paul and corinna and lucas' blog

Take the test to find out.

See if you can beat my 119 – halfway between average and genius! (21st percentile.) That's 17 correct out of 25 questions – I just didn't know some specifics they asked about. Also it said the IQ calculation includes 'how quickly you complete the test' but I was distracted by a few things at work... That's my exuse anyway!   :)

A year or two? How come we work 25 years to pay for one then...?

No, it's not a blog about flatulence...

Is it legal to change the price of something after you've sold it? What a genius idea! We got a letter from Southern Electric the other day ("September 2008" but was around the 12th we received it) saying "From 25 August 2008 we will have to raise gas prices by 29.2% and our electricity prices by 19.2%" – if they can do that, why couldn't they raise it by 2000% and tell you later...?

And I might be being simple, but how come they're making record profits yet claiming they need to raise prices so much because their suppliers have increased prices? Surely you would keep you would aim to keep your profit levels the same or bring them in a little if you were having to pass the costs onto your customers...? You'd have thought one of the energy companies would have thought of this and would be making a killing now...

Ok, a bit slow to react to this one – maybe some people will think that negates my first point but anyway...

So girls thrash boys in school and college grades yet again – not exactly news I know – it's the same this time every year. It never sits right with me, and not just because I'm sexist...  :)  Doesn't it show state that our education system promotes and rewards feminine traits and devalues masculine ones? This is at A-Level too so I don't buy the excuse that it's "because boys develop slower than girls" – what you really mean is boys take longer to learn how to do things that come more naturally to girls – that I agree with, and it's kinda obvious when you put it like that. Boys goof around more? Maybe. But again isn't that a sign that the system just doesn't want to engage them? (It's a similar problem in the church, but that's a whole other blog!) I guess it's just another example of Britain attempting to emasculate itself.

When did university become an end rather than a means? Why is the government obsessed with giving as many people as possible degrees? I went to university as a path to career, and even then the universities were starting to flood with people trying to get degrees in things they have no intention of working in – just to get a degree! What a waste of 3 years! Really a lot of people would be so much better off going into work at 16/18 rather than keep getting qualifications in irrelevancy. Then a year or three later they would be in a much better position to make a choice over whether Uni would really be of benefit. And to top it off, the government insists on basing all this craziness on ladening kids with debt! (A whole other blog too...)

And what exactly is the point of league tables?! I know I've complained about them before but they annoy me... They're just an awful way to measure and compare schools. I've seen enough schools ruined by obsessive pursuit of targets. How do you know historically good grades are any indicator of how good a school would be for your child? And even if they did get you good grades, they could still be sculpting kids that are good at exams but otherwise dysfunctional! One thing I don't like about league tables and targets is they make the school focus on 'getting the average up' which invariably means cajoling every child to improve their worst grades – focus on their weaknesses. They really should be trying to bring out and sharpen their strengths – if you absolutely have to publish league tables, why not just publish the details of each pupil's top grade?

(See earlier post.) Wow – that was awesome! He just floored it down the straights as you'd expect – anyone could do that – but the breaking distances and the way he took the corners?! Unbelieveable! It was like twice the speed I'd attempt them! We were flying past all the Ferraris!

It's amazing to think of the millions of people grazing all the time – we must consume unimaginable masses of food!

I was pouring milk on my cereal the other day and I was thinking how cow's milk wasn't intended for me to drink. And how difficult it is to produce – from our experience with Lucas at least! And how many cows are chained up to milking machines and made to produce all this milk way beyond when they would naturally do it – to meet our demand for the stuff.

Then I realised, I can't think of any food that is intentionally produced for us to eat (other than breastmilk for babies of course). Certainly not cow's milk. Meat is obviously from animals that would probably prefer to live. Plants intended seeds and fruit for something else, etc.

The bible gives believers the moral basis for eating pretty much anything, but when you think of it, people without that religious belief have absolutely no moral basis for eating any of it. From their point of view, I guess it's equivalent to stealing something else's life/murder? Of course they would argue that animals do it and we are just animals, but I'd say animals don't have sufficient mental faculty to know they're stealing.

