Interesting Links for 04-03-2019
Mar. 4th, 2019 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Brexit: Michael Gove admits farmers may never recover from no-deal
- (tags:UK europe farming doom )
- Honda reveals it had plans to make electric cars in Swindon before plant closure
- (tags:UK europe Honda doom cars )
- Momo challenge: The anatomy of a hoax
- (tags:fake news journalism police children )
- Herbalist Who Told Diabetic Boy To Use Lavender Oil Instead Of Insulin Is Jailed For His Death
- (tags:diabetes death usa OhForFucksSake fraud )
- Women hit back at archaic and damaging views on transgender rights in scathing open letter
- (tags:lgbt transgender scotland women )
- Women call ambulance for husbands with heart attacks but not for themselves
- (tags:women health heart society OhForFucksSake )
- China's Ambitious Plan to Build the World's Biggest Supergrid
- (tags:electricity china )
- The Birthday Paradox, and why hashing algorithms need such a huge number space to avoid collisions
- (tags:mathematics birthday )
- What's the worst wedding you've been at?
- (tags:wedding fail )
- Mixing different measurement scales, for fun and, well, more fun
- (tags:measurement funny )
- Humans don't actually make very good teachers
- (tags:teaching psychology attention )
- How ebook piracy can destroy the chances of you seeing a sequel to a book you loved
- (tags:books piracy business publishing )
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no subject
Date: 2019-03-04 12:29 pm (UTC)Suuurrreee......I wear the Dior 'New Look' every day of my life already.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-04 01:24 pm (UTC)Since this was nearly 40 years ago, I get to reveal that the sequel was happy: the couple are still married, and their two children are now adults.
So glad I got OUT of Las Vegas
Date: 2019-03-04 06:53 pm (UTC)My folks had to pick me up at the airport from the late flight in their rental car.
The groom's family was supposed to take everyone out for dinner - and did not wait for us, so only my sister went. They ALL got drunk as hell.
The groom & best man had a fist fight & groom/my sis spent the night in the emergency room. The best man ended up in jail for the weekend.
They all show up the next day, hung-over, for the 1pm ceremony at a cheap chapel with no shade - and the prior wedding party ran late. So an hour spent outdoors, in Las Vegas in July - 108 to 110 F and no shade or seating.
Then it turns out the chapel could hold 12 if everyone squished together - and there were 20-odd there. We had been sitting in the rental to keep my 90-year old g-ma healthy, so g-ma, mom & I stayed in the car.
Photos for the ceremony were done by one of the groom's friends - so everyone had to stand out in the sun again. [Since I never saw evidence of any pics, my guess is he screwed up somehow.]
By this point I had used all the [large] tube of 50-block sunscreen on self - and everyone else attending because NO ONE else brought sunscreen. I was the only one who wore a hat. I was in long sleeves/full coverage - dying in the heat. [I'm pale a.f.]
As the wedding group is getting into cars, someone bumps into me, knocking my prescription sunglasses to the asphalt and a car drives over them.
At the wedding dinner, they booked us for 20 reserved places at a bar - and 30 were there in the party by then. The catering guys never showed, but had called the bar to warn us.
The cake never showed and my sis only found out this about an hour later because the bar's kitchen staff lied that it was 'in the back' so the entire group wouldn't leave before spending money there.
Everyone got drunk again [except me, since I don't drink] - and I drove my mom, dad, g-ma back to our motel. There was another fight in the bar later that night - but my sister didn't want to talk about it.
...and the marriage did not last a year.
Re: So glad I got OUT of Las Vegas
Date: 2019-03-04 10:08 pm (UTC)Re: So glad I got OUT of Las Vegas
Date: 2019-03-05 10:41 pm (UTC)Hearing her bitterly complain about how 'her friends' had messed up the wedding by failing to photograph, get the cake there - and apparently failed to cater the food at the bar made me feel much less sympathy for her. She had [still has] a habit of asking if someone is ABLE to do something and then -assumes- that the person WILL do the thing she has not actually ASKED them to do.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-04 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-04 04:10 pm (UTC)Teaching and measurement scales
Date: 2019-03-05 09:28 am (UTC)I do like a good measurement scale.
