Next door is having an extension built for their son who will be staying at home indefinitely as he has Crohn's disease. The cat is taking advantage of the scaffolding. Sadly, this cat hunts birds in our garden, but the pigeons, at least, have now got wise to this, after a few fatalities.
The building firm is very tidy and efficient, and reasonably speedy.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Friday, September 04, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
anti-socialism
Sadly, it has been the Socialists who have altered University experience in the UK. Not content with creating miles of unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy, they have made it so that kids have to work their way through to sustain themselves, as well as pay a fair whack in Uni fees. The result is that the rich people's kids (who have mum and dad to fund them) have more time to study; they come out with better degrees (better class of degree) and also they can go to more expensive areas of the country where the better Unis are. AND without being lumbered with debt when they finish.
It is astonishing to me that the Labour government has tilted the game so much in favour of the better off.
It is astonishing to me that the Labour government has tilted the game so much in favour of the better off.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Las Vegas in 1966
I took this serendipitous picture with a 35mm film camera on a trip around Nevada and Arizona in summer 1966. After 43 years, the image still appeals. This is a scan from a print from a 35mm slide.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Reflective fabric
This Red Cross issue jacket is vivid yellow, with reflecting strips and a reflecting logo. This picture is what the camera makes of it in the little light that comes through the open front door. The Red Cross provide CJ with large quantities of regulation clothing, but no pay! But they do reimburse him for his travel expenses, and provide him with many free trips which double as holiday. In 2010 he hopes to have a spell with them in sub-Saharan Africa. He also gets to stay in a very wide range of emporia, from ***** to "under canvas".
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Red Cross FACE 2009 Oldenburg
Red Cross volunteering gives CJ work experience, lots of driving experience, team work experience, organisation experience, budget-management experience, travel experiences, international contacts, a custom-made GAP year activity programme, valuable skills, an enjoyable life, and a GOOD TIME.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Never unpacked
The OECD foretells that the UK economy will shrink.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8117013.stm
This is GOOD news for eco-conscious people who know that our planet is already over-populated and over-stressed. Meanwhile, this calculator can be used within its original package from nearly 20 years ago. It is solar powered, has no batteries, and the keys can be pressed through the plastic encapsulation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8117013.stm
This is GOOD news for eco-conscious people who know that our planet is already over-populated and over-stressed. Meanwhile, this calculator can be used within its original package from nearly 20 years ago. It is solar powered, has no batteries, and the keys can be pressed through the plastic encapsulation.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
beef rib
Public health problem; If you go away (possibly for a few months) and leave food in your freezer, you may not be aware there has been a power cut while you were away, leading to a warm-up and to the bugs growing. The frozen food in the freezer may now be lethal.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Plateful of pie and veg
"Stuff" in the media falls into at least three categories.
"Informational"
"Motivational" (like a sermon)
"Spam and advertising"
"Informational"
"Motivational" (like a sermon)
"Spam and advertising"
Monday, December 08, 2008
fried and poached (fp) egg
The "fried an poached egg" is prepared by cooking bacon in a small frying pan in hot vegetable oil, removing the bacon and placing on toast, then half-frying the egg in the bacon and oil fat and then adding boiling water to poach it. The advantage is that the fat is washed off, and the white of the egg is contained (unlike a poached egg) and also the yolk can be made almost hard so that it does not drip out of the toastie.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Guildford map
"Community" does not, any longer, just refer to the place where you live. Flickr (www.flickr.com) is a collection of communities, for example.
Traditionally, the concept of community referenced geographically specific, culturally homogeneous, and seemingly natural entities such as families, villages, academic disciplines, neighborhoods, races, and religious groups. Whether by choice or by force, people belonged to one primary community and such communities were typically ranked. The massive social changes of the post-World War II era changed all of this. The growth of global capital marketplaces and their ensuing population migrations, the successes and failures of the civil rights, feminist and similar social movements for social justice, the rapid emergence of new technologies of transportation and communication, and the increased attention to security and surveillance of the post-9/11 period all greatly transformed traditional understandings of community. No longer seen as naturally occurring, apolitical spaces of home and homeland populated by people who belong, communities of all sorts now constitute sites of political engagement and contestation. [More...]
