History deals with pearls, ignores dolphins

Diet update

The C (for curry) diet continued last night with a chinese-style chicken, mushroom, tomato, potato and pepper curry and basmati rice. Fresh chillies and cayenne for heat. Wing Yip sauce enhancer from its plastic pot adding some five spice aniseed and takeaway overtones. Yesterday I fell off the waggon and tried the CoS diet. Not the lettuce, that's the cheese and onion sandwich diet. Not as good as the CoDS (cheese and onion doorstep sandwich) diet, and not a patch on the curry diet. The plan is for a jalfrezi tonight.

Actually, history is bunk

Here's why. A revelation. Occasionally, I do get the odd lightbulb going off up there. This one came from the novel I'm reading, By Light Alone. A history seminar, the lecturer proposes the following: standard academic history focuses on the rich. Kings, princes, royals, politicians, so on. Throughout history, human history, over 99% of our species have lived in poverty. The poor fought the wars, built the pyramids, sailed the ships, led the revolutions. Even now, the vast, huge, great steaming overwhelming majority of the world live in poverty. We've had plenty of time to learn, and to do something about it, if, as a species, we were remotely bothered.

In the book the comparison is made between historians and oceanographers. The catalogue of historians, their academic writings, their focus and their narrow approach is like oceanographers looking only at pearls. Ignoring krill to killer whale, ignoring the miles-deep faults with their own (some not oxygen-based) ecosystems, casting aside the 99.9% that is of real interest and beauty and stunning surprises and instead banging on about the tiny minority where the money is.

There's people going on about how exams favour guys able to remember and regurgitate and coursework being the better option at the moment. They forget that applied maths, physics, engineering exams can be real tests in problem solving, in sitting in front of a problem and applying your knowledge to provide a solution. With a real time limit and working on your own, not in collaboration with several classmates and your parents. One thing about my ancient qualifications: their mine and mine alone.

History, geography, the humanities have generally had examinations that have amounted to little more than memory tests. This can change. There's scope for a more intelligent approach without resorting to the death by a hundred cuts, open to huge abuse cop-out that is the marked coursework option.

Cube²

Unfortunately Cube III isn't Cube³, or Cube Cubed. Which would be cool. Cube II, or Hypercube, is basically a Cube rerun, with less blood, splatter and gore, theoretical physics and conspiracy theories added, a strange ending, and is none the worse for all of those additions, or for being a rerun. It put my brain to bed for an hour and a bit after cooking it at work all day. Cube III is actually Cube Zero, a prequel to Cube. That's tonight, if there's time.

The rights to chips?

Our great and good have sold the right to sell chips during the olympics (so some legal variant thereof) to MacDonalds. Other than as the chips in fish and chips. No other burger and chips, just chips, pie and chips, whatever.

Is part of the deal to preserve Seb Coe in a cryogenic deepfreeze topped and tailed with Peter Mendelson? Ugh.