Archives 

Show All

  • 2007
    • June
      • A one-step toddle toward a new ethic, a working morality
        06/24/07
        Now that we are all united in seeking a first world living standard, who defines goodness?
        Culling people is bad, breeding better people is good.
        The eugenics started by Darwin’s cousin Galton, and popularised by most US States from the 1920’s, had an unforeseen consequence: bad public

      • How pack mentality breeds scavengers
        06/13/07
        Anyone else notice the media ducking out of crushing responsibility over the feral wolves attacking politicians issue?
        Wolves need an alpha lead. In the case of Blair, the Tory press. Quite right too.
        But when the rest of the pack has to join in or lose sales and jobs, who will head them o

      • Old age reclassified
        06/12/07
        Fukuyama divides old age into independent Class I with free action and free will, class II is dependent. The split is roughly in our eighties. Clearly there are multifactor subdivisions, and they are highly adjustable. None need be a drain on purse or society, given forethought and flexibility.
      • Dear Sergei Brin of Google re China
        06/08/07
        Dear Sergei Brin,

        Congratulations on google’s tough decision about China. Like you said, you all discussed it first, thoroughly. Hang in there. America has two million problem citizens in jail and as bad many millions of wealthy in denial, Mao killed 70 million, Stalin 35 million, post

      • A code for schooling: understanding, energy, compassion.
        06/05/07
        In the last century, one good school motto was light, life and love. Lux, vita, caritas in Latin.

        A modern translation might be understanding, energy and compassion.

        The changes are cosmetic, but the need is keener this millennium. We have seen the effects of trying only two of

      • Lula and Mbeki could just be right
        06/04/07
        Guardian 4th June re G8 2007
        President Lula said the decisive moment in the current "Doha round" of talks would come in the next few weeks, with the G8 summit at a trade ministers' meeting due in mid-June.
        "I think that this month something has to happen. If nothing hap

      • Virtue, vice and voodoo for survival
        06/03/07
        The graces were listed early in western cultures, and much later extended to the Victorian virtues that decorate London’s embankment.
        Eight vices were forbidden in the early mosaic code, which wisely watered them down to where they permitted society to survive. How much lying is permitted? A

    • May
      • Vidal (World run by the interlocking network of family trusts) extended.
        05/28/07

        The function of government is not security of the citizen, as advertised. It is the entertainment of the citizen in discussion of government or other circuses, while the real ruler, the corporate, gets on with the serious business of enriching the few, and keeping them few enough to know each

      • An old enemy revisited
        05/24/07
        I am getting to be fed up with commercial and self centered interests that delay and destroy progress.

        Whenever there is a media attack on something good, it needs to be analysed and the originators and colluders condemned publically. Berated at least, before class action from those who w

      • A decapolar future for this website?
        05/22/07
        Crazyidea may be about to split, like most book-based religions except scientology.
        Some projects are starting to share lack of ambience.
        Rambles, rants and raves will mostly stay here.

        Cureent rough categories.
        Math for all from late starter to high level
        Livingstone

      • By golly, by gap, and by goodness
        05/22/07
        Reasons for god: by golly, by gap, by goodness and by need of community


        Wonder and amazement at the glories and patterns of the created universe. Evolved from quarks or smaller beginnings, an awesome thing to be part of and aware of.

        The gap in all of us when down, unlove

      • Blessed are the poor in educational spirit, for they measure our strength as a species.
        05/20/07
        The poor we will have with us always, but our response varies. We no longer eat them except in extremis, but we condemn their children to poverty. For those who claw their way up, a hero’s welcome to Elysium. For those who sweated for it ethically, too often the children see a dark underside the p

      • Why schools fail, and how to fix ‘em. Version nn
        05/19/07
        If fail means few get to cabinet level, that’s stats. But where few get fulfilment of potential, that’s bad. If there was a path whereby the reading enthusiasts got to meet the stimulators, those who are moving and shaking or their brothers and sisters, that’s education.

        Convention

      • Restore Torah to western education!
        05/19/07
        Been reading and teaching a bit from Daniel and other parts of the Bible. Struck by the wisdoms in the stories. How to square your conscience with worshipping God and Rimmon as Naaman had to? (Answer: clear it with your spiritual guru, your shrink.) How to use insider knowledge to make a million leg

      • Why the world bank is a useful mirror. But when will we use it?
        05/19/07
        World bank is currently worse for the world than Putin, Saddam as was and Mugabe combined. At least with them we can see the iniquities. The small number of millions these three have removed is nothing compared to the steady death rate and burgeoning misery in the countries WB has helped. By attrac

      • Towards universal manumission
        05/16/07
        Sadly there is part of most of us that is comfortable with slavery. Slaves don’t have to think for themselves, know where the meals and circuses are coming from. The activities of the freeborn become central to life. Slave masters blame the slaves for their condition, like the psychotic bully blam

    • March
      • Did science go OTT at speed of light time?
        03/25/07
        Been thinking awhile how stultifying is the limit of light speed. No effective contact with even our nearest stars with chemical or even nuclear powered craft. So we can colonise moon and mars, but then what?

        Perhaps one day we will see the enlightenment as prelude to this relativistic li

      • Some notschool projects for researchers
        03/18/07
        Hardware list for a computer display

        Motherboard
        disc drives of each type, one open
        media from tape via floopy to CD and DVD and pen memory
        I/O cards labelled
        Input devices opened: keyboard, microphone, mouse, digicam, webcam
        Modem, router, switch opened
        CRT

      • Spare motherboards - draft 1.1
        03/18/07
        Motherboards as a teaching resource. Second draft., somewhat hurried, for topic ideas and ridicule. E&OE.
        Motherboards a source of notschool research projects, and as wall mounted stimulant for each researcher to find more projects.


