The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Sica:

Fragano, er.. yes, absolutely. Oops.

I live in Edinburgh, have for the past 6 years now (how time passes) I really like it here. Would stay if I didn't.

Daylight savings time has just been reset so things have gotten dark. Winter is kicking in.

Having said that I had a really nice stroll around the meadows today, some wind but bright and the autumn colours are pretty on the trees.

The main blight on the city right now is the tramworks. I'm sure it'll be very nice once they're finished but in the meantime they make it harder to get around.

re women in open source software.

The only OS project I've been even remotely connected with is the fannish 'Archive of Our Own' project from the OTW.

That project grew out of the female dominated corners of livejournal fandom and most of the people working on it are women and a significant portion hadn't really done much coding before they started but were happy to learn and are doing great work.

The OTW's happy Ada Lovelace day post.

As for me personally, yes I've been the only woman in the room in company meetings and until recently I was the only woman in the company I worked for. However I was working in a small start up that only had two people full time for a good while, so my co worker was the only guy in the room as well. Heh..

Still when I was doing my undergraduate CS degree the ratio started out as something like 20 women and 140 men. When I graduated three years later it was around 14 women and 30 men graduating.

I love Fry and Laurie, my favourite recurring character/sketches they had were their spies Tony and Control.

Tony and Control, lie detector

It's frequently a very cerebral and wordy sort of humour but it would fall flat without the excellent performances. I'd like to see them take on Jack Bauer and win though :D

Oh and another one..

Joining a in game group for non-teenagers on Discworld MUD

(finding Discworld MUD is another butterfly moment all by itself really, I've mostly grown away from it now but for a while it was an important part of my life that helped keep me (mostly) sane)

Saying "yes" when someone I'd never met wanted to go see a play I hadn't heard of, starring an actor from a TV series I hadn't really seen.

I know some of my very best friends now because of that and we now meet up regularly.

#279 Björn - I know! it's almost ridiculous. Basically if the things going on in Icelandic politics right now were in a book, I'd be rolling my eyes at the unrealistic plotting.

I mean, first there's the President needing heart surgery late last year, then the Foreign Minister with a brain cancer and now the Prime Minister with an oesophagus cancer. All in a few months while the country's economy is falling to pieces around them with corruption and shady dealings bubbling up all the time.

It's just, yeah.. definitely truth stranger than fiction territory.

A minor open thready addendum to the sidelight on Iceland.

The riot police has just used tear gas.

They're wearing gas masks, which will clearly help them feeling and being seen as 'human' which is a key part of de-escalating the situation.

First time tear gas is used in Iceland since 1949 *sigh*

They've been quite liberal with pepper spray so far though. Great 'action shot' from earlier today (or well yesterday technically, depending on timezone)

I'm in the UK myself, been following along remotely. The whole thing is pretty surreal. Icelanders are traditionally not quick to get together and protest, what then to have those protests go violent. It's taken months to get to this stage.

I'm Icelandic so the priest outfits seem perfectly normal to me.

Thinking it through now though, I realise that I've not seen the ruffled collars on any priests in UK or American movies/tv etc. so I should have guessed.

The clip is hilarious though.

Ack a number of typos in my earlier post. This version should have fewer typos:

Lúkasar guðspjall 2:1-20

En það bar til um þessar mundir, að boð kom frá Ãgústus keisara, að skrásetja skyldi alla heimsbyggðina. Þetta var fyrsta skrásetningin og var gjörð þá er Kýreníus var landstjóri á Sýrlandi. Fóru þá allir til að láta skrásetja sig, hver til sinnar borgar. Þá fór og Jósef úr Galíleu frá borginni Nasaret upp til Júdeu, til borgar Davíðs, að láta skrásetja sig ásamt Maríu heitkonu sinni, sem var þunguð. En meðan þau voru þar, kom sá tími, er hún skyldi verða léttari. Fæddi jún þá son sinn frumgetinn, vafði hann reifum og lagði hann í jötu, af því að eigi var rúm handa þeim í gistihúsi.


En í sömu byggð voru hirðar úti í haga og gættu um nóttina hjarðar sinnar. Og engill Drottins stóð hjá þeim, og dýrð Drottins ljómaði kringum þá. Þeir urðu mjög hræddir, en engillinn sagði við þá: "Verið óhræddir, því sjá, ég boða yður mikinn fögnuð, sem veitast mun öllum lýðnum: Yður er í dag frelsari fæddur, sem er Kristur Drottinn, í borg Davíðs. Og hafði þetta til marks: Þið munuð finna ungbarn reifað og lagt í jötu."


