Interesting Links for 13-08-2014

[andrewducker]

• Testosterone in men increases their brains' response to threat
  (tags: testosterone emotion aggression )
• The world's largest scale model of the Solar System is in Sweden. Just about.
  (tags: astronomy scale sweden space )
• What happens if you write a TCP stack in Python?
  (tags: programming tcp networking )
• Finally, there will be a reversible USB

Comments

[bart_calendar]

We actually do have mandatory sex education - it's just bad sex education. (Well, mostly mandatory, your mom can write a letter saying it's against your religion and they'll pull you out of it. But it is mandatory for the schools to offer it.)

[andrewducker]

According to:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-siebold/sex-education-schools_b_3006483.html
and
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-policies-on-sex-education-in-schools.aspx

it's only mandatory in 22 states.

[bart_calendar]

Fuck.

Thank god I grew up on the East Coast.

The more I learn about the South and the Midwest the happier I am that I have no experience with those societies.

[andrewducker]

Pretty much - I was reading something about US history in the South yesterday, and could not work out whether it was massive hyperbole, and that real life was that horrible. I'll get it posted for tomorrow and you can fill me in :->

[bart_calendar]

The history of the South is generally horrible. Much of it seems to come from the fact that for much of its history the area was an agro based economy which means that the idea of reading and general education was seen as an unneeded luxury for much of the population. This allowed the actually educated part of the population to exploit everyone and the idea of social or economic advancement simply didn't exist. Add into that what was essentially a caste system and things got fucked and stayed fucked.

[bart_calendar]

It will be interesting to see what happens when they experience an agro boom in a year or two.

The same fields and soil that produce tobacco (a crop that is declining in value) will be great for growing pot and as more and more states legalize pot and the feds eventually get rid of federal pot laws there is bound to be a huge amount of money flowing into the Carolinas and other once tobacco dependent areas. I'd like to think that all that money will lead to an economic boon, but could also see it simply making R.J. Reynolds and Phillip Morris stock owners wealthier than they already are.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. Getting more jobs into The South would be good.

Although I suspect an awful lot of it nowadays will be automated.

[bart_calendar]

You can only automate so much. Hydroponic pot could be automated, but isn't really cost effective because the lamps burn an insane amount of electricity. Which means that it's going to be much more cost effective to plant in fields - and someone has to drive the tractors and combines and cutting machines. And you have to deliver the pot to other states and someone has to drive the trucks. And you need factories to get rid of the stems and package it and factories need some workers. You then need actual people to market the brand of weed you are selling, accountants to deal with the math side of it, plant scientists to create strains you can patent. There would have to be new jobs all up and down the food chain.

[momentsmusicaux]

Get rid of the stem? Process them surely! Hemp is a really useful material, that only fell out of fashion due to the criminalization of cannabis. Would be handy to have it back in circulation!