Great post about the CRB madness on one of the unschooling blogs. You can read it for yourself, but it poses the question why a group of women would be seen as a threat to children.
I supect that the writer probably intended to question the idea that any adult is a necessary danger to children, but the question is even more significant when asked about women.
There seems to be a movement to identify women as offenders at the moment... maybe it is a natural reaction to the Little Ted's scandal, to look for women behaving badly. Maybe it is a change in the way women behave. But after 20 years in a criminal defence office, my sister says she has never been involved in a case involving a woman.
The statistics are difficult to disentangle, but they show that men are hundreds of times more likely to offend than women, and that women are more likely, not less likely, to be imprisoned once found guilty of an offence.
I feel that it is only a matter of time before this government requires parents to pass some sort of test before they are allowed to procreate... or maybe when it comes it will be necessary to pass some sort of fitness-to-parent test before you will be allowed to procreate at all. When ARE people going to be starting to say NO?
Friday, November 13, 2009
Christmas on Nemesis
The Christmas shop is open on Nemesis Sim in SL. As usual we have high-quality candles and giftboxes and trees. This year there's something new for people who struggle to afford the prims for a tree... I have made a dressing for Linden pine trees, which, though I say it myself, works really well.
There is also the ice Cathedral and Ice rink and ice caves to explore. Type Nemesis into the map and teleport there now!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
You're next
I make no apology for writing a blog about the real world once again. The government is currently considering the recommendations of the Badman report on home education. I expect the 99% of you who don't home educate are planning to surf to another page at this point. But hold on! This affects you too!
For the whole of recorded history, there has been an assumption that the local authority will not break in and enter your property unless they have evidence that you are up to something illegal or are in danger of harming another person. Basically, if you adhere to the law of the land, an Englishman's - or Scotsman's, or Welshman's, or Irishman's - home has been his castle. They have no automatic right of entry without information or evidence that compels entry.
In relation to home education, that rule is proposed to change: the government is proposing that the LEA should have automatic right of entry, in order to see and interview the children, in the case of home-educated children. This is a BIG change to the law. Can it only be applied to home educators? I don't think, in all conscience, not that I think they have one, the government would be able to apply this rule to home educators alone without an immediate challenge on the grounds of discrimination. Thus, I think that if they go along with this recommendation, it will apply to all parents.
Now... we've all looked on, horrified, as tales of children being beaten and killed have surfaced in the press. The child who was starved to death by her mother and her boyfriend - how horrifically awful is that? The authorities present their case for access as though they had no right at all to gain entry to the child's house, and *that* was the reason they loitered around outside and didn't get to see her before she died.
Hold on a moment though. Concerns had already been raised by neighbours and others about the state of the children. The local authority has for a long time had the right to enter the home and seize the children if they believe that they are at risk of harm. They could have done so in this case, had they chosen to. The fact that they got it wrong and didn't is not anybody's fault but their own.
What they appear to be saying is that in order to fulfil their responsibilities towards children who are being harmed, they need the right to enter *anyone's* home, in order to talk to and ascertain that the children in our homes are OK. Does that seem right to you? Would you be ok about being frisked every time you left a shop in case you'd shoplifted? Or having a forensic accountant look over your bank accounts when you put in your tax return in case you hadn't declared some income? Of course you wouldn't. The whole of our system of law is based upon people being innocent until someone has the evidence to prove them guilty. Are we really wanting to change that?
I am appalled by how dishonest the whole system appears to be. Since the amalgamation of social services departments with education departments in LEAs, they don't seem able to decide how to monitor welfare and education and have begun to mix them up in a horrible concoction which means that parents will have no power and no means of satisfying authorities if the authorities choose not to be satisfied.
For most parents, losing their children is the very worst punishment they can imagine. For home educating parents, doubly so, as they actually enjoy the company of their children. Is the government really proposing to oppress parents in this draconian way, and can anything but bad come from it?
Bear in mind they want access to homes even if they are totally satisfied that the children are being educated suitable to their age, ability and aptitude, and even if they have no suspicions or concerns about the welfare of the children. I have just one question, why?
I believe that the authorities see parents who are home educating their children as a dangerous anti-social fringe of society. They read reports every day which link non-attendance at school with anti-social behaviour and the likelihood of getting into trouble with the police, and they appear to make no distinction between an electively home-educated child and a child who has been expelled or is truanting, even though they are very different.
