VinnieK

I don't know about bloody mindedness. Most scientists focus on one small idea simply out of necessity: the age of individuals coming out with bold, broad theories is largely over, for the time being at least. There are limits on what one person can do or say, and science today is far more technical, and far less intellectual than perhaps previously was the case, being a much more collaborative, labour intensive, and, dare I say it, boring endeavour. Take the search for the Higgs boson, one of the biggest recent scientific stories. A nifty idea, yes, but all the fun, imaginative and clever theorizing was done back in the 60's. What's happening at CERN is basically a very grand take on tedious hypothesis testing involving smashing crap together and seeing what happens. All that effort and time spent trying to validate someone else's idea, only to watch them being lauded as a visionary for ever more whilst your fame rapidly diminishes to that of the average lab monkey keener. Anyway, a lot of people get into science filled with enthusiasm only to then realise that their field is so cluttered and that so much is already known that they're basically going to be spending their lives studying things like 'the Saville ramified p-correspondance of bleb factors in a three point pseudo-Eric/Ernie system'. No sane individual wants that as their lot in life, but by then it's far too late: they're already overeducated and underskilled to the point of being unemployable. By then, the system has them. So, to get back on track, what you see as the similarities between professors and hobos isn't bloody mindedness*, it's a shared abandonment of hope tinged with bitterness at the realization of just how futile one's life is . Walk down a department hallway late in the evening, all you'll hear is quiet sobbing and cries from the more thoughtful members of staff consisting of 'why couldn't I be something useful and interesting, like a hatstand or someone who designs fliers for underground dubstep nights'. *Also, I'm not entirely sure people sleep rough out of sheer bloody mindedness...

His level of PR houndarey is nowhere Karren and Henderson's. A former employee of the Chief Secretary's office once told me that the process for drafting laws on the Island was: See what the Scottish Government used Failing that, see what the UK Government used Then of course CoMin will wave it through. Ha! I like the story, even if I have a chill feeling that it's not even that much of an exaggeration. Agreed on Karran by the way, but is Henderson really that deliberate? I always thought he could just be a bit of a ranting nutter at times, on which basis he just happened to get in the papers rather than actively aiming for it. Perhaps I was being naive, but I don't like this tale of super Hendo: political operator. I'd just assumed his 'episodes' were the consequence of a perpetual sulk at getting the sack.

I do think Cannan's a little underrated, though at times he doesn't help himself. I can understand Robertshaw being so favoured since he's riding on a wave of good faith and hasn't had that long in the Keys so far. Not sure about Watterson's position though. He's a fair backbencher, but not that good. Having said that, he is one of the biggest PR hounds outside of CoMin, verging on political stuntman at times: the alternatve restructuring of government was so much cobblers, and if I remember correctly the Breastfeeding bill appeared to be in large part lifted straight from the Scottish law (fine amounts included) rather than thought through, but both were good at generating copy. I suppose we should be cautious in how we read this though: last year Quayle was one of if not the most unpopular MHKs and he still got voted back in.

Was there a particular influx of votes on the final day? It might be as simple as a sudden rush of people who've been putting off answering coming in at the last moment. Also, how many people voted in total? Going from a slight positive rating to around -2% doesn't sound like too dramatic a swing for a small sample. I think it's fair to say that Gawne's image has suffered over the past couple of years: Being in the DoI (or formerly the DoT) is always going to have an effect, being one of those departments everyone loves to hate. Some people haven't forgotten how he conducted himself during the RHA, some will have been a little alienated by the more ardent tone his nationalism has taken, he's now (fairly or not) linked with Richmond Hill and Bulrhenny's car park, and so on and so forth. EDITED TO ADD: Thanks for doing this, by the way!

Saw this a while back, they're superb. Have you seen their "Bags of glue"? Aye. A Song for Willie O'Dea and I Wanna Fight Your Father are currently on repeat play as well. Some of the Republic of Telly Shorts are pretty good as well (partly because it reminds me of what TV used to be like here before things went all shitey)

Bringing me joy at the moment: Rubberbandits, Horse Outside (not even remotely work safe)

Was it? The Island's Human Rights only came into power in 2006, and European and UK human Rights only go as far as to say that prisoners cannot be denied contact with their families, they say nothing about where they can and can't be located. Specifically: "There is no right to be located close to home" (bottom of the page).

If it were possible to detect, it wouldn't be left to aspiring scientists That would be the domain of whichever crusty old duffer past his best that they put in charge of the whole shebang, whilst the aspiring scientists made the coffee/did the work and resigned themselves to being forever forgotten in the 'et al' bit of the citations after the principal investigators' names.

Just a thought: astronomy tends to be a bit of a poor relation amongst the physics based disciplines when it comes to funding: it gets very little private funding and is often in the front line of cuts in public funding. This is exacerbated by the current situation where applications for research grants now have to include an 'impact' assessment whereby the researcher has to estimate the economic or social impact of their research will have over a certain period of time, which typically biases the process against pure or basic science like Astronomy. The one ace up Astonomy's sleeve is that of all science it's particularly accessible and captures the imagination of the public like no other, so I wouldn't be surprised if this were partly down to a bit of a PR campaign on behalf of the discipline in the hope it'll strengthen their case with the research councils and the government.

