Interesting Links for 12-03-2016

[andrewducker]

Mindfulness in the workplace improves employee focus, attention, behavior (tags: mindfulness work psychology ) Plan for £1.8m new theatre in heart of Edinburgh gets green light (tags: theatre edinburgh ) Church decides to cancel Easter for whole city rather than pray with gays (tags: lgbt usa police religion easter ) Does Splenda Cause Cancer?

Comments

[bart_calendar]

That gun story doesn't seem to say what the headline says and the results of that study seem insane anyway.

Nine laws increase gun deaths and one of those laws is waiting periods?

Nine laws decrease gun deaths and one of them is microchipping (which does nothing but help law enforcement after a crime has occurred.)

[brixtonbrood]

If you significantly improve law enforcement after a crime has been committed then you reduce repeat offending, and you decrease the perception amongst potential offenders that they might get away with it. Seems entirely reasonable that that would bring down the crime rate.

[bart_calendar]

On the mosquito thing it occurs to me that introducing more bugs (particularly bugs like mosquitos which evolve very, very quickly) introducing a ton more bats into the area would probably be more effective and have less of a potential for long term environmental problems. There are already bats there, so simply having more is not an issue. Putting new bugs in is a different thing entirely.

[nojay]

Where would one source spare bats from? What sort of unoccupied roosting facilities are available for the extra bat population to use? What happens to the local population of pollinating insects? Moths and butterflies?

[threegoldfish]

And what about White Nose Syndrome? Even if you've got a magnificent environment for them, WNS is still a big problem.

[nojay]

I first read that as "White Noise Syndrome" and I sympathised with the bats having trouble echolocating prey because of ambient HF noise in the modern world. Then I read it properly.

[kalimac]

I had trouble parsing "Supercondenser stores heat as electricity" because I read it as a reference to retail establishments that sell supercondensers.

[gonzo21]

The GM mosquitos have been getting deployed in quite large numbers in Brazil for a few years now, so really the live lab-test guinea pig study has already been done on poor brown people. So the rich white folks of Florida should feel secure.

[randomdreams]

I'm pretty excited about the church cancelling their service on account of possible gays. I hope they keep doing this: cancel anything they're doing for fear gays might show up. Pretty soon they'll all just be huddled in their homes, scared to leave, and the rest of us can live our lives in peace.

[don_fitch]

Well... yes, I guess I'll go along with that. What I'm wondering is how come such a large city is in any way sponsoring a Holy Season (or day) of any specific religion. And spending any of my tax money on this, if it were my city.

Stockton is large enough, I think, to be an actual city -- quite possibly with three or more Cathedrals and the Seats of three or more Bishops, of various Christian denominations. And I don't think it has any business sponsoring any of them.

[randomdreams]

Oh, I agree. But cities paying the bills for church shenanigans on Easter has been going on forever, so it's going to take some cultural shifting to start re-establishing the separation of church and state.

[nojay]

Most cities put up Xmas decorations.