        Motherboard as the Morris 1000 of computi

      • Towards the modern computer museum
        03/17/07
        Motherboards as a teaching resource. First draft., somewhat hurried, for topic ideas and ridicule. E&OE.

        For computer science, all hardware and much system software knowledge is triggered by a glance at the patterns in the boards.

        Basic circuit theory V=IR can be practiced

      • Motivating notschool
        03/17/07
        This is a long shot, but if notschools are to teach anything it must be by inspiration.
        Hence the topic is unimportant except as conduit for researcher and mentor to share an advance in knowledge, skill or awareness of talent. That you have potential, and someone else knows about it and is root

      • First trial of google's blogspot for sharing early notschool ideas
        03/16/07
        If you’ve read this far and want some light relief, you might glance at brewster’s first googleblog called physicslog . Only one piece so far, so you’ll be safe. The current plan – as if I ever planned anything – is to learn to blog well enough to put the whole notschool in blog and on googledocss.

      • Some technical fixes for global heating 1
        03/16/07
        None are original, this is a first collection. Please add to them.
        Few will agree with all these ideas, but the alternatives range from a few breeding pairs of warlords wandering arctic sands to our extinction.


        Engineering
        A large window of reflective foil at the Legrange

      • BBC suspends net learning project
        03/15/07
        Will this Canute action help or hinder foss in learning? Unexpected consequences says yes, the angry programmers are likely to get new jobs, but the anger will simmer and spoil over into being more creative, writing for an appreciative audience, knowing others can use and build on your work without

      • Nuclear goes positive!
        03/14/07
        Recent press speculation on nuclear cars of all things – build the bomb into a car to save terrorists the hassle – is so surprisingly positive that the deeper message of our need for fission surely underlies it. The writers of the pieces may not know it, probably don’t or they would speculate and sh

      • A fanfare for milk
        03/13/07
        Ben and milk community,

        Being there is being very helpful. Any loss of goodness is a major loss.

        Milk and ice and any other similar always was a 'loose' collection of undetermined and vaguely educational - whatever that means - aims but basically giving mutual

      • A fanfare for milk
        03/13/07
        Ben and milk community,

        Being there is being very helpful. Any loss of goodness is a major loss.

        Milk and ice and any other similar always was a 'loose' collection of undetermined and vaguely educational - whatever that means - aims but basically giving mutual

      • Forget banning smoking, its cars, chemicals and pop that will weaken and kill us. Standard rant updated.
        03/08/07
        Cars give fumes of small molecules, similar to hormones. These cause IQ drops along motorways, less fertility in motorway users - blamed on scrotal warmth of course by the media, and assault most body processes that use chemicals or nerves as messengers. The chemical industry does the same: the nast

      • How seeking simple patterns is made complex by our maths ignorance
        03/07/07
        The laws of science we can understand rest largely on proportion and symmetry, particles and resonance. But understanding stops there for most of us. Part is cultural, inbred from evolution. Indian numbers like 0 and 3 and 5 that moved west to us through the arab world carry hieroglyphic difficulty

      • In anti-slavery week, we should be looking at the unsung achievements and future of the movement too.
        03/06/07
        Without the wealth of the slave trade, British ports would not have been large enough to take the Luftwaffe bombing. Nor would Britain have had the finance to survive the lonely years while the Kennedy ambassador in London and other Brit-haters were rooting for Hitler. No matter that America claimed

      • We must go nuclear quickly or die, says Lovelock. In our billions ..
        03/06/07
        Why o why are so few pushing this sensible little argument?

        Believing churches don't, it would be a step too hard for their congregations.
        Parties can't, because their leaders would lose face in the debate.
        Scientists can't, because they would be tarred by the FUD

      • What does Dawkins’ God Delusion offer?
        03/03/07
        I suspect I will have no problem with his arguments, but will worry about their denoument.

        Freedom from bad and even destructive thinking, yes.
        But does his altruism need a map?

        Fine if you are bright and charismatic enough to carry the tribe with you. Because you then ho

      • History, living in it, and evolving
        03/01/07
        Long-settled coasts are littered with the stones of dead cities. The cells, the organs, some binding influence never made them hang together, perhaps they were eaten by a small predator like a virus or by a large predator like an empire or a philosophy. Many more died than lived. The big ones that s

    • February
      • Seeking a soul
        02/28/07
        Curious combo rattling in the old brain: Colossians Remixed is a look at battling an Evil Empire then and now. New Idea of a University uses Pride and Prejudice as exemplar and shows how the keen student can change both in herself as well as exorcise monsters like Mrs Bennet and Mr Collins. Friends

      • A math tool for all sciences?
        02/26/07
        I wonder if us A-levelled Brits can appreciate the freedom Mathematica offers for us to think beyond the western science paradigms. One way in is the weirder bits of quantum physics, relativity and cosmology. What Hawkins tried in the beautiful pictures of his glossy coffee table book, perhaps the m

      • Global opportunities for some
        02/25/07
        Thank heaven for global heating - the unfolding tragedies may just be enough to unite us in doing something about it. Judging by our reaction to wars so far, as ways of reducing both foreign and in-house opposition, that is a slim chance though until at least a couple of billion of us have been snuf

      • Repeated behaviour as a tool in self-therapy
        02/22/07
        Whoever repeats things valuable to life thrives and breeds truer. In physics a repeatable process often involves pleasing resonance as in musical notes, in yoga a repeated posture brings repose, in many buddhisms a mantra develops oneness, in western religion a repeated prayer brings holiness, team

      • Toward a practical democracy
        02/19/07
        The effect of legally carrying a weapon, as enshrined in say the American constitution or urban guerrilla code, is very similar to that of drugs: mind control by part per trillion quantities of happy brain chemicals. To cope with stress, we need a powerful useable tool. If the pen-pushers are right,

      • Will gun law win in our west too?
        02/17/07
        The best memorial to the teenagers killed in London this month would be peace rampant in their schools so that a culture of work and success could be established. The chaos around just one difficult teenager struggling with street cred problems in a your-mum diss-me-not culture cannot be imagined by

      • What else did Sue Cameron omit from her otherwise excellent Cheating Classes?
        02/12/07
        I note that education, medicine, cabinet politics and the great families are not there. But then she is looking at the effect of modern slavery from what it does to the root tips, the little people. On direct causes, like bailiff bullying, councillor attitudes, and treasury influence, she is solid.

