Interesting Links for 30-07-2012
Jul. 30th, 2012 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
- Critical Mass police ban blocked by law lords
- Tom Hardy Rapping With A Baby Is The Internet’s Reckoning
- £1.4bn plan for Fife wind farm submitted
- Music Labels Won’t Share Pirate Bay Loot With Artists
- Gretna Green residents are hoping for an influx of people wanting gay marriages.
- Climate sceptics carry out investigation, change their minds. Huzzah for science!
- Olympic opening ceremony: Chinese Dissident Artist Ai Weiwei's review
- Surprisingly Good Evidence That Real Name Policies Fail To Improve Comments
- The New York Times gets more than half its money from subscribers. Still making a loss though.
- Employment Minister Chris Grayling moves to push people deemed too sick to work back into work.
- The London Olympics are the most Right-wing major event in Britain’s modern history.
- Fall, Mortality, and the Machine: Tolkien and Technology
- Mississippi church refuses to marry black couple.
- The Lord of the Rings in 99 seconds. In song.
- All music sounds the same these days - Computer confirms what your gran always said.
- Ubisoft "Uplay" DRM allows _any_ website to take over your computer.
- Ursula K. Le Guin on being asked to produce books like Harry Potter, and the quality of her adaptations
- How our brains see men as people and women as body parts.
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Date: 2012-07-30 07:11 pm (UTC)"Facebook"
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Date: 2012-07-30 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 12:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 11:40 pm (UTC)The point is that the House of Lords ruled that Critical Mass was not a 'demonstration' and so the Met could not require that they be given notice of it. They did not rule that Critical Mass was somehow exempt from police control, which is the implication I am getting from some references to this ruling.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of CM going onto the much-maligned Olympic routes, and the Met's response to this, I don't think CM can rely on the Lords ruling as an excuse or defence. Indeed, it effectively held that they are users of the road, no more so nor less so than anyone else, and so I would think are bound by whatever restrictions (fair or unfair) are imposed on other road users.
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Date: 2012-07-30 12:03 pm (UTC)However... I wonder what the results would be if breasts were not part of the study as a sexualized body part. (I mean, breasts are obviously sexualized, don't get me wrong.)
I mean, it would occur to me that both male and female babies instinctively learn to recognize the breast of their mother - as a food source and that that subconscious instinct may carry over into adult life.
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Date: 2012-07-30 12:08 pm (UTC)Yes, I know that for me all my principled and practical objections to the Olympics as a whole were completely wiped out by how impressed I was by the opening ceremony - I forgot all about Dow, G4S and the ravaging of London. Write 'NHS' with some beds and I just roll over and play dead-from-socialist-pride. *Rolls eyes*
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Date: 2012-07-30 12:12 pm (UTC)But yes.
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Date: 2012-07-30 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 06:28 pm (UTC)Maybe it's just cheaper to buy a brand with a name that has negative associations?
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Date: 2012-07-30 06:33 pm (UTC)If there's something _Dow_ is responsible for, which they should have done, or not done, then I am happy to hear it. Otherwise, local elites fucking over local populace isn't something I'm willing to hold them responsible for.
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Date: 2012-07-30 03:48 pm (UTC)*joins you in the eye rolling*
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Date: 2012-07-30 05:02 pm (UTC)A: Of course not. Before it shut down, the Openbook website demonstrated that people were posting quite appalling things under their real names. Why would their comments be different?
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Date: 2012-07-30 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 07:23 am (UTC)I do suspect that there is a chunk of the population that is vastly more comfortable using real names rather than made-up ones. And certainly, it makes it much easier to have work colleagues and relatives on there. But that doesn't make it suitable for all occasions.
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Date: 2012-07-30 07:01 pm (UTC)Today's Germans are not liable for the Holocaust, as something that happened before they were born.
Today's white USA-ians are not liable for slavery etc., again as something done before they were born.
But whereas you cannot help your birthplace/situation you can decide which corporations you buy out and evaluate their past acts.
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Date: 2012-07-30 07:45 pm (UTC)That makes zero sense to me.
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Date: 2012-07-30 08:04 pm (UTC)And the Indian govt., of course.
From http://www.corporatenarc.com/dowchemicalscandal2.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Chemical_Company#Vietnam_War:_napalm_and_Agent_Orange
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Date: 2012-07-30 08:08 pm (UTC)"The Indian Union Carbide Company – the American firm’s joint venture with the government – was bankrupted by this. All of the capital of that company went to a compensation fund administered by the Government of India. The American owner of half of the company gave extra money to the compensation fund, on top of giving up all its assets in India. The Indian company was resold – with all the proceeds going to the compensation fund – as the Everready Company of India.
14 years ago, the Dow Chemical Company of America bought the assets of the American Union Carbide company (the company that had already surrendered all of its Indian assets and given extra compensation that went far beyond the value of any business that it ever did in India)."
So, what more should they have done?
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Date: 2012-07-30 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 07:48 pm (UTC)Well, it's _mostly_ right wing-ish, economically liberal, socially centre-ish.
They're Conservative insofar as that being the party they support, but from my reading they come across as being towards the centre of that party, rather than the lunatic fringes. I could see Obama reading it :->
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Date: 2012-07-30 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 07:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 08:21 pm (UTC)The Telegraph talks to a constituency that is economically liberal (which in a British sense means free market, low taxes, floating exchange rates and responsible fiscal policy) but not socially conservative in the way that American conservatives would be. It has a strong libertarian streak, a good example of which would be Daniel Hannan, a Conservative Member of the European Parliament, who is probably on the far right of the party on a simple left-right axis, but who in American terms would have far more in common with the Libertarian Party than any Republican, even Tea Party Republicans.
Generally I agree with Andrew. I could see Obama reading it. I could also have seen Reagan reading it, but not Bush jr.
You may find my cut-out-and-keep guide to British newspapers useful: http://philmophlegm.livejournal.com/235261.html?view=1326589#t1326589
It's not entirely serious and mostly plays to popular stereotypes rather than the actual truth. Although I find that stereotypes often have a grain of truth in them. The stereotypical Daily Telegraph reader is a retired army colonel smoking a pipe living somewhere in rural southern England.
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Date: 2012-07-30 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 09:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 09:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 08:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 09:42 am (UTC)Personally, I think that use of the term 'Tory' to describe members and supporters of the Conservative and Unionist Party is misleading. That party emerged out of a faction within the Tories' traditional opponents, the Whigs. And what is more, the modern Conservatives, especially the modern libertarian right-wing of the party, probably have more in common with the Liberal Party of the 19th century than the Conservative Party of that time.
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Date: 2012-07-31 10:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 11:04 am (UTC)