Quotulatiousness

May 28, 2011

Etymology of the word “buxom”

Filed under: History, Law, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:22

In a report on a lawyer’s attempt to become an internet laughing stock, there’s a brief digression into the word “buxom”:

To get back to “buxom” — I was surprised to learn that, according to the OED, this word originally had nothing specifically to do with women. It meant something like “obedient,” “pliant,” or “submissive,” but in reference to God, the Pope, or legal authority — e.g., c.1175 “Beo buhsome toward gode”; c.1523 “I shall be buxome and obeydient to iustice”; c. 1581 “The Consuls should sweare faythfully to become … buxome to the Pope.” (That last one especially I think is good evidence that the word didn’t mean what it means now.) The word also had the sense of “gracious,” “courteous,” or “kindly,” again without regard to gender.

By the 16th century, though, it was evolving into something like “lively” or “full of health,” still not exclusively as to women, but by the 19th century it looks like the dominant meaning had become “plump and comely … chiefly [to describe] women.” Given the word’s history of meaning “submissive” or “compliant,” though, this transition seems to make the word a lot more creepy and sexist than I had thought. I sweare faythfully not to use it anymore.

Feeling optimistic about peoples’ common sense?

Filed under: Humour, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:15

A few visits to this site will quickly disabuse you of that feeling.


It’s how some folks on Facebook react to stories from The Onion as if it was real news.

This week in Guild Wars 2 news

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:05

I’ve been accumulating news snippets about the as-yet-to-be-formally-scheduled release of Guild Wars 2 for an email newsletter I send out to my friends and acquaintances in the Guild Wars community.

Part 1: Discussion of previous news

Part 2: Guild Wars news

  • Reminder: If you’d like to keep track of the upcoming Winds of Change and other Guild Wars Beyond material, keep this page bookmarked.
  • Game update for 23 May. The Developer Notes indicate that this is a small update to nerf a few Dervish skills which “allow players to output more pressure than is reasonable for the skill required”.

Part 3: Guild Wars 2 news

  • Flameseeker Chronicles: Analyzing the Engineer. “After watching the skill videos… well, an embarrassing number of times, I’ve come up with three or four distinct styles of weaponry. First there are the steampunk-style items: the Glue Shot pistols, the rifle carried by the human female Engineer, the turrets, and the flamethrower. Second, one item has a real-world modern feel — the now-infamous landmine. Third, there are very primitive items that I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see in Guild Wars 1, like the bomb pack, the health pack, and the exploding barrel. In fact, we do have exploding barrels in Eye of the North. Finally, there are brief glimpses here and there of rifles with a colonial feel to them, which seems to fit some of the early concept art. It all has a very inconsistent and slightly confusing feeling, and it leaves me both wondering what exactly this class is supposed to be and dying to know more. I need lore and history and design background — I need context, because I feel like there’s a method to the madness.”
  • Exclusive Massively interview with Eric Flannum. “Unless you’ve been spelunking near the center of the earth for the past few days, you’re likely aware that ArenaNet recently unveiled Guild Wars 2‘s seventh class. Chances are high that you’re also aware of said class’s affinity for turrets, guns, and various contraptions meant to rain death down upon any unfortunate enemies that cross its path. Today, Massively presents a new interview with Guild Wars 2 lead designer Eric Flannum. Naturally, the guest of honor at this Tyrian banquet of exclusivity is the Engineer, and Flannum (along with several other ANet dignitaries) provides us with a few tasty mechanical appetizers before getting down to the lore-centric main course.”
  • GuildMag Issue 7 is now available in HTML so you don’t need to download the PDF file. Interview with Eric Flannum is here.
  • Winners of the Guild Wars 2 Ambassador contest.
  • PC Gamer reviews the Engineer profession. “Like the Elementalist, the Engineer can completely swap out the set of weapon skills on their bar on the fly by activiting different kits, instead of by switching weapon sets mid-combat. It’s unconfirmed, but it certainly sounds like the Engineer’s Backpacks will function similarly to the Elementalists’ different “attunements” — which allow Elementalists to swap out their entire weapon skill set mid-combat — since the blog describes Backpacks as completely replacing the Engineer’s current weapon skills with skills from the Backpack kit.”
  • Frequently Asked Questions about the Engineer. “Last week we rolled out the engineer, the multi-purpose, mechanically minded Guild Wars 2 profession. The engineer’s use of hardware like mines and turrets represents a departure from classic fantasy tropes and a whole new style of gameplay, so many of you had questions. Fortunately, we have answers! Read on for answers to common engineer questions!”
  • Arenanet’s Tradeshow Summer. “What are you doing this summer? ArenaNet is making big plans for this year’s tradeshow season and we want you to join us. Read on for a breakdown of what we’re up to this year! Just like last year, we won’t be attending E3 this year. Instead, we’ll continue to focus on shows that allow us to share Guild Wars 2 directly with gamers.”