      • The primary professional
        02/09/07
        We are each our own, or close to it.

        Just as we have to back the agent with presence or money to her own primary advantage, so we have always needed to get second opinions on doctor and lawyer, baker and goldsmith.

        All in range of course, so long as we can double guess wikipedi

      • Why justice must be quantised
        02/08/07
        Ebay and friends united, googledocs and google earth succeed because we each drive them from our unique perch in the framework. Not so the court system. Yes we may trust a Judge Sirica, Nixon’s nemesis over Watergate, or the hypothetical Justice Deed, avatar-judge both human and superhuman, but we a

      • What the streetcam says
        02/08/07
        The able operator can tell from body language those coming out of the station about to commit a crime, and afterwards that they have done it. The clues are almost subliminal, and there is no public training for picking up the skills. It will not be long before the combination of visual evidence with

      • We deserve our global problems, can we learn to solve them?
        02/07/07
        We get the problems we need, says gaia theory. Derided by many, James Lovelock’s Gaia theory is that the earth is close to flip over into almost or worst case totally uninhabitable. Not global warming, global heating. But he says with equal confidence we could do something about it. He also says if

      • A deduction from the fMRI silence
        02/07/07
        Coupled with the media interest in X-ray scanning on the street for security alerts, and the problems of data integrity and identity theft, an impending challenge is the growing use of fMRI brain scans for purposes other than medical diagnosis. With the advertised public price of a scan dropping to

      • A mental process hypothesis: daemons, demons and damons
        02/06/07
        Daemons are little servicing programs that control flow in unix computers. Many run at the same time, checking for interrupts, switching memory on and off, deciding priorities, all the little tasks are controlled by daemons.

        Like Maxwell’s daemon in physics, many control gateways at the

      • Maybe the claims courts are next up for change
        02/05/07
        Why pay Bloomberg and friends when a simple letter to the damage inflictor, inviting them to discuss with one rep max each of equivalent legal standing, in front of a good-will local arbitrator, a street judge.

        Whose judgement is not binding, but indicative of likely result or damages, an

      • Rewards for carers. If GPs get greens, why not the daily carers?
        02/05/07
        Spare a thought for rewards for carers like nurses, junior therapists, cleaner-carers, classroom assistants, nursery nurses, home visitors, street wardens, an unsung myriad.

        OK so our accountants claim we cant pay ‘em. But we cant afford not to reward them. The damage an unhappy carer doe

      • Why the UK doctors are worth their money to government and us.
        02/05/07
        Easy, ennit? They are the front line in picking up mass medical problems which will make them invaluable to our masters for expert advice fast in crises before they hit the press.

        They also do it comfortably, with practised bedside manner, bringing cure or rumour of cure for the problem

      • Should the fission debate be accelerated?
        02/04/07
        Lovelock says yes to fission right now urgently, and that’s enough for me. In the teeth of greens and media saying no nuclear ever, the cleanest safest and only effective reliable method is being done down by the same good guys who would save the planet.


        How else will China stop op

      • Don't push Blair out!
        02/03/07
        Just finishing All the presidents men again. Initially no comparison with Blair: Nixon’s support team were not nice, reflecting their leader. Blair had to have good people, good with the media, with Labour, with money, and with foresight and with skill to assemble and deliver good thinking on educat

      • Why wolfram?
        02/02/07
        The parts of science peeping under the conventional curtain are complex, multi-factor, and changing. They fool the fan and terrify the initiate: even the soccer ref can’t see it all, let alone the economist and the quantum physicist. Simple questions like is space quantised and can medicine act at a

      • Just visited a Golgotha
        02/01/07
        Three crosses, holding the flapping consciences of good folk trying to improve the world. Broken on the resistance of young people to old moralities. Easy to blame dysfunctional parenting, or STOPP, or d&d of all types. Not easy to fix without a willing army. The intellectually poor you will alw

    • January
      • New tools for math learning
        01/30/07
        I first saw Wolfram Demonstrations when it was just over a thousand pieces old. At that stage a trove of passingly interesting ideas. No longer: I now realise each of them is a tool of first water. Each can be built into a model from game up to post-doc research. Any can grab a child and give a life

      • Is this what Charles meant by prince of faiths?
        01/30/07
        Most of us need a faith, a strong faith, to carry us through the bleak bits.
        Is no religion at all better than midwestern Christianity?
        If Christians truly turned the other cheek, would we not close Wall Street and the NYSE, the promoters and wardens of jealousy, when someone attacks the T

      • Sudoku and friends as arrangers of emotion
        01/23/07
        An emotion is a reaction to things. Like to mother, trust, gold bars, spiders. An emotion is usually instant, but can linger and be triggered by later stimuli.
        So a challenge like a crossword or sudoku raises a series of emotions, mostly pleasurable – I have done these well – enough to challeng

      • The new google software community
        01/22/07
        There seems to be very little of the usual dark side in this grouping. The combination of writely, jotspot, skype and doubtless many geek-blessed others is far more subtle than the old Microsoft extend and embrace method (Show us your secrets, tell us your dreams, and we will give you and your desc

      • A little list of some birth rights
        01/21/07
        I am not yet born, please hear me ..


