Today we went to a wonderful concert at the Birmingham Symphony Hall:
http://www.cbso.co.uk/?page=concerts/viewConcert.html&cid=1906&m=02&y=
We went with my aunt, uncle and cousin, who have been staying with us this week.
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| 2010-02-25 Birmingham |
It’s been years since I have been to see an orchestra play, and I was greatly impressed. To have that many highly trained musicians practice and perform for such an occasion must be quite an undertaking.
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| 2010-02-19 Woodlands |
As always, a big thank you to the fine folks at Autostitch:
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| 2010-01-30 London |
No matter how many times I visit London, I almost always end up visiting Westminster and getting a shot of the clock tower at some point.
I find that whenever I am in front of a very famous sight, I have trouble believing it is real. Somehow, the impression that I have built up in my mind from seeing a place on TV, in movies and so on of the place overlaps with what my senses are telling me. I have never been to New York city but I imagine that the sensation would be very strange after a lifetime spent watching Woody Allen movies and reruns of Friends.
A couple of the blogs that I follow have pointed to the following article in the last couple of days.
The article describes “Boskop man”, who (the authors claim) had a much bigger brain than that of modern humans and was correspondingly more intelligent.
Much of the “science” of the article is debunked here:
Obviously, brain size can only tell us so much about intelligence. Otherwise, school examinations would be unnecessary. Instead, we could simply dunk a pupil’s head in a bathtub to measure the volume of water displaced by the skull and, from this, the child’s intelligence.
However, I think that much of the article was intended to be read a speculation rather than fact. It’s quite fun (and possibly not impossible) to think about how someone more intelligent thinks.
What hope for us modern humans, with our puny brains, is there? As a teacher, I am always searching for ways to improve the workings of my own brain and those of my students. A bit of searching on the internet for ways to improve your intelligence quickly brings you to addicting games like this:
http://www.soakyourhead.com/dual-n-back.aspx
Exciting, but cautious, claims are made about this game. There are probably lots of such games that can improve your brain. Unfortunately, I cannot see this game being a great deal of help in a foreign language classroom (my own area). Perhaps such toys will have an important role to play in education.
We’ve been in sunny Bangkok for a few days now. It’s as photogenic as ever:
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| 2009-11-05 Grand Palace Bangkok |
I’ve been very remiss with uploading my photographs to Picasa for the last few months. The fact that I am leaving South Korea on Tuesday has forced me to get up to date with everything.
Some photos from Chuncheon:
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| 2009-07-25 to 2009-07-26 Chuncheon |
A very rainy day at a traditional Korean village museum:
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| 2009-06-20 Traditional Korean Village |
A day at Everland:
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| 2009-06-21 Everland |
A panorama made using autostitch from the roof of Tekno Mart:
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| 2009-07-25 Tekno Mart |
A short trip to Hong Kong and Macau:
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| 2009-07-29 to 2009-08-01 Hong Kong |
A quick hike up Achasan, where one can see much of Seoul:
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| 2009-10-02 Achasan |
A day at Seoraksan National Park with my parents:
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| 2009-10-28 Seoraksan National Park |
At Bulguksa near Gyeongju:
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| 2009-10-30 Bulguksa near Gyeongju |
A day trip to Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon:
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| 2009-11-01 Suwon |
Here’s an interesting story about an academic playing at being a supervillain:
http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx?TRID=760&Cand=&pg=1
I wonder if anyone with a pacemaker accidentally walked into the lab during development.
An idea that has been working its way around my head for a few days is to do with paying people not to do bad things. We are generally confortable with the idea of punishing people who commit crimes. Rewarding people who do good deeds and are successful is also popular. However, rewarding people who are likely to commit a crime but choose not to is controversial. It is unfair to those who are not likely to commit the crime, as they receive no reward but are equally innocent.
