect miracles.


(This isn't an attack of any kind on you btw, it's more an extended commentary on the current State of the Nation.)

[naath.livejournal.com]

Supposing you aren't an alcoholic (which should be treated as a medical problem) then I think the main problem is that of the cultural expectation that in order to "have fun" you must be blind drunk. Also the fact that it is often cheaper to drink alcohol than soft drinks in bars and clubs is... probably not helpful.

Being very very drunk is not generally physically pleasant, being very very hungover is almost universally physically extremely unpleasant. That horrible "oh god, WHAT did I DO" feeling is also not one that I would personally seek out (btdt)... perhaps people are deliberately seeking out these sensations, but I doubt it. It seems to me that they are seeking out "fun" but don't know how to have it without drink. We need to allow ourselves to have fun without drink, perhaps we need to redefine what fun is.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

The other weekend I was in a club where it cost exactly the same amount of money to buy a soft drink as it did to buy a double vodka and mixer. Since both came in the same size glass, the vodka was effectively free.

[nameandnature]

She wants to make it illegal to be drunk in public.

It already is illegal to be drunk in public, or to be drunk and disorderly (Wikipedia, with cites of the statutes).

I think the comparison to the smoking ban need not imply that we should only worry about drinkers who are damaging the health of others or harming the NHS (though woodpijn uses those examples).

It is _none of her business_ what my state is, unless I am causing destruction of property or harassing people. Should I wish to get horribly drunk then that is _my_ choice.

The law disagrees, and I think rightly. According to the CPS, you need not be a damaging properly or harassing people to be disorderly, you can just be making a public place unpleasant ("rowdy behaviour in a street late at night which might alarm residents or passers-by"). The CPS link came from this thread, where it's discussed a bit.

What Ann Widdecombe proposes seems to be to enforce existing laws, plus a bit of the old Tory "put them in the stocks" business. I doubt the stocks will work, but I'm in favour of enforcing these laws, because doing so would make public spaces better.

There's also the Schroedinger's rapist argument, I suppose: saying I should not be concerned about drunks I encounter as long as they're not violent pre-supposes I know which ones might turn violent so that I can go about my business in public without fear (as long as my spider sense doesn't start tingling). In practice people don't have the spider sense, so you end up with no go areas at certain times.

[andrewducker]

The important point there is the "disorderly". I'm fine with people's external behaviour being judged. Want to ban singing in the street, public urination, or people with the inability to walk in a straight line? Go for it.

[nameandnature]

Agreement has broken out!

[andrewducker]

Not sure what happened to the rape one, sadly.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

The two situations aren't comparable. Smoking has become less socially acceptable as a side-effect to the smoking ban, but the ban itself had to be justified on a medical basis - in that being in a room with a smoker is bad for your health. Me being falling-down drunk near you isn't a danger to your health unless I get angry drunk and hit you - and if I do that I'm up on charges anyway, because hitting you is already against the law.

I absolutely agree that the binge drinking culture is a problem - although it's being vastly over-reported due to what counts as a 'binge' - six units for a woman, which means that if my partner and I do as we did the other night and make a chili, add some red wine, finish the bottle between us over the course of a long, chilled-out evening of card games, then have a wee nip of a nice single malt I got for my birthday before bed, we are binge drinkers. However, shaming people for indulging in acts that are considered socially desirable in their culture is hardly the way to change this culture and would almost without a doubt worsen the problem.

Take, for example, the culture of the twenty-something working woman as experienced by Widdecombe. Women go out in gangs already drunk because that's the only way it's considered acceptable for them to be confident and assertive in public. Women get drunk to go dancing because it's weird to get up on a dancefloor sober. Women get drunk to have casual sex (putting themselves at much higher risk of being spiked and raped as a result) because seeking out casual sex while sober makes you a slut. So on top of this pressure to get mashed before they're allowed to have fun in public, these women are now to be named and shamed in the paper the next day? Why not just tar and feather them and get it over with?

You don't solve a problem by attacking its victims.

[andrewducker]

Thank you for putting that more eloquently, and less grumpily, than me.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

It's not often I'm the more eloquent, less grumpy one!

(And I thought your explanation was fine - if I'd seen it I might not have felt the need to say anything myself but I was already typing when yours happened.)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I agree with woodpijn. (Mind you, I don't drink at all, so you'd expect me to say that.)

Trouble is, for many of the people who do go out and deliberately get drunk, any "naming-and-shaming" will be a badge of honour.

For most of the 20th century in the United Kingdom, it WAS socially unacceptable to go out and deliberately get falling-down drunk*. When did this stop?



* And it still is for most people above a certain age.

[andrewducker]

Certainly when I was growing up in the 1970s there was a lot of stories about people being drunk in the streets.