        It is every child’s right to have -
        Security
        Caring parenting
        Choice of languages
        A just society
        Full access to the culture of that society when young
        Full access to global earth
        Freedom from imposed views and c

      • Below the reptile nerve system
        01/19/07
        If we have a reptile brain below the mammal overlays, should we not also have pre-reptile brains closer to or around the brainstem?

        Now if these early brains have pre-vertebrate nerve and other sensory systems, will we have essential services like fluid flows controlled by these. These wo

      • Why Crick failed with consciousness
        01/17/07
        Consider his background: father within church but an unbeliever. Teenage militant atheist, never bored in non-conformist boarding school chapel because he spent the sermons ridiculing the ideas.

        Now ask the mature discoverer of the messenger of life, doyen for decades of the causal genome

      • Googledocs evolves
        01/17/07
        The usenet groups supporting google’s online storage and wp community are an exemplar of the future growth. The trick has been to welcome greenies by letting oldsters pass on the good will.
        Google has recently bought commercial wiki JotSpot a geek-fave product booster and looks set to give it

      • Prime the maths wiki
        01/17/07
        Kind friends showed me the power of Prime to prove why the conic section called an ellipse is not egg-shaped. If only our Lilliputian wars were so easy to solve.

        Prime of course stands for Platonic Relations Interactive Mathematical Encyclopedia.
        Prime is thesaurus, vademecum, and ea

  • 2006
    • December
      • Extensions of usenet I
        12/30/06
        Remember the first phone call? The first movie? The first night in camp?
        Now think recent extensions: the first chat room, the first posting, the first webpage, first meeting of an online buddy. And so on.
        Harder is predicting: the first prosthesis is memory. The first senses are webcams,

      • Towards bio-electronic co-evolution
        12/29/06
        The expanding brain is co-evolving with off-site memory and improving retrieval.

        Will personality follow? ?US president skills
        Implants of autocue and hud
        Remote surgery options
        Energy stores like wrap-around stents
        Radio communication
        Other resonance effects like

      • The function of government is security
        12/29/06
        Which in UK is growing to include lots like:
        Health
        Social service including education and prisons
        Land use
        Photodatabase of all esp baddies
        Money flow – cherchez le cash
        Borders
        DNA of troubled families
        Tendencies by region, character and schooling assessment

      • A great work in progress
        12/29/06
        Book of the decade award
        To David Peters and team for New Medicine
        And DK for the £5 price and illustrations that put it in range of every family.
        May they sell millions.
        Outlines the body, dis-eases, and therapies
        Illustrations and four-page spreads say it bitesize for eas

      • Towards a cure for asbo breakers, DandD, and cannon fodder.
        12/29/06
        So if the US can do three strikes and out, we Brits can do two asbos and conscript?

        Then in Afghanistan we watch out for those surviving squaddies who set up drug running industries. And promote them to where they see it better to go straight than the other.

      • How far from Saddam to Mugabe and one or two others?
        12/29/06
        The links made by the Beeb this year suggest that any citizen with an International Court level complaint against their ruler could seek redress.

        Like genocide.

        So far so good. But freakonomics and Soros’ Unpredictability suggest we can’t foresee which way it will blow.
        <

      • A first venture in Gibbon
        12/27/06
        Quotations from the opening chapters of Gibbon’s
        Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

        selected from http://www.his.com/~z/gibbon.html#20Patrimony
        to whom thanks


        Curious to know how many of these wisdoms were apposite then, and have now shifted. Only the wise kn

      • Can we turn our media?
        12/26/06
        Media at turning point, a pointer for the rest of business

        One joy of capitalism is seeing realism triumph.

        In this case the paper papers who have contrived for us to pay good money so they can harm us. Until now, we have. But the electronic news is so much nicer – tailored to

      • Sorting the disability spectra
        12/26/06
        Hard to know which overlap and which just cross:
        Autistic, asbergers, diet overload, sleep underload, dyslexias, spoilt child, tired child, growing child, abused child, rebel, triggered resentment, bullied and bullying child (and teacher &#61514;), guilty child – often parental strife, unlo

      • Copyright, copy rite
        12/26/06
        Probably late to the party, but what is the effect of copy right on the artiste?

        If she’s financially comfortable, and earning livably from her art, not a lot. The egoboo outweighs the niggle, I would guess. Unless she’s neurotic about it. That way lies disaster, for mistrusting up to dis

      • Issues for ethical debate
        12/26/06
        Issues for ethical debate -
        lightly edited from Jimmy Carter’s book Faith and Freedom

        1. Western beliefs and differences
        2. Religious fundamentalism
        3. Conflicts among religious people
        4. Entwining church and state
        5. Divorce and homosexuality
        6. Abortion and

      • Freedom from driven faith.
        12/26/06
        Just reading Jimmy Carter’s Faith and Freedom.

        Interesting he remembers being asked by Deng of China to explain his Christian ethos, then suggest what he Deng et al might do. Three suggestions were made, (churches, bibles, mission) only the third not done. We are seeing China open up to

      • So what’s beyond searching?
        12/26/06
        In 50 years Computer Science moved from mainframe to desktop to laptop to hand held to network to knowledge mining. Combining for synergy seems in, as ever in capital growth, but will the little chap squeezed out by democracy get a better look in than by blogging? Yes is likely. Our need for adventu

      • The space in the server room
        12/26/06
        Spent a little time alone in a server room with fifty cabinets recently, and shuddered with déjà vu. Slightly from the noise, more so from the cavities. Comparing with the voids in the PC case we all love for its impressive size. Designed to market, to impress, to hold cards at right angles to the

      • Will we be Morlock*, Eloi, both or neither?
        12/26/06
        No hardship realising we have both in us: thrusting when young, risk-averse when old. With agents to do the business for us when rich enough and incapacitated. Our Morlocks live aboveground in tall towers, palace or Twin. And sometimes the friends of the Eloi take a pop at them, as in the French rev

      • On our blindness
        12/26/06
        We are traditionally blind to things we do not wish to see. For good evolutionary reasons.