Og í sömu svipan var með englinum fjöldi himneskra hersveita, sem lofuðu Guð og sögðu: Dýrð sé Guði í upphæðum og friður á jörðu með mönnum, sem hann hefur velþóknun á. Þegar englarnir voru farnir frá þeim til himins, sögðu hirðarnir sín á milli: "Förum beint til Betlahem að sjá það, sem gjörst hefur og Drottinn hefur kunngjört oss" Og þeir fóru með skyndi og fundu Maríu og Jósef og ungbarnið, sem lá í jötu. Þegar þeir sáu það, skýrðu þeir frá því, er þeim hafði verið sagt um barn þetta. Og allir, sem heyrðu, undruðust það, er hirðarnir sögðu þeim. En María geymdi allt þetta í hjarta sér og hugleiddi það. Og hirðarnir sneru aftur og vegsömuðu Guð og lofuðu hann fyrir það, sem þeir höfðu heyrt og séð, en allt var það eins og þeim hafði verið sagt.

For fun, here's the Icelandic version:

Lúkasar guðspjall 2:1-20

En það bar til um þessar mundir, að boð kom frá Ãgústus keisara, að skrásetja skyldi alla heimsbyggðina. Þetta var fyrsta srkásetningin og var gjörð þá er Kýreníus var landstjóri á Sýrlandi. Fóru þá allir til að láta skrásetjasig, hver til sinnar borgar. Þá fór og Jósef úr Galíleu frá borginni Nasaret upp til Júdeu, til borgar Davíðs, að láta skrásetja sig ásamt Maríu heitkonu sinni, sem var þunguð. En meðan þau voru þar, kom sá tími, er hún skyldi verða léttari. Fæddi jún þá son sinn frumgetinn, vafði hann reifum og lagði hann í jötu, af því að eigi var rúm handa þeim í gistihúsi.


En í sömu byggð voru hirðar úti í haga og gættu um nóttina hjarðar sinnar. Og engill Drottins stóð hjá þeim, og dýrð Drottins ljómaði kringum þá. Þeir urðu mjög hræddir, en engillinn sagði við þá: "Verið óhræddir, því sjá, ég boða yður mikinn fögnuð, semm veitast mun öllum lýðnum: Yður er í dag frelsari fæddur, sem er Kristur Drottinn, í borg Davíðs. Og hafði þetta til marks: Þið munuð finna ungbarn reifað og lagt í jötu."


Og í sömu svipan var með englinum fjöldi himneskra hersveita, sem lofuðu Guð og sögðu: Dýrð sé Guði í upphæðum og friður á jörðu með m0nnum, sem hann hefur velþóknun á. Þegar englarnir voru farnir frá þeim til himins, sögðu hirðarnir sín á milli: "Förum beint til Betlahem að sjá það, sem gjörst hefur og Drottinn hefur kunngjört oss" Og þeir fóru með skyndi og fundu Maríu og Jósef og ungbarnið, sem lá í jötu. Þegar þeir sáu það, skýrðu þeir frá því, er þeim hafði verið sagt um barn þetta. Og allir, sem heyrðu, undruðust það, er hirðarnir sögðu þeim. En María geymdi allt þetta í hjarta sér og hugleiddi það. Og hirðarnir sneru aftur og vegsömuðu Guð og lofuðu hann fyrir það, sem þeir höfðu heyrt og séð, en allt var það eins og þeim hafði verið sagt.

Mike - your last post... I can't even.

The gap of opinion and outlook is so huge that just yeah. My mind, consider it boggled.

A second thanks to Nicole at 67 and Bruce at 72. I had a big rant built up on that subject but you've put it better than I could have.

Mike @ 60

First of all, the women in Sin City are not independent strong Valkyries. They're walking wank fantasies versions of the idea of a 'strong' woman who looks good with a gun while wearing hardly a thing but then when it comes down to it, needs a man to rescue her.

I have heard the, Frank Miller is being ironic, it's a post modern take on comics and a Film Noir pastiche etc. defense before. I couldn't dismiss that completely until I saw the script pages from Frank Miller's Batman.

Reading over that basically made me realise that, yes he is not doing multi-layered self aware parodies of how a shallow objectifying narrative can work in a hyper real sort of way. He really is that immature and shallow. What you see is what you get.

An example, here's a part of an infamous script direction for a panel describing Vicki Vale.

