the corner office

We went to the Isle of Wight. It was Beautiful. We stayed in an old cottage a few hundred yards from the sea, and saw lots of wonderful sights and got to walk on sand beaches and pebble beaches and drove all over the island and sometimes just sat and stared out at the Atlantic.

The only things which could have made the holiday better would have been a good old storm or two (as it was, not a drop of rain the entire time we were there), and if the holiday had lasted another week or two.

I'm getting too old for late nights. One of my subjects is a project course, which boils down to skooling me research techniques and how to do mathematical typesetting. The typesetting is quite a useful thing to learn but the research techniques I've done enough of in the past, thank you. That isn't helped by the fact that maths-heavy journal articles are by no means the sorts of things you can just read through and grok first time round. At least I can't.

I've just submitted one assignment now, have another one which has been half-done for ages and is nearly 3 months late, which is a personal best/worst for me. Still need to research and write 10 pages of mathematical waffle to that. Then the final assignment due in a month, that's 20 pages more of mathematical waffle.

Too much waffle, but gotta do it. But not tonight, time to sleep.

Some of the Tory pro-democracy, pro-transparency, devolved-power efforts this article talks about almost make me like them.

I predict, however, that their zeal for reform will be tempered when (if) they come to power next year. Reducing government power is always a great idea when your party has been out in the cold for a decade, but it may seem less so once you're savouring the sweet taste of being in charge for a change. I'd be happy to be wrong, though.

I briefly had an F-word in last night's post, then edited it out. The sentence sounded better with the word in it, and I'd have had no compunction in saying it that way in person. But for some reason I'm starting to feel guilty about cussing on my blog.

Probably parenthood. I could get philosophical about it, but instead I'll get back to my studies.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that South Africans are more outraged because some bloke was granted asylum in Canada than they are about the hijackings and murders that drove him to apply for asylum in the first place.

Personally, I don't believe that white people are more endangered in South Africa than black people, but that's actually COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. From the perspective of South Africans of all colour, consider: possibly racist Canadians? Little problem. One of the highest murder rates in the world? Big problem.

End of story.

Our current recession might be bad, but we're nowhere near the Great Depression (yet), as this chart (original plus commentary) illustrates:

Media need bad news to make money, and politicians need problems to justify their jobs.

The Telegraph: Crumbs: half of Britons injured by their biscuits on coffee break, survey reveals (via)

Imagine Health and Safety stepping in... or maybe, better not to.

... cycling behind a woman in jeans and platform heels on a mountain bike, and not being able to keep up with her. Then catching up to her at a traffic light and realising she hasn't even broken a sweat.

On the up side, I racked up a pretty good time on an all-the-way-home ride tonight.

BBC:

Bankers' bonuses should be deferred in order to reward long-term success not short-term risk-taking, G20 ministers propose.

Politicians' plans to spend everyone else's money should be deferred in order to reward long-term success not short-term pre-election risk-taking, I propose.

Aside: Right or wrong, banks pay bonuses for a reason, and will carry doing so, one way or another, no matter what legislation is in place, as long as they perceive the return to be worth it. The problem isn't that banks are paying big bonuses that reward risk-taking, it's that from banks' perspectives, there are no risks. They're insured against failure by the taxpayer. If governments want banks to stop taking risks, they should let the risk-taking stupid banks fail.

The week:

• more cycling, including another all-the-way-home ride (sore), as well as my first cycling-in-the-rain experience (unpleasant)

• finished reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I had my head up my arse in the 90s when HP was first all the rage, and never read the books. I loved the movies (those I've seen), and finally started reading the books earlier this year. Unputdownable. It's not often these days that I'll run a bath and stay in there until I've finished a book.

• bonus time is over at work, meaning the annual flurry of farewell lunches and drinks recently. My poor liver.

• not so good on the study front this week. I blame cycling and Harry Potter and farewell drinks.