[how well educated are you] ten questions

The follow up post to this is here.

I've just read a caption to the above illustration on the net, urging: 'Let's change what happens in the classroom.' The article then went on to push for more multicultural awareness, less learning and less results oriented focus.

No, let's not. Let's instead rediscover a role for the teacher where he/she actually teaches and at the end of the process, the learner has actually learnt something.

There was a time, a few decades ago, when children up to Year 10 were actually well grounded across a range of subjects. After Year 10, of course, there was more or less specialization, depending on the Anglo-Saxon nation in question.

It is fair to assume that any end of Year 10 child, of average ability and average standard, could have answered these questions below correctly. How many can you answer without recourse to google?


1. Name one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, situated at Halicarnassus.

2. For what are the caves at Lascaux famous?

3. The Spanish used to carry gold in large ships from the Caribbean. What were these ships called?

4. Hallowe'en is the night before which holiday?

5. On which date is Michaelmas, also known as one of the quarter days?

6. What does this represent:


7. What is the formula for the volume of a sphere?

8. "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." - (Act IV, Scene I) – which Shakespearean play?

9. I didn't wake up on time because I didn't hear the alarm clock. Using the key word woken, unchanged, fill in the gap in this sentence in no more than 5 words: If I'd heard the alarm clock…………………………on time.

10. If the formula for salt is NaCl, what is the chemical term it refers to?


Answers

The Tomb of Mausolus, prehistoric cave paintings, galleons, All Hallows Day or All Souls, September 29th, formula for the quadratic equation, V = (4/3)πR3, Macbeth, I would have woken up, sodium chloride

The follow up post to this is here.

[nyse corruption] simple - close the shutters

It's not often that little bits of hard evidence come through that 'Them' do control the money supply, therefore the world economy, therefore life on this planet:

In a move set to infuriate and send many Zero Hedge readers over the top, the NYSE has taken action to make sure that nobody will henceforth be able to keep track of the complete dominance that Goldman Sachs exerts over the New York Stock Exchange. This basically ends our weekly Program Trading updates disclosed every Thursday indicating that Goldman has singlehandedly captured all of NYSE's program trading.

Market Ticker comments:

The problem of course is that, at least on paper, market manipulation, irrespective of what form of parlor trick you choose to use, is a serious violation of the law. Of course these violations of the law have been ignored for so long that nobody seems to care any more, but the fact remains that should the public come to believe that the NYSE has turned into nothing more than a gigantic pump-and-dump scheme operated by a handful of banks trading between themselves with publicly-guaranteed funds the consequences could be catastrophic.

So rather than stop it, the NYSE is doing what all good robber barons do - they're obscuring the data so nobody can see it any more.

The corruption and intrusion of the EU over here, meanwhile, hardly needs cataloguing in this post. One bright aspect is e-boarders, which seems to have backfired on itself.

[wordless wednesday] captions please

[gambling ban in russia] connected to the sochi olympics

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The first thing to remember about Russia is that the Russian mind is at once tortuous, simplistic and prone to sudden implementation of Russia wide legislation, a legacy of Soviet Times.

An example of the latter was when all foreign workers on extended registration were summarily booted out in 2007/8 and told they could come back later through the usual channels [that is, pay out huge money to embassy approved certifiers at three or four points in the process].

Another example was the tax stamps fiasco when someone in Moscow, seemingly after a sozzled night, slurred that Russian alcohol was better than the foreign muck, the price of a foreign bottle skyrocketed and within a week, supermarkets shelves from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok were free of foreign alcohol. This one lasted a few weeks but the pressure from the upper echelons of society, who very much like foreign liquid sustenance, saw the legislation collapse.

Now we see the banning of gambling across Russia, the closure of casinos and dens of vice, which, of course, will drive it underground because if there's a market for this type of thing, there's a market for this type of thing. The thinking though is a bit more tortuous than that.




The starting point is the Sochi Olympic Games of 2014. The Krasnodar region, a thousand kilometres south of Moscow, has long been the getaway retreat, the haven of the rich and powerful, the movers and shakers of Russian society and by association, it has drawn millions of other Russians as well over the years. Here is a brief profile of the mountainous terrain which looks out over the Black Sea, a sort of mecca for beach worshippers in summer.

Back to the gambling:

Under a 2007 law designed to curb gambling in major cities and boost economic growth in poorer regions, casinos and other gaming establishments are to be relocated from Moscow and other cities to four remote Russian centers - in the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, Siberia, the Pacific coast and southern Russia - by July 1 this year.

"Our company is reluctant to move business to special areas in regions. Nobody feels like moving there, besides there is no infrastructure in those special zones, and nothing has been built there yet," Lavrenty Gubin from Storm International told RIA Novosti, adding that all the big industry players felt the same.

Cosmo girls, summer in Sochi

Gubin may feel that way but it does not accord with what is going on in the region. Huge tracts of land, huge areas are having infrastructure laid in these years now, for example, mobile phone services such as MTS:

The Krasnodar region is one of the most prominent federal districts in Russia in terms of economic development and growth. MTS is the leading mobile operator in the region with around four and a half million subscribers as of the second quarter of 2008. MTS is one of the biggest investors in the region, with plans to invest over seven billion roubles in the development of telecommunications infrastructure, including 3G networks, during 2008-2010.

