Interesting Links for 30-11-2011

[andrewducker]

• Welsh paralympic great Tanni Grey-Thompson criticises absence of women on BBC Sports Personality Of The Year list
  (tags: women sports uk bbc gender )
• The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin (I find it fascinating. Sticking to pounds for now though.)
  (tags: bitcoin currency economics money Technology )
• Good Lord, Windows phones seem to be selling. (Always

Comments

[notlosers]

Hrm. Re: the 17 reasons post --

I agree with 1

I'm guilty of 2 (it's an awesome word!)

3 misses the point entirely.

They do mean it. That's the point. You can absolutely tell when it's been mandated that someone smiles, or if they feel like they have to, but people really are smiling at you for natural reasons. On a personal level, it's a less cynical culture. They do want you to have a nice day - and again, when they don't, you know it. I know it sounds unlikely coming from a European environment, but I swear to you, it's true

[daveon]

9 drives me f'king insane. I'm a Brit living in America. The fact that my father was born in Limerick and I have an Irish passport doesn't make me Irish anything, anymore than the fact my wife has Chinese, Indian and French ancestry and a family from Mauritius makes her anything other than South African.

The number of times I've heard, "oh I'm Norweigian/Scots/Irish/German/Spanish...." when actually, the speaker hasn't had an ancestor born outside the USA since the 19th century, is quite high. I was born in England, I'm British - the fact that I and about 5m other British English people have Irish parents is beside the point.

It's actually an interesting counterpoint to 8 - holding onto something that isn't really real but having a strong national identify to the detriment of all others when you feel like it.

[strawberryfrog]

It's a semantic difference. I could say "I am six foot", but what I really mean is "My height is six foot". The context is implied.

When an American says "I'm Irish", they mean "I am an American of Irish ancestry" - they are certainly not claiming that their patriotic loyalty to the Republic of Ireland is greater than their patriotic loyalty to the United States of America.

The context is implied, and often forgotten. The confusion comes when dealing with someone from outside of the parochial context, for whom the statement "I'm Irish" has a more straightforward meaning.

[daveon]

Nope, it's not semantic. I know perfectly well they're saying they are an American of Irish ancestry. What I am saying as an Englishman of Irish Parents, it's an utterly meaningless distinction especially for something who's ancestors left in the 1840s when the non Dairy farming/Smithing parts of my family got out of dodge. By that distinction about 75% of the English population, including the ones the IRA held responsible for the crimes of their ancestors were English of Irish descent.

What I am saying is the context of your ancestry, usually used to imply some kind of kinship with me or family members(*), is pure nonsense.

(*) - My sister got into a nasty verbal fight in a bar in Boston because the assembled "Irish" couldn't understand why she, somebody with an Irish parent didn't feel she was Irish, while they, with some Irish great-grand parents did.

[i_ate_my_crusts]

the "women who play online games have more sex" link is dubious; the percentage differences are barely sufficient to count as any kind of significant difference, and there's no controlling for other factors (eg, those who are fitter/more active seems to correlate just as well with the higher rates of sex, but they don't appear to have controlled for activity to see whether it is activity or online games or both that is a factor. Sigh.)

[momentsmusicaux]

The 'respecting other people's beliefs' comic and yesterday's 'I won’t “agree to disagree”' -- both very good.

I wonder, are these indicators of a reaction against happy clappy everyone-can-be-right liberalism?

[andrewducker]

One assumes so.

[eatsoylentgreen]

the spammy sites I posted were sites that were de-indexed from Google. So horrible you deleted them upon sight.

[andrewducker]

Aaah. Your comments looked like the kind I get intermittently from spammers - I thought you'd been hacked!