        Hence hubris of course, but also national incompetence. Wouldbe truthtellers need to clothe their saws in acceptable capsules. The wisdom of Solomon in Delphic patter. M&Ms – smarties in UK - at

      • Unix daemons
        12/26/06
        Unix daemons as basis for pretty well every aspect of behaviour seems an increasingly adequate hypothesis. Linking the layers of evolving mind (plant-wide to crocodile to mammal to us) with the daemons in each layer would be a survival enhancer as each new kind of thinking was being added to the fun

      • Carter in NYT before the Iraq invasion
        12/26/06
        Carter in NYT before the Iraq invasion, a year after the decision.
        Based on Augustine c 400AD and Aquinas 13th C. Pah!


        “The pre-eminent criterion for a just war is that it can only be waged as a last resort, with all non-violent options exhausted. ..


        Weapons us

      • Requiescat in pacem, and may his friends reform while still around
        12/26/06
        Not many people die that I am happy to see go. But sadly, the passage of a destructive force in my book did so recently, and I was happy to see the influence removed. No names. But the tribe of moral people who have drunk the milk of the wealthy, and support their ongoing foolishnesses, worry me. Ou

      • Self therapists
        12/26/06
        Why do we in the West not teach some of the wisdoms of the East to ourselves?

        We were great at DIY until the advent of the electronic age.

        Perhaps we are: the here and now philosophy of western buddhism, a soundbite at a time, is a nice contrast and loads easier than trawling f

      • Young doctors to be
        12/26/06
        Young doctors to be, once launched fully into their studies, are amongst the most inspired and inspiring of people.

        They have just realised the joys of therapy and the surging growth of ability that knowledge and competence bring. They are escaping from the humdrum lessons and radiate del

      • Motivising, the international challenge
        12/26/06
        The best holiday is indeed a people holiday working at a children’s home in the third world, and then going on to meet the parents and share skills and problems and challenges and opportunities.

        Giving meaning to an otherwise closed lifestyle.

        When will families and firms and g

      • Sudoko the reasons
        12/26/06
        The tools are the ability to use long pins, and check nine cells for difference.
        The strengths are persistence, care and tenacity.
        The skills are ability to sophisticate methods of checking, and speed the process by slicing corners.
        The motivator is pleasure in improving a process.
      • The new neocons
        12/26/06
        For power, any UK opposition needs to catch the national mood so that influential local people will want to work for them. Mrs Nice Guy is already working for Labour of course, so until she gets fed up with pork barrel politics, only donors of magnitude and surface probity will be sought. Roll out t

      • Battle of Britain 2
        12/26/06
        Nice or not nice sums it up. (Yes, the pun is intended.) Can we keep the level of support for all our population, or will we lapse into neo-eugenics? Currently we use many universities as pre-jail, BUPA as proper medicine for the rich, and quality schools as breeding grounds for people of destiny. C

      • So half the ASBO’s have worked! For the rest we could ..
        12/11/06
        So half the ASBO’s have worked! Yippee!
        For the others, boot camp with skills looms.
        And if that doesn’t work, family boot camp with skills for the failing parents/supporters. With pay as you earn central heating.
        Until the rewards of paid work in the community outweigh those of yobbe

      • Media at turning point, a pointer for the rest of business
        12/11/06
        One joy of capitalism is seeing realism triumph.

        In this case the paper papers who have contrived for us to pay good money so they can harm us. Until now, we have. But the electronic news is so much nicer – tailored to what Mrs Average wants who is basically nice – that we are abandoning

      • Sorting the disability spectra
        12/11/06
        Hard to know which overlap and which just cross:
        Autistic, asbergers, diet overload, sleep underload, dyslexias, spoilt child, tired child, growing child, abused child, rebel, triggered resentment, bullied and bullying child (and teacher!), guilty child – often parental strife, unloved child wh

      • Some uses and their abuses for and-held technology in schooling
        12/11/06
        Make news reports
        Make news digests
        Summarise debates
        Publish issues
        Celebrate triumphs
        Show problems
        Analyse causes of failures
        Situation rehearsals, good and bad
        Teach skills
        Safety videos
        Practise drama ideas
        Summarise opinions of school conc

      • Three of the ages of teenage
        12/10/06
        A first draft trial look at how learning styles can change in a boy’s school life.



        Rough division:
        Early 13- Boy
        Middle 14-16 Older boy
        Late 17+ Young man


        Some fields that will change for individuals and groups:
        1. Reaction to new stu

      • Why successful schools have to be precious most of the time
        12/10/06
        We cannot allow a single child, able or less so, to slip through the caring net.

        In a mere 25% oxygen, trees ignite and blaze almost spontaneously. No surprise then that disaffection in schools breeds frighteningly fast in a likewise highly charged environment.