Have you sat in the bath recently while the water drains out completely? Watching the water whirlwind (its direction being nothing to do with which hemisphere you're in of course). Your body re-negotiating gravity – just when you think you can't get any heavier, you get a little more. And the funny feeling as the last few drops disappear. Then you remember why you get out quicker normally – it's cold!

No? Just me? 

... could Martin Lewis be a star with his own primetime TV show!! (How to save £3.57 a year with only 10 hours work a week, etc.) Actually, I shouldn't have a downer on him as I already do a lot of the stuff on there!

But I have to admit, he's come up with the goods for flights. Check out kayak.com – excellent! He also offers some more good tips.

(Maude, when Ned Flanders' house is blown down.)

Kelly crashing her car the other day, and us signing up for British Gas Homecare recently made me think about this. (It's not insurance technically since it includes a service element, but whatever...)

I know it's a joke, but when you think about it insurance and gambling are surprisingly similar:

• lots of people put money in
• some people get payouts
• the insurance company/bookmaker creams off shed loads of profit (check out those amazing buildings in the City!)

You might think a difference is that payments are structured when you're talking about insurance (regular, agreed amount, under contract), but of course you could do the same with gambling. Another potential difference is that insurance is about something happens to you, whereas gambling is just about something happens – again, insurance just seems to be a specific/specialized form of gambling. The only real difference I can spot is that insurance companies can choose how much they feel like paying out!

And if you do get a payout, you feel sorry for all the chumps who had to pay for it – if you never do, you're a chump for having to pay for other people's driving! :)

This article made me laugh. 'No chance! You can't install that safety equipment if you don't have the correct ladder training!'

"Health and safety regulations are now the overarching power in the land".

Ok, try to reduce risks where it's sensible. But I don't get this attempt to remove risk from everything. It's like playing ten-pin bowling with the cushions – where's the fun? How will anyone learn if they are always protected? And how will they ever take personal responsibility if they're taught it's always someone else's responsibility to look after you? Isn't that the definition of an adult – someone who thinks about the consequences of their actions and takes responsibility for them? (Or maybe the aim is to produce a nation of depenent childish people?!)

And sometimes it even adds risk, like when you're driving up to a junction and there's so many signs it's impossible to work out what they all mean in combination!

Finally!! I've been saying we need this for years (though admittedly I have no high ground as I didn't do anything about it): Children to get lessons in money – and debt.

There's no-one dying over whether it was 1066 or 1068, but there are people killing themselves and living completely ineffective and dead lives because of debt! And it's not as if it's complicated or difficult to teach. But it's left until people are in an uncontrolable mess before anybody does anything! And even if their immediate debt problems are fixed, it's more difficult to get out of a habit than to form a better one in the first place.

It's funny, the 'you can have anything you desire on credit – you deserve it' TV ads at the moment are only interspersed with 'get all your debt problems fixed here' ads. (Which doesn't help.)

Of course the problem is we have a culture of debt rather than just a lack of awareness of it. Education won't solve the problem. But there are plenty of people who get into it because they don't realise the consequences – hopefully this will help spoil the 'easy money on tap' image of evil credit cards (or 'debt cards' as I like to call them) and help in changing the culture longer term. [It's not that we don't use credit cards, but they are we are in control of them, not the other way round. It's the 30% APR I'm calling evil.]

Maybe it's assumed kids should learn personal finance from parents. I benefitted from a very prudent example while growing up, but this credit culture is everywhere now, and I bet kids are just as likely to have debt modelled to them as a way of life. Only yesterday when I said "we're just looking, we're saving up", the sofa salesman was like "but you can get it today on interest free credit" and I got a real strange look when I said "no, we don't do that kind of thing".

It's probably one of those things – like sex – parents want to 'protect' kids from until they're old enough to know – but are beaten to it when they grow up quicker than expected and are assaulted by companies peddling debt early. (Even the government's at it! Though I have to admit student loans are a lot fairer than all the other types of debt.)

