First Day Back (by sarah)

It's Jean's first day back at school today - she is actually five now!

I made sure we had everything ready last night and we where ready in plenty of time until it came time to leave and I discovered I'd completely forgotten lunch!

Anyway she got to school ok - she was very impatient this morning to get there and instantly disappeared into the playground with the other kids.

The only thing was I had to write a letter to the school about the library book they had sent Jean home with over the summer - it was a big book of bible stories and crafts and also some little 'moral' stories and true stories. It was these latter two that made me decide to censor it.

They were absolutely awful 🙁 with implications that those who had been abused in the Nazi Death/Work/War Camps were not protected by God because they didn't hold secret bible meetings :/ And many similar things, including a child in what I would call a mentally abusive situation trying to gain some self respect only to be hit back down because they 'stole' from the parents :/

I'm sorry I just could not read this to my child. And because these bits where hidden in the 'side-boxes' I don't think the school had any idea what it was like either. I was highly unimpressed.

Chris Al-Asward (by sarah)

Last night I leaned of some sad news, Chris Al-Asward also known as Lethe Bashar died in July just after his 31st birthday. This came as a bit of a shock as I was just wondering where he had got too so went to check his twitter profile. Being the brains and drive behind Escape Into Life I hadn't noticed a complete absence as his other twitter account was still going strong being the one that drove his EIL project.

On his profile page was a tweet saying he had tragically died 🙁 I couldn't believe it and felt crushed at the same time and then that sinking feeling of - do I have the right to be this upset - after all I have never met him in the flesh. He lives the other side of the world but he had found me on twitter and had encouraged me in the realms of art and writing.

When I have pain flare ups I sometimes cannot sleep and he was often there to talk too. I started my art journal because of a side project he started with the idea of it being sold in the EIL shop. I've took far longer on this than I have expected but I love working on the Art/Visual Poetry Journal.

It is also through him that I found The Flying Trilobite a young artist who seeks to combine science and art, I can't remember but I think he was profiled on EIL. And it was then through him I found the paleo-art site Art Evolved finially giving me a way to combine the two parts of me - The Artist and the Scientist.

Part of my anguish last night was having not noticed that someone I regually talk to was gone, I know the last few months have been pretty much a wipe out for me but still 🙁 Also as Alaric agreed with me - what of his books? His work? His Art? His Creations? What would happen to them?

I have been told since that there are plans to publish these and everyone is working hard to mantain the websites. The is also a Prize in the pipelines The Chris Al-Asward Prize for braking down the barriers in the arts.

I did cry and it made me realise that my definition of friendship is probably quiet different from most peoples. I am sad that Chris is gone. I spent last night trying to track down all his sites and stuff - getting stumped for a while until I remembered he'd gotten rid of one of his twitter accounts and stuff like that.

I also signed his memorial book.

TYCHRIS

Blood Donation Stupidness (by sarah)

As some of you know I can't give blood due to having had a blood transfusion myself in the past - this is a newish rule and I have given blood in the past but I understand that there are risks of human mad-cow disease and things and these where becoming concentrated by the fact that those most likely to give blood are those who have had a life saved by it.

I personally would have died aged 4 and half without blood so am very keen to encourage people to donate. I try regually to get Al to go but after an initial issue of him being underwieght (for his height) he has just been too whimpy.

Then a friend of mine pointed out he couldn't give blood though being perfectly healthy - the problem? His sexuality.

(Warning I do obviously now talk about sex and things in the post.)

Know anal sex runs a higher risk of bleeding and therefore fluids mixing compared with virginal sex. So I always assumed the rules would be like - if you have had unprotected anal sex not for six months or something like that but it's not.

The exclusion is on men who have anal or oral sex with other men as they are a higher risk group for viruses that live in the blood. But hang on a minute HIV is spreading rapidly through the hetrosexual population and erm... what about women having anal sex with men and for that matter oral sex with men?

