The results of a federally-funded pilot project in Germany have today been released (link in English). It involved anonymising 8,550 job applications, so that employers saw only those parts of people's CVs that were relevant to the job. Personally-identifying material was removed by a clearing-house *.

Women and people who appear to be foreign ** ( Read more... )

So, London-based life-forms, are you up for a game of cards next Monday or Tuesday evening (30 or 31 January)?
I have a game that I'm planning on inflicting on giving to a group of students soon. I've had one short test-play, but want more testing.
More details in the next post, which will be friends-locked.

Neo-nazi terrorists have apparently been operating in Germany for ten years without let or hindrance. They have killed ten people - eight Turks, one Greek and a policewoman (probably ethnic German) - and have apparently been involved in a number of bank robberies. There is some evidence that they were planning more killings (link in German).

German ( Read more... )

I have been reading "A mathematician's lament" (link is to a PDF file). This is a 25-page invective from 2002 against current maths teaching (in the US, but I think it's probably generalisable), and is a plea for more creativity and problem-solving, and for less rote learning in maths education (a short commentary with context is here).

The title of ( Read more... )

Belgian mobile phone provider Mobistar has a terrible customer care reputation. Really bad. So a Flemish TV show decided to go after them in a rather ingenious manner.
The result is a ten-minute YouTube video *. It's in Flemish ** with English subtitles, and is completely SFW. I enjoyed it enough to want to share. It's available by following this ( Read more... )

I am likely to need a small computer for travel purposes (my good 17" laptop is not compatible with frequent travel). After some research, I have two options in mind.
Option 1: Samsung N145 Plus 10.1 inch Netbook
Option 2: Lenovo Ideapad S205 11.6 inch Notebook
Much is the same - 3 USB ports, 6-cell battery, 250GB HDD, 2GB RAM (after upgrade for the ( Read more... )

This is a little story about two bottles of medicated mouthwash, each containing the same concentration of the same active ingredient.

The first was bought in the UK *. It came in a choice of flavours and cost £2.84 for a 300ml bottle.
The second is a 200ml bottle bought in Germany. It came in one choice of flavour and cost €9.50.
That means ( Read more... )

AbeBooks is a place to find rare books. They also have a section on the website called "Weird book room" - go have a look. Here are some of my favourite titles:
* Oral sadism and the vegetarian personality
* Goats: Homeopathic remedies
* The Bible cure for irritable bowel syndrome
* Was Karl Marx a Satanist?
* The romance of proctology

German politicians have been having a rough time recently, not least because many of them have plagiarised as a short-cut to getting that all-important doctorate (and been caught). I've written at length about this already.

But I thought I'd mention two rather special recent developments with one of the plagiarists, Silvana Koch-Mehrin, who has ( Read more... )

Hot and cold running Goons available via http://114.31.201.3:8064/ - and see the website.
I've manually added it to my browser's radio player plugin. My smartphone's radio player finds it as Goon Show Radio.