Interesting Links for 15-05-2012
May. 15th, 2012 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
- The rise of the managers, the death of leadership.
- Somebody please, for the love of god, fix shipping/couriers. (If nothing else, an awesome rant)
- The switch to STV has made big difference to democracy in Scotland
- Your task for the day - write a blog post on one of these questions, send me a link to it.
- Which are better - apps or web pages?
- Google Shuts Down Another Conservative Blog
- The future of customer support is helping each other.
- The new "Profile Reset" feature in Firefox sounds incredibly useful. (I'd been using a profile for 5 years - a reset got rid of all sorts of issues)
- Despite Conservative protestations, the public does want gay marriage, Lords reform
- Do Iain Duncan Smith's DLA claims ring true?
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Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 12:05 pm (UTC)If there's a serious problem, there's worse things to do than exert a bit of local government pressure. But I'm doubtful it's that serious: they seem to conflate "annoying" with "dangerous": is everyone who texts while walking equally likely to step out onto the street without looking?
Your task for the day - write a blog post on one of these questions, send me a link to it.
Date: 2012-05-15 12:13 pm (UTC)Should wealth be inheritable?
Huh. I've never been sure: on the one hand, it's so much part of life to want to provide for our children, it seems difficult to get rid of that. And impractical: how do you stop people giving gifts? On the other hand, wouldn't it be fairer if it wasn't?
Maybe the land value tax has a point here, that if you accumulate stuff, you're entitled to hand it on, but not just to sit on the value without enhancing it. But I'm not sure, it feels like maybe family businesses and personal houses _should_ be passed on? But that if someone owns a vast tract land that gets a big city built on it, they shouldn't just be able to keep on owning it for hundreds of years? I don't know.
Re: Your task for the day - write a blog post on one of these questions, send me a link to it.
Date: 2012-05-15 12:15 pm (UTC)Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 12:15 pm (UTC)Despite Conservative protestations, the public does want gay marriage, Lords reform
Date: 2012-05-15 12:16 pm (UTC)I quite like the idea I saw on your link log that we admit that MPs are not really that geographical any more, and let them be elected by PR, but then have regional representatives in the lords. That way the commons can do its best to represent widespread opinion, but the lords can (hopefully) elect more diverse people with common sense. Maybe.
Re: Your task for the day - write a blog post on one of these questions, send me a link to it.
Date: 2012-05-15 12:18 pm (UTC)Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 12:21 pm (UTC)* Once walked into a lamppost (not hard, but I think I made contact with my arms before stopping), which was when I was texting
* Once came close to bumping into someone while reading -- when almsot I walked into someone else walking the opposite way reading :) Fortunately someone I knew fairly well :)
I think texting may actually take more concentration than reading (or at least, I can't read anything too complicated or I can't keep track of my place on the page) because it needs your hands to do things as well as your eyes to look at things.
But also, I'm not sure it's a sufficient problem that fining the victims will make things better...
Re: Your task for the day - write a blog post on one of these questions, send me a link to it.
Date: 2012-05-15 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-15 12:23 pm (UTC)Google Shuts Down Another Conservative Blog
Date: 2012-05-15 12:24 pm (UTC)But also, I don't really like his stance that there's a cut off point where people accused of crimes sufficiently bad should be executed without a fair trial. The failure modes seem sort of obvious...
Re: Google Shuts Down Another Conservative Blog
Date: 2012-05-15 12:28 pm (UTC)Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 12:48 pm (UTC)Unless they can show a clear source of danger to *others* I think this is a very silly law.
Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 01:01 pm (UTC)Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 01:05 pm (UTC)Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 01:09 pm (UTC)Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-15 01:12 pm (UTC)Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 01:14 pm (UTC)I don't know where the law really came from: is it a populist measure after several people were killed? are people annoyed by being bumped into all the time? or do they simply want more money in fines?
Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 01:20 pm (UTC)Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 01:22 pm (UTC)Drivers should NEVER assume that pedestrians are going to stay safely on the pavement. As a motorist it is *your responsibility* not to hit people or property with your car; and I have approximately zero sympathy for motorists who find this responsibility psychologically taxing.
Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 01:23 pm (UTC)http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.single.html
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/1837/
Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 01:30 pm (UTC)Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-15 01:52 pm (UTC)Perhaps, in reality, my ward was a safe seat. 4 seats, with support spread pretty evenly across the mainstream parties. So one from each of the 5 parties represented in Holyrood less one. Normally, it would be a key marginal but I wonder if this time round everyone knew the Lib Dems would finish in 5th place so no one had to try.
Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 02:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-15 02:17 pm (UTC)Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 02:19 pm (UTC)-- Steve certainly won't underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 02:26 pm (UTC)Banning texting while walking across the road _would_ make sense, if they care. (As long as it IS a road, it's possible it should all be pedestrainised, but that's a different question, and probably not going to happen.)
I also notice that this decision came from the police chief, not any sort of local government. Does that mean the police cheif has the power to enact new laws? Or does the anti-jaywalking[1] ordanance already prohibit this sort of dangerous street wandering in theory, and cheif has decided to enforce it?
[1] When I was young, some film made a reference to someone being arrested for jaywalking in the street, and I asked my parents what it was, and they said they thought it meant "being black". Only later did I find out what it really was :)
Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 02:39 pm (UTC)Dino BurnersSUVs, so there are no cues for the driver to pick up) then there's no chance for the driver to avoid a collision.Pedestrians need to be responsible as well as drivers.
-- Steve thinks the dishonours are fairly evenly split between the two in his personal experience.
Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 03:06 pm (UTC)I actually object to seatbelt legislation.
Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 03:21 pm (UTC)Lords Reform and Gay Marriage
Date: 2012-05-15 03:28 pm (UTC)Firstly, basically the person saying this has just admited they are crap at their job. If the person saying this is genuinely unable to deal with Lords Reform in the same year as doing some stuff to the economy then they are too incompetent to be doing the job I’m paying them for and therefore my “insert favourite cheap improvement to civic Britain” becomes a right of recall to be escalated to a right to defenestration.
Secondly, if Lords Reform / gay marriage / insert your favourite cheap improvement to civic Britain isn’t a priorty for the politicians and would distract from fixing the economy then they should concede. It’s a priority for me. So they should give in, give me what I want. I’ll be happy. They won’t be suffering because, you know what, it’s not a priorty for them. If they give in now and sort out Lords Reform and gay marriage I’ll shut up and get on with helping them fix the economy. I have some plans for that. They mainly involve not starting from here.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-15 03:58 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure he would have confessed to the Kennedy assassination, and to stealing the Lindbergh baby, and to anything else his captors suggested they might want him to confess to, too. You can't take the confession of someone who has been tortured as ANYTHING other than "something he said to make the pain stop"
That being said, my bet on the reason for deletion isn't "censorship", it's "dude had a stupid password that he used everywhere, someone guessed it, and his blog made a billion spam comments in a few hours". Which is to say, "spam", which is why Google said they were cutting it off. Google's "no customer service" policy is idiotic, but I'll still bet on their service being tone-deaf and automated before betting on it doing something censorous.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-15 04:09 pm (UTC)Good point, that does seem quite likely now you point it out.
Google's "no customer service" policy is idiotic
I don't know what I would do though. It's obviously a problem when someone has a real problem with the service and can't talk to anyone about it. (Even if it's free, some faults are sufficiently egregious you do want to fix them!) But google offer lots and lots of services for free, which they simply couldn't do if they had to field customer service requests. (I don't know if this particular service was free, if not he should have some recourse, but it's a problem with that sort of service either way.)
I'll still bet on their service being tone-deaf and automated before betting on it doing something censorous.
Well, I doubt they would (or would want to) deliberately censor opinions they don't like. But it's easy to censor people by accident without any malicious intent (eg. anyone who can't use their "legal" name on google plus). It seems likely that wasn't the case this time, but it's a problem that happens with this sort of free or cheap service.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-15 04:10 pm (UTC)This year's local elections in Edinburgh differed from previous local elections in two important respects:
1. Lamppost signs are no longer permitted. This meant that the main visible sign of campaigning was no longer around, and indeed many people didn't even realise there was an election on until late in the day.
2. There were no parliamentary elections on the same day. In parliamentary elections, political parties are entitled to a freepost delivery to each voter. This means that voters should get some kind of literature from all the parties even in non-target areas. Also, the amount of money that can be spent in the campaign is higher, which gives parties more leeway to supplement their own activists' deliveries with paid leafleting by delivery companies.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-15 04:26 pm (UTC)-- Steve's ancient laptop choked on loading the linked site... which argues that his laptop has reasonably good taste.
Re: Texting While Walking Banned in New Jersey Town
Date: 2012-05-15 05:42 pm (UTC)