GOOD or BAD: new season edition

[coalescent]

[Poll #1467130]

Comments

[andrewducker]

I see that Dollhouse Season 2 has entirely dropped off the radar.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure there's much debate about Dollhouse season two.

[andrewducker]

Really? I've heard very good things from a couple of people and "meh" from others.

How speaks The Unanimity?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Scenes with Amy Acker in = GOOD. Most of the rest = BAD. (And the extent to which you think the season is worth watching tends to depend on the weight you give to the Amy Acker scenes, either in themself or as a marker of things to come.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It's a little late now for blackberries, but the damp summer was very good for them. Om, nom.
Friends with the other kind seem to like those, too.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Are you sure? She's bit precious for me.

[rosefox]

Blackberries as in berries or as in gadgets?

...actually, never mind, my answer's the same either way.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Am I right in thinking all you youngsters think raising the retirement age is good and all us oldsters think it's bad. Humph. You wait.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. She's not Fred. Try this. The scene that this clip comes from is also excellent, but the clip focuses on Topher's side of the exchange and I don't think the full episode is available online outside the US. (Spoilers, obviously.)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I have just been given the other kind at work, you see. STUPID STUPID KEYBOARD.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Blackberries as in berries or as in gadgets?

Whichever comes to mind first, in the spirit of GOOD or BAD.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

No, bohemiancoast is at the upper end of the age range, and rosefox and dyddgu are at the lower.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, my answer was to do with the fruit, which I have more experience with.

[andrewducker]

I voted "good" to that because I think it's vital, and makes sense.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I agree that given increasing life expectancy, some raise in the retirement age makes sense. But I wouldn't say it's vital; I could be persuaded that we should just all pay more tax while working to support the longer retirement period.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Hmmm. Maybe.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I don't really mind, I just think you get more cynical and unenthusiastic about work as you get older.

[andrewducker]

I don't know that many people who aren't cynical and unenthusiastic about work :->

I mean, _some_ - I can be enthusiastic intermittently, but a lot of people seem to be in jobs that veritably encourage cynicism and low morale.

Blackberries good, brambles bad

[jinty]

I didn't even think of the machine (even though I too have one for work - use it v infrequently mind you). The ones with the full keyboard are much much better.

[andrewducker]

We possibly could do that - but it gets exponentially more expensive the more years you have to support. I'd be in favour of a citizen's allowance, to be honest, if we could get the political will behind it.

Re: Blackberries good, brambles bad

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I can imagine. Unfortunately mine is very stupid: a qwerty arrangement, but at two letters per key. So it is neither like regular multitouch, nor like a full keyboard; rather it is the worst of both worlds. Aargh.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

We possibly could do that - but it gets exponentially more expensive the more years you have to support.

Yes, but on the other hand it's not going to go up forever; we've got a demographic bulge to deal with, not an increasing elderly population for ever. (Unless medicine *really* comes on a way...)

citizen's allowance

?

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Oh my, I never even thought about the other kind, just the nommy ones.

[andrewducker]

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/10/living_longer_looks_likely_wit.html

Looks likely that 50% of kids born today will live to 100...

I should have said Citizen's Income - the most basic form of which is Basic Income.

Basically, everyone gets given the minimum necessary to survive on for free. You can then get rid of most tax complications above that (i.e. various sliding scales), don't have to worry about housing benefit, (most) disability living allowances, student loans/grants, etc. It's a vast simplification of the system. It also prevents poverty traps where losing the income from your benefits outweighs the income from part time jobs - all gross income increases your net income. It also means that employers can't treat staff in crap jobs quite so badly, as there's always the option of just stopping working, which gives more freedom to the worst paid/treated members of society.

However, as you can imagine, it's not cheap, and would play badly with chunks of society.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Looks likely that 50% of kids born today will live to 100...

Yes, but there's fewer of them!

How on earth do you determine what the minimum necessary to survive on is? It seems like we'd need an awful lot more social housing than we currently have, for starters.

[andrewducker]

How on earth do you determine what the minimum necessary to survive on is?

http://www.jrf.org.uk/work/workarea/minimum-income-standards

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

I don't mind the retirement age being raised per se, but for heaven's sake, it's the 21st century, why are they only proposing to increase the retirement age for *men*?

Also, if they could promise to ensure that my "company" pension pays out when and at the rate that both I and my employer agreed at the start, that would be quite nice :-p

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that an increase in the retirement age for women is already on the cards. The fuss is not about raising the retirement age for women, but about how fast it gets raised, eg:

But analysts immediately spotted a problem. The government is raising the pension age for women, to bring it up to the pension age for men, but this process will not be complete until 2020. Initially, it seemed that the Tory plan could result in the pension age for women rising from 63 to 66 in a single year.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Yes, women's retirement age is being raised, in a phased process, to bring it in line with men's. But the proposals I was reading today are all about raising men's retirement age, in pretty short order, and pretty damn soon, whilst not saying anything about women's retirement age. Or at least, not saying anything about it until someone pointed out that they'd forgotten to mention 51% of the population, at which point, it would seem, they harrumphed a bit, wibbled, promised not to raise women's retirement age too quickly, and then said "ooh, look, a three headed monkey" and making off with all possible haste.