        So the teachin

      • Mechanics in upper school age 16-17 UK physics is like a two-legged tripod – but could be fixed
        12/10/06
        The three legs are statics, linear dynamics and rotational dynamics.
        With time and intellectual fire power short, the decision to reduce the third leg to moments of force, torque definition, and circular motion is inevitable. Sadly this blocks off moment of inertia, rotational energy storage an

      • Towards an inspiring ethic for our schools
        12/09/06
        The future of the species, beloved of humanists, is not an enduring inspiration.
        We have too far lost faith in corporates, capitalism, and flower power whether in rifles or from poppies. The dreams of a working nash, a caring school system, and a reaching-every-corner church are no more. (But w

      • The death and putative rebirth of morality
        12/05/06
        The second Judao-Christian commandment was always double edged, a people selector not unlike Joshua’s method for selecting assault troops. Under Chicago economics it became another tool in the tax box, stating that trickle-down would work wonders where the state chose not to go. This gave the market

      • Little for thy comfort, but glimmers can just be made out ..
        12/05/06
        So the beeb is in the frame for the dumbing down of the nation. It cannot be we the nation, of course. The scapegoat principle is too deeply rooted. At the same time we are realising, those who follow Lovelock, that we will be down to one billion tops sooner than we think, and those able to see ove

      • Towards using the new coursework system in physics fully
        12/04/06
        The new system is much better than the old: fairer, easier to mark and therefore set more often, more diverse, no longer one gosh-awful exercise dragged out over yonks to improve each wretched mark till all are screaming. Phew, its gone! Rejoice.

        And the new one has a bonus. It’s dumbed d

      • Some aims for physics
        12/04/06
        To make models
        To improve models
        To solve problems
        To teach and use math to solve problems
        To make physicists rich enough to keep doing what they want

      • A small step for teacherkind towards real education
        12/02/06
        The much improved light-touch inspection system requires permanent inspection of all kids books. This is regrettably as it needs to be in any system especially those that involve children’s lives.
        But I think I have found a way around much of the busywork (work set for child occupation in class

    • November
      • Hooks from physics for tomorrow
        11/29/06
        Currently teaching supply physics in a very good department where the kids fair whistle through the GCSE type topics and seem ready for extra to stay awake: so am adding hooks to future physics and other topics.
        Like, in
        *light, how the ray model and the diagram are powerful tools in us

      • Learning vouchers
        11/28/06
        The veggie vouchers scheme gets my vote. Well done the thinkers uppers.
        A next step is reading vouchers – stories for Mum and Tod on the back giving access to the next book.
        Then lesson vouchers, for club or skill or music tu.
        Also toy vouchers, for those precursor to fraction plastic

      • Astrophysics, a very brief primer
        11/28/06
        Earth in space topics for GCSE


        Solar system

        1. interpret planetary data like mass and orbits
        2. know differences of orbits of the planets, moons and comets, plus at least four different types of Earth satellites
        3. know how gravitational forces control

      • Network school started last night
        11/28/06
        We downloaded do lists from Manchester’s undergrad and Southampton’s MSc course, chose one and vowed to meet to share knowledge.

        Ten minutes on wikipedia filled some of the gaps, and suggested other topics like
        &#61649; taking hardware apart
        &#61649; building a model se

      • Towards a path ahead
        11/28/06
        The combined flurry of slavery apologies and national huzzah (Spooks, Starkey on Great Britain, State of the Nation and the Telegraph’s despair about having to be positive) produces the ironic reflection that enslaving is one thing the species does well. And we do it best to our own: the feckless si

      • Physics is dead!. Long live physics!
        11/25/06
        So pure physics at Reading University is no more. Not for the press reasons I suspect, but because it failed to attract the right calibre personnel. Ucas and hr will rehearse the reasons. But in fact the university, run by people of good sense, will know that reading physics is a non starter. There

      • From FAB to real education
        11/20/06
        BBC news education feature:
        Unity is strength How school victims turned the tables on the bullies
        This working fight against bullies FAB group is a good first stage.

        Others are when pupils:
        Build each others confidence
        Teach each other
        Explore social issues, iden

      • The one to watch out for
        11/20/06
        Is the carefully packaged program that tells about a social need.
        Like the add-ons to the living planet series, flagging up why we war, and why the planet needs us to be nice to it. And Midsomer and Spooks and State, carrying issues central government can’t talk about but needs us to.

      • PPE+ in astrophysics at 16
        11/19/06
        UK school astronomy summarises as earth-moon-sun, solar system, life cycle of the Sun and origin of universe.

        Some useful additions might be:
        Philosophy: explore why do space?
        Politics: Mars in one hop. Why not? Reason being not enough political credit for a small, economical, r

      • "THE INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST THREAT TO THE UK"
        11/14/06

        On 9/12 I asked a class of 15 year olds if they knew where the bombers were coming from. Half the hands went straight up, another half after a moment’s thought. Long before we heard of Al Qaida.

        Young people are mostly radical. Some decades later, we conserve our gains. In between w

      • Dies irae, dies illa
        11/14/06
        Mozart’s Requiem triggers the old lament for the loss of all we hold dear. The ten thousand deserted cities around the med evoke the same. But without change we can’t improve. Our pendulum is about to morph as well. Not with the transience of a moderate election in the states, but like the massive c

      • The law of thirds
        11/13/06
        Modern school theory is that only one third of pupils in a lesson are learning, the other two are unstimulated or lost.. The solution is to have three lessons running at once. Not easy for monofocussing male teachers. Death by worksheet follows.

        One solution is the personal project: chose

      • Lovelock joins terrorists!
        11/13/06
        A natural theme is that pollution, terrorism and Lovelock’s Gaia are holy allies.
        If the figure of half a billion of us is all that our ravaged planet can endure, should we not welcome these population reducers?