Of course the Bible has many warnings about usury...

This is a good idea: Quidco – you follow their link to a site and get the referal bonus back yourself (they're a cooperative and take £5 out of your referal bonuses to cover their costs). So we just got a new mobile (I say 'we' because Corinna's getting the phone, I'm getting the contract) and got the £30 bonus ourselves! (Haven't received it yet, but it's showing up in the Quidco account after 1 day which is good.) Of course we were going to get the mobile from the same company anyway, but the bonus is better than a kick in the teeth as they say! Lots of well known companies on there, so worth checking.

An interesting article in the Times: the answer is of course hard work. But it's interesting where they came from (mostly 'up norf') and only two of top 25 started with a degree – more came through work-related training like apprenticeships in less glamourous professions to later become successful entrepreneurs.

We watched Thank You For Smoking last night – good timing considering the smoking ban coming in shortly! It's very funny in places with some great quotes: "That's the beauty of argument, if you argue correctly, you're never wrong." (You have to watch it to enjoy them fully...)

Talking of the 'Sultan of Spin' (as Nick's called in the film), our Tony made an interesting confession yesterday, admitting that 'new Labour had been over-reliant on spin in its early days in power'. However I have to agree with him that a lot of the media is just rubbish:

"Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. Of course, the accuracy of a story matters, but it is secondary often to impact."

The Prime Minister also criticised newspapers for mixing news reporting with comment. In particular, he slammed The Independent as being a "metaphor" for his point.

"It was started as an antidote to the idea of journalism as views not news," Mr Blair said. "That was why it was called the Independent. Today it is avowedly a viewspaper not merely a newspaper."

Rather than combat it at the time though, it's interesting how even our Prime minister will only dare upset the media as a parting shot – it shows who's really in power.

And his point about impact and accuracy can be applied to leading the country – long term thinking is often secondary to short term impact in politics too.

"Facts are stubborn things." – John Adams.

0% interest for 6 months!
(balance transfer handling fee of 2.5% applies)

Am I just being thick or is that actually the equivalent of (just over) 5% APR? (And that's just for the first 6 months. After that you get the exorbitant 'normal' rate...)

Surely that's just plain lying? Seems to me like there is an untapped niche here - honesty. It's like the cartoon board room: "Gentlemen, this year the trick is honesty." One VP gasps, "Brilliant!" another mutters, "But so risky.")

"As a consumer, it's maddening to find an amazing 'sale,' which turns out to be of little to no value due to stipulations in the fine print ... we bring expectations to the table ... We're drawn to brands which consistently earn our trust by meeting our expectations" (Maxwell, and there's a nice reference to Howard Schultz from there - who put Nicolas Cage in charge of Starbucks?!)

They have been outperforming boys at GCSE, A level and in university for years. But now girls are doing better at work too: earning more than boys in the first eight years of their careers. (The Times)

Hey, that Steve Jobs address is on YouTube. It's only 14m33 and very good.

There was an article on Shaun Murphy a couple of weeks back in the Times. I like how he sees that a lot of what people go through is determined by their choices. And how he's so clear on his ambitions, how he's applying himself to them, and now he's talking about bigger dreams too. Not sure about the magic Harry Potter wand stuff, but it's a nice link to 'potter', he he... It mentions some of his charity work in passing too.

And here's a link to the original blogger: Samuel Pepys!

I have become something of an evangelist for Tesco.com's DVD rental service. The idea is simply that you rent your DVDs online rather than from a video shop, but it's just so much better. There's loads more choice - more than 40,000 DVDs compared to a few hundred in our local Blockbuster. For example, when I asked if they had Scrubs at Blockbuster the guy said "eh? what's that?" and looked at me strange.

One annoying thing about getting films from a shop is that every time you want to watch something you have to drive there and spend 15 minutes trying to find something you actually want to watch. But with tesco.com you make your list once and you can forget about it! (Though obviously you can chop and change/re-prioritise your list.) And technically you have to go out on one less errand too - what used to be a 20 min trip plus 5 mins to return it is now just a 2 mins out of your way shove it in a post box. Keeps the post office busy too I guess.

