Interesting Links for 30-01-2013

[andrewducker]

• Third World Problems (a brilliant dissection of why I don't like the phrase "First World Problems")
  (tags: life problems people )
• Our drive to find food is turned off (and on) by insulin.
  (tags: food insulin brains )
• The existence of grammar schools make things worse for poor children.
  (tags: poverty education uk inequality )
• Flu myths and

Comments

[supergee]

FT insists that I tell them my position & job responsibility if I want to read their stuff. I guess I will never find out about the menace of grammar schools.

[andrewducker]

I suggest you lie :->

[alitheapipkin]

I also got annoyed at being asked to register. I suspect they would be preaching to the converted if I did read it though - if I were dictator of Britain, one of the first things I'd do would be to abolish all non-comprehensive schools.

[andrewducker]

Here's the most salient image:

[alitheapipkin]

That first article makes a very good point that I hadn't considered before. I wasn't much for the phrase anyway but that articulates the issue much more clearly than my vague and unexamined discomfort based on the fact that people are people the world over.

[andrewducker]

Yes, the idea that some problems don't exist for people outside the developed world ignores the realities over there.

I also don't like the idea of people putting down their own unhappiness, although I can see some people using it as a tool to keep their perspective.

[alitheapipkin]

Yes, it was your second point that had been more on my mind in response to the phrase when I had seen it previously.

[octopoid_horror]

Maybe if people used #selfcentredwhining instead of #firstworldproblems? :-)

[ice_hesitant]

You can now only see public Facebook events if you're logged in to Facebook.

Good! If Facebook were to place all of itself behind a login barrier, it would be even better. I don't want any of my Facebook activity to be Googleable or Bingable, not even when I interact with stuff misguided people have left "Public".

If people want to spy on me, they damn well better have NSA-grade resources.

I'm familiar with the "everything on the internet is public" theory. I disagree with it.

[steer]

I find it quite vexing - I want to be able to show certain things to people not on facebook should I so choose. Annoying to have that option cut off.

[andrewducker]

You're aware that this page is public, right?

[ice_hesitant]

I am. However, though my username is easily linked to my real name, LJ does not force people to use real names

[steer]

The flu article missed out my favourite flu misconception which is the "'flu is a really, really serious disease, unless you're incredibly ill, it's a cold not flu".

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/167/7/775.full

From which: "The frequency of symptomatic infection was 66.9% (95% confidence interval: 58.3, 74.5)" -- in other words, 33% of people with the flu had not a single symptom. (This is in studies where people had been deliberately infected.)

Of course 'flu can be serious, indeed fatal. It can also be so mild that you don't notice anything.

Similarly "It's not flu unless you have a fever" -- that paper shows < 50% of people who have flu have a fever.

[brixtonbrood]

Yes, the "£20 note test" often posited to decide whether it's a cold or flu (if you wouldn't go out to pick up a £20 note you'd left on your doorstep then it's flu - if you would it's just a cold) was comprehensively debunked during the recent swine flu outbreak. A lot of people who felt a bit poorly for a day or two, and would absolutely have got up to pick up a fiver, let alone twenty quid, tested positive for swine flu.

[steer]

Heh... I've not heard of that test -- but yes, exactly this. Seems there's no reliable way to tell flu from "just cold" as flu may be incredibly mild.