(no subject)

[johnny9fingers]

Busy day Yesterday.
One of my best friends (Aaron) steps out with one of my cousins. (They met at my father's 80th birthday.)
The Cuz (Celine) despite being thirty-mumble had a medical condition that required a hip replacement. (As an aside she was an athlete and competed as part the national Junior team - one wonders if the strain of constant training through her teens contributed to this hip problem...But I digress.)

So Aaron, Steve A, and I all went-a-hospital-visiting.

After getting lost etc I found my way to the Cuz's room and I joined A & S in sitting and chatting. We also did the Guardian weekend quiz, all being trivia fanatics.
Celine is recovering well, but will be on crutches for some six weeks.

After leaving the hospital I had to call in on Nick's place to feed his cat in his absence. The Hospital is in Epsom. Nick's house is Wimbledon. Thereafter I hied to Aaron's (Tooting - and yes it's true: there is a district of London called Tooting) for supper with a couple of chums over from NY whom I hadn't seen in ten years.

Sylvie and Vid now have two kids. Vid's become a Merchant Banker. When last I saw them they ran/published an experimental art magazine called Sandbox. They've just bought a Brownstone in Brooklyn, which I don't think would have happened if they'd still been in publishing experimental art magazines, or in Academia.

Britain and America are going to have no Physicists left. Academic mathematicians and physicists who move to Banking can earn twenty times what they would if they remained in academia. Also, who'd want to teach Maths and Physics to schoolchildren, for a pittance, when they could put the knowledge to work for them in a more financially rewarding way. Which means the maths work done in banking and insurance is going to have to go to those able to do it....those educated in systems that pay for good maths and physics teachers. So, as the US and UK banking systems are taken over by French, Italians, Indians, and Chinese, don't be surprised if your job is outsourced to somewhere else. The truth is (in general) that US and UK folk aren't educated well enough to do the jobs that these disciplines need.

Both British and American academic maths and Physics are dependent on foriegn-educated people. We stopped producing our own when we could no longer afford to compete for good teachers in the open marketplace.

Teach kids maths for a pittance....nah, I'd rather make lots of money thank you, and avoid getting stabbed in the classroom.

Very soon, the Anglo Saxon cultures are going to be out-evolved by dogs, which was the premise behind the short story 'Null-P' by (I think) A E van Vogt. But that's alright really.
Idiocracy really is our natural form of government. I won't be sorry to see how our complacency will relegate us all to third class powers with fourth class policies voted for by the retarded detritus from our crappy education systems.
China and India are gonna whip our butts...but bad, dudes.

Unless we actually do something about our education systems we will end up standing in the corner with our dunce caps on. And doing something means investing. Which means taxes. And paying teachers a wage commensurate with their responsibility to the next generation.

Some hope.
Bring on the poodles.