Interesting Links for 09-08-2012

[andrewducker]

• Turns out there are good reasons why 22 school playing fields have been sold off. For a start, 14 of those schools have shut.
  (tags: education sport uk )
• Why David Brin Hates Yoda, Loves Radical Transparency.
  (tags: starwars transparentsociety DavidBrin privacy )
• How billionaire backers pick America's candidates (This should be

Comments

[andrewducker]

Thankfully, the school is being pressured to change its policy about pregnant students:
http://www.newser.com/article/da0he7mo1/louisiana-charter-school-changing-policy-that-kicked-pregnant-students-out-of-class.html

[cartesiandaemon]

Thank God.

I mean, I think being pregnant as a teenager is not normally a good thing, but I'm pretty sure public shaming and deliberately denying people an education is not going to make the situation one whit better, whether the pregnant person wanted to get pregnant, made a mistake, was the victim of a mistake, or was coerced or raped.

I also suspect the school is not really pushing a "if you have sex, make sure you use birth control, and have supplemental birth control readily available" viewpoint. I may be judging them unfairly, but I suspect they're pushing a "we hate female sexuality but we're too prudish to talk about it, so we're going to viciously punish anyone who is unlucky enough to be found out for the rest of their lives, and hope other people get the message" viewpoint, which is awful whether or not you think unmarried underage teenagers should have sex or not.

Prisoners and workfare, a pretty appalling situation all round.

[cartesiandaemon]

Yeah. There are good reasons why doing useful work from prison is a good thing, but there are also very good reasons why literal slave labour is a bad idea for everyone.

Re: Prisoners and workfare, a pretty appalling situation all round.

[andrewducker]

I have lots of ideas of how to make this kind of thing work better - but they all involve a radically different prison system!

[0olong]

I had no idea there was half an hour cut from The Shining either! I wonder if the missing footage gets the film any closer to making sense? I couldn't quite judge from the IMDB's breakdown of what was cut.

[andrewducker]

I hope so. The Shining is one of the reasons I'm not a big Kubrick fan.

[eatsoylentgreen]

one real problem, regarding the new species, is that scientists get a big boner when they think they've discovered a new species, so sometimes they overclaim.

[khbrown]

How different is the US position from the UK one, when we consider that there are many constituencies where voters would elect anyone wearing a blue or red rosette/tie, such that the concentration of effort goes into the marginal seats, the tail wagging the dog.

[andrewducker]

In the UK there's a certain amount of that - but it's driven more by millionaires owning newspapers rather than buying advertising. We have strong limits on TV advertising during election campaigns, for a very good reason.