May 27, 2011

Swedish subway stations or hallucinatory flashbacks to a 1975 shopping mall?

Filed under: Europe, Media, Railways, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:10

Andrew Coyne linked to this set of photos of Swedish subway stations saying “Good LØRD. Who was their designer, Willy Wonka?”



I shared the link with Jon, my former virtual landlord, who responded:

Tonight’s nightmares are going to leave a mark.

I can only imagine what the flashbacks must be like for you, though. I suspect that these stations look remarkably like Sherway Gardens did to you and your friend after you guys went drinkin’ at the Steak’n’Burger.

If there is a 1970’s-era Sherway Gardens in Hell, this is what it looks like.

I had a similar reaction to the photos . . . strikingly ugly where they’re not just flat-out disturbing. But what else could we expect from publicly funded artists selected by public transit officials?

Happy 190th anniversary to the good old Grauniad

Filed under: Britain, History, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:08

It’s the 190th anniversary, so the folks at The Guardian have virtually turned the calendar back:

More information about the “experiment in the typesetting of the mechanical facsimile we operate at guardian.co.uk” here.

Powerpoint: it’s not presentation software, it’s visual assault software

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:54

I’ve attended lots of meetings where the Powerpoint slides have been really bad, but I’m happy not to have encountered anything quite as bad as this:

One of this year’s winners in the InFocus Worst Powerpoint Slide Contest.

Our “What Not to Present” contest was epic! Many thanks to all of you kind folks that submitted entries and spread the word about it. Many amazingly horrendous slides were sent in from all around the world. We laughed. We cried. We cringed.

[. . .]

We randomly chose our top 3 winners, but then quickly realized that we had to do more. So we are giving away ANOTHER projector to the slide we thought was the most horrendous. We passed the ugliness around the InFocus offices and to many of our partners pandering for votes — and we have a winner!

Update: While I’m busy poking fun at PowerPoint, here’s the Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation. H/T to Paul “Inkless” Wells for the link.

Colby Cosh: It wasn’t a market failure that caused the sub-prime fiasco

Filed under: Economics, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:52

He’s quite right, not that the powers-that-be will take away the correct lesson from the experience:

What I see when I look at the origins of the financial pandemic is the story “government-sponsored enterprises that subsidize crazy lending practices and puppetize legislators fail.” Mortgage-writing institutions did things throughout the late 1990s and early oh-ohs that weren’t just likely to turn out badly; they made enormous amounts of loans that were practically certain to go bust in the short-to-medium term, loans that your mother could have told you would go sour. It wasn’t a “free” market that relaxed mortgage underwriting standards to the point of annihilation; it wasn’t a “free” market that put unskilled workers in million-dollar homes in the Sand States, or that spent too long ignoring the rising default rates that resulted.

