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You can tell that maths teaching in Britain is in a mess. How do we know? This report in the Guardian:
As we have said here before, when they appoint a “tsar”, it means that they have a problem, but no idea how to solve it. Our only problem is how we are supposed to spell the damn word. February 24th, 2004 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
 What does the FBI do if it has a search warrant to track down one miscreant on a network? Why they seize the whole data centre of course! I’ll attempt to make the seriousness of this more apparent in a non-cyber world example. Imagine the local police are looking for a document that is evidence of a possible crime. The Judge gives them a warrant based on probable cause. When they search the file cabinet at that address, they can’t find what they are looking for. So they corden off the entire apartment building and seize all the file cabinets containing all of the personal and business records of everyone living there. They cart those off with total disregard to the impact on lives and businesses. Then they tell everyone their file cabinets will be returned as soon as they’ve made a permanent State copy of their entire contents. What sort of society would you say you were living in if that happened? February 24th, 2004 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sticking with the religious theme, I am puzzled by the furore regarding Mel Gibson’s acclaimed flick, The Passion of The Christ
The way I see it, a couple thousand years ago a Jewish man called Jesus, most of whose followers were Jews, was executed on the basis of trumped up charges. This was done with the grudging sufferance of the Imperial Roman authorities at the behest of certain powerful Jewish political and community leaders. Thus it would be fair to say he was killed by Jews. This is of course not at all the same thing as saying he was killed by the Jews: that makes about as much sense as saying “John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the Caucasians”. This is just history, guys! What is the big deal? February 24th, 2004 | 97 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Catholic Communications Service for England & Wales have delivered a nifty rejection of a host of the intellectual bits of the Catholic church’s philosophical underpinnings which actually make sense, via a press release called Catholic Bishops: Why we must render unto Caesar. This pertains to a booklet called ‘Taxation for the Common Good’. Yet again the church in England shows it has no problem superceding individual moral choice (there is no other kind really because a decision cannot be moral if it is not the product of individual free will) by using the collective force of the state. Moreover taking the property of others is just fine by them. The problem is that when they say the word ‘moral’, they do not actually know what that means. Hint: it is not the same as ‘manners’ or ‘social conventions’ and is certainly not the same issue as ‘desirable outcomes’. If some members of a church (i.e. Catholic bishops in England and Wales) find the rarified air of pure moral theory too taxing compared to issuing pronouncements on plain ol’ politics, perhaps they are in the wrong line of work.
Presumably this has now been updated:
If the Catholic church wants to spurn its role as a persuader of individual moral decisions and instead be just another collectivist political advocacy group, albeit one with rather interesting buildings and distinctively dressed employees, that is fine by me… but it should not then be surprised if people treat it as just another shrill NGO or perhaps think of it as being rather like that paragon of virtues, the United Nations. For a far more interesting discussion regarding Christianity and Liberty than you will ever find on the arid pages of the Catholic Communication Service, take a peek at the interesting Volconvo site. February 23rd, 2004 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The week’s edition of the Economist is a rather good one. It is a publication which although generally on the side of the angels, often infuriates me with its statist meta-contextual inconsistencies. Likewise they are at their worst when describing broader civil liberties issues, particularly self-defence. That said it is a magazine which is often a bloody good read. The leader article is called The new jobs migration and discusses a subject dear to my heart: free trade and outsourcing.
Great stuff. When people argue that they just want to ‘protect American (or British/French/Japanese) jobs’, what they are really demanding is that force be used to ensure that other people’s purchasing power within their own nation not be allowed to grow because of their own sectional interests. When people look at cases of folks loosing their jobs in the USA or UK because an Indian or Philippine call centre can do it cheaper, and then call for this to stop, they are not looking beyond the first causal link of costs and benefits. Moreover, they are ignoring that we live in an extended and (largely) capitalist society which is extraordinarily good at dealing with such problems when the ‘invisible hand’ is free to work its ‘magic’. Some people are losing their jobs, ergo, this is bad and must be stopped… this rather like concluding as the world seems intuitively to be flat, therefore it must be flat. By this logic all labour saving devices should have been declared ’employment destroying devices’ and banned long ago. There is also another splendid article in the United States section called The Great Hollowing-out Myth which roundly rubbishes the notion that outsourcing damages the US (or other) economy and overall employment prospects (alas that article is available only via on-line subscription or in the print version):
Run, do not walk, to your nearest newsstand. February 23rd, 2004 | 51 comments - (Comments are closed)
So Britain will indeed remain more enlightened than the Continent, allowing people from the new EU member nations in Eastern Europe to live here: the proviso being that they will not be allowed to partake of state benefits for a few years. So in other words, they are welcome (and they certainly are welcome by me) to come here and work just so long as they leave the theft of other people’s money (via the state, of course), to native English people or resident French, Germans, Italians etc… or our very own local Arab terrorist supporters, come to think of it. On a related note, it never ceases to amuse me to hear how politicos can make dissembling use of language. Following an attack by that paragon of liberal values and freedom, Tory leader Michael Howard, in which he asked “Will the government do what other countries are doing, and what the prime minister said he was looking at, will he impose transitional controls on immigration from the accession countries or not”, Tony Blair replied:
