This quote from an article about Britain’s plans to switch to metric road signs made me laugh: “The UKMA says conversion of road signs was originally intended as part of metrification when it started in 1965 and should have been completed by 1973.
But it was put on hold in 1970 and never restarted.” (BBC)
Monthly Archives: February 2006
I haven’t yet tested whatshouldireadnext.com but I hold out great hopes for it.
I wish I’d had this information when I arrived in the UK: TNT’s letter of the week was all about how to get an NI number. It took me three years to get a National Insurance number in the end.
“A new search engine for programmers promises to alleviate that problem by making it easier to find and share code. That in turn could increase programmers’ productivity and give a fresh boost to the open-source movement.
Krugle, which launches officially next month, indexes programming code and documentation from open-source repositories like SourceForge and includes corporate sites for programmers like the Sun Developer Network.” (Wired)
“British workers are adding up to 14 days’ unofficial holiday a year, emailing and browsing online. Other studies suggest this is a conservative estimate.”
And also, “When the laws against sexual discrimination were being put in place the kind of things that people were doing was putting Playboy posters up or leaving magazines open in full view,” she said. “Now it is electronic, so it is a little less obvious but it is no less offensive or difficult for women.” (Age)
“In a recent study of 30 undergraduate students, researchers from the University of Chicago and New York University said the tone of an email message was only correctly interpreted 50 per cent of the time.
Psychologists Nicholas Epley and Justin Kruger paired the students off and gave each a list of 20 statements about general topics such as campus food and the weather and were asked to e-mail the statements to a partner introducing either a serious or sarcastic tone.
The senders of the messages expected their partners to correctly interpret their tone nearly 80 per cent of the time, but in fact they only scored just over 50 per cent, said the report in Wired.
Those attempting to interpret the message believed they had scored 90 per cent accuracy, according to the results which have been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.” Age
“The Bush Administration has made an emergency request to the US Congress for a seven-fold increase in funding to mount a huge propaganda campaign against the Tehran Government.
…
Ms Rice told the Senate foreign affairs committee that Iranian leaders “have now crossed a point where they are in open defiance of the international community.” Age
Gosh, imagine being in open defiance of the international community. So, nothing like this, then? UN human rights investigators have called for the immediate closure of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
I keep meaning to try this:
I probably shouldn’t laugh, but ha ha!
“The Age’s report on the greenhouse row, in which leading scientists assert they have been muzzled for trying to lay their science and their expert opinion before the public that funded them, is the latest development in an alarming trend in which our science is being taken away from us – because somebody deems we ought not to know of it.
This trend is pervasive in our scientific institutions today. For various reasons, including political influence, commercial influence, managerial pressure, institutional control, publisher influence, stakeholder pressure, national security and bureaucratic interference, scientific findings and opinion are increasingly withheld. The consequences could be grave, both for Australia and for science.” (Age)