Home Alone

While Fiona's still in New Zealand for another three weeks or so, this weekend Ed's gone home for a pre-Easter weekend and Cat's gone on some church camp/cake-eating weekend thing, so I'm home alone in a flat that really does feel rather quiet. Hopefully I won't end up in any Macaulay Culkin-style escapades... In fact, I already have invites to two parties tonight, and might well try to make both: my friend Leo has invited me to come to his friend's St Patrick's Day party in Jericho and someone from the department is having a house-warming over in furthest west Oxford (i.e. past the train station)

Good Times in Academia?

I'm slightly surprised to hear, contrary to what I'm so often told about bureaucracy, RAE targets and under-pay/funding, that these are good days to be going into academia, according to Warwick economist Andrew Oswald in The Independent (and on his website). Too bad my job-hunting has so-far been unsuccessful, but at least if he's right I'm not heading down a dead-end in my current projected career.

For what it's worth, his advice to aspiring academics is: be different (while lottery-voting is hardly paradigm-shifting, it does seem to be somewhat off the beaten track, and strike most people as at least slightly crazy), do teacher training (again, check - I took a Learning Institute course this term), stay away from media until later in your career, and try to get stuff published (running out of time on that one - I need to get the thesis done asap, while still funded).

Biblical Lotteries

I don't think Gataker would approve, but here's an example (in Lego) of lots being drawn for a new Apostle in Acts 1:15. Thanks to Chris.

EoT Dinner: A Bridge Too Far?

Last night was our regular End of Term dinner - the last of the out-going committee.

It was a really nice meal. The French theme wasn't too obtrusive, apart from grace and a few speeches (I think our Francophone VP and President may have conferred on this), though my place was set for 'Benoit'.

(For those on Facebook, some albums can be found here, here and here)

In a radical break from tradition, we went to The Bridge rather than Baby Love afterwards. It was amazingly my first time there, and for most of it I wasn't disappointed by what I'd been 'missing out' on. They were playing something loosely 'urban', r&b and/or hip-hop, and the place was swarming with (Jesus) undergrads. Things improved somewhat when I found the upstairs room - playing a mix of popular rock and dance stuff without too much cheese - but even so, I doubt I'll be returning soon.

The arrival of a new Ministry t-shirt and last week's fun at the Zodiac makes me keen to visit the Cellar or Zodiac again soon though...

Another No Interview

Today I received definite confirmation that I wasn't shortlisted for the LMH post either. Given the letter was sent on the 14th, the original scheduled date for the interviews, I'd already assumed this. This job, being more senior, it wasn't so disappointing, though it would have been nice to get at least an interview (I did for the very similar Lincoln job last summer - though that was specific to my field).

Charles Taylor wins Templeton Prize

News story here. (I've been buying The Independent this week for a free gift offer)

It's not too clear exactly what he did to earn it, but given it's worth almost one thousand times what my college graduate scholarship is worth (970, to be more exact) I guess it was important...

Beautiful Indeed

Tonight is our regular graduate End of Term dinner in college. The theme is 'la belle epoque', so I just looked that up on Wikipedia for inspiration. I was struck to read that:

In the Belle Epoque, France was one of the first countries in the world to let all men have the right to vote, in 1871. In 1905, it granted suffrage to Blacks, Asians, and Jews.

Am I to assume that between 1871 and 1905 the only blacks, Asians and Jews in France were women?

No Draw

I see today the Football League are considering scrapping draws, in favour of extra time and/or penalties. (Comments here and here). No doubt more penalty shoot-outs will result in a lot of people saying games are decided by lottery, even though that's not true (whereas this is).

Personally, I don't want to see draws scrapped. I'm pretty happy as things are, even if you sometimes see one team park the bus and earn a frustrating 0-0 draw. (One might also think it would threaten the pools, but I guess they can work fine simply counting the score at 90 minutes, before ET/penalties).

Still, I'm happy for the League to be considering possibilities. I don't think we should blindly accept the status quo if the game could be improved - thus I'd also whole-heartedly support at least the consideration of video replays. As regards making the game a bit more interesting, at least in extra time, I've long thought it might be a good idea to take the penalties before extra time, but only apply the result if still drawn after it. That would certainly give one team plenty of incentive to attack during the added period...

This update makes clear the plan is simply to have a shootout to determine who gets an extra point. That seems less crazy, and would have the incidental benefit that there would always be three points awarded each game, which may make it slightly easier to predict or compare points totals.

Writing

You may have noticed a lot of posts lately. Yes, it's the Easter vac, and I now have some time on my hands again... However, the main project for the next few weeks is, of course, thesis writing - and I've written about 2,000 words today, radically re-writing chapter one.

Man Utd 4-3 European XI

I wouldn't normally blog about a non-Liverpool post, by my friend Rob came round to watch this special charity match. As usual with testimonial-type events (especially mid-season) the game was played in a relaxed, friendly fashion, which made it unsurprising that the attackers got plenty of time on the ball with barely a challenge. It was also unsurprising that Man Utd took an early lead, given the Europeans hadn't really had any time to gel as a team. The 4-1 half-time scoreline may have been a surprise, given the Europeans should theoretically at least have been able to boast better individuals, but the introduction of Carragher, Gerrard (booed at every touch), Zenden and later Fowler helped turn that around - the Europeans winning the second half to finish 4-3, even after having a decent goal called off-side and being denied a penalty. It was Diouf who got both goals - even taking a penalty ahead of Fowler. Never mind, maybe he'll have to wait until Athens for his send-off...

p.s. Watching with Rob resulted in a lengthy discussion as to whether or not defenders could keep clean sheets. While Rob was happy to credit them with shut outs, he argued that definitionally only agents - be they individual goalkeepers or collective teams - could keep clean sheets. Did anyone else discuss essentially contested concepts during the match? And does anyone else have an opinion on the dispute?

