hmmm_tea

So spirits can basically be made from any fermentable material, and as a result you can find them made from all sorts of weird and wonderful things. However, this one is a new one on me:

Gilpin Family Whisky (via inhabitat) a spirit produced from the finest diabetic's urine.

Alas, I suspect I shall not be able to make the show that this is being presented at.

In other news LJ has finally taken it's first steps into the 21st century and people can finally comment on here using facebook accounts.

EDIT: Except of course for the minor point that it doesn't actually appear to work. Back to the drawing board LJ.

EDIT 2: Seems to be working now :-)

So the thought that we might have been able to get away from stories of how Blair hates Brown and vice-versa once neither of them were in power anymore seems to have just been wishful thinking.

However, in amongst all that was this interesting little article in the Guardian today:

Girls think they are cleverer than boys from age four, study finds

So, girls may or may not be naturally more intelligent than boys (or vice versa). The chances of the growth of the achievement gap being evolutionary at that speed seems unlikely though, so there must be some other cultural reason for it like this.

We generally have a strange habit of labelling children from an early age, and then being surprised when they fulfil our expectations. The idea of the gender gap being another result of this, seems all to plausible.

For a world where people push for equality, we seem utterly rubbish at actually treating people equally as individuals rather than just filing them in their stereotype box.

It's not quite home, but it's a lot closer than I am now.

The current weather in Trinity Grove, Greenwich (via @pekingspring)

It seems a fairly straightforward setup using a usb weather station from maplin

hmmm_tea does not need a weather station
hmmm_tea does not need a weather station
hmmm_tea needs a weather station...

Here's a couple of interesting pictures.

Firstly, this one contains 32 mistakes:




and this one contains 16 faces (the answers are highlighted in the smaller image on the camera screen):

Here's an old one:

Poll #1612571 The Ultimatum Game
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

You are given $100 and asked to share it with someone else. You can offer that person any amount and if he accepts the offer, you each get to keep your share. If he rejects your offer, you both walk away empty-handed. How much would you offer?

If you were going to be the person the money was offered to, how much would you need to be offered to accept?

( Thoughts )

The Internet is an endless stream of useless information, whatever you want as long as it's utterly pointless it's bound to be on there.

Therefore, this morning when I suddenly found myself in need of a Welsh translation of "My hovercraft is full of eels" (as you do), I had absolutely no doubt that some sad lonely individual would have created a page with various obscure translations including Welsh, and hey presto here's one.

Nice to know the internet is there for a purpose.

So, it's A-level results day today and so the news is filled with the usual stories of people arguing grade inflation. Only this year we get it more so as they've just launched the new A* grades.

It's strange that when you hear political discussions about A-levels the vast majority of the time they seem to be about grades and assessment. Is that really the most important thing about them? Surely that bit is stressful enough for students to go through without labouring the point?

It sometimes seems that if we could figure out a way to just do the assessment bit in a meaningful way without any of the awkward learning stuff, the government would jump upon it at a shot. Just imagine it, we could have vast education factories churning out kids with letters by the hundred and offer them as commodities to the universities. Wouldn't that be great?

Judging by the current portrayal by the media, they're not even worthy of consideration as being a qualification in their own right, but instead are more considered as university entrance exams. We then wonder where the incentive to choose alternative non-academically focused qualifications, which will always generally be looked down by the academic directors of the world no matter how good they are.

Somehow we've managed to develop a further education system based solely around the idea of academic competition, but what's competitive about learning to further your own knowledge and skills?

The A-level system seemed fairly antiquated when I took mine just over 10 years ago (part of the reason I very nearly didn't take them). Although there have been reforms since then, they all seem to have just been cosmetic, the qualifications are still essentially the same. Besides however much you change them, they will always have been better "in our day". How else can we continue to feel superior in the face of improving results?

6 years ago a government working group did come up with a proposal to equal the playing field between vocational and academic qualifications, simplify the system and reduce the amount of formal assessment in education for 14-19 year olds. Alas, we cannot have most of the suggestions as laid out in the Tomlinson report and A-levels look to remain the defacto standard for further education.

There are some ideas you just have to love, like this one:



Giant stalks that wobble in the wind and generate electricity.

Can't imagine they'd be anywhere near as efficient as a conventional windfarm and the whole idea of 55 meter high carbon fiber wheat fields does sound more than a little crazy. We've got to have one!!!

feanelwa recently shared this quiz about consistency of beliefs, which somehow I seem to have mostly made it through ok inspite of generally being all over the place.

Anyway before I get on with failing to accept where they tell me I'm wrong, let's add an extra question to their quiz:

Poll #1606918 Pretentious Philosophers
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3

It is perfectly rational to want to brutally murder pretentious philosophers.

( For those of you that would rather have a go at the quiz first, the rest is below a cut )

However, now I've have my intellectual inferiority pointed out to me, I will have to bow to the superiors and start worshiping Nessie as God.

I think this may be why I generally don't take internet quizzes...