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I'm looking forward to seeing Slow West. I've heard some very good things.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/27/old-oswestry-hill-fort-housing-development

At stake is the ancient rural surroundings of the hill fort, an elaborate, 3,000-year-old earthwork dubbed "the Stonehenge of the Iron Age". It is said to have been the birthplace of Queen Ganhumara – Guinevere of Arthurian legend – and was familiar to first world war poet Wilfred Owen, who is thought to have trained in trench fighting there before his posting to the western front.

Shropshire council is intent on pushing through a housing development abutting the fringe of the hill fort – which is a scheduled ancient monument in the care of Historic England – citing government targets for new builds. Land immediately surrounding the 13-acre hill fort has no statutory protection.

Earlier this month, the planning inspectorate approved an application to build 117 homes just metres from the outer perimeter of the fort, despite a petition opposing the scheme signed by 8,000 local people, and a large body of expert opinion on the exceptional importance of the site and its surrounding landscape.

A fort which is older than the entire United Kingdom is being put at risk because the council needs to meet housing targets. Reminds me of the stone age sites which are under threat for the development of a new road near Stonehenge.

I really don't know what we can do to stop this stuff happening. It seems to be coming thicker and faster in the past few years. It is depressing; contrary to popular belief, MOST of the island has not yet been concreted, but we're determined to ruin the bits that actually are important and avoid redeveloping dilapidated brown field sites and other industrial land for as long as possible - presumably because they are further from expensive areas and cost more to clean up?

Well, I have learned very much about this Thwack person. 

The question is, does he deserve minimum wage, or would that raise inflation? 

I think they are all conmen playing on people's ignorance to make a heap of cash, but okay.

Hasn't the GOP since the start of Reagan proven that there's no need to look at your predictions to see if they came true as long as you can pretend they did, or blame the other guy when you can't even pretend?

Are you positing that economists = GOP?

I am starting to wonder if you fuckers even know what economists are.

No, just saying that actually showing predictions to be true or false is something that is ignored in politics today, and most of what you hear regarding economist is political in nature unless you're in the financial industry yourself.

That's also true of ecology, but that has nothing to do with the validity of the field, it has to do with the fact that most people are exposed to science and the world around them only through a 42" 16:9 ratio.

Blaming YOU being a sheltered, uninquisitive dumbfuck on the information available through major media makes as much sense as declaring that the field of economics is represented by the GOP.

Considering that I don't rely on the media for my information on economics, I find your view on me and my stance to be as uninformed as you accuse me of being.



If economics does follow the full scientific method, why do we still have experts in the field advocating viewpoints that have been shown false according to the data provided by real world experimentation?

For the same reason homeopaths and mediums advocate viewpoints that have been shown to be false according to the data provided by real world experimentation.

Pickety's 'Capital in the 21st Century' is a good example of economics as social science in my opinion.

He draws purely on historical evidence and statistics, and explains his reasoning every step of the way. It IS a political book, because it is a book not a paper and he makes it explicit at the start that he is against inequality and the whole book is an analysis of inequality as it has existed through the ages and what conditions have led to less of it.

It also points out that the system is rigged and provides some practical steps as to how this could be addressed based on the statistical evidence - but as the way to address it can be summarized as 'tax people based on their assets not their earnings' that will never happen.

ETA - In case it wasn't clear, I mean it is a political book in the sense that rather than just saying 'this is what it is' he also makes an argument in a lot of cases that inequality is morally wrong and therefore steps should be taken to reduce it - and he makes the argument in emotional rather than scientific terms. You wouldn't see that in a harder science - like a psychiatric textbook - but then, I don't know if psychiatrists ever had to make the case that disorders are undesirable and should be cured where possible, which seems like the obvious comparison here.

I think you mean psychology textbook, because psychiatry is the psychological specialty in medicine.

Psychology is a social or "soft" science, like economics.

You do see arguments like that in psychology. Not generally in textbooks, but I also don't think that the book you're talking about is a textbook.

Yeah, I meant psychology - sorry, that's what I get for posting before I'm actually awake. I just don't know jack about psychology apparently. :P

Capital in the 21st Century isn't a textbook, though, yeah. It is written with readability in mind. ... To a degree. It mostly comes across as a very angry statistics professor who is irritated that nobody else seems to have bothered to actually look at what they've been talking about for the past two hundred or so years.

He also makes the fatal mistake of crediting Marx with being the starting point for much of his analysis, though, which is a second tick in the 'pay no attention' column as far as a lot of people are concerned.

He does frame his theory in scientific terms, though. He goes back over all the available data, looks at what was done and why, and how that impacted growth and inequality between the top and bottom percentiles in society. The trouble is, as an economist, he can't isolate his phenomenon, he can't control it he has to rely on what large economic actors (mostly governments, some families/corporations) do and the timescales is decades.

