Interesting Links for 09-07-2014

[andrewducker]

• SSRIs: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
  (tags: depression drugs )
• Apparently we now have sniffer dogs trained to detect electronic circuitry...
  (tags: dogs technology )
• I'm gonna open up a retail store called KickstartMart
  (tags: kickstarter funny comic )
• A list of things which are accidentally Turing Complete
  (tags: turing algorithms computers )

Comments

[alitheapipkin]

Sadly, I was more surprised by the fact that Stonewall are apparently making efforts to be less trans- and biphobic than I was to find one of their number endorsing Bindel (ETA: in that I hadn't noticed at all)

Scotland leaving

[alitheapipkin]

"Rather, the momentum for independence is being produced by a general anti-politics mood"

Funny that most of the 'Yes' supporters I know are hugely swayed by the idea of having better democracy...

I'm amused that this article is basically saying that if Scotland leaves, the remains of Britain will be regarded in much the same way as I expect we already are in many corners of the world... And the fact that he seems to think arguing that leaving will put an end to the UK's war mongering should make us want to stay!

Oh look, he writes for the Mail too, why am I not surprised!

Re: Scotland leaving

[andrewducker]

Yup. It's the awful politics in Westminster that makes me think that Scotland can do better.

Re: Scotland leaving

[momentsmusicaux]

It somehow seems wrong to me that because of historical lines on a map, we get to jettison the democracy we currently have and get a new one. It feels like a cheat.

Re: Scotland leaving

[andrewducker]

It's more expanding the democracy we already have to contain more areas of control than it currently does.

And it's only a cheat because other geographical areas don't have the option of increasing their local control, which frankly I think they should.

In any case, there aren't any "rules" here, there's just historical happenstance. Scotland's lucky that its happenstance is working for it, other places are less lucky. Czech Republic and Slovakia have been similarly lucky in the past, and Belgium may undergo something similar in the future.

34 countries have come into existence since 1990:
http://geography.about.com/cs/countries/a/newcountries.htm
it's not like it's something that Never Happens because Countries are Invioliable.

[del_c]

"In most jobs, you work hard, and you deliver results," Will Self quotes, contrasting that with writing. If he really feels that way, it sounds like he's "structurally unemployed," and should get on his bike and retrain as a plumber, which all the middle-class people tell me is a big money spinner.

(in reality, "work hard, and you'll succeed in life" is even more of a slogan and less of a reality in working-class life than it is in writing. Self is seeing too much green on the other side of the fence, from ignorance)

[del_c]

I should clarify that I was being sarcastic about "structural unemployment". I think it's a bit bullshit even at the population level, but, like BMI, it certainly has no place being applied to individuals. The only time I've ever seen it used to describe individual people, it was as a callous dismissal of "losers" who should just accept that they're not wanted and agree to work for lower wages.

[alextfish]

Oh yay, it's my Magic Turing machine! :D

I'm interested in this kind of accidental Turing-completeness (somewhat obviously, having created that one...) I don't think Minecraft and Little Big Planet should be included in the same list though: like Dwarf Fortress, they were deliberately designed to allow construction of complex machinery, so it's no more surprising that you can create a Turing machine in those than that you can create one in a programming language.

Conway's Life, on the other hand, I believe was hoped to have sufficient emergent complexity, but I don't think it was specifically designed for it, so I think that does count. (Other cellular automata like Wireworld again were specifically deliberately designed to allow computation so I wouldn't include them.)

apocalyptic waistline

[snarlish]

For an entertaining version of the rest of UK blocking an apocalyptic Scotland at Hadrian's Wall, see Doomsday, a sort of cross between Mad Max 2 and Escape From New York. ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483607/ )

Re: apocalyptic waistline

[erindubitably]

aka THE BEST FILM EVER