        The argument that ‘my genes must survive’ is spurious: they will, in the

      • Keeping learning fresh
        11/07/06
        Each school is a very different environment.
        Dynamic in that each day’s changes affect tomorrow’s learning.
        Good vibrations, daily, from the top are essential to each inhabitant.
        Placemen and worse cannot succeed: the kids innately and the teachers analytically pick up and amplify the

    • September
      • Global issues – draft
        09/21/06
        Who runs Britain and the world?
        Corporate morality evolution. Who negotiates?
        Slavery a species evolver, but so is rebellion and mothering
        Young hominids and G-type protests
        Our children's futures; body, mind and soul
        What lights your lamp? fMRI for nation-states and ot

      • As asked by a teacher of English
        09/20/06
        English learning and/with/supported by Internet


        Draft topic list for a possible booklet:

        Bits of English learning that work well

        Bits of English learning that work badly

        Bits of English learning we don’t try (for whatever reason)

      • Just spent a week supply teaching physics in a rather good school.
        09/16/06
        Restored some of the teaching skills I once had, and reminded me how quickly we atrophy. Learnt much that was new to me through seeing new colleagues do things better in class than I had. Have come away inspired and richer – and zapped.

        The line I took with senior classes was that my teac

    • August
      • Seeking a fix for the great maths debacle of the West.
        08/27/06
        Vladimir I Arnold – Russian mathematician of some stature - makes two points forcibly:
        1 We all need mathematical ideas in everything we do.
        2 Western schools are failing to reach enough pupils.

        For details, and hopefully suggestions, we must wait for the publication by Sprin

      • En route to national education triumph, I believe
        08/27/06
        Well done, Blair government, for

        A minister of education with independence, ability, classroom experience, teeth and funding (Adonis in the upper house)
        Teach first program, top rate teacher stream
        Specialiost schools so kids can shine
        Quality PE
        Reading hour
        Clas

      • Earth need not flatten as we age.
        08/27/06
        Met recently a couple of self-opined failures: people about to die who questioned they had got it right for their kids.
        Not sure they are right: some of the kids had got it wrong in ways yes, but their own grandkids' kids were still tabulas rasas. The question to ask is are the new parents

      • A new name for Hobsbawm’s short century 1918 to 1992: The Age of Isms
        08/03/06
        From the 1918 ‘Peace’ of Versailles to the 1992 ‘Peace’ of Paris, we experimented with capitalism, fascism and communism. Only one survives, and that is rent with its own bitter fruits. In philosophy, we started with the iron in the soul of nihilism and its anarchy, then logical positivism and post-

    • July
      • Beginning of world eco change .. too brief to read just yet, but ..
        07/20/06
        Freedom delivery
        starts with the young, heart-driven, radical socialist. Ends with the much older hard-nosed capitalist realising that the only way to keep his/her grandchildren on side is to offer education, adventure, and justice to all young but especially the disaffected. Who will be the ma

    • June
      • The real peril, and a solution
        06/23/06
        In thw West we vote for A or B, where A=B which makes us cynical, and the very poor – mostly in spirit – are given shelter to keep them off the rich streets.
        Elsewhere the rich-poor gap widens and the marginalised fall off the edge.

        Both societies see the central bureaucracy as corru

      • Who rules?
        06/16/06
        So Thatcher was right in saying we need to stand on our own feet, and wrong in thinking we could do it. We need civil service feet to stand on.

        Gilligan, luckless co-accused killer of Kelly, the BBC, and the Blair government’s reputation, has a walking, talking memorial in his look-alike

      • Love thy macrocosm
        06/16/06
        The irony of sex is that shortly after psychiatry allowed us to understand why we have sexual fantasies, our multisexual nature is now driving us into a wilderness of camps.

        Until we realise the full functions of sex in our bisexual species – among them gene mixing for upward evolution, g

      • Materials rule
        06/15/06
        Found a good school subject for the disaffected recently: Resistive materials in design and technology. A doing thing with woods, metal, plastics with lots of useful handskills. A school subject always under pressure because workshops are expensive, technicians and teachers more so, but not needing

      • Towards a Centre for Change
        06/14/06
        A fellow traveller, intellectual gypsy (three careers so far) and visionary is looking to start a mini-exploratory.
        As he puts it, a centre for change where all are welcome. To use culture, cultural differences and all the arts to look for social justice and political equity. Café society witho

      • What blocks change?
        06/14/06
        In evolution, no variety
        In healthy bodies, the immune system
        In illness, damaged immune systems
        In bipolar disorder, positive feedback (moves the system away from the norm)
        In families, rankling insult
        In organisations, over-powerful groupings
        In software, ..
        In e

      • The adopt a school move
        06/13/06
        Nice to see it happening here in UK at a million pounds a throw, and in Africa at somewhat less.
        When the benefits in house get seen it will spread fast and probably fully. Good thrives on good. Increased confidence by the adopter, higher moral ground for the board and company adopting, freedom

      • Chemicals, evolution, and community
        06/12/06
        The analogy is too striking to be ignored: chemicals evolved into cells and mammals because the molecules follow simple rules of physics.
        People too have basic rules, see Maslow’s triangle base. Unfilled, we die out. We have higher ones too, the beliefs and targets.
        Communities too have ru

      • A chat class with wellie
        06/08/06
        Family trust www.jrct.org.uk recently funded visionary-workers in the first six of the fields below, with a discussion site for all to keep in touch. All are worthwhile issues, all contributed by caring and industrious people. I’m finding it hard to keep up. An interesting and maybe strong community

      • Some issues to bat around - where to start?
        06/08/06
        Patronage – effect on hacks
        Schools for masters, upsides and downsides
        Who shall teach?
        The rise of charity, pace Margaret Thatcher
        Manipulation of prole by party
        The legacies of Bush and Blair
        What changes does society need?
        Successful schools do ..

      • Return of the wild – a science fiction prediction
        06/05/06
        Home office incompetence, the dampening effect of PC on policing, and cynicism about our leaders are just three of the furies leading us to take vigilante justice. Oklahoma, sarin and the Twin Towers were part of the overture. Auto Theft, Hitman, and the future game Judge are instruction manuals for

      • When to teach issues
        06/04/06
        When to teach issues is a problem for parents and schools.
        The danger is life-long expectancy of danger fear and confusion, all the stuff of nightmares.

