Executive functions aren't what you thought

I seem to recall being told that the mainland European school systems spend the first year(s) of schooling in developing the skills of children in areas related to behaviour and personal self-discipline in order to lay foundations for better learning later on. Research in Vancouver seems to be indicating that this strategy may be well-founded it relies on promoting "executive functions (EFs) that depend on the prefrontal cortex area of the brain... resisting distraction, considering responses before speaking, mentally holding and using information, and mental flexibility to “think outside the box.”"
The research indicates that "“EFs are critical for success in school and life. The skills are rarely taught, but can be, even to preschoolers. It could make a huge difference, especially for disadvantaged children,"
Pre-school Program Shown To Improve Key Cognitive Functions, Self-control:

Pareto principle and crime

The pareto principle may well apply to crime prevention too: "“Billions of dollars in criminal justice costs are wasted each year on people and places with almost no risk of serious violent crime,” said Sherman, “while the high-risk targets receive far too little attention.” Citing rising homicide rates in Philadelphia since 2002, his research shows how more rehabilitation for a tiny number of offenders may have been able to prevent many of the murders."
I predict some changes in governmental policy following a period of debate in criminological circles.
Less Is More When Fighting Crime:

A tiny bit of good news on climate

It may not change the overall picture, but it may give us a bit of shimmy room. "Increases in trees in the 27 EU countries between 1990 and 2005 absorbed an additional 126m tonnes of carbon, an amount equal to 11% of emissions, a study by the University of Helsinki study found. European forests are absorbing carbon dioxide at a higher rate than previously expected, the researchers said."
But it is only shimmy room: "Forested areas in the UK have doubled over the last 60 years, but the Forestry Commission warned that further expansion was limited by pressure on the land. And three-quarters of the nation's land area would be needed just to offset emissions from cars."
Europe's trees absorbing more carbon, study finds | Environment | Guardian Unlimited:

We need more roads: you're joking, aren't you?

In this article Study calls for 372 miles of new road lanes a year | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited, we are told the RAC Foundation have called for road building on quite a big scale. My response is pretty similar to those recorded at the end of the article. "However, the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) said investing in public transport, not roads, was the priority. It released a poll showing that 62% of people wanted more money spent on public transport, and only 30% voted for roadbuilding. 'The RAC Foundation seems to be living on a different planet from the rest of us,' said Rebecca Lush Blum, of CBT."

Is Blake also among the Creastion Spiritualitists?

Yesterday was the 250th anniversary of William Blake's birth. Probably most of us know little of the man except for the song Jerusalm ("And did those feet ...?") and that he painted watercolours with religious themes and wrote poetry, which we've largely not read. Time to ponder, however briefly, that he had a radical political philosophy that sprang from a mystical bent that revealed itself in him even in childhood. As Terry Eagleton tells it the Guardian, he sounds like an early exponent of Creation spirituality.
"Blake, by contrast, viewed the political as inseparable from art, ethics, sexuality and the imagination. It was about the emancipation of desire, not its manipulation. Desire for him was an infinite delight, and his whole project was to rescue it from the repressive regime of priests and kings. His sense of how sexuality can turn pathological through repression is strikingly close to Freud's. To see the body as it really is, free from illusion and ideology, is to see that its roots run down to eternity. 'If the doors of perception were cleansed,' he claims, 'everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.' Political states keep power by convincing us of our limitations."
You can almost hear Matthew Fox cheering (and probably he has in one of his books that I have not read), but wait; perhaps two cheers for we are also told:
"Brothels, Blake wrote, are built with bricks of religion. Today, hardly a single Christian politician believes with Blake that any form of Christian faith that is not an affront to the state is worthless. Blake was no dewy-eyed radical, convinced as he was of the reality of the Fall. He had a radical Protestant sense of human corruption. His vision of humankind was darker than that of the Panglossian progressives of our own time, with their vacuous talk of "moving on". Yet it was more hopeful as well. London had lapsed into Babylon; but it remained true that "everything that lives is holy", and it might still prove possible to transform the city into the New Jerusalem."
Actually there's a lot about Blake, on this showing, I think I like. And I quite like this:
"In a land of dark Satanic mills, the exuberant uselessness of art was a scandal to hard-headed pragmatists. Art set its face against abstraction and calculation: "To generalise is to be an Idiot," Blake writes. And again: "The whole business of Man is the arts, and all things in common." The middle-class Anglicans who sing his great hymn Jerusalem are unwittingly celebrating a communist future."
Maybe I don't go with the communist thing: replacing the tyranny of capital with that of state monopolistic capital seems to be a frying pan to fire journey. But a future where people are cared for, treasured and given the means to make the world better than we found it ...
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Terry Eagleton: The original political vision: sex, art and transformation:

Posada chainblog 2007?

