Interesting Links for 26-04-2015

[andrewducker]

• St James Centre demolition is delayed until 2016
  (tags: Edinburgh development )
• New Kinloch mayor blocked by police from entering city hall
  (tags: police corruption USA )
• Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America
  (tags: usa prehistory )
• What I fat about when I fat about fatties
  (tags: weight health obesity )
• What

Comments

[bart_calendar]

Is the british pound coin made out of some super cheap type of metal. Because even if you have a coin making machine - which these guys did - you still have to pay for the metal and metal usually isn't cheap. Plus you have to pay for the transportation from the Netherlands into the UK - and beyond the price of gasoline, the driver is going to charge you something for the risk.

On a more philosophical note - would adding a billion pounds to the UK economy really be a bad thing? I mean it's not like the coins made by proper officials have magic powers the ones these guys made don't have.

[bart_calendar]

Google shows me it's made of copper, zinc and nickle. Copper is crazy expensive. I really don't see the profit margin here.

Also, Wikipedia shows me that the copies are so good none of the UK banks can tell the difference, so I'm really confused as to why this is a bad thing.

Surely the result is to put money into people's pockets without the government having to take money out of their own coffers.

[drdoug]

Under normal circumstances, no - the result would be to take the same amount of money out of everybody's pockets, by causing inflation. (And helps out everyone with sterling-denominated debts

[bart_calendar]

But isn't it a matter where inflation happens because the central bank announces that it's going to pump extra money into the economy. If nobody knows about it and it's simply a bunch of extra coins floating around wouldn't the effect mostly be that more people can afford food and drink?

[gonzo21]

Jesus wept, how is the American police staging a coup not the single biggest story of the day? That's shocking that they're obstructing a legally elected mayor from doing her job.

They have finally tipped over into full blown fascism it would seem.

[apostle_of_eris]

Entrenched assholes in one tiny trivial town are newsworthy for being extra egregious, but this is very small and very local. They can't win.
If you want a tipping point, go back to the 2000 election.

10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings

[drdoug]

Oh god. "Repeat the last thing the engineer said, but very, very slowly" is a thing I do all the time in meetings.

In my defence, I think of it more as "rephrase what the engineer said in terms that the non-engineers can understand". But it usually involves saying it much more slowly and in very simple words. Especially when it's senior managers involved.

Re: 10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings

[andrewducker]

Rephrasing adds value though.

And it does make you look smart :-)

Re: 10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings

[naath]

Ah, Speaker To Management. A fine position to have.

[octopoid_horror]

This is going to sound silly, but why is there a cinema going into the new St James complex? There's one quite literally across the street. Or is the assumption that there's enough demand for two cinemas within a couple of hundred metres of each other?

[andrewducker]

Silly?

Sounds like a very sensible question to me!

Apparently it's going to be a "boutique" cinema. I guess that going all the way across town to the Cameo/Filmhouse/Dominion was too much effort for some people.

[danieldwilliam]

Going all the way across the park is often too much effort for me.

I have a Glasweigan friend who goes to the Cameo more than me.

[andrewducker]

Which leads me to believe that nothing short of installing a cinema in your home would suffice.

And even then, you might find that it was used more for Scooby Doo :->