We know this, in part, because we know how slightly freer mortgage markets traditionally behaved; they “redlined” the living heck out of low-income neighbourhoods. Because redlining resulted in racial discrimination — critics would just say it is racial discrimination — there has been a concerted attempt among economists to absolve the major U.S. anti-redlining statute, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, from any role in creating the housing bubble. Obviously it won’t do to pin the crisis on a 1977 law, but there is such a thing as the straw that broke the camel’s back; the CRA was followed by an even more intense fusillade of statutory and regulatory measures consciously designed to increase home ownership in America without making homes less expensive and valuable per se.

Badminton: moving against the tide

Filed under: Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:38

If they’d wanted to be sure that the sport got more media attention, they sure chose an effective way to do it:

In an attempt to revive flagging interest in women’s badminton as the 2012 London Olympics approach, officials governing the sport have decided that its female athletes need to appear more, how to put it, womanly.

To create a more “attractive presentation,” the Badminton World Federation has decreed that women must wear skirts or dresses to play at the elite level, beginning Wednesday. Many now compete in shorts or tracksuit pants. The dress code would make female players appear more feminine and appealing to fans and corporate sponsors, officials said.

The rule has been roundly criticized as sexist, a hindrance to performance and offensive to Muslim women who play the sport in large numbers in Asian countries. Implementation has already been delayed by a month. Athletes’ representatives said they would seek to have the dress code scrapped, possibly as early as Saturday at a meeting of the world’s badminton-playing nations in Qingdao, China.

“This is a blatant attempt to sexualize women,” said Janice Forsyth, director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario. “It is amazing. You’d think at some point, somebody would have said: ‘Wait a minute. What are we doing?’ ”

There are about 85 players at my badminton club. Only two women regularly wear skirts to play. Despite this ruling, I doubt that many of our players will choose to switch.

May 26, 2011

Reason.tv: The government’s war on cameras

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 17:09

More on resveratrol in red wine

Filed under: Health, Science, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 15:04

Every few weeks, there’s another study result published (or, in some cases, mangled in the publishing) about the benefits to human health from the resveratrol in red wine, but few of them will go this far:

Drink 8 bottles of wine, you’ll be unharmed if hit by Mike Tyson
True medical fact: Trials with boxers underway

Top boffins in Texas believe they will soon provide solid proof of an astonishingly useful biological fact: that if you drink eight bottles of red wine you can be punched in the head by a professional heavyweight boxer and it will do you no harm at all.

We’re paraphrasing slightly, of course.

Charles Stross on Buckminster Fuller’s “Dymaxion House”

Filed under: Architecture, Economics, History, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:07

I remember something about Fuller’s potentially revolutionary design for housing from a few mentions in Robert Heinlein’s work, but I’d never followed up those hints. Charles Stross did:

. . . the Dymaxion House was probably the most fascinating of his failures, because it was nothing short of an attempt to revolutionize how we live.

Modernist architects of the 20th century generally designed two types of house: those for rich architects and other members of the upper classes to enjoy, and grimly regimented concrete cookie-cutter apartment blocks for factory workers. Fuller’s approach to housing was cookie-cutter-esque, insofar as he planned to mass-produce Dymaxion Houses on converted B-29 Superfortress production lines after the second world war, and ship them to their owners in freight containers, but as far as I know it was radically different in conception, purpose, and design from any of the other modular homes of the period. For one thing, he was interested in portability and nomadism; while a concrete foundation with utility connections was necessary, Fuller’s idea of moving house was that you could pack your house down into a container that would fit on a truck, drive it to your new neighbourhood, and deploy it again — the design influences of the traditional Mongolian yurt should be obvious. The Dymaxion House used aluminium sheeting for floors and structures, suspended by wires from a central steel structural shaft: saving weight was a priority. As he famously asked an architect on one occasion, “why are your houses so heavy?”

For another thing, he took an early interest in minimizing the human impact on the environment. The Dymaxion House had passive air temperature control and a pressure-triggered roof vent to survive near-misses from tornados (by releasing over-pressure inside the building so that it didn’t rupture). It had a then-unique mist-spray shower and a grey-water system to reduce water usage; Fuller was also interested in non-flush toilets.