Sally has just enquired whether I was thinking of doing the Posada chainblog again. It's funny, but I was just wondering that yesterday as my church in Ryton are attempting to set one up ecumenically... So if anyone would like to see it happen again or has any comments about doing it better another time, let me know promptly!

I did find getting posters everyday was quite a hassle in the end, and I'm wondering whether a lower key approach would be better. Though I'm not sure what that would look like ... perhaps not organising a master list myself but rather simply 'releasing the couple into the wild': a true chain where someone simply picks up the chain by leaving a comment on the latest place of arrival with a link to their own post. I like the idea of maybe taking the picture from blog to blog.
I think that it would need a sense that there are enough potential takers to make it work without stranding the couple in cyber limbo.
Nouslife: Posada chainblog 2006. Start here.

biometric ID: essentially leaving your PIN on a post-it note

Ben Goldacre in a letter to the Guardian makes a telling set of points about ID Cards in the wake of the recent government data-unprotection scandal.

Tsutomu Matsumoto is a Japanese mathematician, a cryptographer who works on security, and he decided to see if he could fool the machines which identify you by your fingerprint. This home science project costs about £20. Take a finger and make a cast with the moulding plastic sold in hobby shops. Then pour some liquid gelatin (ordinary food gelatin) into that mould and let it harden. Stick this over your finger pad: it fools fingerprint detectors about 80% of the time. The joy is, once you've fooled the machine, your fake fingerprint is made of the same stuff as fruit pastilles, so you can simply eat the evidence.

But what if you can't get the finger? Well, you can chop one off, of course - another risk with biometrics. But there is an easier way. Find a fingerprint on glass. Sorry, I should have pointed out that every time you touch something, if your security systems rely on biometric ID, then you're essentially leaving your pin number on a post-it note.

You can make a fingerprint image on glass more visible by painting over it with some cyanoacrylate adhesive. That's a posh word for superglue. Photograph that with a digital camera. Improve the contrast in a picture editing program, and print the image on to a transparency sheet, then use that to etch the fingerprint on to a copper-plated printed circuit board (it sounds difficult, but you can buy a beginner's etching set at Maplin for £10.67). This gives an image with some three-dimensional relief. You can now make your gelatin fingerpad using this as a mould.

And -new information to me but not surprising-

In the new biometric passport with its wireless chip, remember, all your data can be read and decrypted with a device near you, but not touching you. What good would the data be, if someone lifted it? Not much, insisted Jim Knight, the minister for schools and learners, in July: "It is not possible to recreate a fingerprint using the numbers that are stored. The algorithm generates a unique number, producing no information of any use to identity thieves." Crystal clear, Jim. Unfortunately, a team of mathematicians published a paper in April this year, showing that they could reconstruct a fingerprint from this data alone. In fact, they printed out the images they made, and then - crucially, completing the circle - used them to fool fingerprint readers.

And let's not forget that the terms of the legislation mean that, in effect, you and I will be guilty until proved innocent of any crime related to the theft of our identity in this kind of way.

And if I'm not mistaken much of this applies to the USA whose strictures regarding visas etc are ostensibly the drivers for some -at least- of this.

Really: be afraid, be very afraid. I am.

Filed in:

Celebrating Christmas: you do it your way, I'll do it the right way...

It may be a couple of weeks before this is generally available but it looks at an issue I've been interested in for a good while: how we celebrate Christmas Christianly in the face of the secular world's midwinter festival. The nub of the issue, it seems to me is that the Christian kalendar is based on 12 days of Christmas which begin on December 25th. The secular world has an approach where Christmas begins in early December and ends effectively on December 26th and is followed by a period of relative rest until new year. This throws up a tension which is articulated well in this Church Times article (which may not be totally viewable for a week or two for non-subscribers) by Sr Rosemary of the Community of the Holy Name. She writes,

"if we obey the liturgical rubrics, the main Sunday services continue doggedly to proceed as though the nativity has not yet happened, when everything around them proclaims that it has. OUR SISTERS put up no decorations until Christmas Eve, and our feasting starts on Christmas Day (and is well worth waiting for). But the staff who work with us find this austerity unnatural, and do their best to cheer us up by bringing in cards and candles and boxes of chocolates, and — of course — mince pies. For years, I have struggled with this, trying to keep an Advent stillness within myself, while being assailed by premature festivities all around, and sometimes being required to provide them. Last year, I declined to attend a glorious cathedral carol service in the first week of December. I would have loved to take part in it after Christmas, but it was not on offer then."

