Interesting Stuff Thread

TomSweeney

Whatever you may think of Rowan Croft, these 2 lads have interesting tales to tell about leaving Islam

Hotblack Desiato

Terry Jones has died.

Someone posted this on another thread, seems appropriate

smacl

Very sad news indeed. I enjoyed the following interview re Life of Brian

https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1219979458301628417

robindch

^^^ Sorry about Terry

But - gosh, that could almost be Barry Norman beneath that splendid interviewer hairstyle.

Hotblack Desiato

Andy Batten-Foster, apparently.

Bannasidhe

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Terry Jones has died.

Someone posted this on another thread, seems appropriate

Terry Jones was one of the greatest scholars of the Medieval Period ever - and I say this as a historian.
He changed the narrative as to how the whole era is viewed. Among his achievements was demonstrating that Chaucer was taking the Michael in a big way and that there was rather more casual shagging going on than had previously been acknowledged.

robindch

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Among his achievements was demonstrating that Chaucer was taking the Michael in a big way and that there was rather more casual shagging going on than had previously been acknowledged.

Funny you should mention that - I was only listening to an interview with him and Douglas Adams this morning from 1997 where Jones said as much, with literary evidence, off the top of his head, in the Chaucerian vernacular:

https://www.meyersonstrategy.com/2015/01/douglas-adams-and-terry-jones-one-of-my.html

Enjoy

smacl

Interesting piece in the RTE today suggesting St Patrick was a runaway Roman tax man, https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0317/1123667-was-st-patrick-a-runaway-taxman/

Hotblack Desiato

Trouble at t' condom mill

Global condom shortage looms as coronavirus shuts down production

magicbastarder

can they not just make them smaller?

Hotblack Desiato

Turn 'em inside out and use 'em again

robindch

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Turn 'em inside out and use 'em again

...the only way of using a condom which the RCC supports!

robindch

Harvard academics with plenty of spare time on their hands announce that sarcasm within organizations increases both conflict and creativity.

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49283

Li Huang, F. Gino, Adam D. Galinsky wrote:

Sarcasm is ubiquitous in organizations. Despite its prevalence, we know surprisingly little about the cognitive experiences of sarcastic expressers and recipients or their behavioral implications. The current research proposes and tests a novel theoretical model in which both the construction and interpretation of sarcasm lead to greater creativity because they activate abstract thinking. Studies 1 and 2 found that both sarcasm expressers and recipients reported more conflict but also demonstrated enhanced creativity following a simulated sarcastic conversation or after recalling a sarcastic exchange. Study 3 demonstrated that sarcasm's effect on creativity for both parties was mediated by abstract thinking and generalizes across different forms of sarcasm. Finally, Study 4 found when participants expressed sarcasm toward or received sarcasm from a trusted other, creativity increased but conflict did not. We discuss sarcasm as a double-edged sword: despite its role in instigating conflict, it can also be a catalyst for creativity.

Hotblack Desiato

robindch wrote: »

Harvard academics with plenty of spare time on their hands announce that sarcasm within organizations increases both conflict and creativity.

Yeah. Right.

smacl

Interesting to see Facebook starting to check and label false content. Saw this one earlier on



Video is published by The Epoch Times who seem to be a rather unusual pro-Trump and far right support group. What's interesting is that "a 2019 report showed it to be the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign", which means that Facebook is doing this even though it means significant loss of revenue. More here

Hotblack Desiato

Facepuke is still a sewer though

smacl

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Facepuke is still a sewer though

I only use it to keep in contact with friends and family so don't see too much crap. I see they've changed their policy with regards to misinformation. See following beeb report; Coronavirus: Facebook alters virus policy after damning misinformation report

robindch

The American Atheists have conducted a poll of 34,000 non-religious people in the USA. The results are interesting, especially when it comes to concealment:

Summary from The Friendly Atheist - here.

Full report - here

robindch

The Kansas City Heart Rhythm Institute is taking time out from sciencing to establish, via a 1,000 person trial, whether praying for people with covid is associated with positive care outcomes. Results are expected at the end of August.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04361838

Summary wrote:

This is a multicenter; double blind randomized controlled study investigating the role of remote intercessory multi-denominational prayer on clinical outcomes in COVID-19 + patients in the intensive care unit. All patients enrolled will be randomized to use of prayer vs. no prayer in a 1:1 ratio. Each patient randomized to the prayer arm will receive a "universal" prayer offered by 5 religious denominations (Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism) in addition to standard of care. Whereas the patients randomized to the control arm will receive standard of care outlined by their medical teams. During ICU stay, patients will have serial assessment of multi-organ function and APACHE-II/SOFA scores serial evaluation performed on a daily basis until discharge. Data assessed include those listed below.