I am unconvinced they've thought this through with any degree of rigour. Or possibly even just the first half of that sentence.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

So far as I understood, the proposal was always going to affect all working men and women, and the wibbling was the fact that they'd forgotten the already-planned raise for women, rather than forgotten women entirely. Which doesn't give me any more confidence that they've actually thought it through, mind.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

My mood dictated that things were bad even if I didn't know what they were. But the new DW logo is definitely BAD.

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

It's a little late now for blackberries

Depends where in the UK you are. I picked some fresh and juicy berries this morning.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Ours have just gone over, alas. We're very soggy here, and the mould has begun to appear.

[peake.livejournal.com]

You really should have an INDIFFERENT option on your polls. I can't tell you how indifferent I am to most of these questions.

As for the retirement age - in broad terms it is probably good, in personal terms it is definitely bad. I can't afford to retire without the state pension, which means I cannot retire early. But I have plans for what I want to do when I retire, and it is something I want to do far far more than anything I am doing right now. Looks like I'll have to put it off for another year, which is most distinctly undesirable.

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

The same may happen to ours, if the rain keeps up for the next couple of days.

[talvalin.livejournal.com]

I was volunteered for one by my old manager in March. The keyboard is indeed rubbish but you'll get used to it. Its best use so far has been letting me read overnight emails from our support team in Singapore whilst on the train in so I don't get surprised by my manager (who gets in around 8am) asking me what I plan to do about X, Y and Z as soon as I walk into the office.

My cousin (voluntarily) bought a newer model a couple of months ago and the keys are just that bit bigger as to make it easier to use.

Re: Blackberries good, brambles bad

[talvalin.livejournal.com]

Ah. I thought you had a full keyboard model. Those other ones suck quite badly.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

The text part is not much of a departure from the first few logos the series ever had. It's retro. I like it. The Tardis icon is way too gimmicky, though.

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[(Anonymous)]

I don't see it as jealousy so much as iroatitirn at people who (a) feel they are entitled to something (i.e. higher education) that is (b) heavily subsidized by the taxpayer, but (c) take no responsibility for the personal choices that led to being up to the eyeballs in student loans.Out of high school, I had the grades and the test scores to go pretty much anywhere, but I chose Podunk State, because (1) it cost relatively little, and (b) they gave me a nominal scholarship/stipend that covered my living expenses. This ordinary education has never been a liability for me, not when I applied to grad programs, and not when I went to law school. It's not the government's job to absorb our errors in judgment. That said, I do think the student loan situation has become untenable. It is effectively a form of debtors' prison, and I have some sympathy for those who made sound choices, but still find themselves on the wrong side of student debt. One thing I'll never understand is why Congress can't change the laws to allow student loan debt to be discharged in bankruptcy. (I've been reading your posts, btw. I've just been too stressed out at work and home to leave comments, etc).

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[(Anonymous)]

I think the core ethical value that is tghuot in the book Seedfolks is respect. I think this because all of the neighbors, even though they do not know each other, they still respect the fact that they are people and should be treated as such. All the neighbors treat each other fairly and never desturb other peoples garden. This is why I think respect is the core ethical value that is tghuot in the book Seedfolks .

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[(Anonymous)]

the Hellenes, an I.E speaking group from Asia with weonaps and an aggressive attitude overwhelmed the peaceful Pelasgians and forced their language upon them. The Celtic speakers in the historical era pushed out Iberian speakers, and the later Roman occupation killed off what was left of Iberian. Spain and Portugal are good examples. For hundreds of years many Iberians spoke Andalusian Arabic before the reconquest of Iberia by Castilian speaking Christians. Languages change without much genetic changes occurring.The age of the Polish R1a I have no qualms with, but it must be realised that 10 kya there were no Poles, there were hardly any native Europeans in the part of Europe, and the ancestors of those people whose language became Polish were in Asia 10 kya. They just brought their haplogroups with them with no "Polish" haplotypes left in Asia. Archeology and aDNA of various remains found in NE Europe have shown the male remains to be R1a. The remains are from about 5 kya. Obviously R1a entered Europe long after it formed in Asia.I am J1e, I am European. My haplotype, 67 markers, matches with one person, an American whose European ancestor comes from another country to mine and spoke a different language to mine. This Yank is 63/67 match. According to FTDNA he is related to me from 12 to 24 generations. I have checked my paternal line back fifteen generations, and my line comes from the one country and my surname is mentioned back in the 1400s. It is unlikely that the American is related to me for many generations more than 24, in the pre surname period of Europe. The Yank has a version of my surname applicable in his ancestral country. Using Ysearch, the closest to my haplotype is a Spaniard, genetic distance of 25 in 67 markers. The furthest from me is a person with a Jewish surname who has a g.d of 55 out of 67. I am closer to other J1 subclades, even some subclades of J2 than this Jew with the same haplogroup as me, J1e. I only use 67 markers to work out age, anything else, less than 37 markers, is just wasting time. When you check out whether your son is your son, I would go for 67 markers particularly if you are common R1b.Dating haplogroups is not a science, just based on statistics. It may not be accurate but it is what the experts use. Dienekes is not an expert or a geneticist. Using prejudice, hate of Middle Easterners, is not a way to age haplogroup.

