Andy Cunningham

Teaching the intangible – from “But she’s a girl”.

“I think that many traditional crafts require these kinds of skills that are difficult to teach quickly, which is probably why apprenticeships were traditionally so long. However, as someone who also teaches as part of my living, I can recognise similarities with some of the skills required to be a good scientist. For example, grammatical rules are fairly straightforward to teach, but trying to guide students in how to properly structure their writing, write clear, logical, flowing sentences and so forth is quite difficult to do. You can give tips, point out good and bad examples, and suggest ways in which they can improve, but in the end, they need to develop their own ‘feel’ for what makes a good piece of scientific writing.”

Version 1:

Dear Jon,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours?
Gloria
Version 2:
Dear Jon,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Gloria

I’m with Nigella Lawson on this one. Vegetarianism is like exercise. It’s very good if someone else is doing it.

After Wired.com’s 100 essential skills for geeks, I think I need to make a list of the ones I’ve got to learn.

31. Know at least 10 software easter eggs off the top of your head.

I can think of about five, but this is the first one in the list that I didn’t know.

45. Build amazing structures with LEGO and invent a compelling back story for the creation.

1. Be able to pick a lock.

I’m just not very good.

63. Whistle, hum, or play on an iPhone, the Cantina song.

64. Learning to play the theme songs to the kids favorite TV shows.

I claim a pass on these because I’m tone deaf.

69. Recite pi to 10 places or more.

3.141592654 (what we all remembered from our calaculators) is only 9 decimal places.

Or, from google for future reference, 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510

75. Solder a circuit while bottle feeding an infant. (lead free solder please).

I can do the soldering.  Which end does the bottle go?

82. Know all the names of the Dwarves in The Hobbit.
88. Be able to recite at least one Geek Movie word for word.
89. Know what the 8th Chevron does on a Stargate and how much power is required to get a lock.
93. The ability to name actors, characters and plotlines from the majority of sci-fi movies produced since 1968.

Oh come on, this isn’t geekdom, this is literature.

96. Have a documented plan on what to do during a zombie or robot uprising.

We don’t need no stinkin’ documentation.

Peter Sissons has been a BBC newsreader for as long as I can remember.

He’s recently retired, and in a Daily Mail article, has left a fairly damning criticism of the BBC.  While they still make some of the best documentaries in the world, bar none, the organisation has clearly been taken over by the PC brigade.

This is a sad trend that too many organisations are following.  Political Correctness is, like many good things in life, being turned into a force for bad.  It’s turning into something scarily reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984. 

We need a new word.  One that describes the context of respect for the fellow man, but allows the individual space for their own views as well.  I run into this dilemma often in my views on religion.  I genuinely can’t understand how any sensible person in the 21st century can believe in a god.  I really can’t.  But it’s hard to make this point without it being offensive – especially by today’s hyper-sensitive standards.

We need a new word.  One that allows for free thought, free expression of opinions, and respect of the opinions of others.  There’s room for all of us. 

We need to allow the Muslims to practice their religion, but fight against those who would bring down the Western society. 

We need to allow Christians to pray and to sing, but to laugh at those who fail to accept Darwinism as a factual model of how our world came to be.

No, we already have that word.  It’s called Freedom.  It comes with a price.  The price is being fired for being crap at your job.  The price is not being paid for time taken out to pray, or to smoke.  The price is being laughed at when you can’t defend your views in rational terms.

But we should all have the freedom to express our views, be they political, religious, atheist, or just plain insane.  And we should express those views without violence, intimidation, or legal threats, and without the fear of the same in retaliation.

Freedom.  It comes with a price. One we should all be prepared to pay.

Despite being fascinating in it’s own right, this is a wonderful example of how to explain something complex (quorum sensing in bacterial cells) in language anyone can follow.

The secret, social lives of bacteria

I sit near customer support where I work, and I spend all day listening to people badgering customers for call reference numbers, licence numbers, serial numbers, and other trivia.

I’ve just wasted 90 minutes of my life speaking with Sky’s customer support who were polite, full of corporate doublespeak, and totally useless.

When a customer phones up with a problem, he doesn’t care what is licence number or viewing card number is.  He certainly doesn’t want bullshit about how the Sky satellite decoder is made by a third party who make crappy unreliable electronics and should have paid £70 a year for a service contract.

I don’t want to spend 45 minutes on hold before I speak to someone.  I don’t want an IVR system.  I want a person.  Someone who speaks English passably for preference, but I work in such a multi-cultural world that it’s no challenge to deal with someone who has English as their seventh language.  I can’t passably function in any other language – and I’d learn another language if I could figure out whether Mandarin or Malayalam would be more use.

I don’t want to speak to someone who repeats everything I’ve said.  It’s not polite.  It’s not helpful.  It just gives me time to think of sarcastic come-backs.

How would you like if it I repeated everything you said back to you in a normal conversation?

So you think it’s stupid to repeat everything you just said?

Please. throw out the corporate bullshit.  I’ve worked on the other side of this particular fence.  I’ve run a (small) call centre.  I’ve faced high level customers spending hundreds of thousands of pounds who aren’t happy.  Don’t think your two days of call centre training can fob me off.   I know all the excuses.

“High call volume” is a emphemism for “too few staff on tonight”.  “We’re sorry for the inconvenience” is a sop to stupid people.  If you were actually sorry, it would be “I’m sorry, and I’d like to arrange for a credit for your account by way of apology”.   And if you can’t answer my call, don’t insult me by telling me how valuable it is.  If it was actually valuable (i.e., revenue generating), you’d be a hell of a lot quicker to answer.

Just answer the phone by the fourth ring with a real human being.  And then transfer me in one go, with no waiting, to someone who has the skills to help me.  You’ve got my phone number from the IVR, so don’t ask me for it, or my name, or my mother’s inside leg measurement.  You know all that.  Stop messing me around and help me.  It’s what I expect when I’m paying for a service that isn’t being delivered.

From the New York Times.

Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone,” the group’s 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman’s living room to grapple with the fallout.

The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had attracted an outpouring of hostility. It was the opposite. An overflow audience of more than 100 had showed up for their most recent public symposium, and the board members discussed whether it was time to find a larger place.

And now parents were coming out of the woodwork asking for family-oriented programs where they could meet like-minded nonbelievers.

Full story here.

They wonder why we focus endlessly on the handful of officers who, under pressure, go beyond what is acceptable, but ignore the thousands of others who stand there, getting stuck in the leg with pins and nails, kicked mercilessly out of sight of the cameras.”

‘Nuff said, as they say.