I cannot agree that it is in the best interest of families or children to increase the powers to intervene without evidence, and I hope the MPs trusted to examine the Badman report feel that way too.
I think that some LEAs have been unhappy about their powerlessness in law to compel parents to comply with their rules on education. Many of them are completely ignorant about the efficacy of alternative methods of education, and there is a big education lobby of people who make money from education, who spend a lot of money trying to convince the government that this or that system works better or will work for children who are not achieving. I think there are a lot of vested interested in education from academics, institutions, companies, who don't want anyone to know that actually, doing nothing that looks like school is MORE effective in educating your children than school.
The authorities reject this idea without even trying to examine the very good evidence that exists that a loving parent who will talk to their children and support them in their endeavours, whatever they may be, will achieve more than schools. They look at an unschooling parent and make assumptions that unschooling means unparenting and uneducating and those things do not necessarily follow at all. They have until now been powerless to act if an articulate parent who knows their rights refuses them access to their homes, and they don't like it.
From my point of view, it seems highly unlikely that if a social worker can go into Baby P's home and leave him in the care of the people that tortured him to death, they could go into an average home educator's home and conclude that the children are at risk from a lack of curriculum, but this is precisely what I fear may happen: they may assume that they know what they are talking about in the realm of education because so many of the people who work in LAs in education are failed teachers and think that they know what education looks like.
It seems that hardly a week goes by without some injustice or other in the field of child welfare, and it invariably seems to me that the authorities are idle and do nothing in cases that require action, like Baby P, like the child who starved to death in Birmingham, Khyra Ishaq, like hundreds of others who have been beaten and abused... and then they take action when no action is required, such as the family who have lost their children do to obesity problems in the family, including a newborn who *may* have been returned, the child who was seized after a police raid on her family, the child whose mother went on the run because the authorities threatened to take her child into care because her ex-husband had moved near to her locally... the list goes on and on.
What shocked me when I read reports about cases which have ended in children being taken into care, is that more cases of emotional abuse have been brought than physical abuse. From the description of the case where the mother went on the run around Europe to avoid having her child taken into care, the authorities had already seized her son for some weeks because they accused her of allowing her alcoholic husband to shout at her in the presence of their son.
Show me a family who says that they have never raised their voices to each other in front of their children! I wonder what planet those social workers have been living on if they believe that a functional family never loses their tempers or raises their voices. If that's being dysfunctional, it's pretty amazing that most children aren't in the care of the local authority.
Of course, you are free to ignore this post, may already have surfed off into the sunset. But if you have children and don't want the local authority to be able to march into your home at the drop of a hat, I'd suggest that you support home educators now.
Edited 10 November to remove comment about parents needing a lie down after spending time with their children, which I accept may have been offensive to some.
For the whole of recorded history, there has been an assumption that the local authority will not break in and enter your property unless they have evidence that you are up to something illegal or are in danger of harming another person. Basically, if you adhere to the law of the land, an Englishman's - or Scotsman's, or Welshman's, or Irishman's - home has been his castle. They have no automatic right of entry without information or evidence that compels entry.
In relation to home education, that rule is proposed to change: the government is proposing that the LEA should have automatic right of entry, in order to see and interview the children, in the case of home-educated children. This is a BIG change to the law. Can it only be applied to home educators? I don't think, in all conscience, not that I think they have one, the government would be able to apply this rule to home educators alone without an immediate challenge on the grounds of discrimination. Thus, I think that if they go along with this recommendation, it will apply to all parents.
Now... we've all looked on, horrified, as tales of children being beaten and killed have surfaced in the press. The child who was starved to death by her mother and her boyfriend - how horrifically awful is that? The authorities present their case for access as though they had no right at all to gain entry to the child's house, and *that* was the reason they loitered around outside and didn't get to see her before she died.
Hold on a moment though. Concerns had already been raised by neighbours and others about the state of the children. The local authority has for a long time had the right to enter the home and seize the children if they believe that they are at risk of harm. They could have done so in this case, had they chosen to. The fact that they got it wrong and didn't is not anybody's fault but their own.
