Links - April 19th 2012

You Can't Say Effin on Facebook - "Facebook may have its European headquarters in Dublin but the social networking site has wiped a small Irish village off the map because its name is deemed obscene"

New Study Shows that Free Apps Are Killing Your Battery - "For free games, downloading ads over 3G was by far the biggest energy waister. In Angry Birds’ case, only 18% of the energy used was spent on actually running the game."

Married couples 'take it in turns' to win arguments - "husbands and wives took it in turns to get their own way - but unmarried couples did not."

Is Unconscious Plagiarism a Real Phenomenon? - "While unconscious plagiarism is embarrassing in cases where original creative output is expected, in most aspects of daily life it ranges from useful to indispensible. What is called cryptomnesia in one context is known as social learning theory in another"

Women Are Like Cats - "Too many guys treat women like dogs, when really they are most more feline in nature. With a dog, you can pet them whenever you want. A cat can be very affectionate as well, but they will let you know when they would like to be rubbed. At the right time they will purr, arch their backs, and show great satisfaction in physical attention. But you really have to let them make the first move."

New counselling programme brings together couples torn by adultery - "After 11 years of marriage, the romance had fizzled out and the conversation had died down. But it never occurred to John (not his real name) that not paying attention would drive his wife into another man's arms."
If a man strays, he's a cad. If a woman strays, it's because her man's a cad?

Grotty cravats and microbial stats: taking aim at "functionless clothing items" in British hospitals - "In 2006 the British Medical Association called them "functionless clothing items." The BMA went on to say: "Ties are rarely laundered but worn daily, commonly outside the healthcare environment. Ties perform no beneficial function in patient care and have been shown to be colonised by pathogens." Take that, Beau Brummel... The current fashion for ties that are long, pink and extremely bloated reflects either very bad taste or unsavoury phallic fixation... The discomfort of the necktie, or the girdle, as a form of attire, is its very significance. As with snaffle bits and hackamores, light but continuous pressure is applied to a region of the body — a constant reminder of your place in the social hierarchy. Are not such functionless clothing items really just tired symbols that are better undone? The cravat when your luck is good: the slipknot when luck runs out"

Hills Criteria of Causation - "Hills Criteria of Causation outlines the minimal conditions needed to establish a causal relationship between two items...
1. Temporal Relationship
2. Strength
3. Dose-Response Relationship
4. Consistency
5. Plausibility
6. Consideration of Alternate Explanations
7. Experiment
8. Specificity
9. Coherence"

ON LANGUAGE NERDS AND NAGS - "Writing in English offers far more room for manoeuvre than some may realise... in common-law legal systems, constitutions and statutes make up the basic set of rules, but legal opinions by judges play just as big of a role in specifying how the rules apply. The original rules allow room for interpretation, so the law can change organically with time... the English language is far too rich for such rigidity"

Wall Street Smarts - NYTimes.com - "“The financial system nearly collapsed,” he said, “because smart guys had started working on Wall Street.”"

Battle of the Book | Conservation Magazine - "So, how many volumes do you need to read on your e-reader to break even? With respect to fossil fuels, water use, and mineral consumption, the impact of one e-reader payback equals roughly 40 to 50 books. When it comes to global warming, though, it’s 100 books; with human health consequences, it’s somewhere in between."

Chris Birch stroke: Rugby player wakes up gay after freak gym accident

Vital job skills you didn’t learn in school - "Regardless of whether you're an introvert, or the "life of the party", you have the capability to infect your surroundings with positive, life-giving energy."

The Best On-Screen Depiction Of Abortion We’ve Ever Seen - "“Obvious Child” shows Jenny Slate’s character Donna deciding to have an abortion with little fretting or to-do. She’s not soul-searching or struggling, she’s simply exercising her right NOT to have a baby"
Safe, legal and rare is evidently not a goal of all: no wonder many pro-lifers get so upset

Syria bans face veils at universities
Islamophobia!

Face it, you can be virtually spooked via Facebook - "USERS of social media sites should not post their pictures online as they could be used for witchcraft, said Kelantan Darussyifa' Islamic Medicine Association chairman Zaki Ya."

Win-Win is for Losers! - "Contracts are signed with each party's own interests in mind. Leading up to the contract is the negotiation, and the winning attitude must start there. This is not to say that the opposing party does not get what she wants out of a deal as well, but an experienced negotiator lets her have it on his own terms. The mark of a master negotiator is to walk away from the table with what he came for while letting the other party feel she got a good deal as well. Now that's skill. Win-win suggests a tie wherein you, in the best case scenario, end up with a dissatisfying compromise. On the other hand, win big/win small means getting what you came for while still making sure the other party's needs are met as well. You will always get the best deal in bargaining if you follow more of a win big/win small philosophy."

IQ link to drug use - "Men with high IQ scores at the age of 5 were around 50% more likely to have used amphetamines, ecstasy, and several illicit drugs than those with low scores, 25 years later. The link was even stronger among women, who were more than twice as likely to have used cannabis and cocaine as those with low IQ scores"

Big Bang Theory fuels physics boom - "There was a 10% increase in the number of students accepted to read physics by the university admissons services between 2008-09, when The Big Bang Theory was first broadcast in the UK, and 2010-11"

Networking and pay: Contact sports | The Economist - "Among executive-board members, women earn 17% less than their male counterparts. There are plenty of plausible explanations for this disparity, from interruptions to women’s careers to old-fashioned discrimination. But the authors find that this pay gap can be fully explained by the effect of executives’ networks. Men can leverage a large network into more senior positions or a seat on a more lucrative board; women don’t seem to be able to. "

