Links for Wednesday, Pi Day 2012 March 14, 2012

Bring back the 40-hour work week:

As time went on and the unions made disability compensation and workplace safety into bigger and bigger issues, another set of concerns further buttressed the wisdom of the short week. A growing mountain of data was showing that catastrophic accidents — the kind that disable workers, damage capital equipment, shut down the lines, open the company to lawsuits, and upset shareholders — were far more likely to occur when workers were working overtime and overtired. That sealed the deal: for most businesses, the potential human, capital, legal and financial risks of going over 40 hours a week simply weren’t worth taking. By World War II, the consensus was clear and widespread: even (or especially!) under the extreme demands of wartime, overworking employees is counterproductive and dangerous, and no competent workplace should ever attempt to push its people beyond that limit.

US e-voting system cracked in less than 48 hours:

Researchers at the University of Michigan have reported that it took them only a short time to break through the security functions of a pilot project for online voting in Washington, D.C. "Within 48 hours of the system going live, we had gained near complete control of the election server", the researchers wrote in a paper that has now been released. "We successfully changed every vote and revealed almost every secret ballot." The hack was only discovered after about two business days – and most likely only because the intruders left a visible trail on purpose.

Moroccan girl commits suicide after being forced to marry her rapist:

Last year Amina’s parents filed charges against their daughter’s rapist, a man 10 years older than her but it was only recently that a judge in the northern city of Tangier decided that instead of punishing him, the two must be married. The court’s decision to forcibly marry Amina to her rapist was supposed to “resolve” the damage of sexual violation against her, but it led to more suffering in the unwelcoming home of her rapist/husband’s family. Traumatized by the painful experience of rape, Amina decided to end her life by consuming rat poison in the house of her husband’s family, according to the Moroccan daily al-Massae.

Ugandans react with anger to Kony video:

The audience was at first puzzled to see the narrative lead by an American man – Jason Russell – and his young son. Towards the end of the film, the mood turned more to anger at what many people saw as a foreign, inaccurate account that belittled and commercialised their suffering, as the film promotes Kony bracelets and other fundraising merchandise, with the aim of making Kony infamous. One woman I spoke to made the comparison of selling Osama Bin Laden paraphernalia post 9/11 – likely to be highly offensive to many Americans, however well intentioned the campaign behind it. The event ended with the angrier members of the audience throwing rocks and shouting abusive criticism, as the rest fled for safety, leaving an abandoned projector, with organisers and the press running for cover until the dust settled. It seems that the while the film has a viral power never seen before in the online community, it did not go down nearly so well with the very people it claims it is meant to help.

Afghan Shooting Highlights Military’s God-Awful Track Record on Brain Injuries:

Indeed, the military’s mismanagement of TBIs over the past decade is nothing short of astonishing. Military docs have failed to diagnose soldiers who showed clear symptoms of injury. Potentially thousands of medical diagnoses for TBI have been all-out lost. Soldiers sometimes wait months to start TBI treatment. Most importantly, scientists still don’t even know what TBIs do to a person’s body, brain or long-term mental health. An estimated 200,000 soldiers have suffered from a TBI over the past decade. At least, as far as the military can tell. Even after the Pentagon in 2007 injected $1.7 billion into better management of TBIs, military docs still can’t accurately diagnose the injuries during a soldier’s deployment or upon his or her return to base. Right now, the military typically uses a three-phase screening test to spot TBIs in personnel. One baseline test is taken before deployment, another after a possible TBI has been sustained during deployment, and a third when a soldier returns home. But, as highlighted in a 2010 ProPublica/NPR investigation, those tests are hopelessly flawed: One screening test failed to spot 40 percent of TBI cases among military patients. Another was described as “basically a coin flip,” by Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the former Army Surgeon General.

Why Slutty Disney Princesses Aren’t Funny:

But then it gets strange. And strangely misogynist, and sex-negative, and slut-shamey. So apparently Ariel (from The Little Mermaid) is a slut because… um, I’m not exactly clear on why. Something about her wearing a shell bikini leads to this conclusion: “Yeah, this fire crotch is a ho.” It gets worse. Cinderella apparently is on Xanax when she meets the frat-boy prince (a subtle jab at date rape, or the writer again attempting to be funny?), while Esmerelda (from The Hunchback of Notre Dame) is left out of the list because “gypsies don’t go to school.” Wow, racist much?

Retake Mass Effect Petition Raises Nearly $38K for Child's Play:

While some may disagree with a group of gamers who have created a petition asking for alternate endings for Mass Effect 3, it's a little easier to like those that support it because they have managed to raise $37,533.12 for the Child's Play charity through a ChipIn donation drive. Organizers of the charity drive and the petition explained their reasoning for raising funds for Child's Play

Why Mass Effect 3’s Ending Was So Damn Terrible:

There's an almost universal outrage at the moment over the ending of Mass Effect 3. After playing a series for what's usually over 100 hours, people are very upset at the manner in which the trilogy wound down. And they have every right to be. But not for the reasons I see so many putting forward. It has nothing to do with the story, or the writing, or the fate of Shepard, or indeed the fate of the Mass Effect universe itself. Those are creative decisions, and as the creators of the content, BioWare can do whatever the hell they like. If Shepard had sprouted wings and gone off to fight Sephiroth, whatever, that's what they had in mind. Stories are subjective things. We can not enjoy them, hate them, even, but I don't think a story - however poorly implemented - can ever be a universal failing. No, I think the biggest problem lies in something more direct, and thus culpable, than any of those offenders. It's in how the game's conclusion played out.

Note: As I’m wary of spoilers and have not yet finished the game, I haven’t read the whole article as I know it’s full of spoilers. Consider yourself warned for both this, and the next two links about Mass Effect 3.

Why Mass Effect 3’s Ending Doesn’t Need Changing (SPOILERS):

If you died tomorrow, if some kind of disaster struck and removed you entirely from the world, would the choices you'd made with your life to date matter? Would it matter what you had accomplished? Who you had loved? If you had saved another's life? Would your life's work have meaning? Would there not be at least a single day in the course of your years that managed to have repercussions beyond the limits of your own knowledge and time? I know very, very few people who would say, "no, none of it matters." It's a nihilistic and bleak point of view to maintain, that the inevitability of the final conclusion — for indeed, we are all mortal — overrides the importance of what one does along the journey. To be human is inevitably to face death. The moments we live for, before the end comes, are what define us. So, too, for the life and times of Commander Shepard.

This Wonderful Mass Effect 3 Art is Full of GIANT SPOILERS:

Matt Rhodes is one of my favourite concept artists in the business. Why? Because his style, using bright, colourful cartoon characters for games that are often very dark and serious in tone, is a breath of fresh air in an industry where a lot of art ends up looking exactly the same. We've featured his art previously on Kotaku, and you seemed to love it, so I figured I'd post more tonight, this time covering his work on Mass Effect 3. A warning, though: half of these are from the end, or very near the end of the game, so obviously there are spoilers ahead.