Interesting Links for 16-01-2014

[andrewducker]

• Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes, yet there are only 24 hours in a day?
  (tags: time astronomy history clock numbers )
• An envy-free cake-division protocol.
  (tags: cake )
• Why novellists shouldn't chase the Next Big Thing
  (tags: writing publishing )
• Ampere to get rational redefinition
  (tags: physics electricity )
• How

Comments

[gonzo21]

Ha, yeah, Kennedy was awful. Deserves to be last.

I would always have Giles at number 1 though.

[cartesiandaemon]

I think I root for the underdog too much because I often like characters who are kind of awful.

I quite liked Kennedy, not because she did anything much, but because she was the only character in the entire series who I remember fancying someone, asking them out, and not having a gigantic emotional freakout over it. I do admit it's really annoying that they introduced a lesbian character only for Willow, but it's hard to see how they could have handled it better. And I did generally find series 7 annoying, but I liked Kennedy for being the only potential slayer I could tell apart...

Likewise, I thought the annointed one was really really creepy and could have been a good villain, if they'd not killed him off immediately, but I agree Spike was even better.

[gonzo21]

Yes I was surprised to see the Anointed one right at the bottom of the list there, I thought he was pretty creepy too. But worth the rapid killing off just because it was very funnily done.

And yeah, Season 7 had lots of problems, mostly the potentials. It was odd that the final season of a much loved show with much loved characters decided to suddenly waste so much screentime on a bunch of people nobody knew or liked.

Oh, Riley though. I think I might have put Riley last.

[bart_calendar]

Riley and Angel would be tied for last in my book.

[channelpenguin]

Have always used 'you cut, I pick' for cake sharing (and other similar tasks)

[andrewducker]

Me too - and that would be the "Cut and Choose" method on page 10. However, this doesn't easily generalise into a group of n people where n>2.

[channelpenguin]

of course. But 2 is the most usual scenario.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. And for more than two I just chop cake into bits and hand it out.

But that's not the point!

[bart_calendar]

Angel and Angelus are listed as two different characters?

What bullshit is that?

[andrewducker]

Clearly they recognised that Angelus is a massively better character than Angel, to the point where we'd scream "Yay, Angelus!" whenever he got a chance to appear!

[bart_calendar]

Fair point.

I hated Angel as a character.

[andrewducker]

Yeah.

We rewatched Angel recently, and the article's complaints about him are spot on. They didn't want him to change and grow, so every season you'd have Brooding Angel for 90% of it, and then at the end he'd have a realisation that he didn't have to be such a dick, and everything would be great!

And then, at the start of the next season he'd revert back to Brooding Angel, for no good reason, who was just a massive pain in the neck to watch. If they hadn't had great supporting characters, we never would have watched all of it.

An envy-free cake-division protocol.

[cartesiandaemon]

ROFL!

Although, while I love the mathematics of cake dividing in theory, I think it might do children more good to teach them to want to be fair, not to teach them to *always* expect everything to be adversarial.

I like stories like this: http://negotiatewithchad.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/negotiation-is-not-about-compromise.html and http://negotiatewithchad.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/quick-win-win-and-importance-of-why.html where children are taught to look for solutions better than "not being cheated".

Re: An envy-free cake-division protocol.

[andrewducker]

I agree! Perfect fairness is a nice ideal, but most of the time you're best off realising that life isn't perfect, and spending more time trying to achieve perfect fairness than it's worth is not a good idea.

And those articles are both brilliant!

There's going to be a romantic remake of 1984. I adore the idea.

[cartesiandaemon]

I guess people conflate the idea of having a romance, which it has a lot of already, with the idea that it must end happily ever after, which would be a radical departure from the book.

I'm not sure how I'd do 1984 now. I would actually want to update a lot of it to reflect trends now. Instead of TVs, have universal computer monitoring. Instead of enemy superpowers, focus on the constant threat of terrorism. Instead of "the party", base it on the current American or Chinese elite. Etc. Weirdly, we seem to have a similar amount of source -- not less, but not necessarily more...

Re: There's going to be a romantic remake of 1984. I adore the idea.

[andrewducker]

Sounds a bit too similar to the social setup in The Hunger Games. Maybe Orwell borrowed a few things?

Now, a Brave New World movie, that I'd like to see.

Re: There's going to be a romantic remake of 1984. I adore the idea.

[cartesiandaemon]

Hm, interesting question. I think maybe the Capital and Districts in Hunger Games are similar to Winston and to the proles respectively, except that Hunger Games is almost all about the districts and 1984 is all about Winston.

Hunger Games doesn't really seem to concentrate on the embracing manipulation aspect which seems so central to 1984. The districts are constantly told to be grateful to the capital, but there's no characters who act like they believe it, they just work in dangerous physical conditions because they're oppressed and have to. Conversely, in the capital, maybe life actually is good, or maybe everyone is terrified but has to go along with it -- we don't really see enough to know.