In which I procrastinate. About procrastinating.
Goodness.
I knew it was a long time since I’d posted anything, but I hadn’t realised it was over four months.
Oh dear.
I’m not sure why the quite-so-extended hiatus. It has certainly been busier at work this year, but not THAT much busier.
(Though there has been an especially big hike this year in the amount of marking, which, as I get older, I feel to be more soul-sapping than in my younger days. Perhaps it is the sensation, with marking as with much else after one passes forty, of time you’re not going to get back, as sometimes commented upon hereabouts by my celebrity nutritionist friend).
Anyway, it can’t all be work, I think.
And… the kids do stay up later, especially as the days get longer. But not THAT much later.
There is, of course, the time that now goes on chess, but again, that’s not THAT much. I am, after all, only allowed out to the chess club one night a week – and I’ve avoided playing online in case it does take over.
There is also the Siren Call of Twitter, perhaps the best way for attention-span-deficient old farts to waste time that I’ve come across these last few years. Those of you with teenage children (or students) may have noticed that they spend almost every waking moment on Facebook. Someone somewhere described Twitter as “Facebook for old people”, and that sounds about right to me.
(I should say, BTW, that I blame my involvement in Twitter, where I have now racked up a rather disturbing just-a-few-shy-of 14,000 tweets, squarely on Stephen Curry of this parish, who originally talked me into it.)
Anyway, none of those seems to account for the decline of blogging. But perhaps the answer is that old multiple choice question favourite “All of the Above”, plus the tendency of an evening once the kids are (finally) in bed to slump in front of the Idiot Box with a beer.
Anyway, I have two purposes in dragging myself back to the keyboard.
I’m A Scientist – Get Me Out of Here
One is to mention that this year – now, in fact – I’m in I’m A Scientist Get Me Out Of Here, following in the footsteps of Stephen a couple of years back. I’m getting towards the end of week one now, and have answered a bunch of questions on line, and done several live chats.
These last, as I remember Stephen saying when he did it, are the real novelty for someone like me. Partly this is because of the unexpected things you get asked. One that I hadn’t expected is that I’ve been asked quite a few times how much I earn. I was tempted to say “not nearly enough”, but so far I’ve usually answered “about the same as your teachers do”. Though I may switch to:
“Well, I earn about as much in a year as Wayne Rooney does in half a day. Probably when he’s having his hair done.”
I also got asked if I believed in vampires and werewolves, as well as in God, and whether I had any tattoos. (No on all counts, you’ll probably not be that surprised to hear).
I’ve also fielded, and answered, a bunch of scientific questions. As Stephen said when he took part, the questions can be on anything, but it is still a bit of a shock to find yourself being asked about…. the earth, and… physics, and other stuff I’d long since forgotten.
I’ve been finding ways to answer, but as a result I am never going to criticise a student, ever, for looking something up on Wikipedia. In case I get accused of rank hypocrisy.
Anyway, given my age, grumpiness, and legendary inability to smile in a photograph, I’m not banking on lasting past the first evictions early next week But I’m glad I signed up.
And now for the chess. Normal people can stop reading.
The second, and less interesting reason for this post is to say that I’ve started a separate page for short random musings about chess – sort of my “Chess diary page’. This will probably only be of interest to about three people (you know who you are!), but if you’re one of them you can find it over here. (A link to it is also at the top of the blog). I’m hoping to add a little snippet to it every week or two. Some chessical stuff will still carry on appearing in the normal posts too, hopefully with the general interest bits ‘above the line’ and the chessgames below.
[Actually, there are some nifty WordPress plugins about that allow you to support playable chessgames, if Richard is reading]
Anyway, that’s all for now. Back to my “I’m a Scientist’ unanswered questions. Which to tackle first: “Why can’t we live forever?” or “Why is grass green?”.
Tricky One…
Austin – I, for one, will be investigating your chess page (haven’t looked yet though). I stick to the on-line games, which although not very time-consuming can be a chore on those occasions when you don’t really feel like it but but face losing on time. About a year ago I also took part in I’m a Scientist, for which I also blame Stephen Curry. No strolling to victory for me unfortunately, though I managed to avoid being evicted in the first couple of rounds and found the whole thing rather enjoyable.
