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This page represents only my own views, and not those of any university or other body. Posted Friday 3rd June 2011 at 2.07pm KPP No, not Kolmogorov-Petrovski-Piscounov. Kevin Peter Pietersen. The calls for KP to be dropped are growing. If the British love an underdog, they really don't like a big-headed freakishly talented turncoat for whom things have started going downhill. He hasn't done brilliantly recently, bar his double hundred at Adelaide, and his Test average has dropped to 47. But there are a number of reasons why he shouldn't be dropped. Firstly he's one of the best 6 batters in England. His average says he's third best in fact, despite his recent travails. Secondly our batting is doing very well at the moment, which means that we can afford to carry him while he finds form again. And thirdly he's a different player to most of the rest of the top order. Of course it looks bad sometimes when he tries to switch-hit and gets caught on the boundary, or if he charges down the wicket when well set and gets stumped. That's how he plays - if you want 6 Jonathan Trotts in the top order then very well, but if you want some entertainment in your cricket then KP's your man. It's a shame that he will never achieve his potential to become one of the all-time greats, but he's still an excellent Test match batter and well worth his place in the England team. Especially now that we have Cook and Trott to score the double hundreds that KP should have been rattling up. Song of the week: Bumper, by Cults (click the link then click "Next" till you get to the right song - or just listen to the whole album!). Posted Tuesday 31st May 2011 at 11.51pm Ah, Zaltzman "It is fair to say, in modern sporting parlance, that Sri Lanka had 'a bad day at the office'. As office days go, it was roughly equivalent to turning up to work to find that your swivel chair has been stolen and replaced with a stuffed porcupine, before your boss calls you in to give you a 90% pay cut, feed your packed lunch to his pet iguana, and put your trousers through his shredder, after which you return to your desk to find that your colleague has run off with your car keys, half-finished crossword and spouse, and your computer is frozen irretrievably on a YouTube video of Gary Kirsten’s unedited double-century at Old Trafford in 1998." "Yesterday’s win was facilitated by Tremlett, who surgically dismantled the high-class Sri Lankan top order in such a way that it would not have been entirely surprising if, at the post match presentation, Mike Atherton had marched up to the Surrey paceman, said, 'come on Scooby, let’s see who he really is', and ripped a latex face-mask off to reveal Curtly Ambrose underneath, before concluding: 'I thought I recognised the way you were bowling.' " I met my first officious German today. I had booked a visit to the Reichstag. On attempting to enter, the conversation went something like this: Him: Can I see your passport please? Me: I don't have my passport, I had to send it away to get a Canadian work permit. I have a driving license, will that do? Him: Where is your passport? Me: I had to send it away to get a Canadian work permit, because I'm moving to Canada in September. Him: Why? Me: So that I can work in Canada. I'm moving there in September. Him: It's European law. While you're in Europe, you have to carry your passport with you at all times. Me: (Thinks: Well, I've lived in Europe all my life, and rarely carry my passport with me, so I've been a criminal since birth. And if he's right then it's basically impossible to ever leave Europe, as generally to get a work permit anywhere you have to send your passport to an embassy.) Me: But I had to send my passport off to get a work permit for Canada, because I'm moving there in September. Him: (Looks at my driving license and scowls.) OK, go through there. I could have understood if he'd just said "Sorry, to get into the Reichstag you have to have your passport. I can't let you in." But to lie and say it's European law to carry your passport with you at all times - I'M EUROPEAN! - and then to let me in anyway - it's just stupid and inconsistent. It's a good job I have Zaltzman to cheer me up. Posted Thursday 26th May 2011 at 8.05pm Three good articles Saving the rainforests, eating less meat, and saving lives. Posted Wednesday 25th May 2011 at 4.15pm To understand and construct: splitting infinitives I like splitting infinitives. Why the hell should we not split them? Why are they splittable unless we're supposed to be able to split them? I'm currently correcting a draft of a paper, and wrote ... allow the reader to quickly understand and construct a ... Then I thought that maybe I should change it to ... allow the reader quickly to understand and construct a ... but this doesn't sound as good. Wikipedia has a fun set of examples in which it is more or less necessary to split the infinitive. This isn't one of them, as the alteration I proposed above is unambiguous. But the "construct" verb has already been separated from its "to" - why should the "understand" not be? Maybe you suggest ... allow the reader quickly to understand and to construct a ... but then it's not clear whether the quickly belongs to "understand" and "construct", or just to "understand". So perhaps I could use ... allow the reader quickly to understand and quickly to construct a ... but now things are becoming all kinds of clumsy. I propose that split infinitives should be allowed whenever they sound right. (No doubt someone will email me saying "oh but everyone already knows that", so again I should include some kind of disclaimer. I'm not claiming that I'm the first person to say this. Actually I'm just annoyed that my brain has recently started flagging split infinitives when I proof-read things, and perhaps this blog post will persuade it to shut the hell up.) Posted Tuesday 24th May 2011 at 9.37pm Indie pop Walked down to the corner store just before nightfall in my bare feet. Black tarry asphalt, soft and hot. And when I came back, I spread out my supplies