At the University of East Anglia we have Wellbeing Week.
Today, the main restaurant Zest appeared to cancel the roast dinner it normally provides on a Wednesday, providing "healthier" alternatives like rice, chicken, new potatoes etc.
Now, since when was a roast dinner unhealthy, and burger and chips (which it had on offer yesterday, as is normal for Tuesdays) healthy?
Having scanned through various motoring threads I regularly see the term "comfortable" bandied about. Of course, while it's being used with reference to the comfort of travelling in a car, it can equally apply to a train, bus or boat journey.
When it comes to the actual seating and space, I have no arguments with the traditional definition. The more pleasant to sit in, and the more spacious, the more comfortable.
But it's in ride quality where my definition of "comfort" seems to be disti
We often hear southerners talking about how the correct way to say words with "ath" is the "ar" sound, rather than the "a" sound that's common up north. E.g. barth, carstle, grarss. But is it really the correct way? The South East biased media think so, but these links suggest otherwise:
[url="http://lairdofglencairn.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!FA29A59CC6777652!3323.entry"]http://lairdofglencairn.spaces.live.com/Bl...!3323.entry[/url]
[url="http://digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=837
In the current climate of negativity, I think it's worth noting that while a lot of negative things are happening and we should do something about them, there are also some very positive things happening.
1. More recognition of environmental issues. I have to admit, I don't like the current orthodoxy of "pleasurable things are non-essential, work is essential", resulting in a risk of a general "cutting-down" causing decline of recreation and an even more work-oriented society, but at leas
My view on the rising petrol costs is that if current trends continue, regrettably, we may miss a good opportunity.
At the moment, a lot of people feel they "have" to drive (especially for work) primarily because there is no decent alternative. Provide a decent alternative, and many (not all, but many) of them will use it. There are also many instances of people driving around the corner just for "convenience" when they wouldn't really lose anything if they just walked or cycled. School ru
I've had some discussions over on the environmnental thread where I argued for reducing the extent to which our society revolves around money and economics, but didn't qualify it particularly well (it may have sounded to some like I was arguing for abolishing capitalism, which is a common agenda among some environmental circles). I do think that in moderation, capitalism is a very good thing. But the problem at the moment is that most policymakers tend to consider only the economic perspectiv
I see a lot of posts, particularly in the Model Discussion, about "settled" weather. But what, specifically, is "settled" weather about? In my experience it means different things to different people- and most people's definitions don't entirely match the dictionary definition. Most of us, when we think of prolonged settled spells, imagine those weeks on end of clear blue skies, heat, absence of rain, and sunshine, like in the famous hot dry sunny summers, or the Mediterranean summers. But so
May Bank Holiday- and plenty of sunshine, if a bit windy. I'm coming up to having a meeting shortly with my PhD supervisor about the last batch of work I've been doing and the set of results I have, so hopefully some advances in the PhD soon! A bit of a drab Sunday/Monday coming up weatherwise, but there's nowt that we can do about it- it's the weather after all, and it does as it pleases. Some places do need the rain but I'd much prefer it if the rain moved through quickly and/or fell as thun
Okay, after a few rants, I thought it was worth redressing the balance with updates on my own life. PhD still continuing at a steady rate, while in the meantime I had another reunion with old schoolfriends back in March- a very satisfying experience. Then I enjoyed the storms and convection during the first half of April (I forgot to upload my subsequent photos of cumulonimbus cells and lightning- will do soon). I like to pop down to the Grad Bar on some evenings and get a game of pool in- the
We learn from an early age that life isn't fair, but learn to accept it, cope with it and be pleased that there are people out there who are much worse off than we are. But few ask the question, why isn't life fair? Life isn't fair partly because of random chance, unplanned events, or 'fate' or 'God' if you believe in that sort of thing, things that generally can't be helped, though their ill-effects can often be helped. However, a large proportion of unfairness is caused by human behaviour-
So onto another topic where I have issues, the entitlement to have opinions. The main issue I have with letting people have their opinions, is that there's a line between letting them have opinions, and letting them force their opinions down everyone else's throats. It's like the question of how much a tolerant society should tolerate intolerance- if there's no onus on the intolerant to let people have their opinions, on the grounds that they're entitled to the opinion that nobody should be all
So, onto another of my pet rants, the idea that we should be of a two-season persuasion, one being "winter mode" where we're interested only in cold and snow, and another being "summer mode" where we're only interested in heat, sunshine and thunderstorms. So once a certain time arrives in spring, you're supposed to "move on" from "winter mode" to "summer mode", and if you show any desire for cold/snow, you are clinging onto the past instead of moving on. I've never agreed with the idea that mov
One popular misconception that's ingrained in our society is the idea that productivity is a linear function of working hours. Even at a scholarly level, it was generally assumed that the more hours you revised, the better your exam result. There was even a maths module where they stated "A person's performance in a piano exam can be expressed as y=mx where x is the number of hours per week the person practiced for, and y is the exam performance..." The problem with the "productivity = workin
