Author: Ian

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It’s Just Right

Once a fortnight is just about the correct frequency.

Private Eye is a fortnightly news magazine to which I subscribe. It’s possibly the only newspaper willing to spread the truth and print what is going on. It’s quite frightening really just how corrupt and dodgy most organisations and societies are. Maybe corrupt is the norm and I’m just hoping for an idealised society that can never exist? The other magazine I subscribe to is Scientific American.

In the same week that I receive Private Eye the Merseyside Skeptics Society release their podcast called Skeptics With A K. It’s a show about an hour long which features three normal (ish) guys chatting about skeptical items that interest them. There’s a bit of swearing and a reasonable amount of poking fun at people but it is very interesting and I learn a lot.

Both these subscriptions arrive in the same week and have for a few years, even allowing for the Christmas break they have. Each new year I wonder if the synchronicity will be altered but I haven’t found so this far. Perhaps it’s deliberate?

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Crocus

Saw this earlier today in the sunshine and it warmed me through. So nice to see spring flowers and sunshine. It’s been rather grey for the last few months.
A garden in Kent:

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Official Declaration

As an encouragement to one of my classes today I decided I would declare them as a genius on this website if they produced a scattergraph that looks better than mine. The criteria I used were:

  • Axis scales consistent
  • Axes correctly labelled and correct variable
  • Small crosses for each datum
  • Good, well-positioned line of best fit
  • Good interpolation value from graph

The following pupils succeeded and are therefore declared geniuses:

Ed
Louis
Leo
George W
Cameron
Stewart
James

 

 

 

Note: genius should only be taken to mean able to draw a graph.

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Not Green Fingers

Just spent a wonderfully pleasant hour with #1 son sowing seeds in the garden. We tidied the vegetable patch and got rid of the weeds and then planted this year’s selection of veg. It’s going to be carrots, parsnips and chillies. I don’t think the chillies are going to survive the cold so I’ll get some more and grow them inside.

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We also read the instructions for the tomatoes and are actually going to grow them inside. They are on the kitchen window sill.

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Because We Are Stupid

So, in a DIY shop today getting some seeds to sow and I saw this attached to the petrol lawnmowers.

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Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that some people are lacking a bit in the grey matter but SERIOUSLY? People are so moronic that we have to tell them to put FUEL in a petrol motor before using it?!
Someone stop the planet. It’s time for me to get off.

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Wow, A Castle!

This morning I might have been having a cheeky couple of laps on Gran Turismo 5. I was possibly attempting to win one of the seasonal events (which for some reason I find quite tricky).
While racing around the GT Original track I noticed a castle in the background. I was so fascinated by this that for a few laps I couldn’t really concentrate on the track. The castle is a rather good looking building and really adds to the atmosphere. Sometimes I wonder whether game designers have bets about the most ludicrous things they can add!

 Screen #1:

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Screen #2

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These two screen grabs were taken using the LG remote app on my iPhone that has a capture function!

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Endless Speculation

This morning was the result of the Eastleigh by-election. I was listening to BBC Radio 4 while getting breakfast and I was amazed at the utter rubbish that the presenters and politicians were promoting.

There was endless speculation about why the public had voted a particular way with nearly every party claiming the result was good for them and using their own justifications. What utter rubbish. I do understand that the political parties are trying to spin the message and make sure that people think that they have done well but when you hear one argument after the other you begin to realise it’s BS.

I like the way that the politicos were trying to gather to mood of the nation and applying interpretations about the thoughts of the voters from this election result. Surely to gather any evidence about people’s motivation for voting a particular way would take some serious questionnaires and detailed investigation. It is not possible for this to be done a few hours after the result. I am sure that the sociologists out there must be swearing at their radios far more than me.

Politicians and spin! Perhaps one day we will get someone in charge who is quite happy to say things as they are and admit that they don’t know much!

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Easy Research

Short one this. For a few years now I have become convinced that there’s an easy way to make discoveries and gain a PhD. Although this might be slightly controversial and I am prepared to accept my views are probably wrong, I do currently think that this is how some fields of research work.

Recipe:

  • Take a phase of life or social behaviour (grieving, riots, middle-age, becoming a parent)
  • Perform a survey of people going through this process or involved in these behaviours
  • Look through your data to find correlations or patterns (humans are very good at this)
  • Make up a causation-correlation statement or split the phase into sub-divisions
  • Perform another survey to confirm your results
  • Write up a PhD
  • Write a popular style book explaining your results and what people can do to fix themselves
  • All done!
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Unreliable

Some time ago I started writing communications about news failures on the BBC News website. It has been quite clear to me that the quality of journalism on the BBC website has been falling for years (subjective rather than hard data). The headlines and stories have not been presented well. Rather than giving accurate news and reporting important things it seems that the BBC feel they are in competition with sites such as the Huffington Post and the Daily Mail “news” websites. The BBC is not in competition and as a public body should try to maintain high standards of news and programming but they push their content to the lowest denominator of population trying to compete with channels that I couldn’t care about.

I have decided to stop using the BBC News website so much. It has been a gradual decision but was forced through the day I saw the following picture and clip on the front page of the site.

Not really news

This story is not news. It’s not even a new thing. Animals have been given wheeled prosthetics for a long time. I just don’t care!

Goodbye BBC News website. I will still listen to Radio 4. I feel there is still some standard of production there. I guess one day I’ll change my mind. Is it because I’m getting older and therefore more cynical? I think there’s a Phd in looking into these factors.

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