That articulates the dilemma very acutely and nicely. And I have over the years tried to hold something of a line over this, mainly because I keep hearing moans about the commercialisation of Christmas and the way it loses its meaning and have felt that perhaps trying to work with the 12 days of Christmas and observing Advent more disciplinedly could help with that. I do think that part of the problem is that the extension of the season into late November and the focus on all the present giving on one day is part of the problem. Smearing the season over a month seems to trivialise some of the meanings and inoculate us even more to the meanings in the carols of gospel messages. There is an important function psychologically and sociologically to having seasons of preparation which include restraint and self-discipline before festival seasons. It's about rhythm, appreciation, capacity building for enjoyment and wholistic appreciation of the context of celebration in a still-suffering world.

However, I'm beginning to think that being too counter-cultural may be a lost cause and we may be better to recognise the reality and -once again- go down the route of weaving significant aspects of the non-Christian festivities into a Christian framework.
Sr. Rosemary writes,

"When I reflected ... the truth finally hit me. December is note a preparation for Christmas; it is Christmas. Keeping Advent in December is a lost cause. Does that mean that the profound spirituality of Advent has been lost too? Not necessarily, if the churches could only decide to accept the suggestion tentatively offered in The Promise of His Glory: Services and Prayers for the Season from All Saints to Candlemas (Church House), ... and move the time of preparation to the real pre-Christmas period: November. In this less eventful month, people could be encouraged to attend a short study course, or gatherings for quiet prayer, at a date when they need not worry about meetings clashing with parties. Preaching and meditation on the traditional four Last Things could very suitably be linked with All Saints, All Souls and Remembrance Sunday, at a time when Common Worship: Daily Prayer (Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England) already directs us to focus on the Kingdom."

My own experiments so far with this ran to having Advent start on or after 17th November as part of honouring our Celtic heritage and links to Eastern Orthodoxy who had and have a 40 day season of preparation for Christmas analogous to Lent. So perhaps, combined with the All Saints and All Souls/remembrance idea this could make a coherent approach.
Sr Rosemary points out a further advantage to approaching things in this way:

"Preaching in these weeks could offer extended consideration of the great mystery of the incarnation. I have often felt frustrated at the lack of opportunity to invite the congregation to engage deeply with the theological significance of Christmas. The emphasis at Christmas services is often on welcoming occasional attenders, and some of the most thoughtful of the regulars are away spending the holiday with Granny.
A midnight mass enlivened by the presence of post-party revellers, a Christmas morning service — complete with excited children clutching presents, and parents anxious about roasting turkeys and visiting relatives — does not offer the most propitious setting for demanding theological thought. It would be good to have done that earlier."

I do think that this is probably a really fruitful way to go. And it needn't 'throw' currently successful Advent occasions: "Those churches that have the resources to offer an Advent carol service or procession could still hold it on the Fourth Sunday before Christmas, but as marking a heightened stage in this time of preparation rather than its beginning. Advent wreaths and calendars could similarly be used to produce a crescendo towards the climax of the feast itself." which seems fair enough and workable. Though I would say that it may be worth reworking things like Advent crowns to work with the revised approach; all sorts of creative possibilities suggest themselves. Advent 'crowns' with 7 or 8 lights (picking up some Hanukkah resonances, perhaps), perhaps the last three being red, green and white (pulled from the predominant colours of secular celebration). It'd be interesting to play with liturgical colours for this too. Perhaps deep blue for the start of November, shading into a traditional purple and then a week or so into December picking up a variety of 'Christmas colours especially white and red and green in combination ... ?

I'm actually pretty sold on this approach broadly ... but I'm wondering what other people might think too.
And I wonder what sense it makes in the antipodes too.
Church Times - Find a new space for the incarnation

Home Office insists biometric data is secure -yeah, right!

