Google acts against comment spammers (Guardian)

This seems like an excellent idea, and could really help with fighting blog-spam, which was a contributing factor to the downfall of The LBSC.

Bill Gates as a teen pin-up doesn’t seem such an excellent idea.

Grammar lessons are wrong for writers (Guardian)

In a pressured curriculum, where the development of literacy is a high priority, there will be better ways of teaching writing and our findings suggest that the teaching of sentence combining may be one of the more effective approaches

How has the curriculum become more pressured than it used to be? Could it be due to the teaching weeks lost to exams, and because increased bureaucracy means that teachers have to be given ten percent ‘non-contact’ time?

Primary schools should return to a basic system of studying Maths and English for at least ninety minutes each every morning (9am to 12.30pm, allowing for breaks), and then having a series of different subjects for around two hours in the afternoons (1.30pm to 3.30pm) – The Arts, History, Geography, Science, and Games. Exams should be taken at the end of the Michaelmas and Summer terms (external exams where necessary, internal exams at other times).

The exams should determine into which group each child should be placed, so that one stream could have more challenging exercises and accelerated learning covering much wider topics than those required to pass public examinations, whilst others could cover the basics at a slower pace.

What’s difficult about that system? It worked for me, there was plenty of time to teach grammar, and there was no feeling of a ‘pressured curriculum’.

Multiple choice: The second of three exams – and the hardest so far, by far. It was very difficult, and there were an awful lot of questions where I didn’t understand the question and had never heard of any of the answers. So it was somewhat difficult to choose the right one. But there were a few questions that seemed alright, so maybe I’ll have passed overall. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: This advice from Handy Andy about how to use WD-40 as part of a love-making routine, or the page that pointed me to it, which not only revealed that people snort cocaine from pub toilet seats, but also that WD-40 is being used to combat this practice. It’s certainly versatile.

US military pondered love not war (BBC News)

The US military investigated building a “gay bomb”, which would make enemy soldiers “sexually irresistible” to each other, government papers say.

The plan for a so-called “love bomb” envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among troops, causing what the military called a “distasteful but completely non-lethal” blow to morale.

Other weapons that never saw the light of day include one to make soldiers obvious by their bad breath.

Is it 1st April? Sadly not. These people were, apparently, serious. And the American people wonder why we mock them.

Bad Medicine (Student BMJ)

Could my degree seriously endanger my health? Apparently so. I don’t claim to be particularly stressed or depressed, but I have been getting a lot of headaches recently…

Tesco sees Christmas sales soar (Guardian)

As a Tesco convert, this doesn’t surprise me. The shop far outperforms its main competitors, simply because it has low prices (unlike Sainsburys) without seeming ‘cheap’ (like Adsa and Morrisons). It’s a pleasant place to shop, with wide easy-to-navigate aisles, and is generally very well stocked. It doesn’t have ‘special offer’ stock dumped all over the middles of aisles, and it doesn’t make you feel claustrophobic thanks to high ceilings and good lighting. It’s also open 24hrs, which can be very useful, and almost every store also has a petrol station. There are very few circumstances under which I shop at other supermarkets, because Tesco is easy and relatively stress-free. Which is why it’s performing well.

I’ve changed the archives to the Weekly sort, as the monthly sort were becoming somewhat overloaded of late, and difficult to navigate because of their size. The downside to this is that some archive pages now only contain one post, which looks rather strange. But at least you can more easily find what you’re looking for in the archives.

And, on the subject of finding what you’re looking for, I’ve tweaked the search engine so that’s it now reindexes the site rather more often (it’s now indexed most days – at around 2am – whereas it was previously done weekly), and will only produce the individual post pages as results (so you won’t get two results for each post any more – one for the weekly archive page, and one for the actual post page). I’ve adjusted the weightings, too, so that the ‘Work’ sections of the site are likely to come near the top of your results, and any of these blog postings are likely to come nearer the bottom.

There are other tweaks here and there too, but those are fairly self-explanatory, such as the “Email this Post” link, and the greater range of Feed formats.

I hope you find the changes useful! If you think I could do anything else to improve the organisation of this place, then please let me know.

Howard unveils Tory tax cut plan (BBC News)

I think he performed very well today, with a good speech on taxes. The juxtaposition of him and his chancellor was a rather good idea, highlighting the split in the Labour government without making any explicit comment.

Oliver Letwin was very good when talking about abolishion of the New Deal programme, and I particularly liked how he pointed out that they were contraversial plans, but that this was what he truly beleived. It was much better than Labour’s usual tactic of saying “We’re right, stupid”, and simply attacking the opposition. By recognising that the opposition have valid points, the party appears much more credible.

My only major criticism is the lighting, which had clearly not been camera-tested. Because it made Mr Letwin and Mr Howard look orange. Which was somewhat unfortunate. It’s minor slips like this that make parties look amateurish and not governmental. And these things can so easily be avoided.

Overall, I was impressed.

Tories set to unveil tax cut plan (BBC News)

I don’t think we, in our wildest dreams, thought that the Conservatives would drop the ball to the extent that they have done

The words of Matthew Taylor. I do wish the Lib Dems would get control of their language – you can drop a ball or not drop it. You cannot have an ‘extent’ of ball-dropping. It’s this kind of silly slip and bad writing that makes them look amateurish, and not like a future government.

I’m just about to watch Mr Howard’s speech about Tax Cuts. I hope he doesn’t go as far as the headlines seem to be suggesting, because it will make people think that he’s going to cut services in a big way, which will play right into slimy Milburn’s slimy hands.