That all makes it hard to experiment in a traditional scientific way, but it isn't as though he tosses out examples where they don't fit. He's just shifted his analysis accordingly and looked at everything he can get his hands on since taxation records began, then analysed what happened at peaks and troughs and so forth. That's definitely 'science' to me. I was often reminded of climate change studies whilst reading it, actually - how temperature rises and falls over centuries and why that is . When the phenomena you're looking at are that big, you can't really 'retest' you can only use the data you're able to collect; that doesn't make the science any less valid.

Pickety's 'Capital in the 21st Century' is a good example of economics as social science in my opinion.

He draws purely on historical evidence and statistics, and explains his reasoning every step of the way. It IS a political book, because it is a book not a paper and he makes it explicit at the start that he is against inequality and the whole book is an analysis of inequality as it has existed through the ages and what conditions have led to less of it.

It also points out that the system is rigged and provides some practical steps as to how this could be addressed based on the statistical evidence - but as the way to address it can be summarized as 'tax people based on their assets not their earnings' that will never happen.

ETA - In case it wasn't clear, I mean it is a political book in the sense that rather than just saying 'this is what it is' he also makes an argument in a lot of cases that inequality is morally wrong and therefore steps should be taken to reduce it - and he makes the argument in emotional rather than scientific terms. You wouldn't see that in a harder science - like a psychiatric textbook - but then, I don't know if psychiatrists ever had to make the case that disorders are undesirable and should be cured where possible, which seems like the obvious comparison here.

Running a Cthulhutech/Evangelion mashup campaign at university, one of the players always - always - played a samurai expy, no matter the game. We had western samurai, fantasy samurai, superhero samurai... this time I had a little chat with him before we started to set things up.

Over the course of the campaign the other characters - and players - became convinced he was just insane. He kept talking about his 'Master' and going to an old dojo, but the other PCs never saw this Master and when they went to the dojo it had been closed down for years. As a pilot he was terrible, but the payoff happened in the final session when the PCs needed to get to their giant robots through a small force of special forces troops- not exactly fair when you're a bunch of teenagers.

It turned out that the nerdy Japanese teenage samurai wannabe was a samurai wannabe because Nodens, God of Dreaming and Inspiration, had a direct link with him, blurring the line between fantasy and reality. When shit hit the fan and the world was going to end, Nodens revealed himself, gave his disciple a kickass katana, and let the kid go to town.

The reveal was totally worth it for the look on the other player's faces, and the player of that character really loved having an excuse to play a self-parody.

The main thing I hate is the idea that there are jobs where it is okay to be paid next to nothing and be treated in a degrading fashion because 'it isn't a career'.

Guess what, jackwad, people have to do that work - or you won't get your 'meal', and it is never okay to treat people like they are worthless, regardless of how much value you place on their job.

I think a good part of this is misplaced aggression because there's a lot of people out there who feel like what they do 9-5 every day doesn't actually produce anything meaningful and they like to push other people down to make themselves feel better by comparison. 'Sure, all I accomplished today was to send a few dozen emails, but at least I'm not flipping burgers!'

Conspiracy collection:
Racism because Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Obama
Obama secret muslim.
Obama Kenyan.
Greys.
Aspartame is killing everyone.
Monsanto is killing everyone.
GMOs are killing everyone.
Fluoride is killing everyone.
Vaccines are killing everyone.
The government is trying to get Ebola to kill everyone.
Smoking is not killing him but the snortable migraine medicine he takes will.
Chem trails.
Ghosts - specifically the janitor that died in the building and is pressing elevator buttons.
The military destroyed his wife's thyroid.
All cops are evil oppressors.
All cops are awesome and are just doing their jobs.
Bundy ranch solar farm thing.

Non conspiracy item that I thought was funny:
We went to the moon because the astronauts were boyscouts and boyscouts don't lie about that sort of thing.

It's a wonder anyone is alive at all.

But he believes in ghosts.

Maybe we aren't.

These five words are repeated.

What you're not getting is that taking something seriously has no bearing at all on finding it funny. The best comedians take their comedy extremely seriously.

I have some complaints about the last season, but mostly that the quality of the politicking/characterization seemed to go down markedly, and the plot ground to a halt.

I understand this is also a common complaint re: this part of the books, though, so here's hoping next season picks things back up again.

I love government procurement systems sometimes.

I get a message saying I have to log in and confirm acceptance of the opportunity to keep getting information about the opportunity, so I do that - it says I have an urgent message...

... the urgent message is a step by step instruction guide on how to register to the system you need to log into to get the message.

There was no access to a guide before this point I had to work it out for myself.

HOORAY! 

Definitely research the leasing deals, compare that to how much money you can make from Uber (I'm guessing you know/can find some people you trust who can answer those questions) - assume you will earn less than that at the start.

If it all seems to add up, I say go for it. As 'something to do whilst looking for something I want to do' it sounds pretty good. I worked in supermarkets/cafes until I managed to land something even vaguely related to my field at 26, and it sounds more pleasant than doing that work IMO. Just make sure you're not going to screw yourself over with the loan - but that's pretty obvious.