I think that our elected leaders seem to have become overly enamoured of NIR and have forgotten that the technology, for all the things it can do, still is only as strong as the weakest link. And in relation to the concerns raised in the wake of the loss of 25million records recently, they have been missing the point. "The Home Office insisted that the biometric elements in its database, the electronic fingerprints and facial scans, will keep it secure and proof against identity theft, even if there were to be a major breach and stolen confidential data. 'The biometric means that it will be much more difficult to use somebody else's identity, as they will have to provide the correct fingerprint or facial image at the same time. You can't create a fingerprint or a face,' said a Home Office spokesman. He also emphasised that the identity register would also be protected by a chip-and-pin with severe penalties for those who tried to access the database illegally."
Yes, yes we know all that, but it isn't the point is it?
The difficulty is that my biometrics won't be used for online transactions, and may not actually be used for many everyday transactions which could cost me money. They also would not protect me if someone was able to get to data-entry points and substitute data. The weakness of the system will still be badly paid civil-servants or curruptable officials. It only needs one and all my biometrics could suddenly belong to someone else, or all my date could end up fastened to someone else's biomentrics and I'm an unperson. What the government seems to be failing to realise is that this incident shows that we can't trust the human infrastructure to this degree, no matter how much we could trust the IT (which is a doubtful assertion in any case).

Home Office insists biometric data is secure | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: see also here and here.

Islamists?Islamofascists? What is the right term?

Timothy Garton Ash is probably right to we concerned about the connotative effects of using the word 'islam' in compound words and phrases referring to certain terrorists. He highlights the IRA and the community it was/is set within for comparison, helpfully. So, "'Al-Qaida' won't do as the functional equivalent of 'the IRA' - not on its own anyway. We need a wider term to describe the kind of violent extremists who perpetrated the London and Madrid bombings. Counter-terrorism experts talk carefully of 'al-Qaida-inspired' violence, but that's too complicated for everyday use, as are alternative suggestions such as 'violent Muslim extremists' or 'modern Islamic militancy'. We need a simpler shorthand."
Helooks as the current contender 'islamofascist' and 'islamist' (the latter is the one I have tended to go for, admittedly). The former has difficulties on the hook up with statehood currently. The latter, however, does tend to be used by 'serious analysts'. However, while most of the terrorists we are concerned with here are indeed Islamists, not all Islamists are terrorists.

So what would he propose? "The best answer I have found so far is "jihadists", especially in the form "jihadist extremists" or "jihadist terrorists". I know that "jihad" can also be construed as peaceful spiritual struggle, but the Muslim opinion-leaders that I have consulted seem ready to accept this usage. It places a clear demarcation line between ordinary Muslims, and even non-violent political Islamists, on the one hand, and the dealers in death on the other - yet it does not obscure the connection to their religion. In fact, it makes it clearer than either of the alternative terms. Jihad, holy war, is precisely what the suicide bombers tell us - in their pre-murder valedictory messages - that they were proudly engaged upon."

So I'm probably going to adopt this usage, which is one I have used on this blog from time to time. I'm inclined towards the form 'jihadi[st] terrorist' to be clearer that I recognise some usage of the term 'jihad' to be functionally equivalent to the way that many Christians may use terms such as 'spiritual warfare' or 'fighting the world, sin and the devil'.
I may have to alter my labels though
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | In identifying those trying to kill us, we should choose our words carefully:

Just Church

Having once been pastorally responsible for planting a 'fresh expression' of church based in valuing justice, peace and the integrity of creation, I was really pleased to find this site which offers resources for bringing the justice end of that trinity more fully into the capability of ordinary congregations. I commend it to you. I'm thinking of adapting some of the resources to use with the spirituality side of ministerial formation at college.
Just Church

World Clock

Now this is an intriguing page. Not only does it show the time, it shouws world population being updated (also broken down into births deaths and net growth since it started nearly 8 thousand days ago. I'm thinking that I might use it to start some lectures, just while people are coming in and settling down.
World Clock: " "

Greening The Desert

This is a sobering thing to read. "Several years ago, I travelled around Europe. It seemed to me that Europe was very nice and beautiful, with lots of nature preserved. But three feet under the surface I felt desert slowly coming in. I kept wondering why. I realized it was the mistake they made in agriculture. The beginning of the mistake is from growing meat for the king and wine for the church. All around, cow, cow, cow, grape, grape, grape. European and American agriculture started with grazing cows and growing grapes for the king and the church. They changed nature by doing this, especially on the hill slopes. Then soil erosion occurs. Only the 20% of the soil in the valleys remains healthy, and 80% of the land is depleted. Because the land is depleted, they need chemical fertilizers and pesticides."Masanobu Fukuoka - Greening The Desert:

Can't trust the government with our data: what price ID cards?