My day job in educational technology often includes dealing with different scales for measuring different things to do with learning. There's tests of what you've learned, which vary in sophistication from mandatory, standardised tests like IQ and the American SAT, to ad hoc tests that the teacher just made up for the lesson you were just in. Then there's tests of how you learn, or how you are taught, which span the gamut from the well-intentioned but largely disproven (all the many variations of learning styles) to the well-established (things like the Approaches to Study Inventory and its many, many relations, and any number of self-regulated learning scales). These proliferate because generating and validating a new scale is fun (for particular values of fun), and gets you vastly more citations than if you simply use an existing one.
Because there are so many, there is often some discussion about which is the most cromulent measurement scale for a particular context. If the discussion is getting too silly, and/or I'm feeling mischievous, I'll suggest my favourites, usually in obfuscated form by citing the papers rather than naming the scale.
The first is particularly suited to assessing the response of learners to a teaching intervention. It is Teasdale & Jennet's (1974) GCS, aka the Glasgow Coma Scale.
The second is better suited for assessing the teaching intervention itself. My favourite here is Lewis & Heaton (1997), otherwise known as the Bristol Stool Form Scale.
(For largely unhappy reasons, I am more familiar with these two scales than I would like to be, but I find getting a dark laugh out of them is helpful.)
Chinese Super Grids
Date: 2019-03-05 12:41 pm (UTC)I also note that China being the first to build a hybrid UHV AC-DC grid is finding it difficult. Which I think is evidence in favour of my theory that China's rapid growth is mostly because it is operating inside the exiting technology frontier and that when it tries innovation it finds it just as difficult as everyone else.
But I look forward to them building and funding huge transmission lines through Asia and even more so to them then going bust.
Re: Chinese Super Grids
Date: 2019-03-05 12:59 pm (UTC)Re: Chinese Super Grids
Date: 2019-03-05 01:14 pm (UTC)Re: Chinese Super Grids
Date: 2019-03-05 01:15 pm (UTC)Sounds good to me!
UK farming, post-Brexit
Date: 2019-03-05 10:36 pm (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_Zealand#20th_century
(With the slight difference that you're leaving the EU, whereas in our case it was the equivalent of the EU leaving you.)
NZ put it's begging coat on then and eventually negotiated a deal with the EEC that allowed us a relativly soft landing. (Relative to what you'll probably experience if you have a hard Brexit...) 90% of our exports were from farming in the 1950s, with 65% of them going to Britain. By 1973, post you joining the EEC, only 26% of our exports were going to Britain.
Now our export destinations are...
China 24%
Australia 15%
US 9.7%
Japan 6.4%
South Korea 3.1%
UK 2.9%
Germany 2.1%
Taken from here: https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/nzl/
We have trade deals with China and Australia and are in the TPP. (Meaning the CPTPP, post the US pulling out.) And we're currently negotiating a trade deal with the EU...
https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/trade/free-trade-agreements/agreements-under-negotiation/eu-fta/eu-nz-free-trade-agreement-overview/
Look there if you want to see how long trade deals take to negotiate. Add to that that you'd be negotiating from a point of weakness. So yeah, you're screwed.
Long before Brexit I asked someone who wanted to leave the EU what were examples of great British products these days. Their answer? F1 cars. WTF?
Seriously though, what do you make that anyone would want to buy?
Re: UK farming, post-Brexit
Date: 2019-03-05 10:44 pm (UTC)https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exports_of_the_United_Kingdom?wprov=sfla1
All of which is shafted by Brexit.
Oh, and we're mostly a service economy nowadays. Which is going to be even worse.
Re: UK farming, post-Brexit
Date: 2019-03-06 05:38 am (UTC)But yeah, I know you don't live or die because of exports. (Like we near enough do.)
All of your options seem poor, including no Brexit, given the level of division in the UK.