Interesting Links for 13-08-2015

[andrewducker]

• Would Corbyn's 'QE for people' float or sink Britain?
  • (tags: economics UK )
• What word was created in the year you were born? (I missed "Reboot" by one year!)
  • (tags: language history vializziecassmaran )
• Frequent spicy meals linked to human longevity
  • (tags: food lifespan health )
• Woman has sex wearing Fitbit - shares the resulting graph
  • (tags:

Comments

[gonzo21]

Well that's an interesting hotel design, but I cannot in a million years see why they thought it would be suitable for a city like Edinburgh.

And did you ever hear of the Lisl Auman case that Hunter S Thompson wrote about? A woman was convicted and jailed for shooting a police officer, when her boyfriend did the shooting, and she was at the time locked up in handcuffs in the back of a police car.

Yet the US legal system found her guilty of doing the shooting. She served something like 8 years in jail before being released on parole.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/report-lisl-auman-released-from-halfway-house

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I've seen that a few times - completely brain dead decisions with no common sense at all.

And yes, it would look great in a city that's not a World Heritage Site!

[gonzo21]

Yep, or even in the banking area, or up towards the Gyle. But not right there.

[kalimac]

What seems to have happened in the Lisl Auman case is that she was considered a material accessory, and such people can be considered equally guilty as the actual culprit. That's a useful law to have if you're trying to charge someone who, say, hired a hit man but you lack proof of the actual agreement between them, though it can be abused like any other. There was a case in the UK in the 1950s of a pair of burglars who were caught in the act by the police. One of them, to the shock and dismay of the other, pulled out a gun and shot the cop. But the shooter was a juvenile and could not be sentenced to death. The accomplice, however, was just over the adult threshold of age, could be so sentenced, and was. That was one of many cases which led to the eventual abolition of the death penalty in the UK.

But abuse of the material accomplice law is not the same thing as just getting the wrong guy.

[momentsmusicaux]

I'm really surprised at gobsmacked in 1985 and gasp in 1968. I would have thought those were both much older! Though I thought mockney (1967) was much more recent.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I was surprised at some of the dates!

[lovelyangel]

I thought Frenemy (1953) was much more recent.

And I'm the same age as "Artificial Intelligence". AI doesn't seem to have gone far in 60 years.

[kalimac]

I too am really skeptical of some of those dates. On Ngram, "gasp" goes back centuries.

And while "flash mob" might only date to 2003, "flash crowd" which is really the same thing was invented by Larry Niven in 1973 and is the origin of any "flash N" phrase of this meaning.

Very few of the words on the list have I never heard. I do thank it, however, for telling me what "bada-bing" means. It had always seemed to me a random exclamation used in gangster stories for no discernable purpose.

[cmcmck]

Frequent spicy meals?

Sounds good to me! :o)

[agoodwinsmith]

For me: nitpick; for my SOGP: TV, the abbreviation for television. Oh dear. :)

[chess]

I am glad that the spicy food article does indeed contain someone setting off the Correlation Is Not Causation alarm bells, although obviously most people will still only read the headline.