It doesn't matter how long you keep the DVD for. You can return it the same day or keep it for a year if you want (though that would be a bit pointless). So with Scrubs, which we got the first DVD for recently, we were rather sad and kept it for a while and watched all the episodes again...   :p

If there's a film on at the cinema you'd like to see but can't be bothered to, you can reserve it on tesco.com and it will be sent out to you as soon as it's released on DVD! They send out DVDs pretty quickly too.

Plus, as if you needed any more convincing, it's a load cheaper than Blockbuster too. You could in theory watch up to 10 DVDs a month on our tariff which would work out at 80p each. More realistically we are watching about 6 a month, so £1.50 each - much cheaper than blockbuster's £3.75!

I looked at Amazon's too and for the same price you are able to keep 2 DVDs at home (compared to one on tesco), but you are limited to only 4 a month which is a bit tight. There are a few other services but they all seem to be supplied by one of two companies so all the deals are pretty much the same.

Just catching up on a few bits and pieces I've been storing up...

Our footie season has finished. I reviewed it here. Particularly humourous was the final game, ho ho...

I came across Manic Mexican, a game I wrote back in '99 when I first learnt Windows programming. It's not that bad actually...   :)   Gets manic pretty quickly (as you'd guess from the name). I love the detail put into the game context (see the readme). He he... Apparently my record is 63 frags which is quite impressive if I remember rightly!

I also came across a Peg Solitaire solver I wrote yonks ago (I won't say why I wrote it) but it's a bit pointless uploading it here because you need to be debugging it to see what solutions it comes up with and I've lost the code! Ha ha... Looks neat whirring away tho...   :)

I figured out what that popup on my webpages was - the stupid nedstat counter (free version) puts one in occasionally - stuff that! Although I like their presentation, it's more hassle than it's worth so I've removed it.

I think I knew this already so you may too, but anyway... You know the PAL video format runs at 25 frames per second but films are shot at 24 frames per second? Well, that means your PAL player will play an extra frame every second, which works out at 4% faster, so films will be 4% shorter and the pitch of voices and music will be 4% (a semitone) higher! (source)

And in the news: God is more famous than Rooney!

Wow, cool recipe search engine, thanks Anna! www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes

I have to say I disagree with all this 'Voters give Tony Blair a bloody nose' stuff. Britain is never happy with her government. She's always shifting between one party and the other, thinking 'maybe the other one will be better now'. So I think this is a massive victory for Labour because they are defying this law of political oscillation. After 8 years, people are still choosing to vote for Blair! And to put it in perspective it's still their 4th best majority ever (out of 11). Or if you don't count Blair's first two elections, it's Labour's 2nd best majority out of 9! How you can call that anything other than a huge success, I don't know...

But the commentators were right about this being like a presidential election. It all seemed to be about Blair, Howard and Kenedy. Not Labour, Tory and LibDems. Not anything like policies or local issues. I think Blair won the election (or maybe Howard lost it) rather than anything else.

Not that I voted for Labour (though I did vote). Funny. It reminds me of Pryor's Brewster's Millions. If only there was a 'none of the above' candidate... They would win easily.

Easter Egg Hunt! He he...

feedmebetter.com: Jamie Oliver's petition to stop schools feeding kids so much rubbish.

Cool! I just added nethouseprices.com to our links page. It lets you do simple land registry searches for free (rather than the two squid you normally have to pay)!

It has our details on correctly anyway. We can find out how much the houses on our street have been selling for! It only goes back to 2000 unfortunately though. But a couple of houses in our area have been sold twice since then; one nearly doubled and the other one did! (more than double!) It shows how much things have changed over the last few years.

Apparently our Government 'wastes £81bn every year', which is a sixth of all Government spending. (£2.3bn of it is attributable to cost overruns on NHS IT projects!) The Taxpayers' Alliance identified 500 spending cuts that could be made without closing a single hospital, firing a teacher or cutting pensions. Savings of such magnitude would be sufficient to abolish National Insurance contributions and inheritance tax.

