Monday Links from a Sauna Vol. LXXVIII

[NickFitz]

Crikey, it's hot - the hotel environs look like this:

I'm off to the pub for dinner, but not before posting these:

• Harold Shipman: typically middle class - "In Chavs Owen Jones contrasts the press treatment of Karen Matthews and Harold Shipman. Whereas Ms Matthews was widely regarded as a typical chav, no-one regarded Mr Shipman as typically middle class... Let me rectify this omission. If we must generalize from particular, extreme, cases, the Shipman case does shed light upon middle class Britain." I can see this one ruffling a few feathers on here
  
  
• What is Magic? Graduation Speech for Sixth Graders - "I gave a graduation speech to my elementary school, which is actually really terrifying. What do you say to 12 year olds? Especially because you also have to make it interest*ing for the adults in the audience. I was totally panicked. So I stewed on it for a few weeks, I finally was inspired, and wrote this in 15 minutes in a burst... Below is my speech, and you will see that my school really does look like a castle." An inspirational talk by journalist, artist and technologist Jennifer 8. Lee.
  
  
• Kind of Screwed - Andy Baio gets stiffed over the subtle distinction between art and copying: "Last year, I was threatened with a lawsuit over the pixel art album cover for Kind of Bloop. Despite my firm belief that I was legally in the right, I settled out of court to cut my losses. This ordeal was very nerve-wracking for me and my family, and I've had trouble writing about it publicly until now."
  
  
• The shot that nearly killed me: War photographers – a special report - "Attacked by a Haitian mob, kidnapped by Gaddafi's troops, shot in Afghanistan… Who'd be a war photographer?" Great photos though.
  
  
• LSD: Acid tests - "The psychedelic era of the 1960s is remembered for its music, its art and, of course, its drugs. Its science is somewhat further down the list. But before the rise of the counterculture, researchers had been studying LSD as a treatment for everything from alcoholism to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), with promising results." Could research into the major psychedelic drugs become respectable again?
  
  
• Michele Bachmann's Holy War - The Sarah-Palin-alike politician has an agenda, and it is strange: "Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government... You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger."
  
  
• The story of the Gömböc - "A Gömböc is a strange thing. It looks like an egg with sharp edges, and when you put it down it starts wriggling and rolling around with an apparent will of its own. Until quite recently, no-one knew whether Gömböcs even existed. Even now, Gábor Domokos, one of their discoverers, reckons that in some sense they barely exists at all. So what are Gömböcs and what makes them special?" I want one, but by heck they're expensive for a mathematical oddity made real
  
  
• The Brain on Trial - "Advances in brain science are calling into question the volition behind many criminal acts. A leading neuroscientist describes how the foundations of our criminal-justice system are beginning to crumble, and proposes a new way forward for law and order."
  
  
• The geeks who saved Usenet - Good account of how Google managed to gather together the scattered backups of (part of) the internet we had before the web: "The tale of how early Usenet was saved begins with one of the Net's great old-timers: Henry Spencer. 'Henry Spencer is the real hero, because his contributions are what makes this historic,' says Schmidt. 'Back in the Stone Age of the Internet, he was already archiving this stuff, and he was the only one doing it.'"
  
  
• Photo Opportunities - Corinne Violet gathered together hundreds of photos people had posted online of famous sights, and blended them together. The message seems to be that we all photograph the same things from pretty much the same spots, but the images are nice

Happy invoicing!

[PRC1964]

The Guardian photos are horrible. The one in the Congo in particular. The hand is bad enough, but if you zoom in on the original (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) what he's got in the other hand is even worse

[doodab]

The Guardian photos are horrible. The one in the Congo in particular. The hand is bad enough, but if you zoom in on the original (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) what he's got in the other hand is even worse

That's bollocks

[doodab]

[*]The story of the Gömböc - "A Gömböc is a strange thing. It looks like an egg with sharp edges, and when you put it down it starts wriggling and rolling around with an apparent will of its own. Until quite recently, no-one knew whether Gömböcs even existed. Even now, Gábor Domokos, one of their discoverers, reckons that in some sense they barely exists at all. So what are Gömböcs and what makes them special?" I want one, but by heck they're expensive for a mathematical oddity made real

This will have some applications for space rovers and the like I'd imagine.

[MarillionFan]

The Guardian photos are horrible. The one in the Congo in particular. The hand is bad enough, but if you zoom in on the original (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) what he's got in the other hand is even worse

Um Bongo, Um Bongo, they rip your nads off in the Congo, Congo.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Great stuff - keep up the good work !

LSD article - that is food for thought,

Right - back to the Tardis !

PS I did attend a lecture by Timothy Leary back in - erm 1992ish - I was touring California at the time and he was giving alecture in Virtual Reality in San Francisco - cane across the conference by chance = I did manage to speak to Mm Leary after his lecture - a veru intelligent man I should add.

Tinothy Leary is Dead
No -he is outside - looking in

[xoggoth]

Let me rectify this omission. If we must generalize from particular, extreme, cases, the Shipman case does shed light upon middle class Britain

Quote in that 1st link implies that generalisation from particular, extreme, cases is wrong/innacurate but is it? given the nature of statistics and sample sizes of millions. The outlying and therefore rare events can still be still part of the distribution curve. "Lurid headlines" can sometimes provide some fairly accurate pointers.