Close, but no cigar....

On my way across London this morning for a conference where David Willets will this afternoon talk about the value, heritage and future of technical skills at FE and HE level, I picked up a copy of one of the free papers distributed outside Underground stations which today contains a report about an article in yesterday's Daily Mail (lazy journalism part one) regarding the alleged censoring of Winston Churchill's cigar from a poster outside an exhibition near London Bridge by anti-smoking zealots.

"It seems the man who steered Britain through the most dangerous period of its recent history may have fallen victim to the modern curse of political correctness," says the report (of the report!).

Oddly enough, the story goes on to describe that the disappearance of the Churchillian havana is "something of a mystery" with the ubiquitous, un-named spokesman for the visitor attraction "astonished" that such a thing could have happened and denying that the museum has been contacted by any anti-smoking lobby group, and was quite unaware of the airbrushing until a visitor drew it to their attention.

Anway, despite the Daily Mail (or the Metro) being unable to identify who was responsible for the airbrushed image (lazy journalism part two), typing "Winston Churchill Images" into Google gives a listing of which one the higher ranked results is Fanpix, an on-line image gallery. So, on the assumption that Fanpix isn't responsible for removing the cigar (why would they?), presumably someone creating the War Experience display went on to the Internet in search of suitable Churchill pictures and, not knowing that it was digitally altered, selected this one.

A bit more research using Google's advanced search facility gives what is probably the ultimate source of the doctored picture, a 2006 blog about a Washington Post story about politically-correct anti-smoking fanatics censoring old pictures. In this case, the story concerned Hanna-Barbera apparently removing scenes from Tom and Jerry cartoons after a complaint to Ofcom that the scenes were "glamorising" smoking. The blog suggested that "they’d have to go back and edit all the old pictures of Winston Churchill to remove his cigar" and mocked up an image poking fun at the excesses of Political Correctness to illustrate the point, which four years later has ended up getting used as "proof" that PC has, once again, "gone mad". So, as we now know that it's not (in this instance at least), maybe something else is going on: an attempt to attract publicity to the Britain at War Experience, perhaps? Or am I just too cynical?

Hoop, hoop and away (with the money)

I'm now in Blackpool at the end of my first ever staff development day just for school teachers where the principal topic of conversation has been the hoopla stall owner prosecuted last week for breaching gambling laws by making his game almost impossible to win.

Although none of us were in the least surprised that the blocks were tilted at such an angle the chances of success were calculated by academics at Lancaster University to be over 2,600 to 1, nobody could even begin to comprehend why one complainant to Trading Standards lost nearly £1,500.

According to court reports, secret filming showed punters losing around £1 a minute, which made us all wonder what kind of person would want a shoddily assembled cuddly toy enough to spend what must have been about 3 days vainly throwing money away?

So yes, the operation was crooked, but this particular idiot was always likely to get separated from his money pretty quickly one way or another. Now if only the bbc report had mentioned his name and address, I could forward an e-mail from a Nigerian chief anxious to deposit £5m in a British account, then all he'd have to do to recoup his losses would be to send his complete bank details without delay....

Leicester 2 Colin 20

This repeat visit to Leicester College (we were there in June 2009) was the 20th Colin Beard Experiential Learning Day put together for lecturers delivering HE level education programmes in a FE environment.

Even though there's been 19 similar events around the country over the last 4 years, and there'll be more in the North and on the South coast later in the year, recommendations from previous attendees meant that delegates were willing to travel from as far away as Brighton and Greenwich, with two of those present making the effort to "experience the difference" for a second time in less than twelve months.

As usual, a full day and an engaging facillitator meant that nobody's attention was diverted from the activities in the room, although our venue on the second floor of the Freemen's Park campus has such an excellent view (from the window to the right in the picture above) of the magnificent rubgy ground which is home to the Leicester Tigers that we should probably have included a mention of it in the programme for the day instead of just alluding to it in a post title...

Space (centre): the no-Phil Frontier

Having been asked to help coordinate a "Creative Assessment to Help Eliminate Plagiarism" workshop as part of the joint JISC/HEA e-asy Assessment day at the National Space Centre, I arrived in Leicester late last night to be told by the organisers that Professor Phil Race, the advertised keynote speaker, was ill and unable to attend, so "could I step in"?