What they appear to be saying is that in order to fulfil their responsibilities towards children who are being harmed, they need the right to enter *anyone's* home, in order to talk to and ascertain that the children in our homes are OK. Does that seem right to you? Would you be ok about being frisked every time you left a shop in case you'd shoplifted? Or having a forensic accountant look over your bank accounts when you put in your tax return in case you hadn't declared some income? Of course you wouldn't. The whole of our system of law is based upon people being innocent until someone has the evidence to prove them guilty. Are we really wanting to change that?
I am appalled by how dishonest the whole system appears to be. Since the amalgamation of social services departments with education departments in LEAs, they don't seem able to decide how to monitor welfare and education and have begun to mix them up in a horrible concoction which means that parents will have no power and no means of satisfying authorities if the authorities choose not to be satisfied.
For most parents, losing their children is the very worst punishment they can imagine. For home educating parents, doubly so, as they actually enjoy the company of their children. Is the government really proposing to oppress parents in this draconian way, and can anything but bad come from it?
Bear in mind they want access to homes even if they are totally satisfied that the children are being educated suitable to their age, ability and aptitude, and even if they have no suspicions or concerns about the welfare of the children. I have just one question, why?
I believe that the authorities see parents who are home educating their children as a dangerous anti-social fringe of society. They read reports every day which link non-attendance at school with anti-social behaviour and the likelihood of getting into trouble with the police, and they appear to make no distinction between an electively home-educated child and a child who has been expelled or is truanting, even though they are very different.
I cannot agree that it is in the best interest of families or children to increase the powers to intervene without evidence, and I hope the MPs trusted to examine the Badman report feel that way too.
I think that some LEAs have been unhappy about their powerlessness in law to compel parents to comply with their rules on education. Many of them are completely ignorant about the efficacy of alternative methods of education, and there is a big education lobby of people who make money from education, who spend a lot of money trying to convince the government that this or that system works better or will work for children who are not achieving. I think there are a lot of vested interested in education from academics, institutions, companies, who don't want anyone to know that actually, doing nothing that looks like school is MORE effective in educating your children than school.
The authorities reject this idea without even trying to examine the very good evidence that exists that a loving parent who will talk to their children and support them in their endeavours, whatever they may be, will achieve more than schools. They look at an unschooling parent and make assumptions that unschooling means unparenting and uneducating and those things do not necessarily follow at all. They have until now been powerless to act if an articulate parent who knows their rights refuses them access to their homes, and they don't like it.
From my point of view, it seems highly unlikely that if a social worker can go into Baby P's home and leave him in the care of the people that tortured him to death, they could go into an average home educator's home and conclude that the children are at risk from a lack of curriculum, but this is precisely what I fear may happen: they may assume that they know what they are talking about in the realm of education because so many of the people who work in LAs in education are failed teachers and think that they know what education looks like.
It seems that hardly a week goes by without some injustice or other in the field of child welfare, and it invariably seems to me that the authorities are idle and do nothing in cases that require action, like Baby P, like the child who starved to death in Birmingham, Khyra Ishaq, like hundreds of others who have been beaten and abused... and then they take action when no action is required, such as the family who have lost their children do to obesity problems in the family, including a newborn who *may* have been returned, the child who was seized after a police raid on her family, the child whose mother went on the run because the authorities threatened to take her child into care because her ex-husband had moved near to her locally... the list goes on and on.
What shocked me when I read reports about cases which have ended in children being taken into care, is that more cases of emotional abuse have been brought than physical abuse. From the description of the case where the mother went on the run around Europe to avoid having her child taken into care, the authorities had already seized her son for some weeks because they accused her of allowing her alcoholic husband to shout at her in the presence of their son.
Show me a family who says that they have never raised their voices to each other in front of their children! I wonder what planet those social workers have been living on if they believe that a functional family never loses their tempers or raises their voices. If that's being dysfunctional, it's pretty amazing that most children aren't in the care of the local authority.
Of course, you are free to ignore this post, may already have surfed off into the sunset. But if you have children and don't want the local authority to be able to march into your home at the drop of a hat, I'd suggest that you support home educators now.
Edited 10 November to remove comment about parents needing a lie down after spending time with their children, which I accept may have been offensive to some.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Broken by fixing it up
Once upon a dark and distant time, I heard people mention BoingBoing and I didn't know what they were talking about. That was about six years ago. I was introduced to Boing Boing and lo! I saw that it was good.