In this context, the term community resonates throughout social policy, popular culture, and everyday social interaction in ways that generate dynamic social and political identities. People understand community in diverse ways: from the face-to-face interactions of small group dynamics, to the contested communities of schools, workplaces and other organizations, to the large-scale imagined political communities of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nation-state and diaspora. The social practices of community catalyze new meanings of freedom – for example, youth with access to computers construct new virtual communities in cyberspace whereas others seek to escape the confines of their inner city neighborhoods. The ideal of community also holds significance for quite different populations with competing political agendas – political groups of the right and left invoke ideas of community, yet have very different definitions in mind. These practices among others reveal how the idea of community constitutes an elastic social, political and theoretical construct that holds a variety of contradictory meanings and around which diverse social practices and understandings occur.
Through the theme of the 2009 Annual Meeting, “The New Politics of Community,” the Program Committee invites you to consider the significance of these changing and contradictory understandings of community. We also hope that the meetings will catalyze the process of building more robust, excellent and diverse sociological communities. In this sense, when it comes to the discipline of sociology, the new politics of community constitute both an object of study and a matter of practice.
Patricia Hill Collins
ASA President
University of Maryland
Traditionally, the concept of community referenced geographically specific, culturally homogeneous, and seemingly natural entities such as families, villages, academic disciplines, neighborhoods, races, and religious groups. Whether by choice or by force, people belonged to one primary community and such communities were typically ranked. The massive social changes of the post-World War II era changed all of this. The growth of global capital marketplaces and their ensuing population migrations, the successes and failures of the civil rights, feminist and similar social movements for social justice, the rapid emergence of new technologies of transportation and communication, and the increased attention to security and surveillance of the post-9/11 period all greatly transformed traditional understandings of community. No longer seen as naturally occurring, apolitical spaces of home and homeland populated by people who belong, communities of all sorts now constitute sites of political engagement and contestation. [More...]
In this context, the term community resonates throughout social policy, popular culture, and everyday social interaction in ways that generate dynamic social and political identities. People understand community in diverse ways: from the face-to-face interactions of small group dynamics, to the contested communities of schools, workplaces and other organizations, to the large-scale imagined political communities of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nation-state and diaspora. The social practices of community catalyze new meanings of freedom – for example, youth with access to computers construct new virtual communities in cyberspace whereas others seek to escape the confines of their inner city neighborhoods. The ideal of community also holds significance for quite different populations with competing political agendas – political groups of the right and left invoke ideas of community, yet have very different definitions in mind. These practices among others reveal how the idea of community constitutes an elastic social, political and theoretical construct that holds a variety of contradictory meanings and around which diverse social practices and understandings occur.
Through the theme of the 2009 Annual Meeting, “The New Politics of Community,” the Program Committee invites you to consider the significance of these changing and contradictory understandings of community. We also hope that the meetings will catalyze the process of building more robust, excellent and diverse sociological communities. In this sense, when it comes to the discipline of sociology, the new politics of community constitute both an object of study and a matter of practice.
Patricia Hill Collins
ASA President
University of Maryland
Thursday, December 04, 2008
play of water
Christina has been to Washington DC and taken some pics. The quotations and phrases around the various monuments starkly illustrate just how far the USA has slipped away from its traditions since 2001.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Afghan cultural support
The picture here is of an Afghan rug bought by Ted Jefferies in Kabul in 1968, for the equivalent of 5 pounds sterling at that time. It was inexpensive, because the vendor said that the maker had run out of wool before completing it, and indeed, you can see that the two ends are of different lengths. It has, for the past 14 years, been on the direct walkway through the hall in the house and you can see how tough it is and how well it has withstood the traffic.
It is worth supporting Afghan art and culture at the moment. In 2008 they have had the worst winter for many years, and folk have been dying of the cold, and losing limbs through frostbite. If we all buy Afghan art, perhaps they will not need to grow so many poppies for heroin production.
Friday, November 02, 2007
For ALL busy people
Jonathan Deane suggests the "do nothing" machine. It is offered to all busy people who have insufficient time in their day to sit and just relax and "do nothing". By switching on the "do nothing machine", it gets on with the job of doing nothing at all while you get on with your busy life.
