Books that make you dumb

One of the things I love most about the web is that if you have a wacky idea it is so easy to get it out there to a potentially huge audience. If it is particularly cool then you will ratchet up the numbers on bookmark sharing sites and maybe even hit the heights of geek cool and get a story on slashdot.
The subgenre I like most is amusing and interesting ways of supplying information, ether useful or facile, in a graphical manner. Today I found these:
Booksthatmakeyoudumb which uses facebook data on book preferences, linked through college attendance to average SAT scores. Given one of the data sources, I wouldn't cite this in any serious way but it is quite amusing, especially given the book that makes it to No.1.
Data Mining in Politics which uses more robust data (the voting patterns of Congress).
Yesterday's gems were the mySociety travel-time maps which I hop can eventually be rolled out for much of the rest of the country and the Telegraph's dynamic political map.

P.S. For a look at similar things down the ages, take a look at strange maps

Ten years is a long time in...

We are in the first few days of a shiny new year so naturally all of the media, both old and new, people are looking at what anniversaries fall this year, in technology ten years ago the iMac was released, Compaq bought DEC oh and a little company called Google, was incorporated.
In the UK one of the most significant and subsequently maligned pieces of legislation was introduced, the Human Rights Act (and the companion clauses in the Scotland Act) on the face of it just brought the rights that we already had into play earlier in the judicial process, but it provided for so much more, mainly an easy target for the right to throw stones at. It also of course brought about the final formal abolishing of the death penalty.
Over in America the floodgates for the sort of citizen journalism, that a fair proportion of those of you with blogs, practice were opened by Matt Drudge. He broke a story about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and probably more importantly he broke that Newsweek were sitting on it.

Survey

I have been having a play with Survey Monkey. Please can you take the time to answer 10 questions in my Quick survey about your voting preferences and issues. As John Snow might say "Its just a bit of fun."

Odds and ends

I have had this post by Ben Goldacre open for some time while I tried to think of a story to write around it, I am giving up on that and have decided to just post the link and a thought.
I really respect Ben's writing on Bad Science and there are some very good points in here and I agree with almost all of it, my one quibble is with point one, lots of places have fostered a great community with actual proper conversations in the linear comments of a news site/blog, check out Radio 4's PM, so I don't think that At best your discussions might work with threaded comments, or with peer voting is right I think in those places there is a sense of community it will make life a heck of a lot easier, in those places where there isn't one or two will develop and on the news sites and blogs where the comments make me think the Daily Mail is a reasoned piece of journalism and the Daily Express is more than a two story pony no amount of change will help.

Since even before I was a teenager I helped out at a variety of playschemes for children with a wide variety of needs, from those with a wide variety of physical impairments to those with milder problems such as Hyperactivity. So I know that the research reported on yesterday will come as no surprise to anyone, we always when shopping for the refreshments looked for the magic flashes on the bottle of squash (all rare in the 80s) "additive free" or "no artificial colours" and when we couldn't find those look through the ingredients list to see which E numbers were in the drink. Even before I read the article the demonic inscription E110 floated into my mind and the cold certain knowledge that giving even weak orange squash with that in the Hyperactive kids would be causing mayhem.

Sorry for the interruption

Sorry for the interruption, it isn't as you might imagine the switch to using Blogger, that was exceptionally easy, with the possible exception of getting the "Edit colour hex code" box to work. It wouldn't but given that within certain tempting constructs you can directly edit most of the html and all of the css the whole thing was beaten into submission.

No after the aftermath of the play, the power cuts brought on by the floods and most immediately a stinking cold, kind of crimped my style.
So going to try and get the energy back into sorting the house, various other projects and most relevantly here, this blog.

First up, I am going through the new government's new green paper on The Governance of Britain, I was going to start with a summarising post and then follow with a commentary, I apologise in advance for what you are going to get which is a stream of conciousness mix of both.

I am a third of the way through so I suppose I might get it done by the end of the weekend, depending on how much fun I end up having and if the rain lets up enough for me to "get stuff done"^TM on Saturday.

Play week

I have finally finished the play blog stuff I have been working on over the week.

