Interesting Links for 19-06-2016

[andrewducker]

Pornography: Not actually bad for you (tags: pornography research psychology ) A simple numbers game seems to make kids better at math (tags: maths numbers learning psychology ) UK to reject EU plans to combat multinational tax avoidance (tags: tax europe uk ) Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4 Million Years (tags: antarctic co2

Comments

[gonzo21]

Brexit and Indyref will rapidly become completely pointless if Co2 levels continue at this rate. We might have gone from one or two generations left, to 10 years left.

[ice_hesitant]

Left until? UK's not going to be underwater yet in 10 years.

[gonzo21]

No, but we might see more large-scale crop failures which could make things... lively.

[bart_calendar]

Two questions:

1. Is the referendum legally binding? If Leave wins could Parliament say "You people are idiots, fuck that!"

2. Wouldn't the UK be completely fucked fiancially if Scotland stayed in the EU while the rest of the UK left, since you have all the oil?

[andrewducker]

Oil's not so valuable as it was:
http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/crude-oil.aspx?timeframe=2y

and there's a lot of discussion of whether the value of the oil outweighs the extra spending Scotland gets at the moment.

And no, the referendum is not technically legally binding. But any politician that says fuck you to a majority of the population is going to have _really_ big problems getting elected ever again.

[bart_calendar]

Well, oil will become valuable again.

It's only cheap now because of weird Middle Eastern politics.

According to the French newspapers (which I have to say are often incredibly biased so take it with a grain of salt) oil is cheap now because the Saudis are trying to pump out a lot to depress the prices so that Syria/ISIS have less financial resources.

[andrewducker]

That's kinda my understanding. Only also that Saudi Arabia and Iran hate each other, and therefore neither is willing to pump less (and make less money), despite knowing that if both did it then they'd both make more money. It's the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Only also there's Russia, which is also unwilling to pump less. Quite a good write-up here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/04/18/saudis-are-going-for-the-kill-but-the-oil-market-is-turning-anyw/

[andrewducker]

Google tells me that means "What should we do now, is to inflame by loud saber-rattling and war cries location".

Care to give me a better translation?

[sashajwolf]

"Kriegsgeheul" means "war cries" or "baying for war". I'm not sure that isn't actually stronger than "warmongering".

[channelpenguin]

I'd translate that as

"what we should not do, is inflame the situation by sabre-rattling and crying for war"

I get the sense of "making demands for war", rather than "taking warlike action" (which is how I would translate "warmongering" in English). But I'll agree, I don't know the exact word "Kriegsgeheul", or it's subtleties. "geheul"/"heulen" is howling/ to howl.

I'll ask a native who also speaks good English later.

[missedith01]

At Nye's school they call the estimating small numbers thing subatising.

[octopoid_horror]

If Leave won, then surely what would happen is that if this triggered a hashtag indyfref 2: indyref harder, is that Scotland would a referendum, possibly become independent and then try to -join- the EU, because Britain would already have left as a whole by that point?

[skington]

Depends on the timing - e.g. if Indyref2 happens before the negotiations for the UK to leave the EU are completed (article 50 allows for 2 years).

Although for Catalonia reasons other EU countries would prefer the UK to leave and Scotland then to join as an independent country - even if it's only a matter of days between the two.

Incidentally, I believe the actual process of Scotland re-joining the EU should be straightforward - it usually takes a long time for most countries because they have to adjust their laws to match the EU's, but Scotland's already done that, by definition. Scotland would have to set up the appropriate institutions that the EU expects to deal with, but it would have to do that as part of becoming an independent country in any case. Some of it would be difficult - e.g. I believe the DVLA is pretty much all in Swansea at the moment so you'd need to build that up from scratch - but in other cases it would presumably just be a matter of "we'll take the part of the UK institutions that are physically in Scotland".