Frank Miller: "OK, Jim, I'm shameless. Let's go with an ASS SHOT. Patnies detailed. Balloons from above. She's walking, restless as always. We can't take our eyes off her. Especially since she's got one fine ass."

So yeah, I think it's entirely warranted to be upset and get misogyny spider senses a-tingling when that man changes Silken Floss from a nuclear physicist and a brilliant surgeon into a sexy secretary.

#49 SKapusniak

Nah the UK government froze Landsbanki but they transferred all the deposits in the Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander, the UK division of Kaupthing to the Dutch ING bank.

This then made the Kaupthing mothership go into technical default and it got effectively nationalized by the government then as well. The last of the three big Icelanic banks to fall.

This is all extra special because the UK division of Kaupthing was operating under a UK banking license and covered by the UK deposit guarantee.

The Icelandic government is not liable for any deposits there. It was a UK bank owned by a big Icelandic bank rather than a subsidiary operating under the European bank passport scheme thing.

Right now, in a "the plot thickens" sort of way Kaupthing is planning on suing the UK government for potentially billions of damages

To be fair Kaupthing wasn't doing great and it's fairly likely that it would have gone under anyway but still, it had a shot which was more than the other banks.

Abi, Thanks for the consideration :) as for my friend I know she'll pull through. She's resourceful and has a good support network even though some of it is incapacitated in Iceland right now.

I'm ok and in fact I'll potentially be way 'richer' than normally when I go home for Christmas this year. What with earning in pounds and the icelandic krona having collapsed. It's something my parents have joked about (we'll be ok, we have a daughter abroad earning pounds!) Hopefully though things will have stabilized by Christmas.

I have whiplash from following the news though everything has happened so quickly. There's lots of misinformation out there as well. Stories about runs on food in Supermarkets and that there is no food production in Iceland. That people are burning furniture for warmth etc.

Granted there was a slight run on a supermarket at the very start when people decided they wanted to stock up on pasta, rice, fancy japanese soy sauces and olive oil. The local food production mostly centres on sheep, fish, milk and potatoes. So not the most exciting diet. Having said that though there is currently no lack of imported goods.

Also fortunately we've got the geothermal energy and that's used to heat the houses so no matter how poor the country gets, the locally generated renewable energy will be used to heat the houses and generate the necessary electricity to keep things running.

Things are slightly strained here in the UK though since it turns out a lot of councils, charities and even the police are loosing millions in the Icelandic bank collapses. This is in addition to thousands of UK savers frozen out of their Icelandic online savings accounts. Gordon Brown then in return freezing the assets of one of the key banks didn't help either. We're in good company here: UK Financial Sanctions. I had no idea that Landsbanki, a bank, could be an evil regime.

I don't run into that sort of thing much though since the people I meet are usually very nice people. Then again I don't have a strong accent anymore so I don't know if things would be different then.

What I'm worried about now is waiting to see what strings will be attached to getting help from the IMF.

Icelandic expat here, living in Scotland.

I don't think I'm the protagonist. I'm working though so I'm not as affected by the complete freeze in international bank transfers as students.

The whole situation is rather scary though and it feels weird to know I'm completely on my own, i.e normally I can get financial help from my parents if the small start up I'm working for has cash flow problems. Not so much now.

A friend of mine is a better bet. She's an Icelandic student in Oxbridge, cut off from her funds and her banker boyfriend has just lost his job in the City..

Rozasharn @ 175

Thanks for the comment and the links *heads over to read*

albatross @ 144: "But they got the assessment wrong. I would like to understand why, because I suspect that this is the underlying problem that drove this crisis--both for the credit default swaps and for the mortgage based securities."

I think part of the risk assessment going wrong is that they assumed that the risk of each mortgage failing was independent. I.e there's x% chance of a mortage failing and that's completely independent from the odds of all the other mortages failing. So you can then bundle a ton of mortgages together and voila! with tranching you can have vasts sums of 100% safe, yeah for real, honest! investment.

This gives nice and easy math to calculate out the risk but unfortunately reality doesn't quite work that way. Mortgages tend to start failing when there are interest rate rises or if unemployment is on the rise etc. and that's not something that affects all the mortgages so the odds of each mortgage failing failing goes up when a few of them start to fail and the whole house of cards comes crashing down.

So yeah, they cheated at math.

Here's a post over at Good Math, Bad Math that goes into this in more detail: Bad Probability and Economic Disaster; or How Ignoring Bayes Theorem Caused the Mess

Get better soon, and here's to a full and speedy recovery

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