News is breaking of the loss of CDs full of the personal details of many UK subjects. The shadow treasury spokesthing put into words my reaction when "He urged the government to 'get a grip' and said it was the 'final blow for the ambitions of this government to create a national ID database' as 'they simply can not be trusted with people's personal information." Would that it was that this was the final blow to ID cards. I fear that although this could be a crippling blow this government will eke out the lifespan of this project though it may be on life-support.
BBC NEWS | Politics | UK's families put on fraud alert:

Patients Do Better With Psychotherapist Who Practice Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness meditation is essentially about learning to be in the moment and attending to more of ones sensory data and being less caught up in ones own inner monologues (I think). So this bit of research on psychotherapists in training (PiTs) is interesting, though perhaps not entirely surprising when you know what mindfulness meditation entails. "This study indicates that promoting mindfulness in PiTs could positively influence the therapeutic course and treatment results in their patients"
It should probably be noted that, although this article was written highlighting Zen, mindfulness is wider than that tradition, even than Buddhism, there are Christian correlates, for example.
Patients Do Better With Psychotherapist Who Practice Zen Meditation, Study Suggests:

Cyberaction: resist nuke power in earthquake zone

It's hard to believe but there is a proposal to build a nuclear power plant in Bulgaria in an earthquake-prone area. "The Belene project was planned in the early 1980s and from the start it was controversial because the nuclear plant would be situated in an earthquake zone. During the last large earthquake in 1977, over 120 people died only 14 kilometres from the Belene site. In 1984, Soviet scientists actually warned against building a nuclear plant at this location and in the 1990s the plan was scrapped."
We should recall the lasting effects of Chernobyl ... add your voice to opposing this by clicking on this link: FoE Europe - Anti-nuclear cyber action

What's In A Name? Initials Linked To Success, Study Shows

I think that this may be further supportive evidence of the mimetic drive in humans affecting behaviours and achievements subconsciously. ". The result of the test confirmed that when people’s initials match negative performance outcomes, performance suffers. These results, appearing in the December issue of Psychological Science, provide striking evidence that unconscious wants can insidiously undermine conscious pursuits."
The other thing I'm wondering is whether this also may indicate a degree of corporate identity and feedback. After all these are totally humanly constructed environments in which these effects are taking place and depend, therefore, on our consensuses about alphabets and how they are used additionally in our signalling of social and related status. We already know that self-esteem relates to health outcomes ... (just plumb 'self esteem' into this blog's search bar).
What's In A Name? Initials Linked To Success, Study Shows:

Global diet

"Do you eat meat?' asks Jo�o Meirelles Filho, a Brazilian conservationist ... 'Yes,' I reply, ... Filho surprises me with the venom of his next remark. 'Then you are responsible for the destruction of the Amazon,' he says, 'because 95 per cent of deforestation is caused by cattle ranching. I would love it if every one of your readers boycotted Brazilian beef.'"
The rest of the article is about a new fruit which could help the situation in Amazonia.

One of the company's best-selling fruit smoothies contains a small amount of pulped açai (ass-eye-ee), a berry that grows only within 25 yards of the Amazon's banks. To harvest it, the palm on which it grows does not have to be cut down; better still, it thrives in the shade of other rainforest trees such as rubber, Brazil nut, cabbage palm and miriti palm, encouraging growers to mimic nature rather than plant açai in endless regimented rows - the kind of monoculture that destroys biodiversity.

Can the discovery of new fruit used in smoothies save the rainforest? | Food monthly | The Observer:

Robo-scribe, the future of “hand made”

I think that this is probably an iconic image. A German art group have programmed an industrial robot to 'hand craft' a manuscript. Very niche, very personal, pretty cheap, relatively.
"Wouldn’t it be great to be able to order “manuscripts” of your favorite books on demand?"
Long Views � Blog Archive � Robo-scribe, the future of “hand made”: "

Low Self-esteem Increases Materialism

Research on adolescents shows a correlation between low self-esteem and materialistic attitudes. The research further shows "that the relationship appears to more than just a correlation, but a causal relationship -- low self esteem causes increased materialism and raising self esteem decreases materialism."
Very interesting, don't you think. It may help us to understand why loving others creates a womb for the gospel. Why should low self-esteem promote materialism (not necessarily philosophical, you understand, the cultural kind)? It's to do with this "the stage is set for the use of material possessions as a coping strategy for feelings of low self-worth,". Which doesn't seem so surprising, on reflection. And the further good news is that it's not hard to help raise self-worth among adolescents: "Our results indicate that simple actions to raise self-esteem among young consumers can have a dramatic impact on expressions of materialism,"
In Children And Adolescents, Low Self-esteem Increases Materialism:

Social Change Relies More On The Easily Influenced Than The Highly Influential

This may be significant in considering the behaviour of human social entities, research shows "that it is rarely the case that highly influential individuals are responsible for bringing about shifts in public opinion." Rather it seems that sufficient numbers of influenceable people is more significant.
Social Change Relies More On The Easily Influenced Than The Highly Influential:

A favourite French poem ...

