a-cubed.info

Some UK MPs are supporting a cynical attempt to remove themselves from the Freedom of Information requirements. A backbench Conservative MP, David Maclean, has a private members’ Bill which is being provided with government time to get it through the commons which would severely restrict MPs needs to reveal information about themselves. Freedom of Information is a necessity for accountable government. The Telegraph has a piece on this. I have written to my own MP urging him to turn up to the debate and vote against this bill:

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The internet connection at the Guest House has been a bit flaky since I got here. It seems to have four states:

1. Working
2. Occasionally failures to resolve DNS queries or connect, defeated by reloading in a web browser and ignorable for most other net work. Oddly, once a connection is created it generally continues to run if it’s a dynamic keep-alive connection. Multiple connections sometimes lead to missing graphics or, worse, non-loading of CSS files for web pages.
3. Mostly down. If I try hard I can sometimes get a web page to load by trying 20 or so “reloads”. Mail comes in when an IMAP connection establishes for a little while. Outgoing mail is very awkward and often doesn’t get out for hours or until it comes back up.
4. Completely down.

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Wired had a fun short article this month. The best quotes preceeding an apocalypse.

As a university lecturer, I get asked by quite a few students to act as a personal referee for them in applying for jobs, further study etc. It goes with the territory and I’m generally happy to do it. What I’m less happy with is the standard of the people asking for references. I’m getting really tired of receiving a reference request with questions like “What are they like dealing with co-workers?”; “How is their time-keeping?”; “Would you re-employ them (if company policy allows)?”. That is, references which assume that the referand was employed. Now, when the reference is for something like a temp agency, that’s a little more understandable, but when I get these things from regular graduate employers, it really ticks me off. I got another one like this today. I try to be polite, since I don’t want to mess up my students’ chances of getting a job, but I do get a little short in my notes pointing out that I could fill in the form, but it would consist of lots of N/As and would they like to send me an appropriate form or would they like a free-form reference as a letter.

Pointed at by Piled Higher and Deeper (Cecilia’s Blog) is this Nature report, where scientists managed to (apparently) “delete” a pavlovian response in rats by providing the stimulus while they had been given a memory consolidator-suppressing chemical.

It is ironic to note that many of the religious types currently arguing against the new anti-discrimination laws in the UK, banning discrimination on the grounds of sexuality in the provision of goods and services to the public, are the same groups who were so vocal in support of laws banning discrimination on the grounds of religion in the last couple of years. Today I heard a Christian on Radio 4 claiming that discrimination against homosexuals in the provision of adoption services or hotel provision was a matter of religious conscience. The debate about the partially state-funded Catholic adoption agencies is a classic “separate but equal” argument last used by the racists in the Southern US states during segregation. (more…)

Ah, these things abound, but thanks to Sparks, I had to try this one out. What a surprise (not):

What kind of soul do you have?
Dark Soul

Another old link revisited resulted in this

after a bit of messing around with the placement of the elements (the standard placement is on a grid and doesn’t quite work with some of the elements being smaller than others). Still, it gives an easy starting point for a tiny bit of messing with a graphics package to come up with something fun.

Rediscovered an old favourite link of mine when I was cleaning up my bookmarks: the Surrealism Compliment Generator.

A colleague, Mario Arias Oliva, from the University Rovira I Virgili gave an interesting talk here today. As part of it he used a case study about Zara. I couldn’t place the name when he mentioned it at first, but that’s because I’m a distinct anti-fashionista. However, Zara recently became the second largest clothing retailer in the world, he claimed – and I have no reason to doubt it although he simply stated it rather than providing a reference – when it overtook GAP. Only Benetton is larger. It has done this in a very short time for such a large company and has been built up from literally nothing. The owner, Amancio Ortega, comes from a working class background and started his working life as a retail assistant. The model of most of the other fashion stores is that designers produce designs, production managers source large order in bulk from cheap manufacturing in China, India et al. and then the marketing managers at regional levels decide what goes into the stores where. Local store managers must do what they can with what they are sent. Oh, and these companies have huge marketing budgets purchasing TV, radio, billboard, newspaper and magazine adverts and expensive sporting sponsorships.

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