Interesting Links for 22-10-2015

[andrewducker]

• Plastic bag charge in Scotland sees usage cut by 80%
  • (tags: environment Scotland )
• Fascinating court case involve a deaf man with almost no language skills who had to give evidence
  • (tags: speech sign law Scotland )
• Here's where the public are on Jeremy Corbyn's side - and where they aren't
  • (tags: Labour politics uk )
• The TV industry wants you to go

Comments

[andrewducker]

A better article on "powers for the islands": http://beta.scotsman.com/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-vow-more-powers-for-scots-islands-1-3789054

And several of the links come from the link-roundup at: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/10/19/links-1015-take-back-your-link/

[gonzo21]

The SNP have spent a lot of money on infrastructure up on the islands. And now this. They must be genuinely worried about the Islanders declaring independence.

[cmcmck]

And yet again, she goes off to the Gaelic speaking west to talk about it.

And people wonder why the northern isles are fed up..........

[gonzo21]

I do wish they'd understand how the whole Gaelic obsession as the One True Scotland is playing in the non-Gaelic half of Scotland.

[gonzo21]

So if 4k broadcasts will require at least a 25mb internet connection to stream. Will they ever be able to broadcast 4k transmissions via traditional broadcast methods? I'd assume there's only so much bandwidth available?

Presumably they'll wind up having to slash SD and HD transmissions and degrade those signal strengths, in order to show more 4k stuff. Just as they did when Sky limited SD to favour HD.

I'm not sure consumers are ready yet to want to upgrade their blu-rays already anyway.

Interesting though. Means flatscreen tellies are about to get a lot cheaper.

[andrewducker]

I'm still not convinced that 4K is going to take off. It really does make no sense to upgrade from HD unless you have a 60" TV.

And yeah, they'd have to cut out a bunch of the other channels to make it work. I'm not convinced that that's feasible either.

[gonzo21]

No, me neither. It doesn't have the wow-factor of seeing HD on a big screen for the first time over SD. And you need a wow factor if you're gonna sell somebody a thousand pound telly.

And no, a lot of the SD channels on satellite already look terrible because they've cut the bandwidth allocated to them. If they cut them even further, and start cutting the HD signals too, then everything apart from the 4k transmission on your 60" 4ktv is gonna look terrible.

[andrewducker]

Exactly. I'm not sure what the hell they're going to do.

(But I am glad that I get a lot of my stuff over the internets, because the quality is definitely better.)

[momentsmusicaux]

> We can say that we feel exactly as traumatized by the kitten. But we are almost certainly lying.

Really? I mean, we can say that kittens are so lovely and fluffy that who could possibly be traumatized by them. That seems reasonable based on my own feelings about kittens.

But then I could consider my own feelings about spiders, and draw similar conclusions.

[erindubitably]

I had a similar reaction to that statement, but the more I thought about it the more I realised it probably has to do with existing knowledge and literature about stuff like triggers, trauma and phobias. We know and accept that people can be traumatised by things like witnessing violent acts (in the case of the beheading). There does not seem to be as similar amount of proof that people are traumatised by small fluffy kittens. That's not to say that no one is actually traumatised by kittens, but that's where the 'almost certainly' comes in. If that person has a note from a medical professional that says "no really, this person will suffer mental trauma if they have to read a book about this subject' then fair enough, I'd expect them to be exempt from that assignment.

Is there a principled distinction between refusing to w

[cartesiandaemon]

Learning vs learning about

One thing that stands out is the distinction between learning something, and learning about something. For instance, in America, schools are not supposed to teach religion: that means students should still be able do read about religion themselves, and the school should still be allowed to teach "this is what these people believe and this is what those people believe, and this is what happened in history between one group and another group", but the school should not be allowed to say "these people are right".

Like, if Mein Kampf showed up in a history class, I'd think that was perfectly reasonable. But I don't think students should set up a "Woo, Mein Kampf" club.

Triggering vs bigotryAnother is to break up the "what you disagree with" into "things that are harmful for you to see" and "things that are harmful to let pass unchallenged

RE: Is there a principled distinction between refusing to w

[momentsmusicaux]

> But I think people who actually do think there's something wrong with being gay, typically think it's wrong in some way, not

For instance, they might think that if you're gay, then the giant star goat will chew you up, and also your family and neighbours.

[elfy]

Preventing child sexual abuse

[cmcmck]

It was a teacher with me and I wasn't able to process it at all until my late forties / early fifties- didn't tell anyone. Who's going to believe a kid over a teacher?

It's an awful lot to carry for all those years.

[elfy]

I'm sorry it was a burden for you so long (and probably still is) :(
I was fairly early able to talk/write about it, but never talked to a professional about it. What I am mostly fighting with to this day is the way it has shaped my sexuality/desires and that I have such a hard time trusting men and get very easily creeped out as soon as they are interested in me.

[cmcmck]

It never quite goes away but got buried under having to deal with being trans in my mid teens (yes- that as well) so there were more important issues. I hope that doesn't sound too crazy?

Thankfully, I found the right man after a few false starts in my yoof. :o)