I loved this poem when I was studying French as part of my first year undergrad course. Delighted am I to rediscover it. As the 'translation' opposite it on the referenced page shows, it's not easy to render into English, mainly because it is one long play on words.
Etre ange c'est étrange dit l'ange
Etre âne c'est étrâne dit l'âne
Cela ne veut rien dire
dit l'ange en haussant les ailes
Pourtant
si étrange veut dire quelque chose
étrâne est plus étrange qu'étrange
dit l'âne
Etrange est
dit l'ange en tapant des pieds
Etranger vous-même
dit l'âne
Et il s'envole.

Did you say "stronkey"?:

Speed kills, so what of speed cameras?

Taking together the article and the comment responses is a good education in the issues relating to speed camaras. I do confess that I find disturbing those conversations I've been party to where I'm expected to connive at speeding and the demonising of speed camaras. And I am worried that there should be an attitude abroad that it is a right to speed and it's not really a 'real' crime. One of the things that comes home from this, loud and clear, once you have paid appropriate homage to the issues about good and bad driving and looked at alternative strategies, seems to me, is that when all is said and done, the faster you go in these metal boxes that are strengthened for the safety of their occupants (not those outside), the more likely you are to make an error of judgement and the more likely people are to die if/when you do.
Once all the considerations are made it may be shocking but it seems true as one commenter says:
"Campaigning against speed cameras is pretty much equivalent to advocating random acts of homicide".

Interestingly, one of the persistent arguments against speed cameras is their capacity to raise revenue. I grok the emotional appeal of this argument: nasty authorities finding ways to take more money off us (note implicit connotative framing of speaker as innocent victim of acquisitive nanny state by alluding to a stock of cultural 'memes' to that effect). However, they really don't manage to clear the hurdles of the basic facts: the limits are legal limits and "Even if the devices are money makers, who cares? I'd sooner the authorities raise revenue with fees targeted at anti-social behaviour like speeding rather than increasing taxes across the board to everyone." Indeed, and wouldn't it be a great outcome if no-one speeded and they enforcement devices became redundant? The petrol-heads argument exposed hereby as merely a desire for licence to exceed the legal limits without being held to account for it.
One comment makes an interesting point I'd not seen before but resonated with me, as a sometime cyclist, "I'd make everyone ride a bike for 2 years before they're allowed to take the car test - if you don't pay attention to what's going on around you on a bike you end up dead, and you never lose that, whatever form of road transport you choose to take"
I'm not sure how I evaluate the taste of WellArdSpnge, but it's certainly an arresting challenge; "To those who honestly belief that speed has no effect on accidents may I suggest the following little experiment;

I'll take one of your children, or if you don't have any another close and dear relative. Strap them in a car and then run it in to another car travelling in the opposite direction at the same speed. The speed of each car on the initial run will be 5 miles per hour and then on each subsequent run it will increase by another 5 miles per hour, hence closing speeds of 10 mph, 20 mph...... You can let me know at what point you feel that speed may have some 'impact' upon the subject and the results.
- Any takers??"
That said, it may still be an open question as to whether the cameras are actually effective and in what condition and under what kind of usage they are best deployed.
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The anti-speed-camera campaign is built on twisted truth and junk science:

Spiritual Direction, Life Coaching and Culture

I just remembered that I hadn't noted publicly that an article of mine has been published in JASANAS: Journal of Alternative Spiritualities and New Age Studies. It's basically a synopsis of my MA dissertation of the same name as in the title of this post.

Schools face a downsizing revolution?

