Freesteel Blog » 2010 » November

Sunday, November 28th, 2010 at 1:01 am - - University, Whipping 5 Comments »

Students have been getting all uppity about university fees of late and channeling their anger into marches in London that are supposedly going to get noticed by politicians.

Seems like a waste of time to me, given that the actual origin of the policy has been on campus, pushed by the cadre of senior managers circulating through the higher education institutions like generals on tour of their military bases.

Take Sir Howard Newby of Liverpool University, now the third highest paid Vice-Chancellor in the country.

In 1999 Mr Newby had already made his position clear — especially on the importance of controlling access to the best universities by the ability to pay:

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Saturday, November 27th, 2010 at 9:00 pm - - Other

Just saw For The Best down in town thisafternoon (newspaper review here). Aside from the dull choice of name, this site-specific performance was pretty intense.

Afterwards, when I came past the building after doing some shopping, death was outside in his bathrobe and slippers smoking a cigarette.

Monday, November 22nd, 2010 at 10:29 am - - Cave

The mission (on 23 October) was to dig at the far end of True Grit in Ireby Fell Cavern towards the extremely muddy dig at the far end of Northeast Inlet.

True Grit was itself a dug passage, with a section called “One Armed Bandit”, because you had to crawl through with one arm ahead of you. Too tight for SRT gear, and I further decided to leave my oversuit behind because of its bulk. If you wear just a wetsuit you can tell whether you are actually fitting through a tight squeeze or not, as opposed to imagining that the drag is only a matter of friction that only requires you to push harder.

Turned out that there was already an air gap in the passage ahead above the sea of mud, and we wallowed through with our faces to the ceiling.

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Wednesday, November 17th, 2010 at 9:57 am - - Whipping

I’m run off my feet. Just got in from the ferry at 6am after six days in Ireland helping to run two Hacks and Hackers Hackdays in Belfast and Dublin. The stuff is professionally blogged here.

I’ve got some caving trips to blog and some caving surveys to draw up now, as well as booking our annual pilgrimage to Euromold. Tonight I’m in London tonight to be at OpenGovData2010 for the next two days. I’m staring at a 400 email backlog right now and deciding what to do with my time next.