Moral distance in dictator games
Interesting economic experiments trying to look at morals.
BBC - Radio 4 - All in the Mind
Time stands still or slows down when you think you're about to die.
what i still don't know: Tools: Enablement or Control
Some tools let you do things well, others try (unwittingly?) to force you into a certain mindset. Need to think carefully about software I write.
Courageous E-mail To Boss In Drafts Folder Since December | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
I don't know anyone who does this...
Google Knol (a competitor or complement to the almighty wikipedia).
I'm not sure I like what I see so far. That word "authoritative" bugs me, somehow - what a rampant post-modernist relativist I must be. But I'm glad there is a well-resourced alternative model out there, so that they can compete. I wonder if there will be any cross-fertilisation/evolution.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Festival of History
Today we went to Kelmarch Hall in Northamptonshire (you know, M5, M42, M6, A14) and saw lots of battles. The tagline was "One weekend, 2000 years in the making". If this event was anything to go by, history consists mostly of wars. We saw a Roman battle, an Anglo-Scottish "Battle of the Standard", a battle from the English Civil War, a battle from the Napoleonic wars, a Boer War re-enactment, a scene from World War I trenches, and D-Day airborne display from World War II. But it was quite interesting - especially all the commentary providing the context.
While in Australia we may learn about all of these events, it seems to be very dry and abstract - no matter how hard teachers try to engage students. But here, you can go and see the places where it happened, and there's so much evidence around the place: it's hard to ignore - it seems so much more real, as though it actually happened. Still, it doesn't seem to have engaged our children to any degree...
While in Australia we may learn about all of these events, it seems to be very dry and abstract - no matter how hard teachers try to engage students. But here, you can go and see the places where it happened, and there's so much evidence around the place: it's hard to ignore - it seems so much more real, as though it actually happened. Still, it doesn't seem to have engaged our children to any degree...
Friday, July 18, 2008
Interesting links for the week
Interesting/amusing things I've seen recently:
- The Underhanded C Contest - a fun competition to make apparently good "security software" that is actually insecure.
- Michael Nielsen » The Future of Science - How can scientists cooperate easily & flexibly.
- audiveris: Audiveris Home Page - Open source software for optical music recognition. (And proprietary software.)
- Cheap Wine - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog - fancy people can tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine, but regular people can't.
- Severed USB cable is really a 2GB flash drive - Engadget - for real engineers.
- EclEmma - Java Code Coverage for Eclipse - generally nicer/simpler than CodeCover - an open-source glass box testing tool, but it misreports on Java 5 enums.
Extra Large
It seems that I now have an excuse for three course dinners at nice French restaurants (like Cafe Rouge in Worcester, where Joanna, Steph, Helen and I went tonight), having chocolate cake at lunchtime, impossible pie for dinner (last night) and various other delicacies - even if I don't get to the gym as often as I plan, although I did go yesterday. For today I'm officially XL.There were some cute presents this morning - many from the recent journey to the Lake District, and a baseball bat & ball (well, rounders to be more accurate). And at lunch time, I was summoned home to assemble two new bicycles for the girls - which they're glad to have after the disappointing disappearance of the previous ones.
I'm enjoying a number of aspects at work at the moment - both the supervision of university student projects and our own project. There's a bit of a bureaucracy challenge to overcome at the moment, but that can't be too hard. And I'm enjoying the conversations with Permis people at University of Kent - I feel sure we'll see some great progress there.
That reminds me: I was going to blog my visit to Canterbury on Sunday and Monday. After Steph and I spent some of Sunday morning constructing the first parts of the egg slinger (for a school science challenge), I drove to Canterbury. I didn't get there in time for a 3:15pm choral evensong at the Cathedral, but I did manage to catch compline, in (but without!) the choir, for the first time ever. I can't really describe it as a sermon, but the Dean managed to interweave through the whole service a story about John Keble, who is remembered on Bastille day - particularly for his sermon that started the Oxford Movement. I also attended a Eucharist on Monday morning, this time in the crypt. I came home on Monday afternoon, but as I write on Thursday, the place is crowded with over 800 bishops at the fourteenth once-a-decade Lambeth Conference.Thursday, July 17, 2008
Frithwood and De Martino
Joanna wants you to know that she, Berenice, Steph, Helen, and Christopher went for a 4½ mile walk at Frithwood near Ledbury. Only one of the walking group appears to have had a non-fatal heart attack and collapse.
