Interesting Links for 24-07-2012

[andrewducker]

• Liberal reform in employment law
  (tags: employment politics government libdem uk )
• Three strikes rule has halved piracy in New Zealand. Kinda. Anyone got more stats?
  (tags: piracy copyright newzealand )
• Lego The Lord of The Rings - the whole story in 4 videos (with a few teensy liberties taken)
  (tags: funny video lego lotr )
• Frank Miller’s Year One Screenplay (a review)
  (tags: scripts movies batman DarrenAronofsky FrankMiller )
• On the expertise available in the House Of Lords
  (tags: government houseoflords experts )
• Gorilla Youngsters Seen Dismantling Poachers' Traps
  (tags: traps intelligence behaviour gorillas )
• Why Crunch Modes Doesn't Work: working more than 40 hours per week is detrimental to performance
  (tags: management history work productivity )
• Sticking up for David Gauke and his tax-avoidance comments
  (tags: libdem uk tax )
• Photo-bombing seal! (And Llama!)
  (tags: funny photos animals )
• How to suck at your religion (not likely to change anyone's mind, but pretty funny)
  (tags: religion comic funny )
• Gender quotas for political parties set to become law in Ireland
  (tags: ireland gender equality )

Comments

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

What good is half a pirate?

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I love the concept that Nickleback is god's punishment for gay sex.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

That made me roar with laughter too

[hano.livejournal.com]

Me too. I must remember that line.
(still doesn't explain the Smashing Pumpkins though)

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Some analysis of the RIANZ's made-up numbers (hey, we detected less file copying, there must be less, people can't have held off to see what happened, then carried on while hiding their activities more effectively!) here
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/07/section_92a_after_six_months.html

[andrewducker]

Thanks for that!

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Crunch time does work, but most people fail to understand it's not a simple productivity boost, it's productivity arbitrage.

For 2-3 weeks (if I'm remembering "Slack" right) crunch time will give you a serious performance boost. However, it'll then be matched by a performance drop in the following weeks, which gets worse the more you keep doing it.

If you're 2 weeks away from a critical release and you KNOW you won't need the team for 3 weeks after that, crunch time is an excellent way to arbitrage performance.

If you're an idiot and decide to force your team to do it for 6 months... you're an idiot.

[andrewducker]

As the article says:
"Productivity drops when working 60-hour weeks compared with 40-hour weeks. Initially, the extra 20 hours a week makes up for the lost productivity and total output increases. But the Business Roundtable study states that construction productivity starts to drop very quickly upon the transition to 60-hour weeks. The fall-off can be seen within days, is obvious within a week...and just keeps sliding from there. In about two months, the cumulative productivity loss has declined to the point where the project would actually be farther ahead if you'd just stuck to 40-hour weeks all along."

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I'd say that's an over-generalisation - the exact drop-off depends on type of work, morale, and state of the team beforehand - but basically, yes.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

As far as I recall, the military worked all this out a couple of hundred years ago - that's why we even HAVE a nominal 40 hour week, this is where the number comes from. It's the proven absolute max you can get out of people day-in day-out without notable performance loss.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Henry Ford is the most famous early adopter and experimenter (see linked articles). In the 19th century much longer working hours were common practice.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

This is my favourite post so far on Lords reform.

[andrewducker]

It seems a bit muddled. On the one hand saying that we should have experts who are members of the second house, but on the other saying that we should recruit people when needed.

Personally, I'd be happy with having experts recruited as needed to revise bills, and then having the government have to clarify why it was ignoring the advice of the experts.

If it wasn't the for the fact that they would just do what they do with their drugs advisors since time immemorial and just ignore them.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I think the details need work - see also conversations in comments - but I like the principles quite a lot.

[andrewducker]

I like the idea of people who do not depend on elections and are not partisan taking a long-term view of our laws to ensure that they are not idiotic.

But I'm not sure why this needs a "second chamber", rather than a series of reporting committees that work with the House of Commons?

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I think they need to have decision-making and arguably overriding decision-making power for it to work. But might be wrong. Haven't given deep consideration.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

But the Government merrily ignoring its drug advisors is surely the best argument for needing experts with more power than a committee?

[andrewducker]

So, if we want to continue with the primacy of the House Of Commons (which, apparently, we do), what power should we give them?

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

That is a very good question and the honest answer is that I really don't know. The current powers of the Lords to reform legislation aren't a bad starting place for the debate though, I think. Except of course, we need to decide what we're doing with the Lords themselves first, because if they are more democratically elected than the Commons, we start getting into awkward constitutional territory over people who are less representative having more power. It's a difficult area and not a topic I really have the time to devote brain power to at the moment. Unfortunately, I suspect most people feel much the same, thus why we haven't got very far with Lord's reform over the past 100 years!

[fearmeforiampink]

I like having a second chamber that can revise and scrutinise, but which can never permanently block. It dodges the legislative deadlock you see in America, but provides a slowdown where needed. And I'm still of the opinion that people will vote differently for an elected Senate than they do for the Commons.

The problem with Experts is that they're experts on just one thing. And also, that that runs out — whilst a fair number of the non-MP members of the Lords (about 40% have been MP) have had expertise, a lot of them have been retired for a decade or more, leaving them rather out of date.