Longtime posters might remember a similar, larger scale, 2006 study into the efficacy of praying for patients recovering from a certain kind of heart surgery (CABG) which concluded that "Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567

Odhinn

Stoners, which may explain a lot

Ancient Israelites burned cannabis as part of their religious rituals, an archaeological study has found.
A well-preserved substance found in a 2,700-year-old temple in Tel Arad has been identified as cannabis, including its psychoactive compound THC.
Researchers concluded that cannabis may have been burned in order to induce a high among worshippers.
This is the first evidence of psychotropic drugs being used in early Jewish worship, Israeli media report.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52847175

robindch

St Paul’s Catholic School in Leicester has apologized after a religious studies teacher asked a class of 12/13 year to plan their funerals during lockdown. Items which the religious studies teacher wanted the kids to think about included the name of a favourite piece of music or hymn, the flowers they'd like, a style of coffin, whether burial or cremation, whom they'd like to be present at the event and so on.

The school has announced that the homework was "sent out in error":

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5721768/children-homework-plan-school
https://www.irishpost.com/news/catholic-school-funeral-homework-187273

robindch

Wondering about how geographically segregated societies can come about? Wonder no longer!

This (very simple) simulator allows you to see what happens over time when two groups of individuals have varying levels of desire to live near to, or far away from, members of their own group. One can certainly pick holes in the simulation easily enough, but it's certainly interesting to see how the overall distribution of individuals changes over time.

https://ncase.me/polygons/

Peregrinus

Wonder a lot harder. The simulation assumes the the driver of segregation is people's preferences - sorry, polygons' preferences - for who they live near. But isn't that kind of assuming the conclusion?

Here in real polygon world, where polygons live is largely determined by other factors, such as what they can afford, what jobs are open to them (you can't put a square peg in a round hole ) and where those jobs are located. These social and economic determinants produce physical segregation, and that segregation drives group identity and group preferences, more than the other way around.

robindch

Peregrinus wrote: »

Wonder a lot harder.

Indeed - the simulation assumes a bunch of improbables - an homogeneous society, that people's preferences for neighbors are the only drivers for when and where they move, that there really are people who move away from somewhere because their neighbours are too "samey" anybody ever heard of this happening?)

However, despite the assumptions, I don't see how that assuming these improbables, one also assumes the conclusion - which is the arising of ghettos in places which didn't have them. BTW, is there a neutral word which describes areas where one phenotype tends to dominate?

The starting condition of homogeneity seems improbable though I don't believe it matters to the simulation. As you say, other drivers include availability of work, transport, schools, housing cost, earning power - in addition to neighbor preference. But are these other drivers larger than group identity to start with? Perhaps there's a distinction to be drawn between racial grouping which is phenotypical and social-class grouping which is economic - and where the two overlap, then you'd get ghettos as above. Or, do socioeconomic groupings self-assemble in the same way? Seems very possible indeed.

Hotblack Desiato

All mathematical models work off assumptions. The interesting thing is to let them run and see how they reflect (or not) reality, adjust assumptions and go again.

Robindch your simulation reminds me of a program that came on the "Horizons" demo tape for the ZX Spectrum, Fox and Geese I think it was called

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizons:_Software_Starter_Pack

Actually it was called Evolution

Life was interesting, too.

You can download this legally for free and play it on the excellent FUSE emulator, ahh memories (very small 16K or 48K ones )

robindch

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

your simulation reminds me of a program that came on the "Horizons" demo tape for the ZX Spectrum, Fox and Geese I think it was called

Ah, yes, the old Speccy - 48k's worth of happy coding space and a graphic addressing scheme which was dreamed up by Satan himself. My first Speccy game was - blushing slightly here, since I was 15/16 when I wrote it - called Spermatroids, a game in which you played a hapless sperm wending your way up the scented heaven of a fallopian tube, a process made slightly the more difficult by the uneven walls of the tube - dead if you touched them - and by the constant flow of 8x8 UDG's in the form of tiny condoms, IUD's, pills and diaphragms - again, game over if one of them hit. The successful player would navigate sufficiently far up the tube, find the egg, dive the sperm into it, at which point a 32x32 graphic of a little baby would appear and a small ditty would play. Thankfully, 3D games were still some way off at the time.

robindch

"‘Embarrassing’ system of oaths and affirmations to be abolished"

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/embarrassing-system-of-oaths-and-affirmations-to-be-abolished-1.4310299

Irish Times wrote:

Witnesses will no longer be required to swear before God or make an affirmation when filing affidavits under proposals agreed by Cabinet on Tuesday.

Instead they will be able to make what will be known as a “statement of truth” and will face a maximum one year prison term for breaking it.

The proposals will put an end to the “embarrassing” practice of a witness having to indicate their religious faith when making an affidavit, the Law Society said.

[...]

Hotblack Desiato

But this is just for affidavits - in court, jurors, witnesses and accused will still have to choose to either swear on a specific holy book or affirm. Outing yourself as a Jew, Muslim or atheist isn't always the best move.

Robindch - it's never too late to release your creation into the public domain so we can all play it

robindch

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

But this is just for affidavits

Baby steps.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

it's never too late to release your creation into the public domain so we can all play it

Mercifully, all my Speccy tapes from those years departed many years ago. Feel free to take up the idea though - the good people over at GTA would be thrilled to hear about it.

robindch

https://twitter.com/LettersOfNote/status/1286953846841974784