Scribble, scribble, scribble

book three

I've finally got round to finishing off Charles Townshend's Terrorism: a Very Short Introduction. I'm in the middle of several books at present; not sure which will be next; perhaps Doug Lea's "Concurrent programming in Java".

mad props

In the course of the (excellent) singing lesson I just had, we used

• A cushion
• A broom
• A roll of kitchen paper
• A marker pen (only because there wasn't a cork to hand)

sony bono

An article at Crooked Timber is entitled "Sony Bono, Mickey Mouse and John Clare". I'm not sure whether "Sony Bono" is a deliberate or an accidental deviation from the official "Sonny Bono", but on the analogy of "Cui bono?" it makes excellent sense, the meaning presumably being "for the good of Sony". 'Course, "Disney Bono" would make even better sense.

likely to be useful

I am rather slow on the uptake sometimes. I have only just discovered, reading about the Abu Hamza case, that in the United Kingdom it is presently a criminal offence to possess "a document or record containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".

Excuse me?

Here is a brief list of things that would fit that description.

• An English-[any_other_language] dictionary.
• A railway timetable.
• Any secondary school or university chemistry textbook.
• A map of London.

And those are just things that might be useful for the specific purpose of committing or preparing terrorism; the actual legal language is considerably broader.

Furthermore, it is not necessary for the prosecution to prove that you actually owned, or read, or even knew of the existence of the document. If it "was on any premises at the same time as the accused ... the court may assume that the accused possessed the document or record".

But all this is OK, because "it is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that he had a reasonable excuse for his action or possession". So that's all right, then.

Once upon a time, it was a key principle of the UK justice system that everyone is to be presumed innocent until proven, beyond reasonable doubt, to be guilty. But of course it would be unreasonable to apply such a dangerous principle to terrorists. Where, of course, "terrorists" means "persons who have been accused of terrorism".

Apparently this masterpiece of paranoid imbecility has been part of UK law for nearly five years now.

Note: By reading the above, you have come into possession of information that might be useful to a terrorist. Please report immediately for attitude realignment therapy and termination.

book two

I changed my mind, and read Frederick Mosteller's Fifty challenging problems in probability next instead. Charles Townshend's "Terrorism: a very short introduction" is next in line again.

book one

On schedule so far. Mary Midgley's "The myths we live by" was a bit of a disappointment. Next up: Charles Townshend's "Terrorism: a very short introduction".

change on 2006-01-08 at 21:32:50

Page changed: books/typo-style.html

Corrected a minor misquotation from Robert Bringhurst.

Update 2006-01-20: oops, I miscorrected it. Now actually fixed.

change on 2006-01-05 at 01:32:54

Page changed: essays/dembski-vise.html

Two typo fixes: one trivial, the other less so ("a doctrine
of creationism" should have been "a doctrine of creation").

bad education drives out good

Gresham's Law states that "bad money drives out good". Something similar holds, though not for quite the same reasons, in our education system. Each examination board wants as many schools as possible to use it. (All hail Competition!) Each school wants its examination results to be as good as possible. (Yay for league tables!) And so ...

At a certain local secondary school, which I shall not name because I understand all the others are equally corrupt, pupils' mathematics grades are determined partly by "coursework". It's supposed to be investigative and open-ended. The school chooses what they pupils will be asked to do for their coursework. Immediately before they start work on it, they work with their teachers to produce a model submission for a different coursework exercise, one that a really good pupil might have produced on her own.

So far, so good. But the collaborative model answer is for a coursework exercise almost identical to the real one. So the pupils' contribution is this: they copy out what their teachers have led them to, and make a few superficial changes in the formulae.

This is not education. It is not assessment. It is bullshit. It is corruption. And it is a perfect example of why running a national public service as a set of competing individualized concerns is stupid.

Updated 2006-01-05: I'd said that the teacher just gives them a model solution; it isn't quite that bad.

change on 2006-01-02 at 20:58:13

Page changed: remarks/time-left.html

Fix a typo. An observation on improving stability.

fifty-two

One of my New Year's resolutions (I have others, which I shall not list here) is stolen from hundreds of other people on the web: to read (at least on average over the year 2006) one book a week, and post comments on them.

First up: Mary Midgley, "The myths we live by".