Deaths of famous people

I realise that it's always been one of the principal roles of newspapers and news media to report deaths of famous people but the preoccupation with them does take me by surprise sometimes. Today two of the older ones, in fact the oldest currently, are reported. Henry Allingham who became the world's oldest man at 113 last month has died. The astonishing facts of living in three centuries and serving in the first world war are newsworthy in themselves but it's the manner of his last couple of decades which caught my attention. He still thrived on life.

The other one is one of the US's most well known names and faces. It's a name which defies the habit of being made into an adjective when fame is achieved, Walter Cronkite. So such examples of Brownite, Blairite are avoided. Maybe -esque could be used, Cronkitesque... no don't think so

The wonders of language

I had to read the following phrase twice because the first scan gave me a different meaning from the second longer read

Growth markets in infrastructure, construction and the extractive industries are increasingly in the developing countries

It was the 'ly' at the end of increasing. It changes the sense of the sentence markedly. While neither sense contradicts the other ie both could happen (indeed are likely to), the point the writer wishes to make is different with the actual much more perceptive than the misread one.

I suppose the question is: How much more literate a society are we than a generation ago?

Rank - Picturing the Social order

Well my defence is that I was cornered. I'd been wanting to go to see this exhibition (http://www.ngca.co.uk/exhibs/default.asp?id=147&prnt=18) since I learnt about it on Radio 4 when it was in Leeds. Now with it finishing tomorrow, I had only today as Saturdays are generally pretty difficult. So off I went, justifying by saying that I'll catch up tonight and tomorrow morning and failing that on Sunday

It was worth it, a well structured and varied exposition on class, status and income mainly in the UK. The older pieces were particularly good with some like William Booth's summary of research presented as maps.

Overall and this is probably as much as criticism of all such exhibitions is that I felt way too passive. I need to do something. My second comment is that there is something missing with the implied statistics. A bit more on how the numbers do stack up. How social patterns continue to be replicated. It doesn't take a great deal of insight to realise that each generation's rich and poor are likely to live in the same areas as the previous. There is a huge amount of embodied wealth in environments. Also we live in continuums by and large. We haven't had anything approaching a true disjunction since the Civil war. The last perturbation was the second world war when certain areas were levelled and there was a significant realignment of status and income.

So seeing a cake with segments representing the wealth of the top 1%, next 4%, next 5% etc is never likely to change much (although some of the personnel may) over a relatively short period of 20 years. When a more international perspective was taken then things became more interesting.

I've ordered the book!

two days in a row

OMG! I've made it! 2 days in a row - not that this post is likely to be even as marginally interesting as yesterday's
I've been thinking about numbers. I didn't see myself as being that obsessed by numbers but the other day I was explaining to some colleagues about the new telephone codes that were brought in a few years ago.. OK lots of years ago so they're not new in any sense of the word. Ones like 0113 for Leeds, 0114 for Sheffield and so on. Well I knew them all and judging by the faces of my colleagues they didn't nor did they feel that a grown man should keep such trivia as accessible. I felt like saying.. I do letters as well before launching into an explanation of the new (OK 7 years old ish) car licence plates. You know the ones? C for Wales, L for London etc Well wisdom got the better of me and I kept my counsel.

But I do love numbers and thoroughly enjoyed the fairly famous people saying the same in snippets advertising the BBC programme More or less. People such as Charles Clarke explaining the wonders of the number 28 which is the 2nd perfect number. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/more_or_less/7824130.stm

My current favourite number based phenomenon is the chances of 2 people in a room sharing a birthday is 1 in 2 for a group of 23

Gender and engineering

I've just been to a course production team meeting for a residential school in engineering and very heartening it was too. Plenty of good ideas and overall commitment. One thing which emerged, mainly due to the paperwork that we have to complete, is the degree that we need to consider diversity. While TXR174 has a much better gender balance than many other technology courses, it is likely that TXR120 will suffer in comparison. This means that we need to make a big effort to redress this.

The issue is about accessibility and the perception of accessibility. It could be argued, probably convincingly, that including the word engineering in the title is a mistake!

I think I need to arrange at least half a day workshop where we can review our work to check that we are doing what we can to avoid rebuffing women.

Dust trails

I think I'm stumbling toward identifying a paradox which might explain why a lot of journalism is crass. As someone who takes a bit of pride in an orderly household that is clean but not pristine I've often wondered about dirt or its slightly more palatable cousin, dust. Most people only notice dust; they don't register absence of dust. This means you rarely get endorsement or compliments for cleanliness, you simply don't get criticism for slovenliness. Similiarly, When something runs well, you don't notice. You notice things when they go wrong. This means that we don't register when things run smoothly what the process is. So some things could be running well and some things badly but we are not affected by them. We don't scrutinise the OK. Maybe we should be celebrating the ordinary. So many things appear to work well, maybe that is just luck. For example, how many people have any idea of the number of miles that a long distance train does in a year and how that compares to other forms of terrestial transport. Trains do of the order of a quarter of a millon miles a year. Let's celebrate that

Serendipity

help! maybe it's as I get older those links between events and personal knowledge just get more and more complex. I think it's called serendipity but it's becoming so prevalent for me. Take saturday's example: I'm listening to Fi Glover on BBC radio 4's morning programme. She's interviewing the novelist Harlen Coben (?) on his inheritance tracks. He's a bit younger than me but still chooses Bruce Springsteen's Jungleland from the Born to Run album. His justification fits entirely with the slot's aims: sentimental, consistent and interesting.

I turn the page of the local paper, the Newcastle Journal and staring out of the page is a photo of a old school friend, Jon. I remember in an instant the first time I heard Jungleland. In Jon's front room!