Interesting Links for 18-12-2012

[andrewducker]

• How to lose an argument on the internet.
  (tags: argument internet discussion funny )
• Scots parents reveal fury at Weetos breakfast cereal with character called 'Big Baws'
  (tags: funny scotland breakfast )
• JL8: The cutest take on Superman, Batman, etc. I've seen in a long time.
  (tags: cute comic superheroes )
• Instagram’s new Terms of Service

Comments

[a_pawson]

I thought that story about Big Baws was a windup as yesterday only the Daily Record were publishing it and it seemed too ridiculous to be true. But if you go to the Weetos website you can indeed play a game where the first opponent you must defeat is Big Baws! I do still wonder if it is clever viral marketing - it seems too ridiculous to be otherwise.

[theweaselking]

I don't get it. What's the joke?

(Because I can't see any pun except "Boss" there.)

[a_pawson]

Baws is how the word "balls" would be pronounced in a Scottish accent.

[theweaselking]

So, to rhyme with "Boss"?

#1: Weird. There are Ls in there, people!
#2: Doesn't that make any use of "Boss" potentially off-colour, to the point where familiarity should have long since made it stop being shocking?

[del_c]

The Northern Ireland statistics are clearly understandable in the context of the old joke "but are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew [, atheist etc.]?"

[drplokta]

Yes, indeed, the categories "Protestant" and "Catholic" here have little or nothing to do with religious beliefs.

[cartesiandaemon]

Have we got to the point of having protestants who follow catholicism and vice versa yet? :)

[naath]

Well England has Anglo-Catholics...

[parthenia14]

Yeah, I was about to make this point exactly, based on my experience of growing up in Glasgow. We supported Partick Thistle but this was seen as a lame copout.

Slightly surprised to find it's still a 2-way split in Northern Ireland 30 years later - really, no other religions present?

[philmophlegm]

Yeah, but were you Rangers Partick fans or Celtic Partick fans...?

[parthenia14]

Indeed...as though supporting Partick Thistle wasn't punishment enough.

I got out of that one but eventually you had to say what school you went to. *sigh*

[cartesiandaemon]

As an atheist non-football supporter, there's so many places where I fear I'd piss off both sides completely...

[bohemiancoast]

Not remotely surprised on the TV chef stuff, though it sort of depends how you mean 'healthier'. They compared 'levels of fat, saturated fat, energy, protein and fibre', and it's no surprise that the recipes from these books come out quite high. Most people are cooking from celeb chef books for special occasions. However, it's reputed that Jamie 'couldn't understand why he was putting on weight while he ate so healthily'. So, say again chaps, it doesn't matter how beautiful and fresh your food is if you eat too much of it, and extra virgin olive oil has just as many calories as lard (actually more, because you don't need quite so much lard to cook in and lard isn't 100% fat

[naath]

I think of most of these TV chef books as "special occasion" things; like I have Delia's Christmas book from a few years back - and sure, none of that is exactly "health food" but it's *Christmas food* you'd be a fule to suppose that anyone ate Christmas dinner every day!

BBC Good Food magazine helpfully provides nutritional breakdowns for the recipes (if you make them exactly how they say) which is useful if your stomach answers "what shall I eat today?" with "1500kcal of mostly protein" rather than with "cheese, I demand cheese".

[bohemiancoast]

To be fair to them, they did pick cookbooks that purport to be about everyday eating, and they have highlighted something that most home cooks already know -- food that is bad for you tastes nicer; in most cases you can make good food better by adding a dollop of something evil to it.

[anef]

I burst out laughing when I saw Nigella make her caramel croissant pudding on TV. Take croissants, add bourbon, sugar, eggs and cream, and bake in the oven. Eat by the light of the fridge door, as it is widely known that food eaten this way has no calories.

[randomchris]

The NI stuff is "A Profile of the Monitored Northern Ireland Workforce", not the total workforce (which I wish the BBC had bothered to state a bit more clearly). As you probably knew, but just in case. Apparently "Monitoring covers an estimated 64%-67% of those in employment" (page v of the introduction to http://www.equalityni.org/archive/pdf/MonitoringMainReportNo22WEB.pdf") so other religions / no religion make up about a third of the workforce.

[andrewducker]

I was mostly curious as to what percentage were covered by the monitoring - was hoping that one of my friends could clear it up, so thanks for that!

[heron61]

Apparently "Monitoring covers an estimated 64%-67% of those in employment" (page v of the introduction to http://www.equalityni.org/archive/pdf/MonitoringMainReportNo22WEB.pdf") so other religions / no religion make up about a third of the workforce.It looks to me like footnote i on page v mentions that this 64-67% isn't about the % of the population who are either Catholic or Protestant, but about the the various types of employment who are included in the stats - so, it mentioned in that footnote that self-employed people, school teachers, and people in small companies are not included, and it sounds to me like people in those jobs make up the missing 33-36