Interesting Links for 29-06-2012
Jun. 29th, 2012 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- The internet will never catch on! (Article from 1995. Looks like satire from this perspective.)
- More details (and insider info) on what happened to RBS with their "software glitch".
- 35% of Scottish electricity needs came from renewables in 2011 - and 2012 is up 45% on 2011 so far!
- If the writers of computer programming books wrote arithmetic textbooks
I have seen so many coding books which use examples that are whole, useful programs to illustrate things, rather than tiny snippets that a beginner can actually understand.
- JPMorgan's $2Billion Trading Loss May be a teensy bit higher
- Money-laundering and corruption charges rock Edinburgh council.
As Zornhau put it "HEADS ON SPIKES! BRING BACK IMPALING FOR CORRUPT OFFICIALS!"
- When SCOTUS Upheld Obamacare
- People Who Say They're Moving To Canada Because Of ObamaCare
- A great review of Season 1 of The Legend of Korra which highlights all the things that annoyed me about it.
- Is 40% the maximum level for UK public expenditure?
- Labour’s cowardice on immigration is sickening (Lib Dems also far too quiet)
- Upcoming Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies That Aren't Remakes, Sequels or Prequels
- Ursula the Sea Witch Forced to Get Liposuction for Disney Villains Beauty Line
- Verdict on 'not proven' sought from Scottish public
- Time to scrap the tax on e-books
- Scientists come up with spray on battery
- Israel stages Holocaust survivor beauty pageant
- A touching story of intolerance that brought a tear to my eye.
- The Nordic Model - I thoroughly approve
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 11:25 am (UTC)(The over-reliance on wind bothers me though. I don't much fancy living in a country where if we get a big winter high pressure system developing in jan-feb, which brings freezing temperatures, and none of us have any electricity because the wind isn't blowing.)
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Date: 2012-06-29 12:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 11:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 11:58 am (UTC)Or, to put it less sensationally, a private Israeli charity that runs an elder care program for Holocaust survivors staged a gala evening that also included a beauty pageant. As far as I know lots of assisted living facilities and elder activity programs have beauty pageants, and while you could certainly quibble with that idea, with the idea of beauty pageants in general, and with the juxtaposition of beauty pageants and the Holocaust, the gap between what actually happened and "Israel judging Holocaust survivors according to their beauty" is pretty wide.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 12:59 pm (UTC)(And I don't actually object - I just found the conflation baffling, and assumed there was some kind of artistic purpose to it. Knowing that it's even simpler and more normal than that is actually something of a relief!)
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Date: 2012-06-29 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:10 pm (UTC)Looks like an interesting selection of book adaptations forthcoming anyway - I'm not sure that fact that I really enjoyed all the books (of the ones I've read) is a good thing or not! On past experience, I seem to enjoy adaptations more when I wasn't the biggest fan of the books. Hopefully no one will do a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and completely miss the entire point of the ending!
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Date: 2012-06-29 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:38 pm (UTC)ETA: deleted comment below because it became rather redundant, I was trying to explain my point further having looked up what they actually say before they die.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-30 06:26 pm (UTC)...I can't convince myself that "nooses" is a real word, but will post this all the same.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 03:02 pm (UTC)Yes, there is a bit of a temptation to think "Book I love! They're making a failm of it! THEY WILL SURELY MISS THE POINT OF EVERTHING AND IT WILL BE AWFUL", isn't there?
('failm' was a genuine typo there, believe it or not. But definitely one to leave in, having made it. :-)
What I found interesting, reading that list, was that I had very different reactions to the idea of forthcoming films based on two books both of which I enjoyed. Ender's Game gave me that strong feeling of "SURELY THEY WILL COCK IT UP UNBEARABLY", but Neuromancer gave me a feeling of "actually that one has some chance of coming out OK". Not sure why; those were my instant gut reactions, not based on thinking it through carefully.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 03:08 pm (UTC)Personally, I'm not re-reading The Hobbit until I've seen both films, and am carefully reading behind the Game Of Thrones TV series.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 03:13 pm (UTC)But I don't know that that's necessarily the inevitable destiny of any William Gibson novel anyone tries to turn into a film! Though certainly I can't think of any faster way to wreck Neuromancer than to try to fit it into the same continuity as film-Johnny-Mnemonic.
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Date: 2012-06-29 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:07 pm (UTC)Not guilty, but don't do it again.
(Old as the hills but I love it.)
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Date: 2012-06-29 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 01:35 pm (UTC)I sort of like the idea of having the middle ground, but I don't know if it does good or not in practice.
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Date: 2012-06-29 01:38 pm (UTC)Historically, the two verdicts available to Scots juries were that the case had been "proven" or "not proven". However in a dramatic case in 1728 the jury asserted "its ancient right" to bring in a "not guilty" verdict even when the facts of the case were proven (see jury nullification). As the "not guilty" verdict gained wide acceptance amongst Scots juries, Scots began to use "not guilty" in cases where the jury felt the "not proven" verdict did not adequately express the innocence of the defendant. Shrewd defence then further encouraged this interpretation in order to persuade juries unwilling to bring in a "not guilty" verdict that the "not proven" could be brought in as a lesser or "third verdict".
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Date: 2012-06-29 01:58 pm (UTC)"When there is insufficient evidence to convict, but the words "not guilty" stick in the throat, then your verdict is "not proven."
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Date: 2012-06-29 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 02:40 pm (UTC)There are little bits of Scottish law is are cross-fertilisation from England (mainly) but then you could argue that most of Scots Law is a cross-fertilisation of Dutch law with a vague memory of Roman Law.
I recall an interesting case (possibly English) where some guy was arrested and his defence was entrapment, which is a doctrine that exists in the US but not in the British legal systems. The guy has basically been watching too much LA Law.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 02:03 pm (UTC)People Who Say They're Moving To Canada Because Of ObamaCare
Date: 2012-06-29 01:38 pm (UTC)(Many Americans with partisan views on this issue seem genuinely confused about what it means to have a "socialised" health care system, but it's been a standard talking point that Britain and Canada have socialised medicine and it's awful, so I'm a little surprised people would make THAT stupid mistake, even if they also say things that sound much more stupid to an outsider. But I've been wrong about things that I thought must have been parodies before :))
Re: People Who Say They're Moving To Canada Because Of ObamaCare
Date: 2012-06-29 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 02:06 pm (UTC)I haven't seen it yet, but judging from what I've heard, that sounds very apt. Although to be fair, it possibly doesn't cover what was good about it (judging by the way many people liked a lot of it, even if they were also very annoyed), but it does seem to sum up precisely why there were problems.
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Date: 2012-06-30 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-30 06:16 pm (UTC)They're actually making an Ender's Game movie? Whoa. Not sure I like that idea anymore, actually. Really psyched about some of the things in that list though.
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Date: 2012-07-02 02:07 pm (UTC)But on the plus side, I am finally getting to rewatch Avatar: The Last Airbender now that I've convinced my partner that it's worth seeing.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-02 02:21 pm (UTC)