The oddest question I recall was ‘who would win in a fight between a grizzly bear and a giant squid?’. The correct answer of course is that it all depends whether the fight is on land or at sea. And then of course one would need to stage at least six such encounters to ensure statistical reliability, and take care with variables such as creature size and age.
Er… oh yeah, blog posting. I should get on that, too. 😉
Look a post! 🙂
I’ll read the Q&A for lunch. It’s such a fun idea, the ask-the-scientist thing. The span of questions must really be enormous. And the people hungry for all the knowledge…
As for the Rooney comment, made me giggle and then turn sad. It’s really true, the disparity is mindboggling. I remember reading about the difference btw CEO and the lowest paid emploee at the company has grown from 1:5 (back in the day) to 1:20 000 or something like that in certain huge companies…. Seem to remember something about a legislation about it in France? Germany?
I did not *stroll* to victory — it was bloody hard work. I flogged myself! 😉
But profound apologies to Austin for the Twitter thing.
Thanks guys.
@Stephen M Top-notch answer. I hope someone asks me the same thing (or something analogous) so I can steal it!
@Stephen C Actually I managed OK on Twitter to start with, being merely a ‘social user’. And then … it got worse. But I’m still a *Cough* heavy social user. Really. Not an addict. Oh no.
Anyway, the blame for my growing Twitter problem lies, I’m afraid, entirely with me.
@Chall Although Stephen C warned me, I have been taken aback by the breadth of the Qs, in that people ask us biological scientists entirely physical science questions, like “Why does the sun look yellow?”. But the kids are quite young, so I guess a scientist is a scientist is a scientist, from their perspective. Though as I never did biology or physics at school beyond age 15, it is a stretch.
As to the pay thing – what can you say? It has got worse in UK Universities, as elsewhere. You now regularly see articles in the UK questioning the inflation-busting increases in what University Vice Chancellors/Presidents (i.e. Chief Execs) are paid, which is now up toward or sometimes past £ 200K a year… and we have more people in the Univs year-on-year being paid over £ 100K. Meanwhile the pay offer for ‘ordinary’ academic staff this year is currently 1%, which would follow 0.4% last year and 0.5% the year before, so 2% over 3 yrs. Given that price inflation over the same 3 yr period period has been about 10% overall, it is pretty grim. Personally, after 25 years on the Faculty, I’m not even at £ 45K a year… but of course that is probably just about in the top 15% of salaries for all full-time workers, nationally. And there are lots of people out of work. At our daughter’s Birthday party today one of the kids’ parents was telling us he’d just lost his job.
Here’s an amusing (and depressing) example of the differences in what people consider to be ‘highly paid”. Over on a chess forum I sometimes frequent, there was a discussion relating to a top British chess master who is not a full-time player, but instead works in the City of London (banking sector). Someone there commented:
– and then added a bit later:
*This would typically be people in their mid-20s.
Austin> The pay increase for chancellors/vps compared to the “regular staff” is worrying me since I have this wondering naive notion that you want an investment in time and effort to be worth it – and since it’s hard times all over, maybe everyone needs to chip in?
That said, I realise that Unis aren’t working in a vaccum, they need to be competitive in the whole “getting the best chancellor/vp”. I wonder though, when it started to be this big emphasis on “Bosses” rather than “former worker/staff with leadership skills”? I guess it might be something on this whole new era??
/end naive rant from the swede 😉
Austin, if you identify some plugins I can set one up for you.
Cheers Richard. I’ve emailed you the link to the one they use on the English Chess Forum, which seems to be pretty good and is supposed to work with WordPress installations.
Because it’s not red?
(I don’t know if this hypothesis is still current, but I like it anyway)
Or “why is sky blue?” (another famous question).
I admit I did answer “Why does it rain?” with:
Actually, the question “Why is the grass green?” occupies a special position in science – see this old blogpost for some of the background.