Comments | andrewducker: Interesting Links for 08-06-2015

andrewducker

Interesting Links for 08-06-2015

Jun 08, 2015 12:00

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Comments 30

Mining Surprises danieldwilliam June 8 2015, 11:41:05 UTC

I remember a trip out with my dad once.

He'd just picked up a new car on the company car scheme and suggested he and I go out for a drive in it.

We drove down from Aberdeen with its bustlling port to Dundee which in the early 80's seemed to be really struggling and as we parked up at the port in Dundee, empty with derilict buildings around he suggested that I might want to work hard at school.

RE: Mining Surprises andrewducker June 8 2015, 11:49:50 UTC

I could probably have done with something like that.

Specifically, I managed to make it all of the way to the other side of university without having a clear view of how businesses work, and how they fit in with the rest of society. Which feels like a staggering failing of both my parents and the education system as a whole.

Re: Mining Surprises danieldwilliam June 8 2015, 13:07:50 UTC

I wonder how much of an advantage it is to the young and clueless to have that sort of guidance and context might be.

I see that my own eldest child seems often unsure how the world works.

In the old days I'd suggest some sort of self-help book but I wonder if a website might not be better in the 21st century.

RE: Re: Mining Surprises andrewducker June 8 2015, 16:09:00 UTC

Oh, absolutely.

Something which explained the basics of economics, and how scarcity affects things, how businesses work, and taxes, etc.

All of which would have been very useful to me growing up.

(And preferably without a massive slant on it.)

Thread 7

Sumer danieldwilliam June 8 2015, 11:48:53 UTC

I am reading abotut the Sumerians a lot recently - not in depth but from several different angles.

They've cropped up in a John Keegan book on the history of war where he discusses them having sophisticated irrigation technology and the necessary social and political infrastructure to organise large projects but as their cities don't have walls he suggests no evidence of organised warfare (probably because all of the Sumerian cities had a lot in common with all theother ones and without horses or chariots or good logistics no one could get to them from outside.

I've also seen them crop up in discussions about the genesis of writing - suggesting that accountancy came first, then the means to record accountancy transactions, then writing down of words.

I think they are on my list of things to find out about.

RE: Sumer andrewducker June 8 2015, 11:57:35 UTC

I'd be interested to see what you find out!

I wonder if the first cities simply didn't think about building walls, because they'd never expected that kind of warfare/empire building. It would only be once competing cities attacked each other that city walls would be developed.

Interesting theory on writing too. Some good stuff here which seems to agree.

Re: Sumer danieldwilliam June 8 2015, 13:36:43 UTC

That's an interesting question.

I can imagine the look of stunned indignation as one Sumerian had the new world order explained to him by a refugee from the first Sumerian city to be invaded. There's a Bob Neuheart sketch in there somewhere

"They did what?

they just walked right in?. I mean, they just walked right in to your actual city?

Without an invitation, huh?

Right in to the temple? Are you sure?

Yes, yes, of course you're sure.

They didn't stop at the edge?

Uhuh,

uhuh.

Yes.

Well, when you put it like that, why would they stop at the edge?"

RE: Re: Sumer andrewducker June 8 2015, 16:09:11 UTC

*applause*

Thread 11

cmcmck June 8 2015, 12:11:24 UTC

Those chalkboard images are something to make a historian (and former teacher) think rather deeply about the ephemeral nature of time!

Just amazing! :o)

bart_calendar June 8 2015, 12:38:14 UTC

I always heard that what killed the Bee Gees is that they were such coke freaks that their label didn't want to deal with them anymore and pressured radio stations to stop playing them.

kalimac June 8 2015, 12:46:30 UTC

The profoundly incorrect statement in the e-book dilemma discussion is the comment that goes, "had I scanned and OCR’d my own physical copies, then the e-books I created would be the result of format shifting, which has been formally recognised as legal in the UK. Given that the copies I downloaded are essentially the same as the ones I would have made in this scenario, it would ridiculous to say that everyone who wants an e-book copy of a book they own has to go through the time-consuming process of making their own copy, duplicating work that has already been done ( ... )

naath June 8 2015, 13:15:31 UTC

I have two different e-book moral dillemas:

With a physical book I can lend it to people (and I *do*) without them buying a copy. With an ecopy I can't do that really, that seems sad. (Of course if I lend a physical copy *I don't have it* while it is lent, but since I rarely re-read anything that's not much of a question)

With a physical book I can IMPORT US EDITIONS. I can't import US ebooks, not even if I WENT TO THE USA and BOUGHT A KINDLE and BOUGHT THE EBOOKS WHILST THERE because I do not have a US billing address on my credit card. Personally this makes me want to smack the publishing industry upside the head.

simont June 8 2015, 15:40:55 UTC

No, actually, the work involved is precisely the point.

Well, sort of. That's a pragmatic point about enforcement tactics: as long as a given infringement is prohibitively hard work, there's no need for the government or any other interested party to put much effort into stopping people from doing it.

But it doesn't affect the question of whether it's right - a copyright infringement that cost you a lot of hard work is still illegal (even if practically speaking unlikely to be prosecuted), and a protected action (such as, under UK law, format-shifting) is still legal even if it was easy. There's no situation in which any action in this general area becomes right, either legally or morally, just because it was hard work. (Unless you count writing your own novel vs copying someone else's, I suppose! But that's not really in the same space.)