Jonas M Luster's answer to Morals and Morality: How can I eat meat with a good conscience? - Quora - "You could, as most vegans and vegetarians do, declare that you are "not part of the system" and conveniently neglect the fact that your lifestyle requires you to intake supplements produced by polluters and your food comes with a huge death toll as well. You could, also, declare rodents, frogs, fish, snakes, insects, and other animals to be less worthy, but that's slightly hypocritical. Or you could declare that incidentals are unavoidable while intentional killing taints the soul. Or you could fight the CAFO industry and its cruelties. You can't do this by turning around and declaring yourself innocent. But you can do this by supporting the mortal enemies of factory farming and ranching - the small, independent, rancher and farmer. You can do this by eating food that is grown and raised locally, by finding producers that work with the seasons, not against them, by supporting communal agriculture and community ranches (you essentially buy 1/4th of a steer or pig or 100 eggs or six fryer birds, the farm raises them, you can check up on them, and you get the finished product when it's good and ready), by growing your own produce in your yard (vegans without a yard are the biggest hypocrites in the bunch) and by learning seasons and eating only what's in season and doesn't have to be produced 1600 miles away."

Low-Carbohydrate Diets and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality - "Two large, long-term cohort studies examined the relationships of animal-based and vegetable-based lowcarbohydrate diets with mortality. Diets that emphasized animal sources of fat and protein were associated with higher all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality, whereas diets that emphasized vegetable sources of fat and protein were associated with lower all-cause and cardiovascular mortality."

Titanic SUPER 3D - YouTube - "Titanic is back, digitally upgraded with new 3D motion feel technology."

Beauty Queens and Battling Knights: Risk Taking and Attractiveness in Chess - "male chess players choose significantly riskier strategies when playing against an attractive female opponent, even though this does not improve their performance. Women’s strategies are not affected by the attractiveness of the opponent."
The only folly of Man...

The Clergy Project - Home Page - "The Clergy Project is a confidential online community for active and former clergy who do not hold supernatural beliefs"

Christian Louboutin explains why women love shoes - YouTube

Stuart Buck has a startling explanation for Acting White. - "Suppose integration doesn't change the culture of underperformance? What if integration inadvertently created that culture in the first place?... It was desegregation that destroyed thriving black schools where black faculty were role models and nurtured excellence among black students"

State Senator Behind "Don't Say Gay" Bill Refused Service At Restaurant - "There's no escaping the homosexual agenda these days -- even as far into the conservative heartland as Knoxville, Tennessee. A Tennessee state senator who fought to block teaching about homosexuality in schools was refused service at a restaurant in Knoxville... In Campfield's view, he's the victim of the Knoxville thought police. "If you don't think the way certain people think, then they think you don't have a right to be served," he said."
If a restaurant had refused service to a gay activist...

An MMS I got

Text: "There is a future for you on Japanese TV!"

(wah lao who uses MMS nowadays?)

Australia 2011 - Day 9, Part 1 - Kakadu National Park: Sunrise Cruise

Australia 2011
Day 9 - 6th August - Kakadu National Park: Sunrise Cruise (Part 1)

This day, we took a morning cruise:


Yellow Water Cruises Brochure from the previousday: it was $12 more than the 9am cruise but included breakfast and would let us profit from more of the day. Besides which, sunrise was special.

In the morning, I found a cockroach in the bathroom. Ahh, the Tropics!


In my quest to find a non-sour brand of Australian Orange Juice, this was the latest brand I tried. Of course, it was vile like all the rest. Perhaps this was to help the Australians wake up.

We'd forgotten to book the cruise, but luckily they were not out of tickets. There being 4 boats probably had something to do with it.


Sunrise by the pier




Our boat. I noticed something interesting about the demographics: we weren't just the only Asians on the cruise - we were the only non-Whites.

As we got into the boat, we found that we were enjoying an authentic wetland experience, as we passed the time while waiting for the boat to set off slapping mosquitoes.

The boat captain claimed the aborigines had the longest continuous culture in the world. Hurr. That depended on your definition of culture. The captain also talked about sharks in Kakadu. I was confused, but it seems they have come in before (to be eaten by crocodiles).


Wild Horses. They're culled from the air each year, with the buffalo and pigs.


Shore and horses.

There're 25 crocodiles per square kilometre, and the largest crocodiles (and reptiles) in the planets are here - up to 7m. Kakadu is freshwater but there're saltwater crocodiles there too.




There're water chestnuts under the water lilies, below the spiky bit.


Insect movement causing moving bodies of water


Small saltwater crocodile. So small you can't see it properly.

We saw Jabiru (the name refers to another species outside of Australia), a black necked stork flying. It's Australia's only true stork. I can't find out what a false stork might be.


Sunrise on the water


Water lilies




This red-headed bird walking on the water lilies has the largest toe-body weight ratio in the world.


The geese that feast on the water chestnuts and rice get too full to fly, so the aborigines knock them out and eat them.


Lurking crocodile


Crocodile Commentary 1


Crocodile Commentary 2


Crocodile Commentary 3


Raja Show (?) duck with crocodile

75% of what crocodiles eat goes to maintaining their body weight. They have directional sonar.


This should be drovers and cranes.

One of the types of birds in the photographs here should be rjabbaru (sp). It's a Portuguese name, not a local one. Their beaks can pierce turtle shells and kill small crocodiles




This is freshwater mangrove and they are the last true mangroves in Australia (?)

In the early 2000s they tried to grow rice in Kakadu and spent 2 million dollars (?).




Egret walking on water lilies. Quite dangerously, with the crocodile behind. But as the captain informs us, crocodiles only need to eat every 3 months so it's probably not worth the trouble.


Cruising

The only accurate way to tell a crocodile's age is to look at the leg bone. They have rings, like trees.