Links - 6th October 2012

"Life is pain, anyone who says differently is selling something." - William Goldman

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The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic - NYTimes.com - "CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause"

School Assessment Tests: An Imperfect but Vital Measure - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com - "Critics point out that V.A.M. incorporates measurement error. Thus, it is certain that some teachers will receive scores that are either higher or lower than they deserve. The critics are correct. But perfection is too high a standard. The relevant question is whether there is information in V.A.M. estimates that improve a school system's ability to distinguish between effective and ineffective teachers. There undoubtedly is. Improving upon the current evaluation system is a remarkably low bar. Research has discovered wide variation in teacher quality. Yet nearly all teachers receive satisfactory ratings under the current system. Further, research shows that the characteristics used to identify effective teachers — for instance, obtainment of a master's degree — are unrelated to classroom effectiveness. In contrast, V.A.M. can be used to predict a teacher's future performance in the classroom. For instance, research by Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen shows that a teacher's performance as measured by V.A.M. in her first two years in the classroom is a far better predictor of student learning than are conventional measures like a master's degree"

A Singaporean In Australia: What Minister Yacoob Really Want - " What Minister Yacoob does not realise is that there is already a code of conduct in the internet. Do you know what it meant to TYPE IN CAPS? If you received an email you are reasonably expected to reply if you are the main recipient under "to:" and recipients under "cc:" and "bcc:" can reply but are not expected to. There are some form of syntax in communication, be in it business emails, flaming wars on a random forum or gaming with your guild mates. The list goes on. Thus, Minister Yacoob's vision was both perplexing and unnecessary... What Minister Yacoob really want was not developing an internet code of conduct but to create a self-censorship culture for Singapore internet users... As long as our government remains incorruptible, why be afraid of the unregulated, irrational virtual milky way? Somebody is afraid here. This is just my opinion."

9GAG - Olympics Opening Ceremony = Lord of the Rings

Staying dry in rain: run or walk? - "A physicist has put forth new ideas in the long-running question of how best to keep dry when moving in the rain. If you run, you are out in the rain for less time, yet you run into more drops - so what is the optimal speed? Franco Bocci, reporting in the European Journal of Physics, now asserts that both wind direction and a person's stature figure into the answer. In most cases, the general answer is to run as fast as possible; but the answer changes in a tailwind, or for the thin"

The Pompous Ass Words Web Site - "Hello and welcome! This is the Pompous Ass Words site, a place dedicated to identifying words that shouldn't be used on the grounds that doing so makes you sound like a pompous ass. It was partly inspired by the American Heritage College Dictionary's list of "100 Words Every High School Graduate and Their Parents Should Know." When I first saw it I thought, there have to be at least 100 words everyone should know about and never use. So I figured hey, let's start putting that list together... A Pompous Ass Word (PAW) is an uncommonly understood word that is synonymous with a commonly understood one. For example, tendentious is a PAW because it could be substituted with biased with no loss of meaning. On the other hand, ersatz isn't because it isn't synonymous with imitation - it implies a lesser quality as well"

cul pompeux - "Reading your page, I was pleased to see that many of your PAW are ordinary French words. So to be a pompous ass (cul pompeux in French), you just insert in your conversation a few French words that nobody knows the signification and you'll give the illusion of being an educated person. In my country (French part of Switzerland), we get polluted by English words everywhere: big ads in English (specially from telephone companies), sale written on show-windows (sale means dirty in French) and there is a special word in French for clearance sales (soldes). And pompous people often add English words in their conversation to be "in", c'est-à-dire "à la page". 50 or 100 years ago, in French to give the illusion of a "good education", you had to insert Latin expression in your conversation, now, to be "modern", its English. So its a pleasure to see that the pompousass use the same technique on both sides of the ocean"

Learn the definition already! - "I was in the middle of a Ph.D. in linguistics at Cornell then dropped out about ten years ago. We were taught to scientifically and non-judgmentally describe how people actually use words (even if it's "wrong") rather than how they ought to use them. This went against my grammar nazi soul. That's not why I dropped out, but now that I am no longer officially a linguist I've gone back to unashamedly labeling things "WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!""