As part of its investment program, MTS is planning to lay around 300km of fiber optic cable on the bed of the Black Sea to connect key cities on its shores. In addition, the Company will develop a Transcaucasian fiber optic network that will connect Krasnodar region with all the federal subjects of the Russian Federation in North Caucasus.

A few years back, I took my lady of the time to Sochi for my birthday and even without the infrastructure planned for today, it was still mightily impressive. The scenery is second to none, we stayed at the Radisson Lazurnaya, with swimming pool, I remember, looking out over the Black Sea, very good cuisine and excellent excursion deals which saw us hire a Volvo, with driver, for the day for some ridiculously low price and we went up into the mountains to Krasnaya Polyana and skied the day, with good equipment hire services, throwing in a couple of lessons for her, dining out then returning for a spot of shopping in Sochi.

On the way to the resort, we'd stopped at vendors of honey by the roadside and bought local produce, so the rural and rustic still existed in the middle of the flashier lifestyle. We couldn't help thinking that a few billion sunk into this area might see it rival any of the great resort areas of the world, e.g. Kitzbuhel.

When we returned and I waxed lyrical to a few Russians about it, they smiled and said yes, there will be great money found and put in - in the wrong places, in the wrong order and with no part coordinating with the other. That was the Russian way.

I'd like to think they'd learn from the way the west does its development and it seems the Russian government plans to learn from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

They will learn, no doubt but will they learn everything they need to remember? And so Sochi is also mentioned in the same breath as the ban on gambling or rather, the redirection of gambling to the four regions. The Russians are leaving no stone unturned to get Sochi up and running and it does take something like this to get projects moving over there.

On the other hand, the deep cynicism of the average Russian sees a legacy of sustained, prohibitive price hikes after the event, precluding the average holiday to the area and anyway, we're in recession 2008-12, aren't we? Who will turn out to be correct?


James Higham spent twelve years, from 1996 to 2008, in the centre of Russia, where he was a Professor of English at a pedagogical university.

[two graphs] with no commentary

[dilemma for the day] new series, part one

After the coup, the loyalists crammed on board four mini-subs and fled for the uninhabited island they'd predetermined to secretly live on ever after. The island was so configured that cover was excellent, in the form of caves in the hill, there was wildlife and they'd brought seeds and the necessities of life. The subs were well armed but those remaining twelve missiles had to be used sparingly and only on genuine 1st world targets, when absolutely necessary.

They surfaced in a little bay and a reconnaissance crew went ashore to ensure the island was as deserted as they'd calculated. To their dismay, they found four war canoes and soon found the warriors. In their parley, by sign language, a surly type indicated that they were an advance party from their own island a thousand kilometres away and this island had been chosen as the place the tribe would settle.

The fugitives had a problem.

The surly type picked up on this, began making demands, then got nasty. Spears were raised and were about to be be thrown when the Lieutenant whipped out a handgun and shot the surly one in the leg. The warriors appeared stunned, then all fled further inland. The crew returned to the sub and communicated on secure channel with the other three subs.

Immediately, they looked outside and the warriors were swarming all over the subs, hacking at the surface with their spears. Enraged, they jumped into their long war canoes and started paddling at great speed for the open water.

'Sir,' said Captain Laurence Sanders to his superior officer, 'if even one of those canoes makes it back, our cover is blown and either we'll have a whole island full of warriors to contend with but even more likely, GPS will pick up their return, at speed. That will interest our former nation's new rulers greatly.'

'What do you suggest, Laurence?'

'You know as well as I do, Sir,' he answered. 'We have to take out every last one of them before they get too far out to sea. If we take them out right now, they'll drift back to shore. Past the point, they could drift anywhere.'

'NO!' screamed the senior officer's wife. 'No, that's pure genocide.'

'Emma,' said her husband. 'What would you suggest?'

'Talk to them, let them see how much damage we can inflict if we wish to, destroy their canoes but don't kill them!'

'If our missile hits their boat, the boat and crew disintegrate.'

'Sir,' advised Lieutenant Adam Brothers. 'At a minimum, it would take four of our twelve missiles - total wastage. And what if we really need them for the usurper's fleet later?'

'We'll put it to the vote immediately. There are six men, six women and I retain the casting vote. We either fire in the next two minutes, before the lead boat reaches the point or we don't fire and we'll have to try to ram their boats and save some of the crew.'

'Which would leave us in permanent danger on the island from their attack, especially at night and if any escaped, we'd be right back where we were,' muttered Laurence.

'Right, no time to lose,' snapped the superior officer. 'If you vote to shoot, the ultimate responsibility is mine because that is what I'm voting to do. So, all of you. To shoot or not to shoot? Come on people, no longer than a minute to decide. Any hesitation I'm going to count as a yes.'

What is your decision, reader?