3 beers, a glass of wine and a pizza-full of persuasion later, meant sleep was postponed while I re-purposed a collection of resources and wrote a presentation to make up a (hopefully!) coherent 2-hour session around the day's theme of "engaging with innovative ways of assessing learners to make assessment e-asy".

Fortunately, when the moment of truth arrived, adrenaline overrode the effects of having had only 3 hours worth of sleep, so my delivery was something close to normal, but after an afternoon workshop, a plenary and three hours to get home, the effects of "boldly going where no one (well me anyway) has gone before" has left me feeling very tired....

C'est la vie (ou la mort) ma femme fatale...

Looks like those romantic ballards about racing heartbeats might be scientifically based after all, as according to research carried out by the University of Valencia, just five minutes alone with an attractive woman can raise a man’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol to “dangerous levels” that “may be bad for the heart”.

The experiment, approved by the Faculty of Psychology’s ethical committee, involved 84 male students who were told to avoid alcohol and other stimulants for 24 hours, before being led into a room by one of the (male) scientists to solve a Sudoku puzzle. The researcher then departed on the pretext of getting another puzzle, leaving the unsuspecting student to sit alone in a room with a stranger.

Saliva samples were taken from the students to measure their cortisol levels which apparently remained the same when left with another male, but rose when left alone with an attractive female. The study added that this rise was heightened in men who believed the woman was “out of their league", and could even reach levels reportedly similar to that experienced by parachutists, an amount that can “bring on the possibility of heart attacks and strokes”.

As we now know that since pretty women are sociological gravediggers, surely our newspapers should be ablaze with headlines such as “Man dies in front of sexy woman”, “Ban these killer heels” and "French National Suicide Bid: instead of making it mandatory, they're banning the burka!"?

Roses, grants and Guildford signs ahead

Having just spent 5 hours driving down to Surrey in readiness for tomorrow's Funding Applications workshop, I'm now sat in a country hotel's beautiful rose garden looking up at the dozens of vapour trails criss-crossing what would otherwise be a completely clear blue sky while reading the travel information pages of the BBC website.
Apparently, Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland’s second-least pronounceable volcano (where to even start with Þeistareykjarbunga?) is still moderately active, and later today, due to an expected change in wind direction, it's ash plume will drift over Irish airspace and close Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Shannon airports.
Although it's understandable that jet planes will be again be affected since they travel at the same height as the ash cloud (around 30,000 feet with lower altitudes not feasible on many levels : fuel usage, thicker air = overheating etc) and would suck volcanic dust through turbines which could theoretically heat it to glass-forming temperatures, what I can't find an explanation for is why are propellor planes also grounded when they fly much lower, or helicopters which fly lower still?

Ian-PWL (whoever he is) says this blog is wonderful!

The secret's out: how to make any blog appear to be one of the most popular on the Internet, even if it only averages half-a-dozen visits a day (assuming there's no visitor counter like the one on the right).
Just after each posting, leave a comment underneath saying how brilliant it is. Something along the lines of “Fantastic: particularly the headlines with puns in them!”, or possibly "A must read - absolutely fascinating. 5 Stars!!" will do. Then go comment on every other blog you can find and write that they are boring, and perhaps written by morons/idiots/lunatics/etc.

This, according to a BBC news report (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8641515.stm), is approximately the strategy employed by the historian Orlando Figes (a professor at London's Birkbeck College and the author of many books on Russian history) to boost his ratings. Apparently he's been leaving comments like "hard to follow" and "awful" under the Amazon entries of the printed works of rivals, and oozing praise about his own efforts. Unfortunately, there were Baldrickesque flaws in his cunning plan, as not only did he use the ill-disguised pseudonym “orlando-birkbeck”, Rachel Polonsky - one of the authors rubbished by Figes - discovered that the reviewer shared the same home address as the good professor. Oops!

Figes said he was "ashamed" of his behaviour and did not entirely understand why he acted as he did, adding that "it was stupid".
No arguments here!