Obviously, whoever is in power, Government will always be accused of inefficiency. It's part of the British make-up to find fault, and childish politicians always claim 'we could do better' anyway. But I thought it was interesting to read that, and then go on to read an excellent article by Bill Gates and Bono (an unlikely combination!?). It was published back on 03/01/2005, so you may have missed it with all the Tsunami stuff that was going on: Demand a better deal for the poor of the world in 2005. Extract:

Only one of us is known for crunching numbers. But we both believe that investments in human potential pay off many times over. They have the power to end extreme poverty. But only if we learn to think big again. ...

Our momentum, then, is real but fragile. This year brings a unique convergence of global summits, progress reports, and negotiations on debt, trade and effective aid. The acronyms - G8, UN MDGs, WTO, IMF - cause eyes to glaze, but they amount to the best chance yet for the world to learn from its successes and to keep moving forward. ...

The story of 2005 will have its leaders and laggards, and in a year's time it will be clear to all of us who was which. In the meantime, it is up to us how we want our generation to be remembered.

Read the full thing though, it's very good.

I'm not sure what the current total is, but not too long ago the sum total global donations to the Tsunami fund reached around £1bn (I think it was). So it's interesting to note that if the first article is correct, we "waste" 81 times that amount each year.

Do you know what I find really irritating? When you send an email or message to someone and they just reply to the first point... Just the first one, not the second and third things that are more important, just the first one. They've gone to all the effort to reply, but obviously couldn't be bothered to read the thing in the first place.

I'd rather they didn't bother replying at all, then I'd know it's just because they're busy. Honestly... I wouldn't have bothered asking if it wasn't important. What am I supposed to do with a half-answered query? Reply with the same level of rudeness by saying "what about the other two things I asked you?" Maybe I should...

Oooo, not long 'til The Simpsons are back on. "Remember, remember the fifth of November" as Corinna said to me the other day...  :)

I heard this the other day too. It's probably common knowledge, but I don't think I knew. You know everyone used to think the world was flat? And when Columbus set off, the Church ridiculed him and said he would fall off the edge of the world because it's flat?

Well that's all just 19th Century myth/misinformation: everybody in the middle ages agreed the world was a sphere! The Columbus ridiculing was a piece of fiction! There was discussion, but it was actually just about how big the earth is, not it's shape... (see this and this).

As far back as Augustine (c. 400) and probably before, the Church had believed the Earth was spherical. It was just 'some' Christian writers since then that questioned Earth's sphericity. However, by the 900s/1100s, the flat Earth theory had died out. It was only in the 19th century some people tried to revive the idea.

I also found out what a 'limelight' is (as in "stepping into the limelight"). It was a way of using limestone to create a spotlight, used in theatres before electric lights were invented...  :)

Woohoo! Wassim & Nicola have started a blog at captan.blogspot.com. It will no doubt contain lots of bashing of my PES skills. I would like to take this opportunity to remind the world that I still retain the record for the largest PES2 win of all time: 6-0.

Teleportation breakthrough made: Scientists have performed successful teleportation on atoms for the first time. The ability to transfer key properties of one particle to another without using any physical link has until now only been achieved with laser light. Experts say being able to do the same with massive particles like atoms could lead to new superfast computers.

Now if we can create teleporters, surely we can beat Switzerland tonight!

From a recent telegraph article on house-buying: A buyer would now have to find more than £150,000 to buy the average home, which is about seven times the average salary in this country.

I'm a bit of a diesel efficiency junkie, but I heard the other day that coasting can actually use more fuel than not! According to Jeremy Clarkson (Top Gear) when you're coasting, the engine obviously has to use some fuel to keep the engine ticking over. However apparently in modern cars (though I don't know how recent he was talking about) if you leave it in gear and take your foot off the pedal, say when you're coming up to a junction, the car doesn't use any fuel! (Though he may have been exaggerating, maybe it just uses much less fuel?)

