Sunday, September 8, 2013

Link roundup

1.  A Redditor claiming to be a cruise ship worker:
if you're suddenly on the brink of death while in port, they're getting you off the boat. Doesn't matter if that port is a small Alaskan fishing village or Caribbean shanty town with no medical facilities. The point isn't to save you, it's to avoid a death on board. We often have far more advanced medical facilities on board. Often times the towns and ships will throw a dying person back and fourth instead of helping. Nobody wants to acknowledge the statistic. 
... 
If you aren't completely inside your room or the restroom, you're being watched. You may not see the cameras, but they're there. 
Why? Because people do odd things. A few years ago a teenage girl met a boy she liked on a cruise and found by some stroke of luck, he was next door. She was invited over to his room but she couldn't open to main cabin door without disturbing her parents. So what does she do? Tries to jump from her balcony to his. It was only a short way, but it's slippery. She fell from damn near the highest level, hit the water and nobody saw her again. 
Later her family wanted to sue with a claim that the safety railing was the issue and they deserved compensation. It sounds terrible, but all the CL did was tap into the footage. It was all on film, every second of it. Her jumping right over the rail, slipping, and silently disappearing into the dark below.
2.  Wired looks at the origin and morality of Choose Your Own Adventure books:
“Packard was a lawyer, and he was making up bedtime stories for his daughters, and they wanted different things [to happen], and so he’s like, ‘Oh, I could do a book like this.’ … And then he saw an ad for a small children’s press that R.A. Montgomery had started, and he sent them this idea … Montgomery’s story is way more fascinating … He was working for a company that did government contracts to come up with role-playing games and social psychology tools to use in American diplomacy and defense applications. And so he was coming up with these games that Peace Corps volunteers were using to deal with Vietnam War protests when they were stationed in Southeast Asia
3.  Why you never see relevant replays at live baseball games:
MLB limits replays to once, at real speed, but not during an argument over the play and not in a way that might start an argument or create a negative reaction from the crowd.
4. "Marie Curie Had Two Duels Fought Over Her After She Had an Affair."