Mathematica can be absolutely terrifying, both in price and execution, so fair play if you go that route! It's not my field, but I wouldn't be surprised if Mathematica is the best and most versatile and complete application for this kind of work, but it might be worth looking at Maple and MatLab as possible alternatives (the latter of which I know has applications specifically for Astronomy) - searching for Maple + astronomy and Matlab + astronomy certainly seems to yield a lot of results (though I can't say how applicable they are to the hobbyist)

That was me exploring my feminine side. Turns out my feminine side is scary and upsetting, so I've decided to try and burn it out by going on a diet of drawing pins and battery acid. Stay tuned for regular updates on my exciting journey through the world of mentalism and bizarre self harm.

was he the same bloke who previously used to collect glasses in Bushys ? Could have been, though I don't remember so it might have been a little before my time. He used to wear a tweed jacket and flat cap, fairly short - unkindly referred to as Father Jack now and again.

So the rumour went! As it turns out, I think he did have film in it at least some of the time - I'm sure I remember my mum telling me that one day he turned up in one of the pubs showing people the photos he'd just had developed. Edited to add: Also, the aul' fella who used to hang around the Tardis (Lionel?) and was sometimes subjected to people sticking Bushy's stickers on his hat and/or jacket.

If it wasn't, you'd be speaking German, Italian or Arabic by now - or even English instead of bullshit. Take that, LDV! Of course, the "You'd be wearing lederhosen" argument in favour of heart-on-sleeve blimpy nationalism goes a bit limp when you start thinking about what provided the impetuous for Germany to initiate the Second World War in the first place, but we don't need to talk about that right now...

It had a pretty good run for a thread derail though! It's a facebook group. Those places are to idiots what a lightbulb is to moths, rapidly accumulating all manner of annoying, demented creatures flapping and fluttering around the place with seemingly little purpose.

Aye, and unfortunately it's that boring 60's architecture that makes it look like a small mid 70's industrial estate (rather than elevated concrete walkways and stairs to nowhere). Still sounds like my kind of place though. Nicely done, sir! I'm ashamed at how long it took me to get that.

You didn't! Yeah, but I'm awesome. Everyone knows that. Well technically, on this matter you'd be the upstarts I agree that UCLAN is a rubbish name though. They should have just called it 'The University' - it has a nice authorative yet mysterious quality about it. Just out of interest, in what sense is Lancaster a suicide factory? As in it's horribly dull and depressing, or there are actually a lot of suicides there (possibly due to it being dull and depressing)?

That's actually often still the case. Usually there's only a couple of grand in it, but certainly there's still something of a disparity. To be fair though, the teaching workload and pastoral duties at new universities was and is in many cases heavier than for research intensive institutions. Plus, it has to be said that a number are catching up or have caught up with the older universities. Portsmouth, for instance has a cracking little applied maths department, easily the equal of or better than some of its longer established competitors, and from what I hear Oxford Brookes have very good History and Architecture courses.

No, though it's not unreasonable to think that they would on an online forum. I can understand why they changed the name though. There was and there still is horrendous snobbery when it comes to the term 'Polytechnic', despite a lot of the former polytechnics doing very well for themselves.

Come off it. UCL = University College London. You know it, I know it, isolated tribesmen located in the depths of the Amazon probably know it. Nope, but I do know a walter mitty story when I hear it, and let's remember that you started this off stating that an engineering degree had been closed due to a lack of people, which is pretty noteworthy. Only when pressed for details does this become a highly specialized masters degree (the closure of which being slightly less noteworthy). Fair enough, you want to make a point, but as with the fiasco that was the discussion about chemistry, don't just make up stuff and massage the details and hope it'll fly.

Or you're just behind the times . What was it called previously?

UCL don't offer anything combined with motor sport engineering, I think you mean UCLAN, which does, and which was the university you specified on a previous thread. UCL by contrast do offer mechanical engineering, Glasgow offers mechanical design engineering (including the use of CAD), as does Manchester. Leeds offers an MSc in Advanced Mechanical Engineering with the emphasis on design and computational methods, and I suspect there is a similar story across the board. I'm feel a little guilty calling you out on this, but, given what you said the last time this issue came up I can't help but feel that you've either been misled, or are missing out a hell of a lot of the details and distorting the situation a little when railing against 'micky mouse' degrees. The last time this was discussed three of the most glaring errors you made were: UCLAN was the only university to offer a single honours degree in Chemistry (false); That in order to study Chemistry, your son had to study a microbiology course at Leeds before transferring onto the course at UCLAN because nowhere else offered Chemistry (in fact Leeds itself had and still has a perfectly good single honours degree in Chemistry); That in the next year (2009 in this case), only UCLAN would be offering a Chemistry degree not in conjunction with another subject (again, false.), stating that this was due to undersubscription (despite the fact that Bristol, for instance, had an appication to place ratio of ten to one). So I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a little sceptical.