I couldn't be bothered keeping the Currently Selling section up-to-date, so I've replaced it with a Stuff For Sale link. This is much better because I'm lazy, and I don't have to maintain it this way...

Check out the new section in the menu to the left: Currently Selling. We've decided to use Amazon's "sell your copy here" thingy to get rid of some stuff. Partly due to my drive to 'simplify', partly because we just never use them. Thought I'd mention it here incase anyone wants something.

It's pretty straightforward, just browse Amazon as normal but instead of clicking on "Add to Shopping Basket" click on the "5 used" link (if there were 5 Used sellers) below it in the "More Buying Options" (on the right-hand side). Then click on the "Add to Shopping Basket" on our line. Our listings are under the seller username paulparkins7. Prices are quoted without p&p - as usual Amazon slaps some extra on for that. It's something like £1.25 for a CD I think.

I've just put a few up there to start with to see how quickly they go.

Disclaimer: There will no doubt be some very poor items (very poor indeed) that we are ashamed to admit we have ever bought, hence another reason why we're getting rid of them. All I can say is there will be a perfectly rational explaination as to why we're in posession of them, e.g. "I claim temporary insanity for when I bought it" or "it's Corinna's, don't ask me what she was thinking!"   :)   (don't let that put you off buying anything though!)

We decided to go with Amazon rather than Ebay or whatever because it's simpler and you don't have to pay anything (as a seller) if your item doesn't sell. Plus they handle all the money for you. For selling stuff, you pretty much end up with slightly less than what you put the item up for sale for, but p&p comes out of that too. So after fees and p&p, you basically get about £4.50 for a item you're putting up for sale for £6. Ok, they're not great numbers, but if that item is worth nothing to you and is just taking up space, then you're getting £4.50 for nothing!

We worked out who the actor James Caviezel from The Passion of the Christ is on the weekend too (I'm so out of touch!). We didn't know who he was when we went to see it, but Corinna has just read it somewhere. He was the son in Freqency and the homeless guy in Pay It Forward, and he's been in loads of other films too. I'm kinda glad that we didn't recognise him before, otherwise it would have spoiled it. I can see it now, but he does have a different look about him than normal.

Urgh, this is a little worrying: "Army can't go to war for five years". Britain's Armed Forces will not be able to mount another operation on the scale of the Iraq war for another five years, the Chief of Defence Staff said yesterday.

I knew mobiles were evil! Now I've got the proof as firms track workers' mobiles: Rapidly growing numbers of workers are having their movements monitored by their bosses through signals from their mobile phones. An estimated 40,000 employees are registered to new services which allow managers to pinpoint their locations at the click of a computer mouse. The figure is growing at a rate of around 20 per cent per month.

The BBC Newsnight Special on Iraq last night presented some interesting results from a survey of Iraqis, e.g.:

• 70% say that life today is good, 29% say their life is bad
• 57% think life is better now than before the war, only 19% think things are worse
• 71% expect their lives to be better in a year from now, compared with 6% who expect life to be worse
• 49% still believe that the coalition invasion was right compared to 39% who thought it was wrong
• opinion was evenly split on whether the invasion humiliated Iraq (41%) or liberated it (42%)
• the overwhelming majority of respondents thought the current violence was unacceptable but 17% said attacks on coalition forces are acceptable, 14% said the same about attacks on the Coalition Provisional Authority and 10% thought attacks on foreigners working alongside the CPA are acceptable
• 39% of respondents supported continuing presence of the coalition forces, compared with 51% who were opposed to it
• 15% said the coalition forces should leave Iraq immediately, 36% said they should remain until an Iraqi government was in place and a further 18% said until security is restored

Wow, we just got this warning round at work... Very Ian Flemming!

We've been notified of recent occurrences of cashpoint fraud in the Harrogate, Knaresborough, Wetherby and Leeds areas and wanted to alert you to this - we have verified that this is not a hoax with the local Community Protection Officer. You may also have seen warnings on local and national television regarding this.