But no, I have to confess that the title of this blog entry is misleading. It's actually a wine article. We had a delicious roast lamb tonight. Somehow all the vegetables and the meat all seemed to be perfectly cooked, but it was complemented beautifully by a Chilean 2007 De Martino "347 Vineyards" Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon. Despite the youth, the taste was very round, with a very good fruit/tannin balance. It wasn't exactly the fruit flavour that you'd expect from a Coonawarra Cab Sauv - the fruit was a little more rounded, a little plummier, rather than "pure" berry. This was a bottle from the Virgin wines - I'm glad we have two more. My experience so far is teaching me that Chilean wine is much better than Spanish and South African, and possibly even French - but although perhaps coming close to Australian wines, not beating them. Maybe that's only because I've not invested sufficiently in them to find the best...
But no, I have to confess that the title of this blog entry is misleading. It's actually a wine article. We had a delicious roast lamb tonight. Somehow all the vegetables and the meat all seemed to be perfectly cooked, but it was complemented beautifully by a Chilean 2007 De Martino "347 Vineyards" Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon. Despite the youth, the taste was very round, with a very good fruit/tannin balance. It wasn't exactly the fruit flavour that you'd expect from a Coonawarra Cab Sauv - the fruit was a little more rounded, a little plummier, rather than "pure" berry. This was a bottle from the Virgin wines - I'm glad we have two more. My experience so far is teaching me that Chilean wine is much better than Spanish and South African, and possibly even French - but although perhaps coming close to Australian wines, not beating them. Maybe that's only because I've not invested sufficiently in them to find the best...
Birmingham, Newcastle, Liverpool, Pinafore.
Yikes - it's nearly a month since my last post. That won't do at all.
I've had a busy time in the last week. Last Tuesday, I met a student at Birmingham Uni to discuss project progress. Then I travelled to Newcastle. There, (on Wednesday) I had another project progress meeting at Newcastle Uni, and gave a presentation to some academic colleagues - partly as a practice for a talk I would give the next day at Liverpool. We had some good discussion afterwards. Then, I travelled to Liverpool. On Thursday, I attended the 3rd Advances in Computer Security and Forensics Conference at John Moores University. I thought my talk went well, although I did learn a lesson the hard way about configuring laptops, VGA outputs, graphic modes, and displaying videos.
When the first day of the conference finished, instead of taking things easy and ambling to the Teppanyaki conference dinner, I rushed to train station, and made my way back to Malvern. Christopher and Grandma met me at the station, and then I went off to the second half of a choir rehearsal. My voice was a little dodgy, due to a very slight cold. But it didn't seem to matter. After a small and dignified relaxation at the Colwall Crown afterwards, and then too little sleep at home, I found myself back on the train to Liverpool. It's surprising how much nicer the passenger experience is on an electric train - although I would like to have had a 240v plug like some of the other trains do. My voice seemed to have completely deserted me. I attended the rest of the conference in a rather silent mode - only asking one question. (The conference was quite good and enjoyable, but not earth shattering.) Then I met up with Joanna, Steph, and Helen.
They had spent the week in the Lake District, in Wastwater (not what it looks like!) and Ambleside, and they visited Blackpool on the way down to Liverpool. I'll have to let Joanna blog that - although experience suggests this might not happen...
So we met up, and went for a walk. We managed to get to Liverpool Cathedral (the biggest Anglican construction in the world!) just in time for a mens' voices evensong, which was very nice. After tiring the girls out by walking around, we found a restaurant right near our Albert Docks hotel where we had a nice dinner at Circo.