Once upon a time, I couldn't imagine logging into my computer without checking BoingBoing. That was about a year ago. I knew the names of the bloggers, I could navigate my way around the archives or the past week, I posted the occasional comment - not too often, just when something grabbed me. I made a few suggestions, and some of them were taken up.
Boingboing is heralded as a directory of wonderful things... and it was. Not all of the things were wonderful, some of them were pretty devastatingly not wonderful at all, like the reports on miscarriages of justice, the growth of CCTV and the demonising of photography, but what was most definitely wonderful was the way in which you could sometimes see a story and know, just know that the comments would have you howling with laughter, or inhaling your morning cup of coffee - or blowing it all over your keyboard.
The people who met in the comments queue on Boingboing recognised each other, and could see who in the archives was a brother or sister soul who shared the concern about Guantanamo, or the despair at the re-election of Bush. Intelligent, articulate, clever, sceptical people, who wrote great one liners and better paragraphs.
But now, now... they redesigned it, and it seems irretrievably broken. Not for everyone, maybe. For me. I can't navigate around the new design, I can't find my friends, or at least the people I saw everyday and now can't find for the same stupid comments you find on 1001 blogs on a 1,000,001 webpages elsewhere on the internet. Instead of being elegant and simple and letting the blog content do the talking, it SHOUTS AT YOU really loudly, with LOUD colours and loud headings and even LOUDER people commenting.
It isn't that they have changed the content particularly, but they seem to have taken away my ability to navigate easily from place to place, and somehow it looks all wrong, and isn't something I want to spend time looking at. How can this be? It's amazing what a huge difference it has made... it has turned it from a place I coudn't imagine not visiting regularly, to somewhere I never want to visit. Very strange. I expect that they want younger readers, more readers, to attract attention. Maybe they've achieved that. But they've lost one regular reader, and I miss my old BoingBoing. I'm off to the internet WayBack machine to see if I can find it anywhere.
Once upon a time, I couldn't imagine logging into my computer without checking BoingBoing. That was about a year ago. I knew the names of the bloggers, I could navigate my way around the archives or the past week, I posted the occasional comment - not too often, just when something grabbed me. I made a few suggestions, and some of them were taken up.
Boingboing is heralded as a directory of wonderful things... and it was. Not all of the things were wonderful, some of them were pretty devastatingly not wonderful at all, like the reports on miscarriages of justice, the growth of CCTV and the demonising of photography, but what was most definitely wonderful was the way in which you could sometimes see a story and know, just know that the comments would have you howling with laughter, or inhaling your morning cup of coffee - or blowing it all over your keyboard.
The people who met in the comments queue on Boingboing recognised each other, and could see who in the archives was a brother or sister soul who shared the concern about Guantanamo, or the despair at the re-election of Bush. Intelligent, articulate, clever, sceptical people, who wrote great one liners and better paragraphs.
But now, now... they redesigned it, and it seems irretrievably broken. Not for everyone, maybe. For me. I can't navigate around the new design, I can't find my friends, or at least the people I saw everyday and now can't find for the same stupid comments you find on 1001 blogs on a 1,000,001 webpages elsewhere on the internet. Instead of being elegant and simple and letting the blog content do the talking, it SHOUTS AT YOU really loudly, with LOUD colours and loud headings and even LOUDER people commenting.
It isn't that they have changed the content particularly, but they seem to have taken away my ability to navigate easily from place to place, and somehow it looks all wrong, and isn't something I want to spend time looking at. How can this be? It's amazing what a huge difference it has made... it has turned it from a place I coudn't imagine not visiting regularly, to somewhere I never want to visit. Very strange. I expect that they want younger readers, more readers, to attract attention. Maybe they've achieved that. But they've lost one regular reader, and I miss my old BoingBoing. I'm off to the internet WayBack machine to see if I can find it anywhere.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Heritage Key: Tutankhamun
Successfully visited Heritage Key for the first time today. This is a new virtual world venture by the Rezzable people, run outside Second Life, but using Second Life technology. Avatars have been deliberately handicapped by being unable to build or create in world.I had been able to get in and set up an avatar before, but the teleportation didn't appear to be working when I had been there previously. I dislike the clothing, skins and hair which is provided, as I am used to much more sophisticated products in SL, and I particularly missed my animation override, as I hate walking like an SL newbie, because it always has been extremely jerky and badly done.