(Part of my case was that some fantasy football-type contests credit defenders for keeping clean sheets, e.g. here and here. Of course, some might refer to something like the team keeping a clean sheet - I concede Rob's usages are correct, the point really was whether mine is also)

BT Robbery

A couple of days ago, I heard British Telecom criticized for charging customers who didn't play by direct debit. Today I'm more distressed to find that one of my favourite electronic artists, Brian Transeau, has been burgled. I have to admit that having received his latest album for Christmas, I still haven't really got into it (partly, I think, because it's entirely instrumental), but having not listened to it that much I'm sure it's just a matter of time...

Unequal Voting

One advantage, as I see it, of lottery-voting is that because it treats each vote equally it can easily accommodate weighted voting: if you want someone to count double, simply give them two chances. For this reason, I'm particularly interested in proposals that might recommend such.

One is Harry Brighouse and Marc Fleurbaey's 'On the Fair Allocation of Power', now available at the revamped Equality Exchange. I first saw this presented at the Nuffield Political Theory Workshop about two years ago, and enjoyed an interesting email exchange with the latter author.

I've just come across another, a David Heyd paper on 'Democratically Elected Aristocracies'. I haven't read it yet, but it seems maybe a similar idea - people being asked to agree on voting weights in the first tier of the process, then votign according to such weights.

e-Democracy in Action

It's good to know the internet can have a positive role to play in modern democracy. Forget about protesting road charging and petition Number 10: a knighthood for Bob Paisley. (See why here).

WebLearn

After a hectic end to term, I decided to take this weekend off (which was just as well, given Simon's leaving drinks in the KA Friday night then Sam's birthday Saturday).

I did, however, get round to putting my reading lists online, via WebLearn.

Happy Birthday Sam

Last night I went to The Zodiac for the first time in ages. Actually I think it was my first gig since September, if it counts as such, because The Metros played a short set in Transformation, though I wasn't very impressed (my full review). Downstairs in Trashy though was really packed - sweaty and you couldn't move without bumping into people. They played some great tunes (and a few that were perhaps too cheesy) but it was a really fun night. Too bad we left around 2:15, as the crowd petered out (the Jesubites often with the 'long way back to college' excuses)

Jack Straw

I went to see Jack Straw tonight. Chatham House rules prevent me attributing anything said to him, but I didn't think he really said much interesting anyway (his main argument was about how the Commons is more effective now than 50 years ago - he only talked about the recent Lords reforms in questions).

What was more interesting was the fact - despite turning up 10 mins early - we were almost turned away by an over-zealous bouncer, until my friend Maria pointed out there were in fact seats left in the room. Some subsequent arrivals were turned away, on grounds of over-crowding and fire-safety regulations. Of course, when Jack himself turned up with some grey-haired men-in-suits they were allowed in (probably because they were important) - and after that (seemingly, to his credit, at Jack's instigation) other mere students were allowed in...

GCR Elections

The new GCR Committee were elected tonight - unsurprisingly, everyone beat R.O.N., and Mo beat Melissa in the only contested contest for V-P.

Well done to Rhiannon for listening to me explain about electoral systems in the bar afterwards. For those that missed it, my paper from the Theory of Voting class explains how STV differs from simple plurality election methods.

More Jobs Gone...

It looks like I haven't got an interview for the recent LMH job, given they haven't even bothered to contact me.

More disappointingly, I wasn't shortlisted for St Hilda's either, but at least they were good enough to respond to my request for feedback. It seems they think I lack experience - which is possible, as while I don't know about other applicants I'm behind most of my cohort on teaching. They also said they think I'm too early in the doctorate, which seems odd as I'm planning to finish within a year, and as I said many of my friends already have lectureships, at least one of which is an equivalent stipendiary one...

Liverpool 0-1 Barcelona (agg 2-2)

It's been a long while since I was so happy with a defeat! I actually said to my friend Jonas before the Man Utd match that, if someone had offered me 1-0 defeats in both with the sweetener of no injuries then I'd probably have accepted it (losing to the Mancs hurts, but there’s not much left to fight for in the Premiership whereas this puts us through on away goals).

What does disappoint me is losing consecutive games at Anfield, for the second time this year – when really, we should have been about three-nil up at half-time. Riise alone could easily have had a hat-trick, and Momo Sissoko also hit the crossbar with a great 35-yard first-time shot.

As it was, Gudjohnsen’s goal in 76 minutes made for some nervy moments towards the end – when I was worried the commentator’s curse would doom us, but we held on, with Carragher again magnificent at the back. If Terry’s still out, then JC has to start the up-coming England games.

Liverpool 0-1 Man Utd

Grrr, how cruel, and not for the first time. At least we dominated the game against the champions-elect, which gives me some consolation. Better yet, there's still Tuesday to look forward to, and the chance of revenge in Europe...

Happy Dan?