Interesting Links for 07-06-2013

[andrewducker]

• What would Westminster look like under PR?
  (tags: politics uk )
• Letter to Times calls for an end to the war on drugs
  (tags: uk drugs )
• Why princesses need to understand maths
  (tags: princess funny maths )
• Glasgow University holds secret inquiry into sexist heckling, finds everyone innocent
  (tags: sexism glasgow debate )
• China is changing

Comments

[gonzo21]

The problem with the food production article is it pre-supposes no radical environment change. Look at current UK food production, farmers are still having to buy feed in for their livestock because the grass crop is two months behind where it should be at this time of year.

[andrewducker]

Well, yes. It looks at what's happened up until this point - it's possible that climate change might cause massive problems. Or it might mean that large swathes of Russia that were too cold are now suitable for crop production. Either way around it's pretty amazing that we're so much more efficient than we were in the past.

[gonzo21]

This is true. I know GM crops are much lamented, (I'm still on the fence, I don't think they've proved they are safe to consume yet, and there are substantial question marks) but what they can do with them is amazing. The drought and pest resistent varieties are astonishingly clever.

[danieldwilliam]

And think what we'll be able to do with them in 100 years.

[danieldwilliam]

The Glasgow University Union article made me really, really cross.

It feels like really close to home. Probably because it is really close to home. I nearly went to Glasgow Uni and I’m exactly the sort of person who would have been active in the debating scene.

Furious that I’m at risk of being associated with this sort of behaviour.

[a_pawson]

Me too. I was a member of the GUU for the 4 years I was at Glasgow, but had nothing to do with union politics or debating. I only really joined the GUU because it had a decent snooker hall. If those involved in the running of the union are anything like those depicted in the arcicle, I suspect I would have transferred my membership over to the QMU.

[philmophlegm]

The worst thing to me about that story was this:

In an unnecessarily sexist and clearly misogynistic atmosphere, it was left to women to complain. None of the men present stood up and called other men out for referring to a young lady as a "frigid bitch". That's unchivalrous and cowardly. It's the equivalent of weedy little boys backing up the school bully.

If that's what young Glaswegian men are like nowadays, it explains a lot about the decline of Scottish football, among other things.

[a_pawson]

Unless things have changed since I was at Glasgow (I graduated in 1996), I don't think it say much about your average Glaswegian man. The reputation of both the GUU board and the debating society was that they was very much the domain of public schoolboys.

[danieldwilliam]

The article on what the UK parliament would look like under PR is having a weird effect on me.

I thnk the author has followed much the same reasoning as I do when I think about the issue and I don’t think I can disagree with their analysis or even their outcomes.

And yet their outcomes looks very odd to me. I don’t believe them at all.

I’m having some kind of cognitive dissonance or a mind melt.

Perhaps too much coffee this morning.

[andrewducker]

There are, I'm sure, multiple possible outcomes. What would _you_ predict?

[apostle_of_eris]

American food production ("agriculture") is an industrial process with three primary inputs: oil, topsoil, and water. All three are being exhausted at calamitous rates.