Heritage Key is in alpha testing (so it says) and purports to show you the treasures of the Tutankhamun excavation. When you walk into the teleport spiral, you end up in a gallery where you can pick up some slightly less awful clothes, and in the future will be able to buy things with points gained by answering quizzes.
I somehow blundered to the compass point and found the balloon to travel to the valley of the kings. This isn't as impressive as it sounds, as the valley is just a few mountains and some gateways to excavations which are all apparently closed, except for the one for Tutankhamun. Even that one only seems to have a couple of rooms open to the public. There are a lot of things to click on, but these mostly seem to be audio clips of someone reading information in general about the Carter excavation or the Pharoah and not specifically about what you can see in the world. A lot of the things around the excavation site seem to be very skin deep scenery rather than interactive.
There is a game to play, which infuriatingly advises you to take a pickaxe to the dig areas denoted by orange flags, and to dig for things - and then tells you off for doing that. In a few of the locations this gains you some (modern) objects that you would have had to pay good points for. This seems to lack logic - it would be a lot more fun if you found ancient artefacts that might be useful, like a lamp, jewellery or a clue to something else. In some of the designated pits it tells you that you have destroyed the artefacts by attacking them with a pick!
I thought I would be able to explore the Carter dig, and to go into the tomb to see the things he found as he found them. In actual fact there is a strange teleport halfway down the tunnel to the tomb, and then only two rooms with a few artefacts able to be explored.
To see the sarcophagus and fabulous coffin of Tutankhamun, one has to travel to the gallery, which is laid out for all the world just like a real life museum, which seems to miss the point of having it in SL at all. There is a facility to enlarge the items in the gallery, but this immediately kidnaps your camera under the ground - not ideal for newbie visitors.
Finally I travelled to the Life on the Nile area, but once again, this was laid out as a museum exhibit, instead of being the living example I was expecting. There were a few families of hippos and the odd crocodile, and a few desultory artefacts lying around on the river banks... a seat here, a bowl of eggs there and a basket in a few places.
It would have been so easy to make the use of things clear by allowing visitors to sit on and activate them. I had been expecting cooking, fishing, farming, living to be going on in this place. Maybe a home of the time and place to explore with the living and eating areas. Instead of that I found a couple of wildlife tableaux and a shop for free clothing.
Make no mistake, there are some breathtaking exhibits in this virtual world. There are some fantastic objects which are very close to the real life version, I imagine. But they are exhibits in a very old-fashioned museum sense, and don't - in my view - use many of the advantages of a virtual world in which *anything* is possible.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Sorrento
My friend Quantum Destiny has released his epic prefab "The Sorrento" for sale to the general public. It's going to be very hard to do justice to this amazing build... it's huge, detailed and... and... amazing. It's out on his Quantum Destiny sim for all to see and marvel at. He's my friend, but I hope you know that I wouldn't tell you it was amazing unless I believed it was. It is.
He's been working on it for months, and has now released it in two versions: a full version which is 2554 prims, or a stripped down version which is 2179. As he says in his documentation for the build, it is suitable for a group of friends to share, or as a trophy house for those who wish to impress.
It's something which has to be seen to be believed. Quantum has cleverly provided a free footprint, to enable people to check whether they have enough room for the build, as it will likely take up at least a quarter of a sim. It is big... the swimming pool is beautiful, and if you look carefully, can get some idea of the scale of the build by spotting my avatar in the pool below. The picture is taken from a huge balcony. The size means that it is possible to hold a party more or less anywhere - and invite friends who are still having problems with moving around small houses. It is spacious and yet cleverly in proportion, everything is just so. If you're looking for a prefab which is way out of the ordinary run, you can't go wrong with this. At L$12,750 it isn't cheap, but the work that has gone into it more than justifies the price, as I am sure you will agree when you see it in the...prim.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
City simulations
Looking for something completely different (bio-processors) I found an article in New Scientist about city simulations from photographs posted by the public on Flickr. The simulations have a watercolour impressionist feel about them.
The simulations were constructed using photographs posted by people of landmarks, and took hours rather than the weeks or month that one would expect for people to find, organise and position hundreds of pictures. The future possibilities as the software evolves, are mindblowing. Maybe one day it will be possible to explore the world virtually without leaving your armchair... set training operations in real landscapes... the potential uses for this are quite amazing.
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