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[(Anonymous)]

From;Am. J. Hum.Genet. 2000, Richards M,et al: We conclude that (i) there has been suaitbntsal back-migration into the Near East, (ii) the majority of extant mtDNA lineages entered Europe in several waves during the Upper Palaeolithic, (iii) there was a founder effect or bottleneck associated with the LGM, 20,000 years ago, from which derives the largest fraction of surviving lineages, and (iv) the immigrant Neolithic component is likely to comprise less than one-quarter of the mtDNA pool of modern Europeans.From;-2001- Nicole Maca-Meyer, BMC Genetics 2001 The second cluster groups minor haplogroupsW, I and N1b -in Neolithic period- , the three are present although inlow frequencies in Europe, Near East and Caucasus butonly I and N1b have been also detected in Egypt and Arabia. Other: From Behar et al 2006"High incidence of Hg N1b in Ashkenazi Jews. Hg N1bis virtually absent in Europeans (0,20% or minor) but appears at frequenciesOf 3% or higher in those from Levant, Arabia, andEgypt (Richards et al. 2003; Kivisild et al. 2004; unpublishedresults of Tartu and Haifa groups). In total, we have identified four Ashkenazi foundinglineages, three within Hg K and one in Hg N1b, derivingfrom only four ancestral women and accounting for fully40% of the mtDNAs of the current Ashkenazi population(8,000,000 people). The secondmost common lineage is within Hg N1b and correspondsto an additional or more 800,000 people.We comparedthe pattern of lineage distribution seen in Ashkenazi Jewswith a global database of 30,000 mtDNAs, 13,359 ofwhich are from populations in which Hg K and N1bare present (table 6), and we could not detect anythingsimilar For example in European CaucasianPopulations were determined. The frequency of 18 haplotypes was found to account for only20.8% as whole of the European Caucasian mtDNAs a very significantdifference compared with the Ashkenazi Jews,for which four complete sequence haplotypes comprise42% of the mtDNAs "Other: from mine article April 2001 and Oct. 2010 This 42% mtDNA -include "N1" G nucleotide variant of M.E. and E.A. - individuals carrying these mitochondrial markers- as well from a fifth to seven mothers that includes the "L1, l2" and "M1" haplogroup also with origin from the Wide or extending Middle East that includes Abyssinian region who represents 50 % mtDNA of the nowadays Ashkenazi community. See too: Laurie J. Ozelius et al 2006. "The leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) G2019S mutation is the most common genetic determinant of Parkinson disease (PD) in Ashkenazi Jews and North African Arabs with PD."It has been seen, in this paper like Neolithic Nb1 at High frequencies in LKB culture also is present striking in Ashkenazim today at high rates (10 at 12%) perhaps for bottle neck effect.If the Ashkenazim with only 1200 years ancient, likely born in massiveComing from Alexandria Egypt first in number- and the Levant secondin number and before in times towards II century AE -or before yet- to Central Italy in VII century AE when Muslim invaders- and after the North and the East of Europe, they possess actually more in ancient times- maternal mitochondrial markers mtDNA L1,L2 (4%) from Abyssinia, and the sibling N1b (10-12%) and M1(2%)-Behar el al 2006, Also Ovadia et al 2010- linked with L3 from Abyssinia Ethiopia and Eritrea also Somalia- and Near East.Remember that buried and graves in Jewish graveyards and catacombs of Tuscan, andAlsace as too Rhineland cities take a lot of Egyptian ornaments anddisplay figures from these, as well as Y and mtDNA markers - . It likely proves the existence of Abyssinian people in ancient Israel or, also it proves the fact that the former Israelite people had Abyssiniannumerous masculine markers -E3b, 4S etc., including partially like NE markers- as well enough known, asand feminine markers like L1L2 etc., showing a feedback betweenpeople into Ethiopia and Israel in ancient times.

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[(Anonymous)]

ဟ တ ဟ တ ဂ ဒ ... င ဂ ဒ လည ဘ တ ပ က က နတယ မသ သ တ င ခပ လန လန န လ မန ရတယ You might not understand me န )

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[(Anonymous)]

That bottle troewhr.... What a total idiot. The country had pretty much been shaking its collective head and saying, 'What on earth?' We apologise to the rest of the world for our numpties. We'll try and keep them under better control in future.