Even beyond that, there's also apparently a trend for more expertise to mean less votes — at Unlock Democracy we've not yet fully cross-referenced the numbers, but combining the research we've recently done on voting records, with that on the expertise of the chamber we did some time ago (rating Peers who've never been MPs or Councillors out of 5 for expertise, where 5 would be QC if you're in law, or Professorship if in academia, -1 for 5 years retired, -2 for 10+ years retired), and higher ratings on that broadly seems to correlate with lower voting/speaking numbers.

There's also a noticeable number of never-MPs who aren't actually that expert, and have just tried to become an MP once or twice, then been made a Lord by the party.

Everyone seems to have their own system to fix the Lords, but that just breaks down to quibbling over specifics. The current proposals have a decent chance of making it through, and all these specific 'get experts via this method' systems don't.

(Note of bias/admission of interests (for people other than andrewducker, who already knows): I work for Unlock Democracy, a not-for-profit campaigning organisation that's been pushing for Lords Reform for a long time. UD has some specific areas it disagrees with the current proposals, but overall supports the bill. However, my words are my own, and not in any way UD's official position)

[andrewducker]

I like having a second chamber that can revise and scrutinise, but which can never permanently block.
Of course, that does leave you open to the revisions just being reverted back repeatedly. I assume that there's only so many times the revisions can be made, and at least it raises awareness.

[fearmeforiampink]

In theory, no, revisions can go back and forth as much as they're voted on. When done at high speed, it's known as Parliamentary Ping-Pong, and the key is to work out the concessions that will let the bill make it through.

However, the commons always retains the ability to vote something through, have the lords amend it, then refuse to accept those amendments, and push the bill through with the Parliament act. Generally this has resulted in the Lords eventuallly giving way on stuff.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Internet piracy rates in New Zealand have halved since the introduction of the controversial "three strikes" rule ... as measured by the industry group who lobbied for that law. Hardly independent.

Also, making an activity illegal makes it harder (or outright impossible) to measure. I would not be surprised if what they're measuring is exactly the kind of piracy which *can* be targeted by the new law. Squeeze a balloon in one place and it will just bulge elsewhere.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

That Batman Year One script sounds... unpleasant. I'm not sure that's a Batman I'm interested in seeing - and I quite like Aronofsky (although I don't much like Miller). As I was reading it I was thinking it felt much more like the Punisher, and then the writer made that very point.

[andrewducker]

Yup. Definitely Frank Miller heading out on his long walk to crazytown.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much excessive crunch time is the result of managers who are also working such long hours that their judgement is impaired.

In re "How to Suck at Religion": Jews (all denominations so far as I know) accept converts. It's a very common mistake to believe that they don't.

[andrewducker]

Yes, I wouldn't take the "How to suck at religion" post at all seriously. The idea that people who believe that X is the truth wouldn't want to also tell their children that X is the truth seems barkingly mad to me, and yet it's one I hear from people on a regular basis.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The thing is, the idea that Jews don't accept converts is a common mistake, so it's not likely to be recognized as an exaggeration.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Also even converts don't actually have to believe in God.

[andrewducker]

It's Judaism. God gets to have an opinion, but he doesn't get the casting vote.

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

A comment with link that I posted about 11 hours ago has been spam-binned.

[andrewducker]

Unbinned! Sorry, hadn't realised it had been trapped.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I was diving off the Northhumberland coast a few weeks ago. The seals there are very friendly and hilarious.

I pretty much agree 100% with that David Gauke thing. So many people have been saying "but I pay cash for..." -- that's not the point.

[andrewducker]

Seals always look like a lot of fun to me. But that's probably because I equate them with dogs, which I love.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I refer to them as "sea puppies"... they're very often playful underwater -- I think they know they have the advantage so can do what they like with divers without danger. You can very often scratch them under the chin (which they seem to like) -- I'd only try it wearing thick gloves though as a nip from them could be nasty (few diseases in the mouth). They sometimes seem to slightly try to imitate people.

If the guy in the picture is diving off the Farne islands (as I suspect) those seals see a lot of divers -- it's a very popular dive site (this year there were five dive boats lined up by the same spot -- I usually only see that in Egypt's top wrecks). The seals see so many divers they've even learned to play tricks. They quite often tug divers fins with their mouths but I've seen one tug a diver's fin and swim off behind a rock to hide so the diver is confused when looking round.

I've surfaced from a dive with one seal hugging my leg and another biting my fin. I don't know really why they do it. I'm pretty sure it is just playfulness.

A few years ago Caron was swimming with a buddy during the mating season when a lone seal came across the pair. A while later he came back with a seal friend and they proceeded to try to seduce the divers. At one point she found herself pinned to the sea floor in a seal hug. Perhaps that's a bit too friendly.

[andrewducker]

That sounds amazing. You only get seals in colder waters, don't you? Which would be a shame, as while I enjoyed SCUBA in Cyprus and Israel I don't really fancy it in the North Sea.

[steer.livejournal.com]

You do get warm water seals -- Monk seals particularly... but they're quite rare I believe. I don't know how playful they would be as a lot of them are near extinction in some cases through human activity. If you're off to Hawaii you might get a chance to swim with them?

[andrewducker]

I'm not off to Hawaii. Possibly Norway, but Hawaii is sadly far too far/expensive to be on the cards any time soon.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Same here!