Finally, it was intended to be mass produced for $6,500 per house in 1946 money — the cost of a high-end automobile — with a design life of 30-50 years. Early development was funded by the Pentagon, for reasons that should be obvious: WWII generated unprecedented demand for accommodation on bases overseas and, later, demand for housing in war-ravaged regions.

The story of why we aren’t all living in Dymaxion houses today is a convoluted epic of business failure (for one thing, starting up a production line for houses using cutting-edge aerospace technology was something that had never been done before; for another, Bucky’s business sense was not, sadly, as good as his design sense) that has been recounted in numerous biographies. What interests me about it is that it’s a far more humane approach to the problem of providing housing for the masses than his Brutalist contemporaries, whose designs tended to be fixed, immovable, made cheaply out of low-end materials, and built with high density mass housing in mind rather than low impact customizability. It was also way ahead of the field in terms of awareness of environmental constraints; while we could design better today, we’d be making incremental tweaks, whereas Bucky came up with the original idea of modular, lightweight, mobile low-impact housing ab initio.

Image detail from Tim O’Reilly’s Flikr photostream.

More, including a few photos at Wikipedia. And Rivet-head has a picture of the house while it was in use.

The Danish Marmite affair thickens

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Europe, Food, Health — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

Lester Haines has the latest on the plight of ex-pat Brits suffering under a dictatorial food regime in Denmark:

According to this official statement, neither Marmite nor its Oz rival Vegemite are banned in Denmark, because they’ve never actually been approved for sale.

A 2004 law controls the distribution of products with “added vitamins, minerals or other substances”, and in order to punt such foodstuffs, they “need to be approved by the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration before the product can be marketed”.

[. . .]

In effect, then, those shops selling Marmite are dealing in unauthorised enhanced substances.

We and the Daily Mail have no doubt that any attempt to legalise Marmite would be met with a swift rejection, in defiance of EU directives on free trade. As Copenhagen-based expat Lyndsay Jensen put it: “They don’t like it because it’s foreign. But if they want to take my Marmite off me, they’ll have to wrench it from my cold dead hands.”

It’s been said that Marmite is an “acquired taste”, but Denmark’s health regulators are moving quickly to ensure that Danes never have the opportunity to develop that taste. Of course, like most other forms of prohibition, it might actually increase the attractiveness of the “forbidden fruit”.

Denmark has a long coastline, so smuggling in the little black jars across the North Sea would be quite possible . . .

Here’s a different way to pay for socialized medicine

Filed under: Economics, Government, Health, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:35

Kevin Drum has an interesting proposal in Mother Jones:

So here’s an idea: why not reform Medicare by means testing it? Conservatives should love this idea.

Here’s how it works. Basically, we leave Medicare alone. Oh, we can still go ahead with some of the obvious reforms. Comparative effectiveness research is a no-brainer for anyone who’s not part of the Republican leadership. Ditto for some of the delivery reforms on the table. Or allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower prices. It would be great if that stuff works. But if it doesn’t, then people will need to pay more for their care. So why not have dead people pay? They don’t need the money any more, after all.

So Medicare stays roughly the same, but every time you receive medical care you also get a bill. You don’t have to pay it, though. It’s just there for accounting purposes. When you die, the bill gets paid out of your estate. If your estate is small or nonexistent, you’ve gotten lots of free medical care. If it’s large, you’ll pay for it all. If you’re somewhere in between, you’ll end up paying for part of the care you’ve received.

Obviously this gives people incentives to spend all their money before they die. That’s fine. I suspect they wouldn’t end up spending as much as you’d think. What it does mean, though, is that Medicare has first claim on their estate, not their kids. But that seems fair, doesn’t it?

It has the virtue of acknowledging that free healthcare isn’t actually “free” at all.

