Creation and evolution

In a sense, everything that exists has evolved, and nothing has been created. Even though we may think that our table or motor car or computer is the product of conscious design and has been created by human hands, we remember that we ourselves have evolved from the cosmic dust and we are progressing evolution by making artefacts which are as much a product of our biology as is our hair or our fingernails.

Uses of Facebook

Now I come to facebook. It is brilliant for ephemeral communication. I have suggested to them that they set an option for a 2 day latency,such that anything you write is automatically expunged for ever after 48 hours. We can argue about the length of time. It is painful to go through manually deleting everything. Observing the younger generation, there is a lot of stuff going up there that one would not want in any sense permanent. On the other hand, it is a very slick way of display to your circle should they wish to see what you are up to. And, when you make a new contact, you can give them a semi-public glimpse of the wider scene which then deletes, leaving an impression but no usable material.

Moderation

At a certain well-known University in the SE of England, the academics in a science faculty have been required to return exam results, after marking, with averages over all candidates in the range 50% to 65%. This ruling is in the interests of "moderation" between the different courses of different difficulty, set by academics with differing agendas.

One can make a Reductio ad Absurdum argument here. Obviously, some students will be disadvantaged if they score less than the average on a paper. Why not require EVERY student to be given 55.7% on EVERY question on each exam.

But then, we don't need to set an exam, and can save academics' time and administration overhead.

But, if we are not going to assess the students, we can stop requiring them to come to lectures.

In that case we don't have to provide residential accommodation for them and they can live at home and study from the web and the books.

We don't then need the plant and infrastructure of the Universities, which can be asset-stripped and sold off to the private sector and the revenue ploughed back into the Treasury coffers.

The students will go back to learning from books, and resources like http://www.wikipedia.com/ and if they need advice from academics, the vestigial Unis can keep lists of those people willing to help by email and videoconference.

"My name is O'Reilly,
I own a hotel"

On Radio 3, many years ago, a music quiz programme produced the couplet above as the scansion of Haydn minuets. Nearly all the 106 Haydn symphonies have a minuet as the third movement, to which the above words fit. It is said that this is a reliable way of telling Haydn from Mozart. Funnily enough, a Google search for this couplet (before this blog was posted) does not produce this interesting snippet of information.

Furthermore, it is true that for many J.Haydn minuets there is a rider, thus....

"My name is O'Reilly, I own a hotel - -

a five star hotel"

Exchange rate

At present, the official exchange rate between UK pounds and US dollars is running at about $1.95 to the pound. However, if we compare the UK and US price of coffee in Starbucks and of burgers in Burger King, the functional exchange rate is $1.00 to the pound, give or take a few percent. Seeing as these organisations have to hire real estate, and pay the local wages, taxes, and overheads, the "coffee-burger" exchange rate of one dollar to the pound is a much more accurate estimate of the actual costs of living in the two countries.



10th February 2007

restaurant notice

restaurant notice
Originally uploaded by rabinal.

In the woods near Wood Street

Kaleidoscope

photographs through kaleidoscope