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itchyfidget asked
Apr. 20th, 2006 07:34 amchickenfeet1. What most frustrates you about interacting with people in general?
Their humanity? Seriously, it all depends. Mostly I don't find people particularly frustrating but certain behaviours do drive me nuts. I think the hardest to take is people who know they are talking nonsense, know you know they are talking nonsense but still expect you to behave as if you believe them or think they are talking sense. IBM was a hotbed of this.
2. What do you know now that you didn't know fifteen or twenty years ago?
How much easier it is to play rugby when one can see the ball.
3. What's your preferred gentle brain activity? Crosswords? Sudoku? Puns? Other?
I'm tempted to say trying to relearn how to integrate a complex function around a closed contour but that would violate the "gentle" condition. I tried Sudoku but it took me less than six puzzles to work out a fully programmable way of solving them which rather spoiled the fun. Cryptic crosswords remain tops in the brainiac department.
4. How do we in the UK move forward from the present political situation in which everyone wants a piece of the centre-right?
The key element has to be proportional representation. That said, I would prefer it to be in the context of more fundamental reform. I think a move to a truly Republican constitution is essential (and that means much more than scrapping the monarchy and giving the PM powers that Henry VIII would have envied). I'd also like to see genuine subsidiarity. If power is indeed vested in the people let local communities decide how much of that they want to surrender to Westminster (or Edinburgh for that matter). Top down devolution is essentially a nonsense.
5. You get to radically influence the teaching of either literacy or numeracy in primary schools. Which do you choose?
Which leg would you like cut off? I'd have to say numeracy though because I think it's handled much worse today. After all, most (British) primary school teachers are reasonably literate. If I had to answer the question for Canada it would be more difficult. The "communications" David used to bring home from elementary school could reasonably have been described as a gross parody of illiteracy. How people with such poor language skills get to be teachers, let alone heads of schools, is beyond me.
Their humanity? Seriously, it all depends. Mostly I don't find people particularly frustrating but certain behaviours do drive me nuts. I think the hardest to take is people who know they are talking nonsense, know you know they are talking nonsense but still expect you to behave as if you believe them or think they are talking sense. IBM was a hotbed of this.
2. What do you know now that you didn't know fifteen or twenty years ago?
How much easier it is to play rugby when one can see the ball.
3. What's your preferred gentle brain activity? Crosswords? Sudoku? Puns? Other?
I'm tempted to say trying to relearn how to integrate a complex function around a closed contour but that would violate the "gentle" condition. I tried Sudoku but it took me less than six puzzles to work out a fully programmable way of solving them which rather spoiled the fun. Cryptic crosswords remain tops in the brainiac department.
4. How do we in the UK move forward from the present political situation in which everyone wants a piece of the centre-right?
The key element has to be proportional representation. That said, I would prefer it to be in the context of more fundamental reform. I think a move to a truly Republican constitution is essential (and that means much more than scrapping the monarchy and giving the PM powers that Henry VIII would have envied). I'd also like to see genuine subsidiarity. If power is indeed vested in the people let local communities decide how much of that they want to surrender to Westminster (or Edinburgh for that matter). Top down devolution is essentially a nonsense.
5. You get to radically influence the teaching of either literacy or numeracy in primary schools. Which do you choose?
Which leg would you like cut off? I'd have to say numeracy though because I think it's handled much worse today. After all, most (British) primary school teachers are reasonably literate. If I had to answer the question for Canada it would be more difficult. The "communications" David used to bring home from elementary school could reasonably have been described as a gross parody of illiteracy. How people with such poor language skills get to be teachers, let alone heads of schools, is beyond me.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 11:58 am (UTC)Something to do with the limited career pathway, high stress factorsand having to hang out with children all the time? Good people who go in these days don't tend to last long in the school system. I think it was all different in the days when women had few job choices, and primary teaching was a realistic option for brainy girls.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 02:19 pm (UTC)I hate your guts, you do realise that, right?
no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 02:22 pm (UTC)/me pats Shez on the head
no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 05:23 pm (UTC)you can do that even with the hard ones?
I'm able to do the easy ones all in my head but need to put numbers in the corners of the boxes in the harder ones.
I was totally addicted to sudoku for a while but then they started to get a little boring, even when they were hard...
Should pick it up again.
Any advice for the *ahem* novice solvers? :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 05:26 pm (UTC)Well it's a process of elimination so the only real challenge is figuring out a notation to keep track of what you have eliminated or conditionally eliminated.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 02:20 pm (UTC)Good Lord. Care to share?
no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 09:11 am (UTC)