It's a great idea, but call me cynical; it'll never happen."some schools are so large that some children are falling 'under the radar' and failing to build up relationships with the staff. The report, which was shown to Adonis last week, calls for each large school to be broken down into a series of small schools serving about 150 pupils". Well, maybe it could, but the cost could be prohibitive; though it'd be a better spend than on ID cards. That said, it could just make sense with the increased drive towards personalisation and some collaborative technological fixes to enable a broader curriculum than would otherwise be possible. Small is likely to be more beautiful in this case. Human scale for human beings is likely to help produce more rounded human beings. Massification tends to bring the lowest common denominator to the fore, and it ain't pretty.
Schools face a downsizing revolution | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk:

Evidence growing to favour reduction of meat eating

While there are some benefits to having livestock in the landscape (though we could argue about those mentioned in the article), it is becoming ever clearer that, as I keep mentioning on this blog, eating less meat is something that anyone serious about world environmental and justice issues should consider very strongly and urgently. "To help consumers wade through the confusing advice, Hampton says people who want to reduce emissions should first buy local food that does not need to be transported and choose organic produce and reduce meat and dairy foods. 'A person switching from highest to lowest impact for a year can save 1-2 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent - the same annual saving as conserving £300 worth of gas on heating, [or] cutting down 5,000 miles a year in an average car, [or] avoiding one return flight to Europe,'"
It's not new: Ron Sider in Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity encourage low meat diets for Christians. It really is about time we took notice more generally.
Why eating less meat could cut global warming | Environment | The Observer:

Cost of ID card and passport rises to £100

It's a while since I have written on ID cards, but this really should be flagged up, an official government report has recently been published. "The report says that the latest estimate excludes the cost of the ID project to other government departments outside the Home Office, including card scanners for GPs registering new patients. The report to parliament admits that the estimate is likely to change, especially as the tendering process, with eight private sector firms bidding to run the scheme, has just started. The final charge for the ID card has not been settled but the government has decided that the scheme must be self-financing."
In other words we are going to be asked to pay a poll tax to finance our own oppression. No, that's too harsh. ... to finance the potential for our own oppression.
Cost of ID card and passport rises to �100 | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:

Germans hanker after barrier

Declaration of interest. I was involved in a former [to me] diocese's link scheme with an eastern German KirchenKreis. However, my main interest here is in the way that the research is [mis?]intrepreted. We are told, "Only 3% of people who originated from East Germany said they were very satisfied with the way that German democracy worked." Well to make that work we need to know what the comparable percentage would be from the west; and note we are given only the 'very satisfied'. I would not be at all surprised to discover that under 10%, possibly under 5% in the west and other democracies would say they were "very satisfied" with the way democracy worked. I'm a believer in democracy, in that I think it the least bad form of government. I'm 'somewhat satisfied' with how our democracy works because I think it needs reform, but that's not to say I'm hankering for totalitarianism.

And again, 'ware of interpreting this: "The poll by the Forsa institute showed that 73% of those from the east believed that socialism was a good idea in principle, but had been poorly implemented. Over 90% argued that they enjoyed better social protection during the GDR era." I suspect that you'd get a lot of sympathy the world over with that sentiment. The argument, I think, is over wthether it can be impelemented and/or how effectively. Even died-in-the-wool capitalists will pay lip-service to the idea that it's a good idea in principle: it's the "but" that's significant and that impacts on the social protection issue: an argument that is continuing to this day the world over.

What is a bit more disturbing, but perhaps not totally surprising is this: "less than 5% of relationships in Germany are between east and west Germans, suggesting the a social and cultural divide still exists." But even here let's be wary of alarmist interpretations: think for a moment; probably the same could be said between many Scots and English, Geordies and Londoners, Northern Irish and East Anglians ... French and English (!). Again we'd need comparative figures for relationships between the different Laender to have a better idea of the significance of this figure.

Lies, damned lies and statistics. It's because of this kind of statistical illiteracy that people say and believe that.

Germans hanker after barrier | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:

Wubi - The Easiest Way to Linux

Every so often I have a go at persuading my readers that switching to Linux would be a good idea. Well, the possibilities of 'try before you ...' well, 'not buy' have got bigger. This gives you a way to try from within windows' file system. "Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you."
So no scary messing with your hard drive: "Ubuntu is installed within a file as opposed to being installed within its own partition. Thus we spare you the trouble to create a free partition for Ubuntu. And we spare you the trouble to have to burn a CD-Rom."
Wubi - The Easiest Way to Linux:

Diet Linked To Cognitive Decline And Dementia

in the 1970's, we were called cranks for advocating that diet might help in preventing many health problems. Nowadays, all our Christmasses come close together. "Research has shown convincing evidence that dietary patterns practiced during adulthood are important contributors to age-related cognitive decline and dementia risk." This is especially important for those of us who want to be able to harvest our intellectual endeavours in old age and maybe produce some work that is of lasting value...
Diet Linked To Cognitive Decline And Dementia:

