Link Round-Up

[ewt]

Time for another of these... as usual, my apologies if I've provided a link without giving a credit, some of these are a few weeks old now and I don't remember where I get them all the time.

julietk kindly compiled some notes on cycling in London. Useful stuff. I rode on an actual road with real alive cars on it on Tuesday and did not get squished. To be fair I was only on the road for maybe 200m before I started to get scared of the cars, but at least three of them passed me and I am not squished, so I consider that a success.

Basic tutorial for women to pee standing. Still not as convenient as the male version, though.

How to tie the ten most useful knots. I'm not sure why these are considered 'most useful' but they're certainly all worth knowing. There are about four there I don't know from memory; I ought to practise and learn them. That said, I do wonder about the lack of a round turn and two half hitches...

What Psychology Professionals Should Know About Polyamory.

How to recycle office paper into blank books. A bit obvious, but still... If you have a source of printed-one-side-only paper and also do any regular writing-with-pencil-or-pen, this is not a bad idea. We used to use them for telephone message pads.

Omega-3s have positive effect on muscle mass. Is there anything omega-3 DOESN'T do? Srsly. We seem to be adapted to eat far more of it than most people get.

Temporary bike trailer - I want to make one of these! Or something similar. Except, of course, I don't ride quite enough yet to justify it.

Possibly snoring remedy? I haven't heard about this one before. It may or may not actually work. I wonder what it does to actual sleep quality - I suppose with time the wearer would adapt and sleep normally. Hmm.

Farmers more likely to have two jobs, says Statistics Canada. Well, duh. It's not as if you can make a living actually farming any more, what with 2.6 percent of farms bringing in 40 percent of revenue. Hog and chicken farms make most money while field crops make least - of course, if you're underpaying for the hog and chicken feed you're going to make a fatter profit at the expense of those growing grain. That and I expect most farms are still suffering badly from previous soil depletion problems, even if they're not still aggravating them.

Tech writer job going at Fotango.

Temporary work at Middlesex University later this summer. I'm not going to go for it - being on the phone all day is pretty close to my idea of hell, and I can't make the training bit anyway.

Perhaps some of you would be interested in Project Talent UK - not really quite my thing I think, and even if it were I'm not really in good shape to do it just yet.

Pigs given melamine-tainted food cleared for US market. So many food scares... I figure if you didn't grow it yourself you probably don't know what's in it, and even then there are soil contamination issues.

Whenever a politician argues that ID cards are vital to make the job of our police easier, remember this: In a free society, the job of the police isn't supposed to be easy. Hear, hear.

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Forget ID cards - which won't reduce violent crime much but will reduce fraud and illegal immigration, I'm open to persuasion either way whether they'll reduce it enough to be worth the cost of the project.

The statement I'm challenging is about whether the job of the police - preventing crime and catching criminals when it does occur - should be easier or harder. Explain to me how the Government should 'support the police' if it doesn't make that easier. I can only really think of paying them more to achieve less as an example.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

ID cards - read the relevant chapter of "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World" by Schneier, or similar, and be persuaded: They won't reduce fraud and illegal immigration significantly, let alone in line with the cost of the project.

You're conflating comparatives with absolutes. In an absolute sense, good policing which upholds justice cannot be easy in a free society. The police should be completely content to have to work hard, and stay on the side of justice. In a comparative sense, the Government should support the police by not placing arbitrary obstacles in their way, but always whilst respecting the principles of justice. No good Government would wish make the job of the police easy by means which erode justice.

[purplepiano.livejournal.com]

You started off by conflating comparatives and absolutes! The politician argued ID cards would make the police's job "easier", to which you replied it wasn't supposed to be "easy". It's argument by exaggerating the opponent's position. Which I think is fair enough, and it can be a good way of persuading people. After all the opponent often really believes something stronger than they are saying - an authoritarian politician may not really mind a little bit of erosion of justice just to make the paperwork easier.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I started off by implying that the Government wants people confused on this issue. "Make policing easier" can sound like a good thing - the 'slogan' uses 'reduction ad absurdum' to flag up that it may instead be a very bad thing.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Which is fine, and as I said there's a respectable case to be made against ID cards (and a respectable case to be made in favour of them, they exist in plenty of generally free societies). We're in a dialogue of the deaf on this issue nationally anyway, nobody on either side of the debate believes that the people on the other side have any good points at all.

My main concern is that if we lose the case for ID cards, we don't lose the absolutely vital work of making connections between public sector information. I've seen too much failure and suffering caused by the inability of systems used by doctors and old people's care services to communicate with each other, or schools and social workers, to want to let libertario-luddism put improvements at risk.

However, I'm afraid that in my recent experience when I scratch the surface of a committed opponent of ID cards, I tend to find the sort of pro-crime nutter who is opposed to CCTV, DNA databases, judicial access to oyster card records, and generally any measure short of handing out 'get out of jail free' cards at tube stations. This week they mostly seem to be opposing increasing the number of times nurses visit socially disadvantaged mothers-to-be. Though they often call themselves left-wing.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

There's a lot more diversity in opinion that we often think. You can't know that because person A believes X they are a Type 1 person etc. Just about any vaguely rational opinion has a wide diversity of adherants. That you have encountered a few 'nutters' in the opposition to ID cards doesn't change that empirical fact. There are 'nutters' in every camp.

I don't think that opposition to CCTV or DNA databases is 'pro-crime'. I'm in favour of properly scrutinized judicial access to relevant information in well conducted police investigations, by the way. Only judicial access.

The National ID card and database scheme which is now being proposed for the UK is, of course, nothing like historical paper-based ID cards. I haven't seen convincing evidence that any ID card system will achieve anything useful in the real world - they are 'security theatre', giving a false sense of 'something being done', and are dangerous by that alone.

I completely agree that people need to communicate effectively. I am pessimistic that any large, bureaucratic system can ever do that. My logical reasoning on the subject is supplemented by watching my mother's largely well-meaning and individually competant medical and social care team, systematically fail to be able to meet her actual needs.

I think that it will take 'human' scale organisations to properly meet human needs. That probably means devolution down to human-scale communities, which when it comes to social care, could be tight-knit living, working neighbourhoods of fewer than 1000 people. It isn't a coincidence that everyone would have 2 degrees or fewer of seperation in such a community, and ID cards wouldn't be an issue.