There is no right to privacy, unless you’re a police officer

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:24

Jon sent me a link to this post at Reason.com, discussing the odd court decisions which seem to indicate that you have no right to privacy, but that the police do:

Such incidents have led to a national conversation about the propriety of videotaping cops, even as dashboard cameras have become standard in squad cars. There seems to be some tension in the assumption that, as Graber’s lawyer put it, “the officer has a privacy expectation, but the motorist doesn’t.”

That asymmetry has been underscored by recent rulings over global positioning systems. Last year the Virginia Court of Appeals said Fairfax County police did not violate a suspect’s right to privacy when, without a warrant, they surreptitiously put a GPS device on his vehicle to track his movements. Individuals have no expectation of privacy on the public streets, the court ruled — a position also taken by the Ninth Circuit in California.

Yet this past January, Kathy Byron, a member of Virginia’s House of Delegates, introduced legislation that would have forbidden the use of GPS tracking devices for the purpose of following political candidates. People running for public office “are still entitled to some privacy,” she argued.

Even more disturbing is the steady increase in what the police are allowed to do without a warrant or even suspicion of criminal activity:

U.S. border-patrol agents often search the phones and computers of American citizens who cross the border — routinely “accessing email accounts, examining photographs and looking through personal calendars,” according to The Constitution Project, a watchdog group. “In some cases, electronic devices were confiscated for as long as a year.” And in Michigan, the State Police have high-tech forensic devices enabling them to download information from the cell phones of stopped motorists — something they have been doing without a warrant.

[. . .]

Soon Americans might have no right to expect privacy even in the privacy of their own homes. Earlier this month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that police officers may force their way into your domicile without your consent, without a warrant, and without what are usually referred to as “exigent circumstances” — e.g., someone inside the home yelling for help. The case, Kentucky v. King, concerned an incident in which police officers chasing a drug suspect ran into an apartment building, smelled marijuana, heard noises they thought might indicate someone was destroying evidence — and broke down the wrong door. This, said the Supremes, was perfectly fine.

May 25, 2011

Australia: leading the charge to our over-Nannied future

Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:31

There once was a time when the popular image of Australia celebrated its rugged, independent, free-spirited approach to life. It’s hard to recognize that in today’s Nanny State paradise:

Last week, the Preventative Health Taskforce published a report which, in its words, launched a ‘crackdown’ on drinking, smoking and the eating of ‘energy-dense, nutrient-poor’ food. This report made 122 recommendations, called for 26 new laws and proposed establishing seven new agencies to change the behaviour of Australians. To take just a few examples related to tobacco, the Taskforce called for the price of 30 cigarettes to rise to ‘at least $20’ (£13) by 2013, for a ban on duty-free sales, a ban on vending machines and a ban on smoking in a host of places including multi-unit apartments, private vehicles and ‘outdoors where people gather or move in close proximity’. They even contemplate a ban on filters and the prohibition of additives that enhance the palatability of cigarettes.

As in so many countries, Australia’s anti-smoking campaign has acted as a Trojan horse in the effort to fundamentally change the relationship between citizen and state. By no means does it end with tobacco. The Taskforce also wants to ban drinks advertising during programmes that are watched by people under 25 — a category so broad as to include virtually every programme — and calls for graphic warnings similar to those now found on cigarette packs to be put on bottles of beer. It also wants the government to establish ‘appropriate portion sizes’ for meals, to tax food that is deemed unhealthy and to hand out cash bonuses to those who meet the state’s criteria of a healthy lifestyle.

And it’s not just the booze and ciggies getting the full Nanny treatment, either. Australia is very concerned about the internet browsing and video game habits of the citizens:

It is the professed concern for the well-being of children that props up so much authoritarian legislation in both hemispheres. This does not just apply to smoking, nor even health issues in general. Australia has a unenviable record of internet censorship, for example, and a national website filter has been proposed to protect children from pornography and gambling. It also has a longer list of banned video games than any other Western democracy. And so if you, as an Australian adult, want to exercise your right to gamble and play violent video games, that’s just too bad. The rights of some hypothetical teenager to enjoy freedom from grown-up pursuits trump your own rights to pursue them.

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