Day 6 - A Saturday of This and That

It's Saturday evening, I've had a fun day of wandering around Liverpool, looking at posters for the BA Festival of Science and catching up with my friend Julia who is showing a poster there. Less fun was trying to avoid the crowds who were all out to see La Princesse (click here to see my photos, if giant metal spiders interest you).

Have been doing a bit more thinking about tutoring maths; I wrote a little about a different model for tutoring in another place (well, the fact that I was thinking about it and not getting very far) and someone suggested that I could put up videos of me tutoring, or of me explaining some basic concepts and then put some email contact details at the end. I'm intrigued - it's not a direction I was even thinking of going in, but could be tempted to explore.

A few days ago when I first mentioned maths tutoring Bilbo asked me where I was when he was having trouble with maths in college! I thought I'd open the question up to the audience: what didn't you get about maths in college/high school?

No plans for Sunday as yet, but am sure something will come along. I've just bought a bookcase to try and do something about the rampant entropy in my bedroom; I think tomorrow I'll try and organise things a bit more, maybe finish my library book ("Accelerando" by Charles Stross) and then work on doing some more C++ programming.

Yessir, since finishing my PhD I am living the high life...

Cutlery Customs

I'm not actually sure if I've mentioned it on the blog before, but one of my plans post-PhD is to spend a good few months travelling around the US. I've never been to America before, and there are just so many places that I would love to go, cities, wilderness, national parks, mountains, glaciers... At the moment I'm reading (well, skimming certain parts - like I really need to know right now what the best B&B in the Hamptons is) through the Lonely Planet USA guide, which weighs in at over 1200 pages just to try and get some more concrete ideas of things that I might want to do and get an idea of distances.

I came across something in the cuisine and eating section though which made me stop and re-read it just to make sure that I had read it right. The following was in a separate piece on cutlery etiquette:

"The method for holding cutlery seems extremely complicated at first: hold your fork in your right hand, and rest your left hand in your lap. When you need to use a knife, switch your fork to your left hand and cut with your right. Or just eat European-style - it won't be considered rude unless you rest your left hand on the table."

The idea of switching knife and fork seemed a little weird - everyone I know or have ever met seems to hold on to both at the same time - is that European-style? I don't know, it never occured to me that there was a "style" about how you use your cutlery.

The big question from me to you, dear American readers, is to ask why it would be rude if I rested my left hand on the table? Thinking about it, it doesn't feel like it would be a comfortable position, but then I wouldn't normally think about resting it in my lap whilst eating either, so what do I know?

Any illumination on the subject would be appreciated! More on my possible travel plans as time moves on and I have a clearer idea of when I'll actually be finished with my PhD. This weekend I'm planning to correct two of my chapters, and forge ahead with another one - but first I have to do my six hour marathon of marking this evening...

Wednesday

I'm just about to finish for the day, and have to leave in about ten minutes because I'm going to see 30 Days Of Night. Tomorrow I'll say something about how the NaNoWriMo novel is going on, but there were three things that I just had to share today.

Firstly, I'm really happy to say that Bilbo has given us a "Blogging that hits the mark" award! I suspect that this is more for noisms many insightful thoughts (rather than my comments about Portal or The Matrix: The Pantomime) but I'm not one to not take advantage of reflected glory. Thank you Bilbo!
The next thing is to mention that I saw the most bizarre train station promotional campaign ever yesterday, in which a person in a giant nose outfit was handing out packs of tissues and Beechams cold remedy. I had trouble figuring out what it was for a minute, and for a split second I thought that perhaps a dream of mine was intruding on my waking life.

Finally, on the way home I was sat at the platform when a girl in her mid-teens came up to me, put her face right in mine and said, "Do I smell of ale? My friend says I do, and it's my birthday, so I've had a drink but I've got to go home now and she says I smell of ale, so do I?" (that pretty much is word for word what she said to me)

I lied and said no.

More cheerful things tomorrow.

Titbits

I have a four hour computer tutorial to go and give in exactly twenty-three minutes, so I had better be quick about this. There are three things that I have seen on the Internet today that I thought I would share with you (well, there were other things too, but these were the three that piqued my interest).

Firstly, George Lucas has said that he has started work on the Star Wars live action series. I love Star Wars, I really do, but this is not news... OK, the fact that he has started work on it is news, but the actual article barely qualifies as news: there is virtually no new information that was not already known, the rest is just recycled or restated from other articles. I think that there should be some kind of filter against news like this, or some kind of pecking order so that it is automatically dropped down the news page (come on Web 2.0!).

Also on the BBC News website is news of a report that says obese people are not responsible for their obesity. I accept the argument that work in the "modern world" and processed energy rich foods are big factors, but you can still work against these factors. I even take on board the evidence that humans biologically store excess calories as fat with incredible efficiency, but that doesn't mean that we can't do something about it. What else does a government have to do in order to get the message through to people? Every other week a new report comes out that says "Guess what? People are fat!" but in our "It's not my fault" culture we're just passing the buck all the time. Face facts people: barring certain medical conditions, if you are obese it is because you have consumed more calories than your body could use for fuel, and you have done this often enough that it has made a visible impact on your body. YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

Finally this wonderful comic from Overcompensating has a punchline that really made me smile in a semi-horrified way:



Six minutes before the tutorial - I've even got time to get a drink and read through the problem sheet.

Cheerio for now!