Interesting Links for 11-02-2014

[andrewducker]

• Twelve things I now know about gluten
  (tags: gluten )
• The Freemasons are on Minecraft!
  (tags: minecraft )
• Conjugating YOLO.
  (tags: funny language viaLProven )
• Suicide Bomb Trainer in Iraq Accidentally Blows Up His Class
  (tags: funny fail terrorism iraq )
• If the UK were an African Country: Was Great Britain a Mistake? (Masterfully done)
  (tags:

Comments

[bart_calendar]

That "miss" article is slightly misleading. While in Paris it's true that any woman over age 18 will be addressed as "Madame" - down here in the south that's considered rude and unless the woman has an obvious wedding ring on or is with her husband you default to "Mademoiselle" - because doing otherwise implies they are older than you. (It should be noted that people in Paris don't really believe the language we speak down here is "french" - they consider it a variation of "Oc."

[skington]

People in Paris only barely acknowledge that other Parisians are human.

[bart_calendar]

This is true.

[octopoid_horror]

As far as I could gather, people in the south were not entirely convinced that Parisians were human. Or, if they were, that they were the worst kind.

[danieldwilliam]

I liked the giraffe article.

I was pretty annoyed by the coverage of the death of Marius on both Channel 4 news and the Today Programme - both lost lots of credibility points with me.

Edinburgh Zoo recently killed a few surplus Red River Hogs. Personally, I was disappointed they didn't offset the costs of keeping the animals by turning the surplus ones into sausages and gloves.

[alitheapipkin]

Me too - I'm certainly glad there was more to it than the wailing implied. I had to sit on my hands to avoid getting into an argument with an acquaintance who I know isn't a vegetarian, who was making so much fuss about it on FB that you'd think they had massacred a village full of children...

[ajr]

Surplus deer get killed all the time, to take another example.

The question I always want to ask people who wring their hands over such 'news' reports is "What did you have for dinner last night?"

[danieldwilliam]

And it seems quite difficult to get the culled deer in to the food supply. Limited licenced game dealers which I put down to a legacy of anti-poaching laws from Norman times.

If the UK were an African Country: Was Great Britain a Mistake? (Masterfully done)

[cartesiandaemon]

LOL. Perfect.

[gonzo21]

Not to mention Barcleys are also sacking 12,000 jobs. Gotta find the savings to pay those bonuses somewhere I guess.

Re-Writing the Death of a Giraffe

[cartesiandaemon]

Yeah, that sounds plausible. I do feel a bit conflicted. On the one hand, millions of animals are killed all the time, I don't see we should particularly care about THIS one, more than the others. On the other hand, sometimes common practices are wrong and it's worth drawing attention to them.

It sounds reasonable, and I assume the zoo knows what it's doing, although I can't actually tell (how easy is it to house elsewhere? one article says "easy" the other says "hard and not worth it", both are plausible, I don't know which is true).