The most unwelcome of cuts

News here in Leicestershire (where I'm preparing a critical thinking workshop) describes how the USA is helping out the locals with some cuts that President Obama definitely didn't have in mind during yesterday's telephone conversation with our Prime Minister.

Claiming that it's part of a programme to prevent children being born into dysfunctional families or with addictions, an American charity called Project Prevention has "bribed" a 38-year-old drug addict to have a vasectomy. Now I don't particularly object to the trans-atlantic acquisition of our football clubs, the dictation of our foreign policy or the subjugation of our youth culture with their own, but getting involved with which Britons should (or shouldn't) give birth?
That's surely something we're capable of doing all on our own!

So the pot said to the kettle : the sequel!

Local news here in Yorkshire is that Graham Taylor, the author of "the most frightening children's book ever written", claims that he's having to keep the details of a nationwide school tour secret for fear of lobbying from Evangelical Christians after Christian Voice chairman Stephen Green was quoted as saying "Shame on any head teacher who invites GP Taylor into their school with this book", adding that, "To promote gore, bloodlust and thoughts of death as being healthy topics for the minds of innocent children is bizarre."

Doesn't sound to me like the "voice for Biblical values" has bothered to ever actually read the Old Testament part of the book he's supposedly basing those values on...

You are what you eat (allegedly)

I'm now in a Telford hotel room, just a few miles from where the local BBC news has reported that a special "God's Acre" service has recently been carried out on the grave of Richard Munslow, the last known sin-eater in England, at St Margaret's Church, Ratlinghope.

The Reverend Norman Morris explained that "It [Sin-eating] was a very odd practice and would not have been approved of by the church, but I suspect the vicar often turned a blind eye".

The BBC report also helpfully explains that sin-eaters were generally poor people who were paid to eat bread and drink beer or wine over a corpse, in the belief they would take on the sins of a person who had died suddenly without confessing their own sins, and so allow the deceased’s soul to go to heaven in peace.

So logically, as a sin-eater wouldn't have been able to acknowledge these unknown sins prior to their own demise, and would therefore always need someone to consume their unconfessed sin collection, isn't it surprising that there were ever any believers unable to see the flaws in it as a career choice?

So the pot said to the kettle ....

Walking across London because of the tube strike, I've just (30 minutes or so ago) been handed a religiously-focussed magazine (Awake) which states in the first 2 sentences of the first article,
"A new group of atheists has arisen in society. Called the new atheists, they are not content to keep their views to themselves."

As the views of the distributor weren't sought either by me, nor anybody else who politely took a copy without first looking to see what it was (I admit to thinking it was one of the free Time Out style supplements & just dropped it into a conference bag), it's got me wondering whether the irony is deliberate, or is the writer subtly advocating some form of theocracy where people like Stephen Hawking are prevented from making assertions like the one last week?

The proof of the pudding is in the (ch)eating..

"This is only an allegation," says Ijaz Butt, chairman of what is surely an utterly discredited Pakistan Cricket Board, adding that, "At this stage there will be no action taken because there is still no charge or proof on that account." Possibly not proof as defined by a criminal law court, but the evidence of cheating described in the News of the World at the weekend is as damning as anything you could ever hope to see.

Unfortunately, according to some of the participants in today's plagiarism workshop, the PCB's lack of decisive action is not unique and draws parallels with the attitude of some senior educational managers who fear legal action if students are penalised by lecturers, moderators and exam boards for collusion, plagiarism and the passing off of other's work as their own prior to some form of "official investigation".

Noting that both the PCB and the International Cricket Council are currently striving to maintain any semblance of credibility with their very public failure to act, surely it's time for Education's default position to be one of trusting the lecturer who identifies malpractice and place the burden of proving innocence on the accused student?

Herd of cows? Of course I've heard of cows...

If today's Food Standards Agency Summary of investigation on cloned animals statement that "no milk ... has entered the food chain" is true, how come all my glasses of milk look exactly the same?

With a reverential nod to 1942's "Ride em Cowboy"
Bud Abbott: No, not heard of cows, that's a cow herd.
Lou Costello: What's a cow heard? I don't care what a cow's heard, I haven't said anything to be ashamed of.

Never mind the quality mark, feel the myth

Sitting on a train on the way home, I've been reading the TES on-line where one of the headline stories is about the Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm (which somewhat coincidently is located near Bristol which is where I've been for a JISC meeting,) controversially receiving the Government-backed Council for Learning Outside the Classroom's “quality badge”, a kitemark developed last year to accredit outdoor activity centres, museums and stately homes as suitable for children's education.

Hopefully the institution's name ought to be a clue for any educators wanting to broaden the mind of their charges, but the presence of an official badge might sway the unwary into inadvertently exposing enquiring minds to religious propaganda presented as fact.

Now leaving aside problems which are presumably issues of faith, such as where did all the water come from and where did it go, or why did Noah leave all the marsupials in Australasia, the likelihood of the story having any actual, and therefore significant, educational basis can be illustrated with simple mathematics.

Ignoring what we actually know to be the highest peaks on earth (Everest, K2, etc) and instead using Mount Ararat as reference point since that's where the biblical story says the ark ended up, we're left with water covering land at an elevation above sea level of to close to 17000 feet (to be precise the elevation of said mountain is 16945 feet). Since the story says it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, that means in each twenty four hour period the water rose an average of 425 feet (17000/40), or to put it in another way, 17' 9" each and every hour all around the world for nearly 6 weeks, not just local to wherever Noah's menagerie was floating around.

That's an awful lot of water in anybody's (good?) book, and if the family who run the zoo want to believe that it really happened and put on a show about it then that's up to them, but handing out an official educational endorsement is surely not something that's going to help anybody involved in the planning of school trips now that we know there's no apparent care taken in deciding which organisations can be trusted to deliver objective supplements to the national curriculum.