Interesting Links for 18-03-2015

[andrewducker]

• Google is pushing electricity-generating kites
  (tags: energy electricity wind Google )
• Bacteria programmed to find tumours
  (tags: bacteria nanotech cancer )
• Recommendation for vitamin D intake was miscalculated - by a factor of ten!
  (tags: vitaminD )
• New 12-sided pound coin to be unveiled
  (tags: money currency uk design forgery )
• DNA nanobots to

Comments

[cmcmck]

I suspect that this 'male touch' thing is a largely Anglo Saxon issue as it's not generally how things go on the European mainland.

[octopoid_horror]

Yep, I remember co-workers being shocked when they saw the physical contact between Indian men. Male touching or the lack thereof differs widely between cultures.

[cmcmck]

It's true- I lived in Belgium for some years and it's not just male male touch- I was taken aback at first as a stand offish Brit that the Bisou (double cheek kiss) is given both between and across genders once you know someone even a little.

Soon got used to it and these years on, I'm faintly amused by the continued British inability to deal with it! :o)

[andrewducker]

It's things like the "Labout does not want to represent people out of work" article there that make me despair of them.

A) If Labour aren't going to, then who the hell will?
B) As is pointed out in the article - most benefits are claimed by people _with_ jobs, so saying you don't want to represent people claiming benefits is doubly stupid, and demonising.

[a_pawson]

Nobody will. In recent times, the unemployed (or benefit recipients) have been turned into the scum of humanity - a social group it is acceptable to hate - scroungers the lot of them who shouldn't be given a penny in handouts. People receiving tax credits, pensions, child benefit or child-care credits are exempt from the above. These are socially acceptable benefits. The fact they make up the majority of the benefits budget is irrelevant.

On a more serious note - the Labour party do not represent the interests of anyone at the lower end of the income scale. They haven't for a long time. People need to realise this and vote accordingly.

[cmcmck]

Very Victorian, isn't it?

They constantly talked of the 'deserving' poor and the 'undeserving' poor and we somehow seem to have got ourselves back there. :o(

[a_pawson]

It's ridiculous and scary. I'm sure there are a small number of people who do not want to work, but I doubt they are the vast majority of the unemployed. Punishing people for failing to find a job is pointless, because the reality is that the number of job vacancies is far smaller than the number of people who are unemployed.

[nancylebov]

"Findings indicate that the increase in waist circumference among diet soda drinkers, per follow-up interval, was almost triple that among non-users: 2.11 cm versus 0.77 cm, respectively. After adjustment for multiple potential confounders, interval waist circumference increases were 0.77 cm for non-users, 1.76 cm for occasional users, and 3.04 cm for daily users. This translates to waist circumference increases of 0.80 inches for non-users, 1.83 inches for occasional users, and 3.16 inches for daily users over the total 9.4-year SALSA follow-up period."

The increase in waist circumference is pretty small-- I have no idea whether it's medically significant, or whether people who drink a lot of diet soda are people who are more likely to gain weight anyway.

The abstract mentions adjusting for confounders, but doesn't mention what they were.

[bart_calendar]

How the hell is the current one pound coin valuable enough to be faked?

Good god. You still need some metal. You need to be able to melt down that metal. You need to pour the metal into things to shape it, then wait for it to cool down. Making a coin by yourself is a lot of work and the reward ratio seems low - unless you have a giant factory doing it and still it's going to cost you a lot to then transport the coins out so they can be used.

[andrewducker]

I know - you'd think it would cost them a fair chunk of a pound to make them!

(Apparently it costs the mint about 12p to make each one - but forgers don't work at that scale.)

[bart_calendar]

Yeah. It just seems like bad business.

If I was going to make fake money I'd make fake euros. They change the way the notes look on a fairly regular basis so that if someone handed me a fake 5 or 10 euro note I'd have no clue at all.

Is there something that pound coins are used for so commonly that it would make it worth it to counterfit them?

Back in the 80s when video game arcades were huge in america there was a giant market for pieces of metal the same weight and shape of a 25 cent piece, because that's what the games charged.

The forgers made money on these things because they could sell them for about $20 each. The deal was they had a small hole on top where you could attach a string. Then you'd stick the fake coin in the slot and get a credit on Pac Man and then pull the fake coin back out - meaning you could play for free as long as a security guard didn't see you.

Is there perhaps a similar thing in the UK where people want fake pound coins to rip off slot machines or something?

[resonant]

I found that a 40-forint Hungarian coin works in place of a $1 Canadian coin.

[bohemiancoast]

This is not new ground for Labour; the clue is in the name. But we'd have a lot more people working if employment rights were strengthened; and a lot fewer working people on benefits if the minimum wage were raised.

Most benefits are claimed by pensioners, of course.

[nojay]

There's also the NHS, part of the "Welfare State" the Labour Party of old were so proud to have been the creators of. Today's Private-Private Partnership (with a smidgeon of Public, but not too much) NuLab, not so much.