Posts Tagged ‘The Guardian’
The incredible shrinking tax
The Guardian has put together some word clouds for the Budget speeches for the years 1998-2009 (i.e. the speeches given by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling as Chancellors). The more frequently a word is used in the speech, the bigger it appears in the cloud. It makes for interesting glancing for those of us who […]
Filed under: In the News, Media, Politics | Leave a Comment
Tags: Alistair Darling, Budget, Budget 2009, Budget Speech, Darling, Economy, Speeches as Graphics, The Guardian, Word Clouds
Mark Lynas has written a book on climate change, called Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. I haven’t read it, so I can’t comment on its content (though from the title, I would speculate that Lynas is not a climate change sceptic). He’s also written an article on the Guardian website about writing […]
Filed under: Comment on Comment, Science | 2 Comments
Tags: Climate Change, Comment on Comment, Scepticism, Science, The Guardian
In defence of mathematics
Simon Jenkins is arguing on the Guardian website that learning mathematics in school is a waste of time. In exactly those words. He starts off by criticising a recent study (PDF) by Reform. The study is mostly critical of mathematics teaching in the UK, concluding that it compares unfavourably with many other developed and developing […]
Filed under: Comment on Comment, Mathematics & Statistics | 2 Comments
Tags: Curriculums, Euler's Formula, Mandelbrot Set, Mathematics & Statistics, Pythagoras' Theorem, School, Teaching, The Guardian
“Oi, love!…”
When I was a teenager, I spent much of my free time rowing. I was part of a squad that trained six days a week, and at weekends and after school during the summer, the training was at a boathouse on the Thames. The boathouse was some distance from the main road, and so several […]
Filed under: Comment on Comment, Women | Leave a Comment
Tags: Anecdotes, Comment Is Free, Sexual Harassment, The Guardian, Women, Women's rights
Gin&Comment 
Second-hand isn’t necessarily second-rate
When I was a teenager, continously in search of new reading matter, I worked my way through most of Robert Goddard’s books. I liked the plot twists, and the fact that I could read them in a few bus rides. One day, I had read almost the whole way through one of his novels (I […]
Filed under: Books, Comment on Comment | 1 Comment
Tags: Books, Bookshops, Comment on Comment, Second-hand Books, The Guardian