When I was a teen in the 1980s the areas near nightclubs were full of drunk people when they kicked out, and the same with pubs.

Mind you, those were mostly working-class people, so they probably don't count when it comes to socially unacceptable things :->

[andrewducker]

Oh, and I don't drink often, or in large quantities, to be clear. I certainly haven't been falling down drunk more than twice in my life (and neither time in a public place, nor in the last 15 years).

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

I barely drink and have never been falling down drunk in my life but I think Andrew and marrog make a very good case here. Maybe you'd be surprised at the amount of stick I've got over the years for being more or less teetotal. I know plenty of people who really wouldn't find being 'named and shamed' a badge of honour but still don't believe they can have fun without being at least tipsy.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I don't understand at all why the European Central Bank has not figured out that the only realistic way to get out of the current multi-national fiscal crisis is to devalue the Euro.

It's not even like lowering the Euro by 30 percent would be without historical precedent. Several years ago the Euro was at Dollar parity. In fact when it was launched it was intentionally launched at a level that was near Dollar parity. Now a Euro is worth $1.31. Bringing it down to the same value against the Dollar and other currencies as it was originally expected to be would wipe out 31 percent of the current debt.

It would also greatly increase exports. It would even be good for the Germans (think how many more BMWs would be sold if the price suddenly dropped by 31 percent.) You'd create jobs! And tourism would boom - creating more jobs - as vacations to Europe became more affordable.

It's been clear for two years now that devaluation would be much more effective then austerity and yet they won't go for it.

It's bizarre.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I should note that Spain is now double fucked since their largest oil company just got nationalized by Argentina.

http://www.france24.com/en/20120416-spain-vows-forceful-response-argentine-oil-move

Spain is going to bitch to the UN about it, but, you know, good luck getting the Peronista Party to give a shit about the UN.

[andrewducker]

I wonder what they should do that would cause the biggest price drop for the Euro.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Devaluation would be much more effective than austerity ... for all the bits of the Eurozone that are in unpayable debt, which basically means the bits that aren't Germany. In Germany, most people are savers, and are seriously, desperately, articulately and vote-determiningly worried about the value of their savings being reduced by devaluation and/or inflation.

Now, there are more people outside Germany in the Eurozone than in it, so one might in theory imagine that those countries would have more leverage on ECB policy. But of course, the Germans are the ones who have the gold, so they make the rules.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"Majority of England now declared to be in drought".

It's currently pissing it down here. Of course whether "here" is in England or not is something of a vexed question.

[andrewducker]

Here definitely isn't, and I'm very grateful that we get plenty of rain :->

Was it a dry winter in Kernow?

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

It's now beatifully sunny, with mostly clear blue skies. I'm working from home today and enjoying the view of Dartmoor out of my study window. Twenty minutes ago, Dartmoor wasn't there. It does that.

It was dry this winter for us in the Tamar Valley. We have a very different climate in southeast Cornwall than they do in western Cornwall, mostly because the prevailing southwesterlies wait until they've passed over Bodmin Moor before dropping their rain on us. Here in the valley itself, things are complicated further by the river and its mists which usually mean that the atmosphere is humid and the ground moist whatever the weather from October to March. But soil was quite dry this year in March.

Still, the photos that bunn posted of one of our dogs playing in the back garden yesterday should make it clear that we don't seem particularly drought-hit here. http://bunn.livejournal.com/322432.html

[andrewducker]

Yeah - surrounding hills can have a massive effect. When I lived in Stirling I'd frequently see clouds coming close and then dumping all of their water over the hills before getting to us.

[naath.livejournal.com]

We've been having April Showers in Cambridgeshire. This is not enough rain to take us out of drought; although it is enough rain to make people call the local radio to complain about "how can we have a hosepipe ban when it is raining".

[andrewducker]

Are they also asking "How there can be global warming if I had to wear a jumper today?"

:->

[naath.livejournal.com]

Fortunately not at this time.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

There is a very clear correlation between the rise of weird weather in Southwest England and the Met Office moving to Exeter.

Of course, correlation and causation aren't the same...

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Hail now in Plymouth apparently. And Dartmoor is now shrowded in cloud.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

"How can there be a drought if it's raining?" The answer (as you know) is that the drought was a certainty once winter was over. This is also why it won't be over until next winter. The country depends on winter rainfall to not be in drought.

The water companies filled all their reservoirs, but that's not enough to meet the demand that would come when people want extra water to wet their dry ground. More reservoirs would help a bit, but who wants their horizon cut off by a big earth bank they have to drive round to reach the shops?

[anef.livejournal.com]

We don't have a hosepipe ban in Cambridge. There may be one elsewhere in Cambridgeshire, I suppose.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Cambridge water has no ban, but Anglian water (most of Cambridgeshire) does.