Interesting Links for 13-01-2016

[andrewducker]

• Sell everything ahead of stock market crash, say RBS economists
  • shares economics economy
• Actual Facts Related To The Bowie Social Media Shitstorm Today
  • consent age DavidBowie
• A radical new approach to generating human organs is to grow them inside pigs or sheep.
  • organs pigs sheep humans research
• DNA-testing kit 23andme: patient-powered healthcare

Comments

[makyo]

What song would you choose to represent England?
I'm actually rather fond of Jerusalem myself, both the text and Parry's music. And given that Blake's poem was a rather ironic sideswipe at jingoistic nationalism ("Jesus visited here, did he? really? even the gloomy bits?") and a call for progressive social reform, I think we could do a lot worse. The tiresome nationalists can sing it thinking it's all about how England is the bestest country ever in the whole wide world, and the rest of us can sing it with a sardonically raised eyebrow, in the knowledge that it's saying something much different. Which strikes me as a very English way of doing things.

[newandrewhickey]

Absolutely. I have no love for either anthems or the concept of England, but there are much, *much* worse choices than Jerusalem. It's a genuinely great song, with a genuinely great message.

[danieldwilliam]

Aye, Jerusalem would get my vote.

Not sure if I ought to get a vote.

It's a two stage question. Should England use the UK national anthem for England only events? I reckon, as a Scot and therefore a Briton, I ought to get a vote on that.

What song should England pick instead of the UK national anthem. Not my business really, but I think England should pick Jerusalem. If only so that Scotland will be encouraged to get rid of Flower of Scotland and pick Dignity instead.

[a_pawson]

I would also very much like Scotland to ditch Flower of Scotland in favour of something a bit less confrontational. Whether it is Scotland the Brave, Caledonia, Highland Cathedral or something completely different, I don't really care, but having a song that is rather less about kicking your neighbours arse would be a good thing in my opinion.

Scotland of course isn't alone in this. The lyrics of many national anthems are jingoistic, but it would be nice for Scotland to have one that wasn't.

[cartesiandaemon]

To be fair, there may be worse pyramids that didn't last 4500 years and so aren't around to be critiqued :)

[skington]

The Bent pyramid might still have its limestone facing because it was unintentionally built to survive major temperature fluctuations.

[danieldwilliam]

Mmmh, statutory rape turns out to be a bit problematic doesn't it

[bart_calendar]

Well, if you want to just get into a debate over whether Bowie was a criminal or not, he certainly was. But he was breaking lots and lots of laws

[danieldwilliam]

I don't doubt that he's done worse things (both things that I consider worse and which society considers worse) than the statutory rape that is the subject of discussion.

And you're probably right that the motivation of the people getting very excited about it is not a clean and clear love of justice and jurisprudence.

Personally, I'd be more concerned about the moral implication of kicking down doors whilst high or toting guns around whilst at the same time thinking that still doesn't put him beyond the pale (or at least my pale) completely.

Drugs laws start to push against my boundary of legimate laws. I think they are illiberal and unnecessarily restrictive and I think the process used to lobby for their creation and retention is perhaps corrupt enough to make those laws illegimate.

[steer]

Instead people are focused on what legally was considered the least serious law he broke. Because it's the most clear moral transgression. The law is not germane here, it's whether what he did was actually pretty messed up

[momentsmusicaux]

> This is a fairly clear, succinct, and easy to reason about definition, that describes a phenomena that exists relatively rarely.

Bollocks. Or at least, the writer of that does not know much about the area of software that I work in. Technical debt is accrued all the time.