Interesting Links for 26-04-2022

[andrewducker]

1. The West is finally giving Ukraine the weapons it needs to win

(tags:Ukraine Russia war weaponry )

2. Turkish airspace closed to planes carrying troops from Russia to Syria

(tags:Ukraine Russia Turkey )

3. Alex Salmond lawyer guilty of professional misconduct

(tags:law Scotland )

4. Channel migrant boats: Ministers drop plans to turn back vessels

(tags:UK migration )

5. Elegant Six-Page Proof Reveals the Emergence of Random Structure

(tags:random mathematics )

6. Elon Musk is going to *hate* running Twitter. I wonder how long he'll last

(tags:Twitter ElonMusk Doom socialnetworking )

7. How does your part of the UK do in the Sausage Roll Index?

(tags:economics food uk )

8. Warning over health impacts as Scotland's lochs and reservoirs heat up due to climate change

(tags:globalwarming scotland water )

9. Drones Have Transformed Blood Delivery in Rwanda

(tags:drone rwanda blood )

10. Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?

(tags:teeth prehistory archeology society farming )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

The sausage roll article is interesting. I wonder about using the median wage rather than the mean wage but I don't know enough about labour econometrics to know if you'd get big differences between the two which would vary from one location to another.

[andrewducker]

I'm totally in favour of using median wages for this kind of thing. Gives a more accurate idea of what most people will have as an income. Otherwise adding a few billionaires to the population makes it look like things are more affordable for everyone

[danieldwilliam]

Not if the billionaires aren't earning a salary or wage.

I guess it depends what you are measuring. If you are trying to get a feel for the overall prosperity of an area than mean wage is probably more useful than median, whereas, as you suggest median is probably more indicative of what an ordinary punter can or can not afford.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I'm not a big believer in "the overall prosperity of an area" if the median and mean are far apart from each other.

[danieldwilliam]

Might depend on whether you were thinking about opening a Waitrose or a Lidl.

[andrewducker]

If you were thinking of opening a Waitrose then I suspect you'd want the median wages to be pretty high so you could have lots of customers. 5 customers who are international CEOs isn't going to be nearly as useful as 5000 who earn enough to do their regular shop there.

[naath]

3m17, but that doesn't reflect that housing costs are high, reflecting mean wages in a way that national food chains don't. Cost of living is hard (you might get a room for 600/month, or 67 hours at the national living wage)

[foms]

I'd be awfully tempted to do tricks like mean average of the modal average from each of the four lowest quintiles.

[cmcmck]

Simple answer to ten is sugar- lack of in diet.

[channelpenguin]

You can't buy Greggs "sausage" rolls in Berlin (Germans would have no truck whatsoever with the low actual meat content), but theoretically, I personally beat even the lowest time-to-earn one by a little bit. Hmmm. I'd expected it to be by a much greater margin. I assume they used takehome pay?

[andrewducker]

Good question! London wages are very high for a lot of people, of course.

[foms]

The linked article says "The approach was to take the latest available estimates of median gross hourly pay for full-time employees from the 2021 ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE)"

[channelpenguin]

Well that's just stupid. Using gross pay makes it pretty much meaningless as "how long it takes to earn". Bah.

[aldabra]

Elon Musk isn't going to like spaceships either. Couldn't do three months in his own apartment in a global pandemic. No self-knowledge at all.

Why isn't uricase a slimming supplement then? (disappears down rabbit hole)

[armiphlage]

Wikipedia indicates that uric acid helps reduce the risk of cancers in humans, which might deter people from using it for weight loss.

Or not.