Here's one topic that often gets up my backside, in particular the way we only ever hear one side of the argument ("piracy is killing our industries") and rather poor counterarguments from downloaders which can generally be refuted in two seconds flat. There is a middle ground to be charted, and as is my nature, I'm one of those to chart it. It's far from clear that copying in moderation actually erodes sales (such as the "casual copying" that dominated in the 1990s, when people made copies fo
Jan '84 was an exceptionally snowy month from the Midlands northwards, but quite mild with relatively little snow south of the Midlands. Certainly an interesting-sounding month. But I think January 1958 was even more interesting. It began with a rather chilly NE'ly: http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/19...00119580102.gif Then the Atlantic came pouring in for about ten days, with some cooler NW'lys interspersed with mild SW'lys and some rough winds: http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/
I've been singing Facebook's praises over the last few months, as it's enabled me to get back in touch with a large assortment of people, some of whom I thought I'd never get in touch with again. But it's not all roses. Some idiots have been spamming the site recently, so they've brought in anti-spam filters. Which is all very well, but some of the spam filtering is punishing a lot of responsible behaviour. I got warned last night, presumably for one of the following: 1. Posting twice on som
There's been a lot of discussion on Net-Weather about a supposed downturn in society in the past 50 years, and it's often suggested that it stems from it being more acceptable to be 'different'. I'm afraid I can't agree. I don't have a problem with condemning 'difference' if there's an independent reason as to why it's unacceptable (e.g. it's socially unacceptable to drive on the wrong side of the road because you're likely to cause accidents). But some behaviour is condemned purely because i
It's been ages since I last updated the blog- so I will dutifully make amends! I had a pretty successful end to 2007, with getting the PhD underway, and getting back in touch with a large number of old schoolfriends through that notorious social networking site Facebook (a subject of heated debate at times on this forum). I even met up with some of them on 29 December, which considering that I was hardly in touch with anybody four months beforehand, was pretty amazing. Getting back into the sw
I arrived on Saturday to UEA, and have been getting to grips with the campus. With being here for Fresher's Week I can get my bearings for a week before the PhD work starts on 1st October. I'm going to see what sort of societies are about tomorrow. Of course I'm going to need to do plenty of work for the PhD, but hopefully I should be able to fit work and social events around each other so I can both get the work done to the best of my ability, and have a good social life (which I managed to d
Going off to Norwich in two days, and the apprehension increases; it's very much delving into the unknown. I don't know how much different doing a PhD will be to doing the research part of my MRes; hopefully the two will be quite similar, because if they are, it should be a very rewarding three years ahead. Some will remember that I had some friendship issues some years ago. Most people seem to follow an unwritten rule that all conflicts involving friendships are the friend's fault and that yo
One week further on, and somewhat surprisingly, I finished the Doom 3 level episode- today! The penultimate level took three months to create (although I spent a lot of that time doing things other than level editing), then the last level took just one week. Thus I should even get some tinkering done with the earlier levels before I go to Norwich. Otherwise have enjoyed two nice sunny days, after the persistent cloud cover of the past week. Yesterday had a nice meal at an Italian restaurant an
The 8-week period before starting the PhD is down to 5 weeks- trying to make the most of what I'm up to now, while part of me is looking forward to the PhD and another part is apprehensive. Been continuing with the level episode I'm doing for Doom 3, with only one level (a short level as well) to go, I hope to finish that last level before I start my PhD as I'm aware I won't be spending as much time on level editing once the PhD gets underway! It will most likely be a 'beta' product, for as mos
At the moment, I am a week and a half into an 8-week break at home, before I go to University (again!) to do the PhD. It's both exciting and apprehension-inviting at the same time- I don't know what it will be like! However, since I'm going to be researching into the realms of meteorological statistics, the work is bound to be interesting regardless. Other than that, relaxing. It's been a relaxing year out, but at the same time, I've been finding that with regards 'work-life balance', it's po
I am preparing for my holiday in France with my parents, should be going away tomorrow and coming back on Monday 23 July. The region in question is near the Massif Central, more or less in central France, though will be spending the two weeks of the holiday in slightly different places. Most likely I will be spending much of the holiday lazing around, playing table tennis etc, consuming crusty French-stick bread and ice-creams. My holidays in France in the last three years were all very enjoy
I am away in France from 5 to 23 July- starting to prepare for that. In the meantime, I've been busy uploading my weather records into the internet; finally finished doing so yesterday, so that's that done! Meanwhile, this month looks set to break all kinds of weather records for the wrong reasons (e.g. record flooding, June locally in the northeast, the dullest of any month since Feb/Mar 2006!) I expect to be updating my website with monthly data not long after the turn of each month, rather
