Interesting Links for 25-03-2014

[andrewducker]

• WTF, HTML and CSS?
  (tags: html css )
• How London Looks on Google vs. Paintings From the 1700s
  (tags: art london google )
• Death knell for banking secrecy as Luxembourg and Austria drop objections to EU tax transparency
  (tags: tax europe banking secrecy )
• 22 Venn Diagrams Only British People Will Understand
  (tags: uk visualisation funny viaDraxar )

Comments

[steer]

Without irony the article about German becoming gender neutral contains:
"Predictions vary: one suggestion is that Angela Merkel will eventually no longer be die Bundeskanzlerin but a neutral das Bundeskanzler, as she would be in English. Others believe that the feminine gender, already the most common fallback form used by non-native speakers, will become the default article: a policeman would no longer be der Polizist but die Polizist."

(emphasis mine).

[andrewducker]

I assume they meant that as two different examples? "The chancellor" equating to "The Prime Minister", neither of which have gender in English.

Pretty silly using "Policeman" versus "Police Officer" though, I've avoided "Policeman" for several years now!

[steer]

It was the second example that stood out as they were using gendered language where a non gendered alternative was available in an article about how the poor old Germans are struggling to use non gendered language. There's an amazing lack of introspection when comparing English with other languages. I still chortle with the recollection of an announcer on Woman's Hour informing us in horrified tones that "The Germans have no word for postnatal depression."

[andrewducker]

Oh yes - it's amazing how blind people are about the things they're used to (me included!)

[apostle_of_eris]

HTML had a narrow, sensible origin, and has been stretched all out of shape. CSS, on the other hand, was conceived by someone who had no idea how clueless and incompetent they were, and has not improved.

I actually did laugh out loud at Venn diagram #19 about the Sun.

re: books in prisons
Is there any good reason for England to have joined America in the great race to the bottom?

"junk" DNA[RNA]? hah
Obstacles just over the horizon are hairier than they appear. This precise variety of over-optimistic foolishness needs a name.

[chess]

Having read Grayling's own rhetoric on this, it appears to be applying the 'logic' of Workfare to prisons - i.e. trying to force prisoners to 'engage with rehabilitation activities' (read: do prison jobs, inevitably for less than minimum wage) to have access to anything, including books.

I'm not even sure whether it is a cynical move to enable companies to get cheap labour, or whether they actually believe their ideology that some kind of employment, however degrading and poorly paid, is sufficiently beneficial to the human soul that people should be deprived of everything else rather than risk them not doing it.

(At least there probably are jobs available, unlike outside where there often isn't even any work to be done!)

[del_c]

The comments on the London painting site are right, the paintings cover up the one bit of modern London you really want to compare: the bit where the painting was.

I sympathise though, I wouldn't know how to do fancy mouse-over effects either, so kudos to the creator for just going ahead and making something.

[andrewducker]

That's a fair point.

Doing a simple "when mouse is over it, show the original image" effect would have been trivial too.