Electricity (by alaric)

Since we had to have the house substantially rewired, due to a combination of flood damage and aging wiring, we had the electrician put in changeover switches on the ring main and the main lighting circuit:

They are the two little rotary switches beneath the consumer unit. Each circuit can choose between the mains feed from the grid, or the corresponding IEC inlet at the bottom of the picture, where we can plug the generator in to feed the house from it.

Also, somebody was amazed at my offhand reference to having military surplus lights from a submarine, so here's the photographic evidence:

They came from Bull Electrical

Jeany counting (by sarah)

Jean is now counting its a bit erratic but today she counted up to five completely on her own with no reversals, repertitions or skippings of numbers!

How long before I get to do geometry with her properlly? Al told me off like a year ago for drawing shapes like a two dimensional repressentation of a three dimensional prism - he said slipping it in with circle, square and triangle wasn't on :/

electricians at play! (by sarah)

When the electrician was about I took some photographs - here they are showing glourious wires dangling out of things and big tools that go wizz!

Tolerance (by alaric)

Recently, there was a bit of a hoo-haa about a blog the Guardian's travel section was planning on running:

(Max, 19, hits the road)[http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/travelog/2008/02/skins_blog.html]

A lot of people responded with reactions varying from amusement to irritation at the Guardian for this project: it was alleged that a naive, over privileged, kid with delusions of coolness was going off on a textbook finding-oneself journey to the East in their gap year, and that he'd landed a job writing it up for the Guardian purely through "daddy's connections". Playing into stereotypes of the rich trust-funded naive types with an over-inflated sense of their own worth, fuelled by parental influence and money giving them the illusion of success. Who later develop into Nathan Barley.

So, Max's blog brought about reactions of anger, both aimed at him and (more so) at the Guardian for apparently allowing nepotism (Max's father is a writer who had done assorted bits of work for the Guardian, so presumably the job was landed through his connections).

But this in turn brought about a second wave of opinion, that people were being cruel in attacking Max, since it wasn't his fault he was young and naive; and his family claimed that he was not going abroad on his parent's money, but that'd he'd saved up his own earnings to do so. The Guardian claimed that Max was playing up to the stereotype with tongue in cheek. In other words, the identification of him with the stereotype was challenged.

Which leads to an interesting point.

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