Sunday

The get-in
This is where we go into the theatre, build the set, focus the lights and get everything ready for the play. The drama studio "stage" is actually flat to the floor all the way back to a raised area at the back called the baptistry (it is after all a converted church), so in order to have an area higher things are built up with rostra and to create walls, large wooden frames with canvas stretched over know as flats are erected. Both the rostra and the flats need painting and you need to do this without getting in the way of the scaffolding tower being used by the lighting team or getting any paint on the floor. Those of you who have been to lots of productions at the drama studio will have noticed that we no longer paint the floor, it has to remain the specialist black surface it is now. We got round this for Pride and Prejudice by nailing down hardboard with the chess board pattern on.

Monday

Technical Rehearsal
Often one or two people get there earlier to fit up bits of kit that didn't get done the day before. Then we run through the play, not for once, for acting, but to ensure that lighting, entrances, sound queues, scene changes, costumes etc, ad nauseum, work. This is the most frustrating session for everyone, the actors have to stand around or skip parts of their scenes, the techies, no matter how good they are will be too early or too late on cues, the stage crew will find that the changes as written don't work and the director is just getting wound up.

Tuesday

Dress Rehearsal
Everyone says that the dress should be run as if it is a real performance, but personally I can never get quite into that frame of mind, the sheer terror doesn't quite hit. However in all other respects it is a real show and unless things go utterly fubar it shouldn't stop and it is the point where the doctrine that you are on your own really digs in. The company runs without a prompt, it is up to everyone to do their best to dig a friend out of a hole if the forget a line, miss a queue or get stuck in a loop. One of the hardest things to change is binning the "sorries" that pepper rehearsals.

Wednesday

Opening night
OMFG what the bloody hell am I doing here? I get huge stage fright, I can however feed off it and it is what drives my performances, I don't think I would manage to get the performances I can without it. Pride and Prejudice was a bit easier in this respect as I wasn't on stage until scene 8 and before then was doing scene changes and the occasional piece of foley work. Traditionally the first night audience is a little quiet and doesn't laugh quite as much as the cast would like. I will admit I do encourage some of my friends to come along on the Wednesday and get the jokes, especially the geeky or filthy ones ;-)

Thursday

Day two in the Bennet House, Lizzy is called to the diary room
After the utter terror of the first night, the second night is a welcome relief, you generally get a warmer, but maybe smaller audience than Wednesday. Personally I find that if I am not careful and keep focus Thursday is the mistake day. You have done it to real humans once, it must be easy to do again.

Friday

Rock and roll
This for me is the night, it is usually the biggest and best audience, although that can be Saturday. it is also as far as my personal performance biorhythms best night, good focus, great feedback from the audience, the cast have settled in, are enjoying it and will have got any rough patches out of the way on Thursday.

Saturday

Last Night, get out and party
Depending on circumstance this may well be the warmest audience and for some of the cast this will be the pinnacle performance, for others there will be a tinge of "teh w00t last night" but the standard is high enough that it is still a damn fine show even so. Then there is the taking down of all the set and packing away any of the furniture that isn't drama studio property to go away. For something that takes a whole day to build it normally takes less than a couple of hours to demolish, even taking to accunt the exadurated care some of it has to be done with to ensure some of the more expensive bits last as long as possible. Then off to relax over a small glass of wine, enjoy the congratulations of your colleagues and big up thier performance, then talk rubbish for a couple of hours while repeating all the in jokes that have built up over the the week. Matlock!

Sunday

Hangover

Meta

As stated in the first posting I made here, one of the reasons I started this blog was for things I didn't feel fitted the tone of my LJ. Well it wasn't the only reason, another consideration was my innate belief that my writing isn't of sufficient quality. I waffle, I evade the point, the narrative zig zags more than a fat bloke trying to outrun a crocodile. Oh and I love overusing cute little similes, metaphors and highfalutin long words that if I am honest are only there to make me smile to myself as I read it back.
One of the big critisms of the "blogosphere" (apart from horrible constructions like "blogosphere") from old(er) media is the lack of an editorial process. Mostly I think that the lack of proprietorial control, corporate style guides and being "on message" is the best thing about blogging and citizen journalism. I for one however, would appreciate the other half of being edited: feedback on quality of writing, help hitting the appropriate tone, an objective point of view about whether it is worth writing about the subject in the first place etc.
As this blog slowly gains a readership I am hoping that some of you will free to comment on the style and approach of the posts as well as just the subject and content. While I really wanted to avoid committing myself to every day or n times a week, I am enjoying the challenge of producing more "real" content as opposed to the kind of thing I was happy posting to LJ, it is making me think that the next project, when things are happily settled in the new house is to have another look at the idea of trying to run a comment and opinion magazine site.