Saturday was the day of our G&S performance - H.M.S. Pinafore "from scratch" - as part of the Colwall Festival. Unfortunately, the voice was again AWOL. Some emergency texting to the musical director suggested that I should look for my voice where I last had it - at the Crown hotel. We drove from Liverpool via Speke Hall grounds (pictured, where we met a plane spotter, who had grabbed a position 5 hours in advance of an A380 fly past). We tried to find the Halton/Runcorn YMCA, where I had stayed during my British-Australian Vocational Exchange in 1984, but I think it must have been demolished. Or we didn't look hard enough.
I attended the afternoon rehearsal, but didn't talk or sing - trying to save whatever there might have been for the evening performance. Well, the time came. Our Musical Director gave a short apology at the beginning, and asked if anyone in the audience might have been a budding Captain Corcoran - but no, it fell to my. During my first song - "I am the Captain of the Pinafore", the squeaks that emerged (mostly in tune) seemed to amuse many of the cast as well as the audience. It wasn't pretty, but it probably contributed to the comic value of the "opera". Having consumed quite a few anaesthetic lozenges (in complete disregard of everything any vocal teacher told me!), I (squ)eked out what I had. We all (including the audience, I think) had a great time.
I've had a busy time in the last week. Last Tuesday, I met a student at Birmingham Uni to discuss project progress. Then I travelled to Newcastle. There, (on Wednesday) I had another project progress meeting at Newcastle Uni, and gave a presentation to some academic colleagues - partly as a practice for a talk I would give the next day at Liverpool. We had some good discussion afterwards. Then, I travelled to Liverpool. On Thursday, I attended the 3rd Advances in Computer Security and Forensics Conference at John Moores University. I thought my talk went well, although I did learn a lesson the hard way about configuring laptops, VGA outputs, graphic modes, and displaying videos.
When the first day of the conference finished, instead of taking things easy and ambling to the Teppanyaki conference dinner, I rushed to train station, and made my way back to Malvern. Christopher and Grandma met me at the station, and then I went off to the second half of a choir rehearsal. My voice was a little dodgy, due to a very slight cold. But it didn't seem to matter. After a small and dignified relaxation at the Colwall Crown afterwards, and then too little sleep at home, I found myself back on the train to Liverpool. It's surprising how much nicer the passenger experience is on an electric train - although I would like to have had a 240v plug like some of the other trains do. My voice seemed to have completely deserted me. I attended the rest of the conference in a rather silent mode - only asking one question. (The conference was quite good and enjoyable, but not earth shattering.) Then I met up with Joanna, Steph, and Helen.
They had spent the week in the Lake District, in Wastwater (not what it looks like!) and Ambleside, and they visited Blackpool on the way down to Liverpool. I'll have to let Joanna blog that - although experience suggests this might not happen...
So we met up, and went for a walk. We managed to get to Liverpool Cathedral (the biggest Anglican construction in the world!) just in time for a mens' voices evensong, which was very nice. After tiring the girls out by walking around, we found a restaurant right near our Albert Docks hotel where we had a nice dinner at Circo.
Saturday was the day of our G&S performance - H.M.S. Pinafore "from scratch" - as part of the Colwall Festival. Unfortunately, the voice was again AWOL. Some emergency texting to the musical director suggested that I should look for my voice where I last had it - at the Crown hotel. We drove from Liverpool via Speke Hall grounds (pictured, where we met a plane spotter, who had grabbed a position 5 hours in advance of an A380 fly past). We tried to find the Halton/Runcorn YMCA, where I had stayed during my British-Australian Vocational Exchange in 1984, but I think it must have been demolished. Or we didn't look hard enough.
I attended the afternoon rehearsal, but didn't talk or sing - trying to save whatever there might have been for the evening performance. Well, the time came. Our Musical Director gave a short apology at the beginning, and asked if anyone in the audience might have been a budding Captain Corcoran - but no, it fell to my. During my first song - "I am the Captain of the Pinafore", the squeaks that emerged (mostly in tune) seemed to amuse many of the cast as well as the audience. It wasn't pretty, but it probably contributed to the comic value of the "opera". Having consumed quite a few anaesthetic lozenges (in complete disregard of everything any vocal teacher told me!), I (squ)eked out what I had. We all (including the audience, I think) had a great time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)