Interesting Links for 18-05-2012

[andrewducker]

• Number of completed homes in 2011 less than half what is required to meet demand. Can we not just build some? Infrastructure = good.
  (tags: housing uk )
• Comics companies - still making it hard to work out what you should be giving them money for.
  (tags: EpicFail business comics )
• So, you think reason guides your politics? Think again
  (tags: bias belief politics )
• Accuracy takes power: one man’s 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
  (tags: emulation consoles nintendo )
• Parents experience greater happiness and meaning in life
  (tags: psychology happiness parents )
• Strange Pictures of Hot Men
  (tags: sexy photographs men )
• Ovulating women perceive sexy cads as good dads
  (tags: hormones menstruation parents perception sex )
• Sacha Baron Cohen was banned from filming at UN for fear of upsetting dictators
  (tags: SachaBaronCohen movies dictators UnitedNations )

Comments

Strange Pictures of Hot Men

[teresafloyd]

This was just what I needed today.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how it's so expensive to build new affordable housing. Whenever councils seem to want to build new council houses, the quotes they get from building companies seem to be about 10 times what I could build the same houses for. It's bizarre.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

House building has dramatically slowed because of the sharp decrease in house prices. There are numerous building sites around here which have been mothballed and will remain in that state until prices rise again and makes completing those houses profitable.

[andrewducker]

Yup. Two blocks near us that have done likewise.

I wonder if what we need is a way to make housebuilding cheaper.

I have heard that our planning permission system adds a fortune onto the cost of building homes, but I can't dig anything up about it right now.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

The costs of the actual materials and labour have risen, not only but because modern houses are built to higher standards than they were a few years ago. But I believe the biggest variable cost is the land, the cost of which is probably directly linked to the price the builders can sell the houses for. This is why building sites are being mothballed. The building costs have not risen particularly, but the builders have paid out too much for the land to enable them to sell the houses at a profit. Until they can sell houses their cash is tied up.

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

It's worse than that. Suppose you've paid $x to buy enough land to build $n houses that will sell for $y each and have a building cost of $z each. Your profit is $n($y) - $n($z) - $x. Your land is valued at $x/$n.

Now if you go and sell one house under price at $y-$d, your profit is now.

$n($y -$d -$z) - $x.

More importantly your land is now valued per plot at

$x/$n - $d.

because the act of selling one house revalues all of them.

If this is less than the outstanding loan or the conditions on the loan you've just defaulted and your land gets repossessed and all the penalty terms will destroy your business. So a sane plan is to leave the land empty and hope the price rises enough before you run out of money paying the interest.

This is why builders will do anything to get the value listed in the land registry as the list price of the house, even if it involves a special mortgage which happens to be interest free for the first 20 years and the free deposit comes out of the marketing budget and definitely doesn't revalue the land.

[naath.livejournal.com]

What sharp decrease in house prices?

(oh, that'd be something happening somewhere else. Stupid bloody popular city)

[fub.livejournal.com]

Re: "Parents experience greater happiness and meaning in life"
The summary says nothing about the method used to measure happiness. If it's self-reported, I'm going to chalk it up to Stockholm Syndrome. ;)

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

This weeks Economist has a short piece on the same study, but discusses their methods a bit.

[camies.livejournal.com]

And there are plenty of sites that could be reused. Midland Heart are currently opening a former theatre as housing - partly private, partly for homeless/vulnerable people in the Snow Hill Area of Birmingham:
http://www.midlandheart.org.uk/developments/the-snow-hill
although, a Cupcake Bakery ...?
(I know 'cos I have applied for an Admin post there!)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

re: Ovulating women perceive sexy cads as good dads

The point not specifically made is that "stay with current (presumably reliable) bloke but screw 'sexy' one hoping to pass off his offspring as regular blokes" is a valid (and pretty good) reproductive strategy, since 'sexy' blokes have more offspring, so if you have a boy, you [probably] gain extra grandkids.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

The first seven words of that Sacha Baron Cohen headline were so promising, then it descended in specifics :(

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> One can imagine the frustration of instantly losing three hours of progress and being met with an unbeatable game

Eh, any emulator worth its salt should have a memory save function.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I’ve been baffled by the apparent market failure around housing over the last ten or twenty years.

I’m putting it down to some mix of underlying infrastructure weakness and where the profit margins sit for housing.

I wonder if the answer is to start building pre-fab high rises like this one

http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/chinese-builders-erect-30-story-building-in-15-days-20120115/

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

Why? A present high rise takes a year to build and ten years to get planning permission for. Why spend money optimising the quick bit of the process?

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

There's no market failure here. Supply is constrained below demand, putting upward pressure on prices. (They'd rise even more but for some rather famous downward pressure.) Legislating to force prices down might or might not succeed in doing so, but will creat shortages.

To get more housing, the supply - of land and building - needs to be increased. But there's strong political pressure not to do that so I don't expect dramatic movement soon.

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that my politics are based on vague morals and leftish urges, and a desire to slap Michael Gove, and other pasty-faced Tories.

Hmm, is that racist?! Baroness Warsi probably would get a slap too :)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there's a lesson for brain emulation in that SNES story.

[andrewducker]

That we can do useful approximations easily enough, but that complete emulation is going to be nigh-impossible?

Yeah, probably.

Of course, the outcome will depend on how deep a simulation we need to do to get the behaviour we want. If we need to simulate down to the molecular level then we're probably fucked.

[redshira.livejournal.com]

Parents experience greater happiness and meaning in life - could this possibly be because we live in a society/culture that excludes childless people and perceives them as less-than? Why yes, yes it could.