Linseed:
working on a page of rough sketches, which is more trying out ideas and a warm-up than any planned finished piece. Warm-up is os important in drawing & painting- it gets you rmind into the right mood and loosens up the muscles for good co-ordination.Litigation culture: We are hamstrung by lawyers.We have to stop pupils throwing snowballs as it’s a breach of health & safety regulations. If I want to take an art class acrross the road to the park, I need to send letters of consent home and produce a risk assessment. If the pupils forget the signed consent letter- they can’t go.
But look here: BBC Sticking-plaster story.
Note this bit that emphasises the ridiculous:
But Emily’s father Kevan, 39, criticised the guidelines.
He said: "The whole saga is absolutely ridiculous. My daughter had a tiny cut and I just cannot see the reason why a plaster couldn’t be put on her finger by the staff.
If it’s a tiny cut – then why does she need a sticking plater? What do plasters actually do? My advice on the matter is- if you want your cut to heal more quickly, then don’t put a plaster on it. If it’s more use as some kind of comfort blanket – then that’s another issue.
In a smiliar vein, we aren’t allowed to give out paracetamol to pupils in school either. Most kids who want it because they have a headache, they mostly have a headache because their main intake of fluids is sugary "pop". The solution? Drink water?
Creationism: BBC ( again), It looks like some (christians) want to replace a theory that has some holes in its evidence with another theory that has no evidence to support it at all. Similarly, I was talking to a y8 pupil this week who was convinced that Astrology is for real. I know that teenagers can be remarkably naïve, but the worrying thing about this variety of misunderstanding is that quite a few adults believe it too. Luckily the move here ( from OCR) is that scientists will have to discuss creationism- they are however in the best position to refute such mythology. I hope they can learn from the astrology fiasco. When they have done that can we put God onto their syllabus too?
5.4°C, more changable.Spring is approaching, I can hear birdsong as I write, frosts should dissappear soon so we can stop skidding around.
Started two pictures yesterday.
First: a crowd of faces, just for some mindless practice.
Second: a violininst.
If you’re lucky and very very good I may just post a picture later.
EH Shepherd: hated his drawing of Winnie the Pooh
See here:BBC
But, on the other hand:
"If you believe in God (the judgement) is made by God."
when talking about the decision to go to war in Iraq; said on the Parkinson show.
This is where it gets silly:
"Are we really seeing over 100 coffins coming back (to the UK) because God told him (Mr Blair) to go to war?"
And:
Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed in Basra in 2004, said: "A good Christian wouldn’t be for this war.
No Christian can be infavour of any war- it’s built into their religion (see the 10 Commandments). They are by definition- pacifists.
But anyway, TB didn’t say his descision was swayed by God, it was a reference to judgement afterwards. Well, you’ve had our judgement, that hasn’t changed since before the war- Tony you are a liar and were judged so at the time.
The strangest part of this story is the time spent on misunderstanding what he actually did say.
I want a new digital camera. We are going to Cephalonia (Kefalonia) in May and I want it by then, so I dropped in on Jessops camera shop today.
Photography is plagued with the same problem that Hifi is: Marketing by numbers. I want a lens that is equivalent to 28mm to about 180mm, so the shopkeeper shows me all these cameras with 10x zoom! But none of them go wider than 35mm equiv. so what’s the point. I don’t care that they sport a massive zoom range if they don’t cover the one I want. The zoom at the long range is wasted because you can’t take a picture more than about 150mm zoom without a tripod. All that fuss made over a wide zoom range is a waste. The other problem is "megapixels".4 megapixels is enough to print out onto A4 paper, there is therefore no need to get any higher resolution CCD than that. In practice, if the CCD is small but high res then there are going to be noise problems and colour distortion. Small cameras have small CCDs.
I want a good quality camera, all the numbers used in marketing the different models are no guide to the potential quality of the pictures it creates. Buying a camera has to be made from a bewildering range of choices, the marketing people are making it more confusing than ever.
These are on my list:
Micycle 