And this is presumably because workers are not… people? Anyway, I thought it was only a problem when the people in question turn out to not to be ‘workers’. In reality, most of the ‘Old’ EU is not allowing free movement at all but rather highly regulated and restricted movement. February 23rd, 2004 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
About a year ago I predicted the US was in the first stages of disentangling itself from global tarbabies. Invading Iraq was one of the items I expected as there was no real path out of the Middle East so long as Saddam was there. Northern and Southern Watch would have continued for decades. This is not to say America will not be stuck there for quite a few years to come, only that there is a plausible exit strategy where there once was none. The BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) process is due to culminate in a report in mid-March and will include what may well be the greatest re-organization of American overseas basing since the end of WWII. I expect to see the buzz word ‘capabilities based defense’ used as an explanation for greatly decreased numbers of Americans in overseas bases. The third part is South Korea, and I give you these two items from Jane’s to take as thou wilt:
We will see agreements for unrestricted bases containing pre-positioned supplies in in places convenient to expected trouble spots. There will only be enough local American staff to handle peace-time security, inventory and infrastructure. Perhaps there will be some intelligence, training and Special Forces as well, but the ‘footprint’ will be small. As much as possible will be handled by civilians, on base where absolutely required and otherwise ‘outsourced’ to a back-office in the US. Naval basing will be an exception. A primarily maritime power still needs home ports for the Fleet that are within reasonable sailing distances of trouble spots. We are entering an era in which our military will be kept at home and deployed only when and where required. It will take most of this decade to get there. February 23rd, 2004 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
After reading this article you will no doubt sense a bit of hostility towards Senator Kerry from young Iranians:
These are among the less heated statements about Kerry’s plans to work closely with terrorists or ‘engage’ them if you will. I really would be interested in knowing what new set of american values he intends to institute. Like the Iranian students, I cannot see how any existing ones would apply. February 23rd, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. For the UK’s University lecturers are going on strike. On Wednesday. Put it in your diary. It’s a catastrophe. If anybody notices, of course. “We’ve got the support of the students,” said one earnest lecturer, on the radio this morning. From what I remember of my own ear-ringed, combat-trousered, drunken oblivion, in academia, I used to just love lecturers going on strike. It was simply great for extending hangover recovery times. And with Wednesday being a traditional sports day, within British Universities, the lecturers, I presume, will only be sacrificing about three hours pay, from their 10am coffee break, which starts the morning, to the 1pm finish time, which ends their arduous half-working day. So brave of them. Don’t ya think? → Continue reading: Bringing down the ivory tower February 23rd, 2004 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master February 22nd, 2004 | Comments are closed
I’m listening to an old nineteen thirties recording of some Dvorak symphonies. The conductor and orchestra are both greatly admired for this music, yet I find little pleasure in the experience. For me, symphonies, by their nature, only really work properly if the recording is decent, as the best recordings were from about 1960 onwards, but as these ones, made in the 1930s, are not. Concertos are another matter. One of the greatest pleasures I’ve recently got from classical CD collecting is from the Naxos historical CD series. True, as with the symphonies, you don’t get the full orchestral picture clearly, but a solo instrument can still come across very clearly, despite the barrier of the decades. What classical music lover would deny himself the pleasure of hearing the teenage Yehudi Menuhin performing the magnificent Elgar Violin Concerto – recorded in 1932 with Sir Edward Elgar himself conducting – just because the recording quality is not quite up to modern standards? The orchestra is not all you’d like, but the solo violin is clear as a bell. → Continue reading: Reflections on the future of the musical past February 22nd, 2004 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
The front page of the Telegraph today has news of Michael Howard facing a shadow cabinet revolt last night over his plan to impose a public spending freeze, with senior members of his front-bench team protesting bitterly about proposed cuts in services. So far, so good. Cuts in budget, good news for the likes of Samizdatistas. Thumbs up for Howard? Bad front-bench team who reveal themselves for the incorrigible statists they are? Not quite.
The Tory party is trying desperately make themselves credible by pre-emptying Labour’s smearing them with spending less on ‘schoolzandhospitals’. As one frontbencher puts it:
The Tories are so obsessed about getting elected that they are losing their grip on substance. Mind you, they lost that with Thatcher’s departure… She may have actually increased the size of the state in some measures, which is evidence of how hard it is to cut the hydra down to size, but she was certainly aware of the true role of the state. Michael Howard is not. Some people say it is still worth voting – maybe but not when a a sad greedy bunch of oily politicians out of power are competing with a faltering greedy bunch of oily politicians in power. February 22nd, 2004 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
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