BBC Radio 4, poking a bit of fun at itself. Very nicely done.
How The Archers sounds to people who do not listen to The Archers
(This will probably be completely meaningless to anyone who hasn’t spent significant amounts of time in the UK in the last 60 years. Of course, The Archers does include some important news stories occasionally…)
Many thanks to Tom Standage for the link.
We’ve escaped to the Lake District for a few days, and, as we turned off the main road and came down the side of Ullswater, we got the sudden urge to be on it instead of beside it, so we rented a small boat from the very nice people at the Glenridding Sailing Centre. I think it was just about the first one they’d rented this season.
Tilly has limited experience of boats, and wasn’t too sure what to make of it, but quickly settled down. I haven’t sailed much in a long time, but spent many happy days in my childhood doing this. Very nostalgic.
The Inn on the Lake at Glenridding caught the sunlight nicely at one point.
And when I got distracted by the view, Tilly would keep a close eye on the set of my sails.
Click images for larger versions.
In the old days, I had to wind my watch up each night, and every couple of months do a little fiddling to make sure the date indicator was current.
Today, I have to charge my watch up each night, and every couple of months do a little fiddling to make sure the firmware is current.
…plus c’est la même chose.
Thanks to Jon Green for this:
I find these pictures, by Pawel Nolbert, intriguing – a blend of very analogue-like textures doing very digital-like things. Click the images for more examples of his work.
Claire Underwood, the wife of the president in the splendid new House of Cards, expresses distress that a prisoner she was trying to help had hung himself in his cell.
Except, of course, he didn’t. He hanged himself.
Meat is hung. Pictures are hung. People, however, are hanged, at least when it’s in the sense of ‘put to death by hanging’.
There. It’s good to get that off my chest. Thank you for listening.
Two things I can’t remember:
Just how many weeks and months I spent, as a child, learning handwriting.
When (beyond inscribing a simple signature and a date) I last needed that skill.
Mmm.
I like this analogue solution for storing sketches and other notes, designed by Kirsten Camara… but I fear it might turn into more of an oubliette! The blueprints are available under a Creative Commons licence if you want to build one, though; more information at Colossal.
A Telegraph piece by Rhodri Marsden about Bluetooth-enabled devices. Excerpt:
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but there seems to be a race to reinvent everyday objects, connect them to each other wirelessly, then make a promotional video with a ukulele, glockenspiel and handclap soundtrack. We then willingly hand over our money.
Nice. He goes on to discuss devices which talk to your phone, and alert you when you leave them behind.
I like this concept, but at present the likelihood that the phone app is still running on my phone, and that the Bluetooth connection hasn’t failed (due to whatever mysterious movement of the planets causes Bluetooth connections to fail), is exceedingly small, even when set against my notoriously unreliable memory.
No doubt this balance will shift, on both sides, as the years roll by…
Spotted online. Good old New Yorker.
Spotted in Linton yesterday.
This chart appeared in a recent Economist blog post – I think it’s nicely done. It’s based on a study of U.S. university graduates, and the amount they earn over an extended period. The X-axis is a measure of the quality of the institution: roughly speaking, how easy it is to gain admission.
This shows some interesting things – at first glance. First, that Engineers, Computer Scientists and Mathematicians earn more than other fields, which seems only right and natural to me – and second, that the institution at which you study makes very little difference to your final earnings, which seems a bit less plausible.
But then I read the article more carefully. What this is actually plotting on the Y axis is the rate of return on your investment in the degree. If you had put the cost of your education into a savings account and left it for 20 years, what would the equivalent interest rate be? A rather mercenary way of thinking about education, perhaps, but intriguing nonetheless. If you’re studying business, maths or sciences, it’s an exceedingly good investment. If you prefer an arts subject, then you should – and probably will – find other ways of assessing the value of your education.
Now, in the States, a degree at Harvard, MIT or Stanford will cost you much more than one at Fred Bloggs College, and you will earn correspondingly more as a result of graduating, to the extent that the annualised return is roughly equivalent.
But it would be fascinating to see the same analysis done at British universities, where, for local and EU students at least, the tuition rates are capped and are the same at most institutions. (British students whining about their fees at our top universities should remember that they could easily be paying three times as much in America.) So I imagine the returns here would be rather higher, and the slope rather more pronounced.
© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser
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