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Please die a slow, horrible death. Soon.

Thanks

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6266436.stm

Well the New Scientist thinks so. So that’s my excuse from now on!

Apparently not a single education reporter for the BBC, The Times, The Telegraph, The Sun or The Daily Mail actually know how A-level exam grades are awarded. And I suspect if I looked at other news sites, I would find the same (depressing) result.

A level grades are not given out solely based on percentage of marks gained in an exam! If this years A-level maths is truly easier than last years, then candidates will need to score more marks to get an A. If this years paper is harder than last years, then candidates will need to score less marks. It’s simply not possible for them to write papers of the same difficulty each year. Even in subjects like maths, they can’t simply take the previous papers and change the numbers in the questions, because then people would simply need to learn the techniques tested in the previous years papers, and not the entire syllabus.

The confusion arises because people do like to compare things from one year to the next. Most people would agree that someone getting 86% on an ‘easy’ paper has less knowledge than someone who got 78% on a ‘hard’ paper. In fact the 86% might have been a B, but the 78% was worthy of an A…

Because of this the exam boards map the raw marks onto something called the UMS (uniform mark scale). So someone who scored the minimum marks for an ‘A’ on their particular year’s exam will receive 80/100 on the UMS. Someone who scored halfway between the grade boundaries of ‘A’ and ‘B’ for their particular year, will receive a UMS score of 75/100. Students receive their UMS score, not their raw marks. IQ tests work in a similar way - the actual ’score’ given by a test depends on the difficulty of the particular test, and not just how many questions you got right.

You can’t say that a UMS score of 80/100 is 80%. The numbers just don’t work that way.

QCA even explain this themselves…

Whether or not the standards expected for a particular grade have gotten softer over the years is another matter entirely…

The BBC have got a news story on their website at the moment about a game being pulled from shelves for causing offence:

A video game which uses a term abusive to people with disabilities is being pulled by its manufacturer.

MindQuiz, a brain training game for the Nintendo DS handheld console, was released in the UK by French software giant Ubisoft in March 2007.

However, poor performance in one section sees the player labelled in an offensive manner.

The company has apologised “to anyone who was offended by the game” and said it will withdraw it.

“As soon as we were made aware of the issue we stopped distribution of the product and are now working with retailers to pull the game off the market,” a spokesperson said.

“The game was developed in Japan, and we unfortunately did not pick up on the offending word in our quality assurance. We are currently working with the developer to find a way to rectify the issue.”

The problem emerged after a Belfast woman contacted BBC Radio Ulster’s Nolan Show.

Nicola told the show she had been playing the game - aimed at ages three and above - to pass the time while in hospital giving birth to her baby son, Austin, four weeks ago.

It was a fraught time for the young mother, who had lost her other son, Logan, just before Christmas.

The three-year-old - who suffered from cerebral palsy and was severely brain damaged - passed away after contracting pneumonia.

Nicola was shocked when she had performed poorly at one part of the game and it rated her efforts in a manner derogatory to the disabled.

“I thought it was absolutely appalling that a word like this should be used to describe someone who has not achieved very well,” she said.

“My daddy also has cerebral palsy and he is in his mid-50s and this is a word that really offends my dad.”

So what’s the word that caused the offence? Spastic? Retard? Something else? The mystery word is the entire point of this story!

It actually offends me that it hasn’t been published for what I can only assume is ‘fear of causing offence’. It’s a news website - if anyone is offended by any word when used in a strictly reporting context (x said y), then they need to grow up and live in the real world. Should we ban dictionaries?

Bah. I’ve made an official complaint to the BBC - wonder if they’ll get back to me…

The identity card scheme will become a “great British institution” on a par with the railways in the 19th Century, Home Office minister Liam Byrne says.

Bollocks they will.

(source BBC News)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/olympics_2012/6718243.stm

This lot should have won IMHO. With Ukraine and Sweden in joint 2nd place.

Is this guy good or what?

Thanks to a friend who’d rather remain anonymous, I have a copy of the filings in the court case.

Details here (2.5Mb PDF).

So (some) teachers don’t want to teach when it’s over 26°C. Diddums.

As much as I hate bank charges for being overdrawn, I think they are well within their rights to charge whatever they like. If you don’t like them, then you’ve got a few choices.

1) Don’t go overdrawn!
2) Arrange an overdraft for your account. That way if you go accidentally go overdrawn (I’ve done it a couple of times), then you only pay interest, and not interest + penalty charges.
3) Switch bank.
4) Keep your money under your mattress.

If you manage to run up £2500 in penalties on an overdraft, then I don’t have a lot of sympathy for you. I actually hope the cunt loses.

PC World, the UK’s largest chain of computer superstores is to stop selling floppy disks once their stock has run out.

Honestly, I didn’t even realise you could still buy them - I haven’t needed or wanted one since about 1999!

Anyway, I suppose it’s the end of an era and all that…

Last year, I mentioned the 2006 predictions of some bloke named “Professor Bill McGuire” who is a “disasters expert” for the Benfield Hazard Research Centre.

Let’s see how many he got right…

1. Probable collapse of the Gulf Stream. Well that didn’t happen.
2. A definate Flu pandemic. Whoops.
3. Failure of the flood defences in the South East. Nope
4. Rise in sea levels. Yes…but I don’t think anyone’s particular scared by last years rise
5. Major Thames Valley windstorm. OK then…
6. Strategic Earthquake. Earthquakes have a strategy?
7. Climate-perturbing volcanic eruption. Didn’t happen
8. South coast tsunami - think we missed that one
9. Sellafield explosion and fall-out. Nope
10. Terrorist detonation of 1kt nuclear device in London. Fairly sure that one didn’t happen either.

Not a brilliant success rate then…

Sizewell A and Dungeness A were the first two commericial nuclear power stations in the UK, and both will be shut down at the end of today.

Trivia: Several years ago I had a guided tour of the inside of the Sizewell complex (Sizewell has 2 plants - A and B) - including the parts that are normally off limits to the public (i.e. not just the visitor centre). At one point I got to stand pretty much next to one of the reactors inside plant A - I was about 10m away from it. The reactor itself wasn’t very impressive looking - but then it was encased in concrete…

See here for the latest reason why. Fucking wankers.

62 mins: RED CARD Frustration gets the better of Wayne Rooney and he is sent off. He wrestles for the ball with Ricardo Carvalho on the halfway line and stamps on the defender’s testicles.

(emphasis mine, summary taken from BBC Sport)

Not only that, but right in front of the referee. What the hell was the idiot thinking?

Apparently, it was one of the best FA Cup finals ever. I wouldn’t know. But the fact that Steven Gerrard single-handedly brought Liverpool back into the game twice bodes well for England in the World Cup.