Europe is moving to prevent customers from getting a shock with their mobile bill. People do a moderate amount of surfing and suddenly find themselves with whopping bills. As some of you may recall, AT&T did me a solid by waving a hefty data charge if I signed up for the data plan. It’s better when things can be solved this way rather than through legislation, though I don’t find this law objectionable in spirit. I particularly like that people are allowed to set their own limits.
File this away under “things that should have been thought about at some point before or immediately following getting on this road.”
A fascinating article from The New Scientist about the “Women and children first” ethos. Apparently, whether these cultural norms are honored can depend on whether the ship sinks fast or slow. Of course, this looks at older cases. No telling how that would work out today.
Could the cure to peanut allergies be to feed them peanuts earlier?
I read things like this and come away amazed that the early innovators didn’t patent the mouse and other obvious things.
A list of ideas on what we can do about the airline seat problem, discussed here on HC previously. Numbers 6 and 7 sound familiar. Meanwhile, Continental Airlines is joining many others in charging more for front and exit-row seats. On the one hand, getting those seats has been a godsend and thanks to Clancy’s diligence we’ve been able to do so without paying more and that’s coming to an end. So… boo. On the other hand, I said during that previous conversation that I would be willing to pay more for more space.
Another Slate article on the precarious anonymity of sperm donors. If the idea is “the best interest of the child” and children not conceived and not born do not count, it’s difficult to argue that anonymity should remain in tact for the convenience of the father and so that sperm would be widely available for women that want to conceive solo (or have infertile husbands). Even so, this falls under limitations on the best interest of the child in my view.
About the Author
One Response to Linkluster VI
Leave a Reply
please enter your email address on this page.
A more recent and peculiar case of ship disaster survival involved the sinking of the ferry Estonia in the Baltic Sea in 1994. There were over a thousand passengers onboard but only about 20% survived – the ship sank very quickly, the car-loading doors not having been properly secured. Anyway, the strange part is that while the passengers were about evenly divided between those from Sweden and Estonia, the great majority of the survivors were Estonian. They had a survivial rate which, while dismal, was several times higher than their hapless Swedish counterparts. Investigations did not uncover any demographic factors which might have accounted for the huge difference.