Holy tipple may take priests over limit

This looks like it could be a problem that Anglican clergy could share. "with a chronic shortage of priests both in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, Father Brian D'Arcy says that many priests often celebrate more than one mass a day, sometimes in different parishes. 'The shortage of priests has resulted in those who are currently ministering having to say multiple masses, and often drive from church to church to do so, having drunk from the chalice in each church,"
However, when you start thinking about the practicalities, maybe it need not be a problem; it just requires that those presiding at multiple Eucharists be aware of the alcohol content of their ministry! But not putting so much wine in the chalice, getting lay help with consuming afterwards, even reserving wine for later consumption are all possibilites. Where there's a will ...
Holy tipple may take priests over limit | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:

Fasting slows heart disease

This is a piece of research to keep an eye on. "Fasting was the strongest predictor of lower heart disease risk in the people we surveyed. About 8 percent of the people who fasted did not express an LDS religious preference, and they also had less coronary disease,"
Occasional Fasting Associated With Lower Heart Disease Rates:

Sexist Humor No Laughing Matter

I guess many of us supposed that the expression of certain attitudes through humour could be a way of testing the waters about a set of attitudes with the possibility of saying 'I was just joking, get a life' if the atmosphere gets chilly in response. So perhaps we're not surprised at this: "research demonstrates that exposure to sexist humor can create conditions that allow men – especially those who have antagonistic attitudes toward women – to express those attitudes in their behavior,” he said. “The acceptance of sexist humor leads men to believe that sexist behavior falls within the bounds of social acceptability.”
Again it's the issue of building a social context that encourages or discourages certain behaviours and even, a bit further down the line, attitudes. It illustrates the value there can be in being careful about language we use. Not because language creates thought or determines attitudes, but because it can signal and connote things that cause reflection and help rework our thinking. It can create conversations that enable us to explore how to reconceptualise relationships and attitudes. This is not the crude linguistic determinism that seems to have driven some of the PC language lobby. However, it is to recognise the connotative power of language and to use that to beging to raise issues and encourage rethinking attitudes.
Sexist Humor No Laughing Matter, Psychologist Says:

The cultural effects of surveillance?

I'm still thinking about this, though I think there may be something in it, hence I'm sharing it here. "Britain has become a witness culture, inured to watching and being watched. Be it Big Brother or posting friends' antics on YouTube, our leisure time has become increasingly infected with the imperative to expose ourselves and others. No activity, no individual, is deemed valid without an audience."
Which seems to make personal the old philosophical chestnut about whether a tree falling in a deserted forest makes any sound... Is the writer just a modernist individualist unable to see the importance of social construction of identity, or implicitly decrying it? Am I right to think that this is more to do with popular social constructivism than celebrity mimesis?
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | CCTV is no silver bullet - it risks making life less safe:

It really is the taking part ...

Perhaps our intuitions about it being important to do your best and not to have too much pressure and feeling valued are borne out in this research which "indicates that young athletes find playing for coaches who stress personal improvement, having fun and giving maximum effort is far more important and has a bigger impact on them than a team's won-loss record."
I have to say that, as a child I strongly preferred to play for fun, peer-acknowledgement, self-improvement and social cohesion than any amount of fraught competitive games which just overdosed my body with adrenaline and put at peril the esteem of peers. Probably this is because I was a loser. But then, over 99% of us are. Time to stop colluding in our own oppression.
Motivational Coaching Climate Outscores Winning For Young Athletes:

Facebook. Tried it, didn't like it.

I did write about this before, but I'm even more getting to think like Maggi on this one. She says, "Honestly, I have a life already. You wanna say something? Just send me an email or ring me up like you did before."
Yep: I'm coming to the conclusion that Facebook doesn't give me anything I want, especially, that isn't easier to do direct via email, blog or other means. The only thing I like about it is seeing what other people are up to and even then it gets to be boring to see they're adding the functionalities that I'd decided were probably a waste of my time. What I most worry about is the way that it's 'privatising' services that used to be done more openly. It seems to me the equivalent of the shopping mall vs the High street. The former is private space opened to the public. The latter is public space with access to the private. I don't think we need more 'gated communities' where our relationships are within private space owned by someone else. We need our commons and our public spaces. Facebook seems to be an attempt to privatise the internet.
maggi dawn: Facebook. Tried it, didn't like it.: