Interesting Links for 16-05-2015

[andrewducker]

• There is no SNP wrecking strategy (and here's what they'll do instead)
  (tags: Scotland snp politics )
• Human Rights Act to be replaced with Warhammer rulebook
  It's the last line that really does it for me.
  (tags: rights warhammer funny viaDraxar )
• On the Taxonomy of Spaceships
  (tags: space scifi categorisation )
• Vince Cable among four senior Lib

Comments

[gonzo21]

Bravo for Vince Cable and his 3 colleagues who turned down peerages.

I hope that means they intend to stand again in 5 years time.

Human Rights Act to be replaced with Warhammer rulebook

[cartesiandaemon]

The title sells this so well, but i also love the choice of warhammer specifically. I can't remember which war-something is which, but I think I played the roleplaying version, and was struck by how _evil_ it was. Things like:

* There were the catholic space nazis who navigated hyperspace by sacrificing the souls of millions of humans a day. And in contrast to them, there were also the "bad guy" races
* There were the haughty untrustworthy evil elves -- and then there were the dark elves.
* Etc :)

RE: Human Rights Act to be replaced with Warhammer rulebook

[skington]

That would be Warhammer 40K.

Incidentally, Warhammer Fantasy, the original version, set in a Chaos-infested version of Mediaeval Europe, had the best tagline of any role-playing game: "A grim world of perilous adventure".

RE: Human Rights Act to be replaced with Warhammer rulebook

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. WH40k is a world of really unpleasant people, downright evil people, despicably evil people, and chaos incarnate.

All Male Panels

[cahwyguy]

Whenever I see a comment about all male panels (and Dr. Deborah Lipstadt just posted such a comment over on her FB -- she's fighting the battle on the religious side), I think of this wonderful post from Gene Spafford: https://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/blog/post/were_out_of_balance/ . I particularly think of item 10 for men. This isn't just the panel organizer's responsibility: panel members should refused to be on panels without the appropriate mix.

On the Taxonomy of Spaceships

[cartesiandaemon]

Right, that makes a lot of scifi (and history) make a lot more sense. I'm always confused by things like "why isn't a destroyer the most biggest thing" and how hornblower matches up to space battles

Re: On the Taxonomy of Spaceships

[andrewducker]

Yeah - someone else asked about GSVs, and those are basically mobile bases, which don't have an analogue in the real world.

[apostle_of_eris]

Sorry, that particular "all male panel" whinge is a rather inferior sort of bullshit.
It's at best problematic that Post Doctoral Research Fellow candidates at All Souls [ironic name] College are all male, but once you're there, having made an all-male selection from the list is inevitable, not evil.
Robotics and Military Operations has how many women among the leaders in the field? How would you go about making a gender-balanced selection?
World Economic Forum -- The Global Outlook has how many female contenders?
Qatar? really? You have to be desperate for "examples" to go somewhere they're not sure women have human souls.

If you make a random selection of five names from large pools of both males and females, then about one out of sixteen lists will be all one or all the other, and almost a third will be 4:1.