One example of paying people not to commit a crime is a publicly subsidised taxi service intended to reduce drink driving. Somebody goes to a bar and drinks alcohol. They might decide to drive home or take a taxi. Their decision to drive, and commit a undoubtedly serious crime, might be based on the risk of having an accident (which many foolishly ignore), the risk of being stopped by the police and the price of a taxi fare.
The government can try to solve this issue by promoting awareness of the risks of drink driving, increasing the importance of the first consideration in the drinker’s mind. Many countries have gut-wrenching adverts showing the harrowing effects of accidents that have resulted from drink driving. This puts the dangers to the front of people’s minds and makes drink driving less socially acceptable. However, alcohol is a notorious judgement inhibitor. Putting aside the thought of danger and feeling contempt for do-gooders are all too easy when drunk.
With regard to the second consideration, the state can put more police on the roads and make the penalties more severe. Of these, more police might be more effective. In my opinion, a criminal commits a crime because he or she assumes that they will not be caught, rather than the assumption that the punishment will be bearable. I doubt that drinkers about to drive say to themselves “Oh well, it’ll only be a year without a driving license.” The ‘Bring back flogging and hanging’ brigade get a grim pleasure from seeing ne’er-do-wells being punished. Such braying for blood is mere sadism. However, a higher probability of being arrested might have an effect.
The third consideration could be to subsidise the taxi companies in an attempt to reduce the cost of fares. If the money comes from general taxation, teetotalers and stay-at-home drinkers might balk at paying for a service that they do not use. The money could also come from a tax levied on bars. Again, customers who stroll tipsily but harmlessly back home from a pub might begrudge having to pay for others. They should console themselves with the no doubt decreased likelihood of being run over.
Is the proverbial stick preferable to the carrot? Tax payers might broadly agree to their money being spent on schemes that reward others for not commiting crimes, which they themselves never intended to commit, because the benefits outweigh the costs. But what are the consequences? Does a subsidised taxi service not encourage people to drink more? Is it not more prudent to make drinkers fully take moral, legal and financial responsibility for getting themselves home?
We can find Richard Feynman’s Messenger Lectures on physics at the intriguingly named Tuva site:
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/#data=4%7C0%7C%7C%7C%7C
Dr. Feynman is an engaging lecturer; it is perhaps regrettable that all lectures are not so entertaining.
At one point Dr. Feynman says that “It is impossible, when picking one particular example of anything, to avoid picking one that is atypical in some sense.” Of course, this is true by definition. If we were to find an example that was typical in every sense, it would be atypical in that it was not atypical in some sense, and so it would be atypical in some sense. Oh, the joy of school boy pedantry!
The video is rendered with a Silverlight player, which is perhaps not available on all platforms. It also used 100% of my CPU’s clock cycles and caused the laptop to crash three times. I guess that Silverlight has a long way to go before it can threateningly compete with Flash. On the one hand, it’s a good thing that Flash has some more competition (not that I am accusing the Adobe engineers of laziness, mind). On the other hand, the internet will not be as rich a place as it might be if a lot of content is only available to Microsoft’s customers. I thought that that war had been won a long time ago.
I clicked through to take a look at the following article:
Britain 74th in world happiness rankings
Such surveys are always a bit of fun. The “Happy Planet Index” apparently places Britain way down the list. I thought that this was a bit disappointing but not contrary to impression given to me by the many miserable gits that I have encountered over the years. However, the rankings seem especially spurious. It’s calculated using life expectancy (measurable), “happiness” (not sure about what units we use for that) and the environmental impact of the country.
What’s the last one got to do with anything? I once flew to Thailand for two weeks in the middle of winter. I’m sure that my carbon footprint must have rivalled Bono’s that January, but I was a lot happier that the S.A.D. sufferers that I left behind. I’m sure there are many people who feel a little bit guilty about not reusing their shopping bags and not unplugging their mobile phone chargers when not in use, but I don’t think that it makes them unhappier than the people of Burma. Nagging guilt about flying with Ryanair to Prague for a stag-do versus cyclones, war and oppression. Hmm? Which is more likely to make people unhappy?