The method used for this fraud is very sophisticated and police are warning members of the public to be aware of any slight delay in receiving their money from a cash point.

The device used looks like part of the cash machine and scans the magnetic strip and uses a pin hole camera to copy your pin number, the information is then used to create a copy of your card which is made within days. The only warning that you may get is that the device slows the procedure down slightly.

The police have asked for anyone who notices anything different when trying to withdraw cash, to inform their bank immediately. Most banks are honoring any loss to their customers but it would be wise to check this is the case first.

This is interesting: the results of a survey of young people (average age 15). Apparently most are more traditional than their parents: "Teenagers want to turn back the moral clock and are more reactionary than their parents." E.g. their views on abortion contrast sharply with those of their parents, the generation born in the early 1960s whose views tend to be more liberal. "Two thirds of adults think abortion on demand is justified ... compared with just a third of youngsters." Apparently "the sexualisation of society is a concern to young people" too and nearly 80% of boys thought it best for couples to be married before they had children. Also boys were also more likely to believe in God (59 per cent, 51 per cent girls).

And apparently, the official 2001 abortion figures (of all ages) showed that the number of abortions funded by the NHS was the highest on record: 186,274 in England and Wales. I finished reading the biography of Mother Teresa the other day that Corinna read before (her comment here), she had some interesting views on abortion: 'it's murder, if you can't look after them, give them to me'. Literally. Never mind that there are millions (nearly 200k from us alone!) she just said 'give them to me, I'll look after them'...

This is interesting, but it takes a while to do: Inkblot test. Apparently my subconscious mind is driven by kindness... I guess I'd better give it the honest answers this time...   :)

Just to clarify, after I got an odd email or two, this is a question from an IQ test, not a real news story...

NASA received three messages in a strange language from a distant planet. The scientists studied the messages and found that "Necor Buldon Slock" means "Danger Rocket Explosion" and "Edwan Mynor Necor" means "Danger Spaceship Fire" and "Buldon Gimilzor Gondor" means "Bad Gas Explosion". What does "Slock" mean?

• Danger
• Explosion
• Nothing
• Rocket
• Gas

A couple of illusions I haven't seen before (thanks to Anna):

We watched Tears of the Sun on Saturday night. To be honest, I'm really out of touch with films (apart from the big ones) so I didn't know anything about this one. I just fancied watching a trashy action flick, saw Bruce Willis and thought to myself "aha!" but it wasn't what I was expecting... This may already be common knowledge, I don't know, but it's really good. I'd recommend watching it. And if you do, I'd recommend watching the 'making of' feature on there too. The plot is a little artificial, but that's really not the important thing about this film.

We are somewhat desensitised to violence, Corinna and I, and as I was expecting an action film anyway I wasn't really that moved. That was until I realised how realistic it was (hence why I thought the 'making of' feature was helpful). In real life, you often see the results of atrocities on the news but never them actually happening (because of safety/timing issues I guess). It's always left to the imagination. In Hollywood, atrocities are usually over-dramatised so they are obviously fiction (in the big blockbuster movies anyway). Very rarely do we get a glimpse of atrocities actually happening, but that's what this film gives us...

Apologies for not posting much to the blog recently by the way, we have been very busy here at work so breaks have been minimised...

I noticed for the first time this year that the whole concept of Valentine's day is really unromantic. For a start, isn't romance supposed to be spontaneous? So the idea of scheduling it kills that.

I can't deny that it's good for the card/chocolate/purfume/flower/hospitality businesses, but I can't see how that would get anyone 'in the mood'... (anyone who isn't in one of the associated industries anyway!)

And judging by the media, it seems like one of the sexes (which shall remain nameless) typically uses it as a measure of their worth to the other person. How is that romantic? Surely how they treat you the other 364 days of the year is a better measure??

Having said that, thankfully I didn't get in trouble this year...   :)

You just can't win can you. You're either failing kids by putting too much emphasis on literacy or not enough.

