Interesting Links for 02-05-2012

[andrewducker]

• MPs announce that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to run News Corp
  (tags: media news RupertMurdoch uk )
• The EU's Common Agricultural Policy is slowly being reformed.
  (tags: agriculture europe law money )
• Unrealistic expectations of relationships are a scourge on society.
  (tags: relationships family society uk )
• How Marvel took The

Comments

[cartesiandaemon]

"Sleep cancels out obesity gene"

Although I seemed to have missed it if the article reported any evidence of that from the study: it claimed there was correlation, but I only saw speculation about causation.

[channelpenguin]

yeah, I thought that - e.g. fat/obese folks often snore or have sleep apnea which reduces sleep quantity/quality...

[nancylebov]

The other thing is that even if all the recommendations are sound, getting 9 hours of sleep per day would only improve the odds of not being fat. And last I heard, there isn't a single obesity gene.

[steer]

See which parties voted the way that you would want them to.

Oh dear... it seems my favoured political party would be a lunatic in a box making decisions at random by tossing a coin. This agreed with me more than the next nearest political party (Lib Dem at 44%). Conservatives agreed with me more than Labour which was a surprise.

Then again some of the issue summaries were kind of surprising and rather tangential to what the actual votes were: e.g. "All smoking should be banned" was a vote on advertising and smoking in public places. "Legal Abortion should be limited as far as possible" was in fact a vote to reduce the term from 24 weeks to 12. The one about the "right to strike" was a vote about prison officers (actually I think maybe they should but I do think some professions it's just too dangerous for them to strike, the precedents for a police strike are not good).

[andrewducker]

I got much the same result as you - 44% is as close as I got (also Lib Dem), next was the SNP, then Labour, then Conservatives.

Sadly, there are no coin-tossing lunatics running for election, so I will probably vote LD->SNP->Lab tomorrow.

[steer]

I fear that by phrasing the questions correctly you could write one of those such that the typical question answerer would agree with more or less whichever party you choose.

E.g. Reword the "all smoking should be banned" (which > 50% of people disagree with) to "smoking should not be allowed in some places" or (which > 50% of people agree with) and you've reverse people's political stance.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. You can twist them back and forth all over the place.

The fact that no one party exactly matched what I want (and none even got above 50%) does at least tell me that if they're cheating they aren't doing it too egregiously.

[danieldwilliam]

I kinda think the arrests of people alleged to have named the victim in the Ched Evans case might do more to reduce rape culture than the actual prosecutions and conviction.

[andrewducker]

I do think that law (and particularly its enforcement) frequently does more by setting norms than it does directly.

[danieldwilliam]

Yeah.

I think a lot of the outrage following the Ched Evans conviction is people looking at the facts and thinking to themselves "That's me."

Or at least "That could be me."

[inamac]

I do hope that they're also looking at the dipstick who not only posted her name on his LJ but also ran a poll. (On reporting this LJ stated that they would only act if the victim herself reported it - as if she hadn't been abused enough.)

[peadarog]

Would love to try C# on my android. I hope somebody on XDA-Developers figures it out!

[cartesiandaemon]

"Radical Honesty - a step too far?"

That's really interesting. I think Jeff was exactly right when he said that radical honesty was too extremist to be a sensible lifestyle choice, but that it was seductive because it made us think about all the times we'd like to avoid lying but are afraid it will be impractical, when it can (often but not always) turn out to be useful.

However, I think there's a tendency to overcompensate. The first comment described someone who played the guitar, and everyone automatically told him he was great and he thought about becoming professional, and someone told him that he sucked.

Now, I think that person was sensible to give some accurate feedback. But I also think they were embarrassed to criticise against minor social norms, and hence in an almost self-parody exaggerated what they thought.

After all, they probably mean "suck" compared to a professional player, not compared to an average person (who probably can't play the guitar _at all_), so by suddenly shifting the basis of comparison, they're