Month: March 2008

links

Links for march 08

Knee High theatre company
Ian Saville’s Socialist Magic
For skilled performance, mere experience is non-predictive. It’s deliberate practice that matters
‘the $50 billion in aid given to Africa over the past fifty years or so is not, as is usually implied, a very large sum’
Liz Green is a singer who lives in Manchester and does amazing live shows
Post-it Notes, version 2.1
nowthen.co.uk — not a Sheffield based magazine
Nowthensheffield.co.uk — a Sheffield based free magazine
Chapter 2 of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed in which he introduces the banking concept of education
Paul Brians’ Common Errors in English Usage
YouTube: Godhead cover ‘Eleanor Rigby’
What Every Cyclist Should Know About Flat Tires

misc

My ‘as many goes as possible’ head

Post author By tom
Post date March 18, 2008
No Comments on My ‘as many goes as possible’ head

When I did my improvisation course recently the teacher, Chris, said something like this: When I have a group of kids and I ask them who wants to go first they all put their hands in the air and fight to get to the front, because they aren’t worried about success or failure on that attempt, they are just interested in having as many goes as possible. When I have a group of adults and I ask them who wants to go first they look at their shoes and try and hide behind each other, because they are worried about the quality of each individual go, about whether they can do it right, successfully. This is why children learn so quickly, he said, because they aren’t worried about getting it wrong. So, he said, when he asked for volunteers he wanted us not to worry about failure, instead to to expect it, and to remember that the most fun is to be had by trying to have as many goes as possible

politics

Why I want a charter for terrorists and criminals

Post author By tom
Post date March 9, 2008
1 Comment on Why I want a charter for terrorists and criminals

The man on the radio said that the Human Rights Act (1998), which incorporates the EU Convention on Human Rights (1950) into English Law, is a ‘charter for terrorists and criminals’. Like that was a bad thing. The mistake here is to assume that human rights exist to look after people who obviously deserve it (you know, people like you and me, who listen to the radio and own sandals). Wrong. Human rights exist to look after everyone, and particularly those who are at risk of persecution. And we all know that the first thing the powerful do when they want to persecute an individual or a group is to redefine what they do as either criminal or (more recently) as terrorism. It’s as simple as that. Human rights laws that only looked after obedient and respectable members of society would be a sham. It is at the periphery of society that human rights are most important and where they should be least up for compromise.