I understand what they're saying though: Literacy and Numeracy get the big points in the game of School League Table places, so as a result other subjects will be detrimentally affected. But I also understand that it's difficult to measure how 'good' a school is. Using grades is a natural but poor metric: do we define how 'good' a child is by what grades they achieved at school? Grades may be a partial indicator of employability, so is 'employability' the main aim of the education system?

The whole league table thing is basically just trying to evaluate in a highly simplistic way something that is far more complex. I highly doubt there is a way of evaluating such a complex thing as how 'good' a school is so that they can be listed in order in a single table. Perhaps they should use multiple tables? But some things are very, very difficult (if not impossible) to measure. And even if they could be measured, in order to capture all important aspects of a school, I suspect you would have to use at least 20 tables (some would say 100) at which point the whole thing becomes totally unusable. So no simple solution to comparing schools exists really. People are fooled if they think one school is better than another because it is higher in the league tables. And if that is the case, what's the point of publishing them at all? Parents should spend some time at potential schools before sending their kids there. Granted, schools should publish their grades, but what's the point in putting them in a league?

I'd hate to be a politician. It's impossible to please everyone. I guess that's why they have to be so vague. I thought Howard's "I believe ..." statements were pretty good, but then I wonder what he actually means by them. They have an air of genuineness, but they're still quite vague and open to a lot of interpretation. For example, his way of implementing what he's said may be (or will be if the 'you can't please everyone' axiom proves true) very different to what other people would want. He may not even do anything at all (saying "I believe" in something doesn't mean he's actually going to do anything about it).

And I just have a hard time believing politicians anyway. It just all seems like a big game. All you hear is "I'm right, you're wrong", "no, I'm right, you're wrong", "no, I'm right, you're wrong" and so on. More like a pantomime we should be laughing at than people to look up to for making massively important decisions. Every little thing becomes an event over which someone in government "must resign!" How does sacking someone really help anybody anyway? The problem I have with 'The Opposition' is how they (no matter which party they are, or which party is in power) define all their policies as the exact opposite of the government's: they chose to say A, SO we say Z. They want to integrate us with Europe, SO we don't. They are a vote for this, SO we are a vote for that. It's all a joke. If only they would be honest... And why not (horror of horrors) agree with the other party over some things. As Sun Tzu would say, the good warrior knows which fights to fight.

Why wasn't one of the statements, 'I believe in honesty'? Instead, Howard's beliefs are evaluated according to their contribution "to human happiness" - a very popular 'end' indeed. Honesty isn't hedonistic enough, so it doesn't make the cut. The more I read his statements, the more I conclude that he wants to lead by following.

Bank of England raises interest rates to 4%. It was inevitable I guess. I don't much like the sound of this though: "Experts believe further interest rate rises will be needed later in the year".

Hell warning primary schoolgirl is suspended. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this... "It's the principle, you've got to draw the line somewhere. Use some reasonable judgement. Kids are bringing guns and knives to school. They've got dope. And we're worried about 'hell?'"

"The Matrix: Revolutions ... Rubbish film" Yeah, I thought so too. I was quite disappointed, especially after the second one. Reloaded was easily the best of the three...

We went to the cinema to see Lost in Translation which we'd both heard good things about. Rubbish. Totally pointless. Either I missed something major or there was actually very little content. You could have fallen asleep in the middle and you still wouldn't have missed any of the storyline! I was as bored as the characters in the film were! If anything, it should have been a 10 minute short story...

I just got an email from CD-WOW saying that the UK Major record companies have restricted UK consumers rights to buy CD's over the web. So as of this weekend, they will have to charge extra because they can only sell CDs manufactured within the EU! Cha! An outrage!

Hi there

Hi
Hope this works this is the first time i've used this
Corinna :)

Welcome to our new blog!
Hopefully we'll be able to keep everyone up to date with this... Ok, so the design is hardly original (somewhat reminiscent of Matt & Jo's), but what the hey, I'm a plagurist and proud of it (I copied that slogan from somewhere else too).