Various instantiations of "do nothing" machine are possible. There is the "peaceful do nothing machine" that just sits quietly in the corner and shows no outward sign at all that it is busily doing nothing. At the other end of the spectrum is the "flamboyant do nothing machine" which has flashing lights and bells and whistles, and when it is set running, does nothing at all in a very ostentatious manner.
The disadvantage of a television as a "do nothing machine" is that it may just possibly distract you and divert you from whatever busy task you are getting on with.
Various instantiations of "do nothing" machine are possible. There is the "peaceful do nothing machine" that just sits quietly in the corner and shows no outward sign at all that it is busily doing nothing. At the other end of the spectrum is the "flamboyant do nothing machine" which has flashing lights and bells and whistles, and when it is set running, does nothing at all in a very ostentatious manner.
The disadvantage of a television as a "do nothing machine" is that it may just possibly distract you and divert you from whatever busy task you are getting on with.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
The D coefficient
This is a suggestion for a "complex systems" on-line experiment, made today by JHB Deane at Surrey.
This suggestion applies ONLY to one-to-one communications, involving no lists or copies...
When you get email from your friends, or posts on Facebook etc., what proportion of them do you need to acknowledge with a reply in order to keep your friends from dumping you? Jonathan calls this the "D coefficient" and suggests that for himself, for email, it is about 0.3. That is, he finds people will keep him on their emailing list if he responds to about one in every 3 communications.
He suggests that this is empirical science, and that it needs a very large number of people to participate in taking the data in order to establish a "global D coefficient" and a range for this number.
For myself, I find that people are happier if I apply a higher D coefficient than 0.3, and that on Facebook, my D coefficient is nearer 0.1 (I dump "friends" if I get less than one response every 10 communications).
This suggestion applies ONLY to one-to-one communications, involving no lists or copies...
When you get email from your friends, or posts on Facebook etc., what proportion of them do you need to acknowledge with a reply in order to keep your friends from dumping you? Jonathan calls this the "D coefficient" and suggests that for himself, for email, it is about 0.3. That is, he finds people will keep him on their emailing list if he responds to about one in every 3 communications.
He suggests that this is empirical science, and that it needs a very large number of people to participate in taking the data in order to establish a "global D coefficient" and a range for this number.
For myself, I find that people are happier if I apply a higher D coefficient than 0.3, and that on Facebook, my D coefficient is nearer 0.1 (I dump "friends" if I get less than one response every 10 communications).
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
GSA meeting, San Francisco, Nov 2007
Gerontological Society of America meeting 2007.
Christina's factotum-administrator person decided to avoid the on-line information for the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco, and discovered the main direct line, in to the bookings manageress in the hotel. The end result is that all five of the Reading contingent are booked in for all the days of the conference, that is, the nights of 15 16 17 18 and 19th November 2007.
You may be interested to hear that the lady manageress at the Hilton reports that she had had all kinds of irate people from around the planet phoning her up to complain about the website. Partly the problem was with the parochial conference organisers. No-one had thought that any attendees would need to come in early to overcome jet lag. And they had put an upper limit of 4 bodies per booking. And also, the website was broken and reporting there to be no space when actually there is plenty.
It also transpires that for many people, dealing with the Hilton was so much too difficult, that they have instead transferred to other hotels in the vicinity. This further reduces the pressure on the conference space.
Christina's factotum-administrator person decided to avoid the on-line information for the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco, and discovered the main direct line, in to the bookings manageress in the hotel. The end result is that all five of the Reading contingent are booked in for all the days of the conference, that is, the nights of 15 16 17 18 and 19th November 2007.
You may be interested to hear that the lady manageress at the Hilton reports that she had had all kinds of irate people from around the planet phoning her up to complain about the website. Partly the problem was with the parochial conference organisers. No-one had thought that any attendees would need to come in early to overcome jet lag. And they had put an upper limit of 4 bodies per booking. And also, the website was broken and reporting there to be no space when actually there is plenty.
It also transpires that for many people, dealing with the Hilton was so much too difficult, that they have instead transferred to other hotels in the vicinity. This further reduces the pressure on the conference space.
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