on the counter by the sink, looked myself right in the eye. Pizza and a bottle of wine? Matt, you really have to stop basing your life on indie pop songs. This is quite cool. Posted Sunday 15th May 2011 at 10.51pm Schengen There's something about Sunday evenings that lends itself to pondering. I remember an assembly at Priory, my junior school, and the teacher taking the assembly explaining about the EU. She said that if you asked someone on the streets of England what nationality they were, they were likely to say British (as opposed to English). She claimed that some day things would go a step further, and that the standard answer to the question would become "I'm European". Several things have led me to think about that assembly recently. The breakdown of the Schengen agreement, the referendum on Scottish independence, and more generally the rising influence of right-wing minorities in governments around Europe. It feels like as I get more "European", Europe is slowly recoiling from itself. We're discovering some of the problems brought by a breakdown of borders and a common currency. I find myself typing "the left has yet to find a workable and consistent immigration policy" and then deleting it. I've read that, but I don't believe it really. I guess what I do believe is that immigration is often a difficult process for both parties (the immigrants and the receiving community) which can be worthwhile in the long run, and that therein lies the problem. It's harder to make a case for the long run than the here and now. Bah, that's not the whole story by any means, just a small part of it. But the Schengen agreement was beautiful, and I'm sad if the only way forward is to get rid of it entirely. Surely there must be a gentler, a more nuanced solution? Posted Sunday 15th May 2011 at 5.28pm Reflections This week's song of the week is a blast from the past. I haven't listened to Idlewild in years. And Roddy Woomble has possibly the best name in music. (I don't know of anyone called Sadding Roggydolls...) I've finished watching les Mysterieuses Cités d'Or. The animation is poor and it's overly long, but in the end I think the 3 year old me was right - it really is the best kids' TV series ever. I didn't remember all the war and greed - mostly I remembered the cool stuff like the golden condor, whereas grown-up me was more concerned with the nuclear weapons and a dictator clinging to power - it was something like a combination of World War II and Star Wars. It was very ambitious, and overall I think they pulled it off quite well! It's a stretch to call it quality entertainment - there are too many flaws - but it's definitely quality entertainment for kids, with morals and questions without easy answers, and all that kind of stuff that you want kids' TV to have. Lindsay Keith raises a good point here about the lack of science role models for girls on TV. I think the lack of science role models for girls in academia is also a problem, but perhaps that might improve if the TV ratios changed (and it's easier to change TV ratios). I like the quote at the end, too, from an 11 year old girl: "Please don't solve dark matter – I want to do that when I grow up." Posted Friday 6th May 2011 at 8.38pm What a beautiful refrain Quite a spate of posts! Lots of great news today. About 70% of the UK think that AV isn't as good as FPTP. Many seem to have the opinion that AV is too complicated, which suggests they hold the intelligence of the average Aussie or Papua New Guineaese in fairly high regard. Here is a fantastic article from the increasingly moderate Daily Telegraph. Only people who pay income tax can vote (plus pensioners and housewives, because they might read the Telegraph too). Why don't we take the vote away from immigrants and ethnic minorities while we're at it? They obviously don't know what's best for the country! (I would say "because... " here but apparently there is no need to justify such statements. Just tell a "joke" and then say you're actually serious.) And here is a post by the prolific John Rentoul. I tend to agree with maybe a little less than half of what he says, and he's probably as staunch a Blairite as many of the Telegraph writers are staunch Tories. But he has a good point here. Full disclosure: my dad is head of a new academy. But I wouldn't claim that academies are in general better or worse than plain comprehensives - I don't have evidence either way. If you pushed me for an opinion I would say that I don't see the point in calling them academies - for me they're big new comprehensives that have been given lots of money so that they can have great facilities, and giving them a fancy new name makes "comprehensive" sound tired and old (so that you end up having to give the old comprehensives fancy new names, like "Science and Technology College"). But I don't see how the "academy experiment" can have failed. What are you suggesting we do instead? Build new schools with crap facilities? You reckon they'll do better? What I would claim is that you shouldn't move the goalposts so suddenly, let alone stick the goalposts in the washing machine on 90C so that they shrink to a third of their previous size, and then judge. Lest ye look like you're just hoping people won't actually pay attention and will believe you when you say Labour didn't actually have a reasonably good record overall on secondary education. Finally, congratulations to Imms and Fatema who are expecting a baby, and happy 24th birthday to my little brother! Posted Friday 6th May 2011 at 12.06am I'm saying yes Unfortunately I've only just seen this. It's a bit late now. But it's ace nonetheless. Posted Thursday 5th May 2011 at 11.12pm You can make them like you Enough of the bigoted waffling. Here is a nice article written by a Tory. "AV has flaws. It’s not perfect. But it’s better than our current system." My thoughts exactly. But all the polls point to a heavy defeat in the referendum. So this week's song is dedicated to AV. And Nick Clegg. The Hold Steady - You can make him like you (We7)
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