I could find no reference to them only if you've had sex with a man who's had sex with another man - but erm... that is assuming they would actually have told you? And then the restriction is 12 months before giving blood.

Prostitutes fall under the catagory of never give blood too. But what of say someone just sleeping around that is not mentioned plus they say all the blood is tested and they are always short of blood. There is no distinction over weather condoms are used for 'gay' sex. Why I wonder - last I checked they were still number one for reliability and protection. A woman on the pill who sleeps around I would have thought would be a higher risk than say men who have had say three boyfriends ever?

I don't have the statistics so I can't say for sure - but they are also lumping everyone/man together here. Though they are saying it's only men who have been sexually active with other men but there are different life styles.

Ok so the viruses such as HIV and hep. aren't detectable in early infection so leave that buffer zone of 12 months since unprotected sex or exclude everyone who have ever had anal sex or oral sex with a man! And that would include a large proportion of women!

I understand that this may result in more blood being taken that subsequently can not be used but would that out weigh the amount of usable blood you would get?

I wonder what the EU and other countries rule on this one and weather getting their transmittion data would be helpful here?

I may have missed it but I didn't see any restrictions on women having unprotected sex :/ Of any kind!

Society (by alaric)

It's easy to sit and complain that Society Is Going To The Dogs, and hardly any harder to come up with somebody to blame (these days, immigrants and politicians are popular), and still well within the mental capacity of the average Daily Mail reader to come up with some satisfying-sounding radical proposals for what to do about it.

However, a society is a very complex system, and every change you make has complex consequences; nothing is quite as simple as it seems. Further complicating the situation is that any attempt to make your system of laws or government institutions more complex further complicates the analysis of subsequent changes; and, perhaps most pertinently, a society is not some beaker full of bubbling chemicals - the components of a society are sentient, some of them are even intelligent, and they are highly incentivised to make the best of their situation. In other words, people will figure out how to exploit systems, rather than working happily within the spirit of them.

People who are familiar with my approach to engineering solutions to problems will not be surprised to find that I suggest:

1. Forgetting all the cruft and historical baggage, and sitting down and carefully enumerating what you actually want from the system

2. Making the system as simple as possible (but no simpler), to reduce the scope for unexpected consequences

3. Using self-reinforcing negative feedback loops to maintain stability, while injecting noise to prevent stagnation in local maximae

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Economic Crises hits the Public Sector (by sarah)

I'm very happy with Jean's school but yesterday we get a letter say that they do not have enough money to replace the teacher who retired nor to keep all the current stuff on full time. So the teachers have had to take an hours cut and the afternoon will see two classes instead of three.

They do not think there will be an increase in funding and infact there are cuts and expenses will continue to rise. Friends who are teachers are finding they are loosing their jobs as departments in secondary schools are honned down to a minimium. Graduate teachers are being employed as they are cheaper but as soon as they become experienced they to will find there are no jobs.

It would appear that 20 years experience is not needed and everybody will be fine with inexperienced teachers who though maybe good teachers are still very much going to be learning the ropes and now those colleges that could guide them through it are being turffed out of the system. Am I the only one who sees this as dangerous and damaging to our children's education?

More - if class numbers are rising in the village then what of the already stupid class sizes in the towns and cities? Are they going to be doing the same?

Large classes means that children can be lost in the mass and struggling or excelling get lost and not noticed. The children themselves see the school and teachers as a system around them rather than being apart of it - this leads to disruptive behavoiur as they develop the old US and THEM complex. Then we come to the safety issue - more children means more furniture cramped into the rooms and this means that regurdless of the fire door not being obstructed - there are more things to crash into, less room to move about - more territory disputes amongst the kids.

And of course the larger numbers results in a breeding ground for bullying - I am talking about education in general here.

I thought it was telling that the school can't see a change to these circumstances for the next 3 odd years.

I am wondering how Nurses, police and fire departments are fairing? I have already found out that most of the fire fighters are sort of part time hobbyist - ie they do it because they want to save lives on top of their actual job 🙁