        The difficulty is the fears triggered by half-knowledge of their existence without knowing that solutions can be found. Many adult

      • Must read Gibbon for background to our problems
        06/03/06
        Must read Gibbon for background to our problems. Suspect old Eton and the Ivy preps are to breed toughness, overcome the softening of affluence. Now that all have affluence, we are combining, spoiling, parent anxiety, child dominance and total lack of correction, DDSS(drink, drugs, smoking, sex), en

    • May
      • Biological models 2 – a newspaper-cell comparison
        05/29/06
        The editor as CEO and the nucleus drive the show, provide today’s direction, and by appointing subs, hacks and feature writers, direct the immediate future. They direct divisions, multiplying, and some repair. All parts report to them, the finger is on every button. Owners and mitochondria provide

      • Some brain feeds - a first list
        05/27/06
        Resonance between circuits a major player, perhaps the king
        How lubricants reduce friction
        Feeding all ?8 levels of the mind
        Reflection at barriers
        Reinforcement gives detail to pictures
        Dysfunctional memories
        All storage is transient
        Storage can be mended and mani

      • Towards a civil service that is both
        05/27/06
        Green men and river trolls exist in all cultures.
        Friend or foe, we need their help to cross nature’s barriers.
        When they become ravening monsters we send for George,
        who succeeds if we can arm him/ fix his foot/ help him think .

        Just as Thatcher had to slay union power, so

      • The self-friendly species and its future 1
        05/14/06
        Survival of which fittest?[\b]

        If the first priority is survival, lesser questions of ethics and religion and education and capitalism become tools for leaders. The public face of probity remains, but the inner circle knows the reality: Marxism was right about church and opium, wrong abou

      • Towards a 22nd century brain
        05/13/06
        Brain, mind, memory and consciousness -
        a short personal topic list of how I think we think.

        To a hammer, every problem is a nail. Quoted by Steven Rose
        Protrusions will be hammered in. Japanese proverb

        Evolution of brain with body.
        Early cells survived by sens

      • Functions of peace and war.
        05/10/06

        Collective species use peacetimes for breeding and readying for emergencies.
        Countering invasions and protecting commerce are ‘moral’ uses of war, as is spreading core values. The young are easily persuaded to protect the herd.

        War also removes the excess population engendered

      • Towrds universal education 2 - bullying
        05/09/06
        Precursor to adult enslaving, the school bully is merely essaying the skills of successful evolution and business: symbiosis of plants whether epiphytic ivy or parasitic gall or chemically murderous trees have learnt to co-exist through the bullied gaining strength by selective breeding.
        The c

      • Towards universal education 1
        05/07/06
        The learning dichotomy
        Simplistically, schools grew from the ducal homeschool with whipping boy into the independent and the state school for redundant whipping boys.
        Today there are inspiring schools, less inspiring schools, and etons.
        The hidden curricula are multiple and would fill

      • Random one liners
        05/07/06
        Is unity essential in the Iraqs of the world?


        We more often minimise good than maximise bad. Law of unintended consequences.


        In what fields does better payoff follow bad service, so bad service becomes both deliberate or tactical or strategic or all three?
    • April
      • Fresh draft of computing course stuff.
        04/27/06
        Computer Science April 25


        Contents

        Topics
        Faq and howto
        A project for each topic
        Find your level questions



        Faq and howto

        Can I enjoy learning computing?
        It’s best if you enjoy computers and sharing with people.

      • Some new projects for a new computer science course
        04/26/06
        Some new projects for a new computer science course
        Very short answers only if written.


        1. Memory 1
        Memories are what we can find inside us. Computer memory is anything that’s ever been stored. So long as we can still access it. Name the types you know. How are they stor

      • Roll on 4
        04/26/06
        Why would I lie to you? Old tendencies. I lied, so I lived
        Grooming of monkeys, tickling and grinning and giggling, play fighting of cubs, all have survival value. Masking deceit is just one of these. Fraud is a very old crime. Often rewarded with success, at least for a while until the tribe d

      • Rolling on 3
        04/25/06
        All is memory and process
        In early single-cell lifeforms, head for warmth meant survival. Remembering where warmth was meant selective survival. Both mean potential to evolve. These two processes in a cpu mean selection – currently by surrounding life forms and evolution. From chip to Cray to i

      • Towards a computer science background
        04/24/06
        Computer science. A very first draft of a new ‘course’ for computing clubs in school and homeschooling.

        1. Memory 1
        2. Processes 1
        3. Math and physics concepts behind successful computer games
        4. The brain and the CPU
        5. Hardware
        6. Software
        7. Output techniq

      • Rolling on 2
        04/24/06
        Blame culture
        Religion supplies reasons for the illogical questions.
        No religion, no God, no sins, no atonement. So who better to blame than our parents, society, leaders. Finger-pointing headlines sell. In a democracy, they used to sell ideas to voters, before we started blaming the owner

      • Rolling on
        04/23/06
        Networking
        Meetings work on protocols.
        Pre-meeting needs are time, place and agenda and introduction.
        Greeting protocols like handshake, bow, bare right hand and exchange of cards.
        The cup of coffee before, water during and tea or gift afterwards enhance bonding.
        Computers d

      • A roller
        04/21/06
        The Roller

        Volume 1 Number 0.4
        With thanks to Slashdot, Homer the Greek, The Register, Cervantes, Bryson, Andrew Och, Dominus illuminatio mea and much sf.

        Themes this week and next
        • Governance
        • Religion
        • Prison
        • Cures for sleep apnoea
        • Educati