Howard Shaw sentenced to 12 weeks' jail - "Senior District Judge See Kee Oon said the fact that Shaw, a prominent green activist and third-generation descendent of Shaw Organization founder Runme Shaw, did not ask the girl about her age showed it was not a 'honest and reasonable mistake'."
Moral of the story: always ask a girl her age! (this includes those you think are 16 or above if you don't pay them)

17-year-old girl pleads guilty to extortion in Internet love scam - "Blinded by love, she acted in a moment of folly. That was the explanation given by the lawyer of 17-year-old Yap Siew Ting, for her involvement in an Internet love scam, which saw one victim cheated of S$97,350... In a long and detailed mitigation, Yap's lawyer Aloysius Tan highlighted her youthful age, describing Yap as "just an unfortunate and impressionable teenager". Mr Tan added that Yap, whose parents divorced last year, "let her emotions and love for a boy rule over her usual rational and thoughtful self." The court also heard that Yap was working part-time at that time and was assured by Soh that his scam was "alright". Mr Tan emphasised that Yap's role was a more passive one compared to Soh's, and that she ended up being misled by him. Yap, who later requested to speak, told the court that she was remorseful and begged for leniency."
Right.

In romance, the hotties stick together - ""Beautiful people marry beautiful people and less beautiful people marry less beautiful people"... more attractive people placed more importance on physical attractiveness above other features in selecting their dates. Less attractive people placed more weight on other qualities, such as sense of humor."

ObscenityLawyer: Porn Trial: This Time it's Extreme - " Today the Crown Prosecution Service will attempt to persuade a jury that images of fisting should be classified as “extreme pornography” with the risk to the defendant of three years in custody, inclusion on the sex offenders' register and damage to his personal and professional standing. All for a type of image which is commonly viewed, of an activity which is itself is legal to perform and is even discussed in the book Fifty Shades of Grey... After being charged, Simon lost both professional and political positions, despite the fact that no pornography was found on any of his work computers. In fact, no pornography was found on Simon's home computers either. Instead, the police had to “interrogate” Simon's personal email account (server) in order to discover a few images they deemed questionable"

Teenage pregnancy: Setting aside childish things | The Economist - "MTV may have been a good influence. In 2010 the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a non-partisan advocacy group, assigned dozens of teenagers to watch several episodes of “16 and Pregnant”, a reality series that followed a handful of the girls in question. Almost all the young viewers agreed that teenage parenthood was harder than they had imagined... By other measures, curiously, teenagers are still feckless. In 2011 the CDC also reported that they are no more likely to eat a vegetable every day, or to drink milk, than they were in 1991"

This Is How Olympic Divers Really Look While Diving

If Only Singaporeans Stopped to Think: To Singapore... from an expat returning home - "Singapore's impact on most expatriates and other visitors, no matter how long they reside on this island, is often forever. It's the palpable feeling that somehow Singapore gets more things right than most other countries, and that day-to-day life here is on the whole better than in many other places. Not perfect, of course, but better."
If Singapore is so good, why are they leaving?; funny, in other contexts, 'complacency' is supposed to be a bad thing

Why Yes, Those Claw Machines Are Rigged, Says Arcade Operator - "those goddamn claw machines do deliberately have a tissue-thin grip, even when you think you have it lined up directly over that plush toy and can't possibly miss picking it up. The machines have variable PSI strength settings for the claws, wrote TheDJTec. It's designed so that they "pay out" (give you a toy) only as often as state regulations require. I had no idea that there were state regulations concerning this kind of an amusement, but there are"

An Olympic Fencer Refuses To Leave The Floor After Getting Screwed
"It's just a game. Why not put the same energy into helping people rather than train every minute of your life to use an archaic weapon with a blunted point."

Root Beer Float Pops

Japanese engineers have built a giant mech named Kuratas - "The robot can move its torso, arms and hands, and is able to fire 6,000 BB pellets in a minute via its two Gatling guns. It's also controllable via a 3G touch-screen phone if sitting inside the cockpit isn't something you're fond of (you're kidding, right?). There's even a missile launcher that fires plastic bottles at your enemies."