My sister goes to a school called King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls and she’s been having a bit of problem making sure that the search engines around know where they are. If you look for her school with terms like ‘King Edwards Camp Hill’ or ‘Camp Hill School for Girls’ you get lots of information, much of it out of date, about the school. It’s a fantastic school and has great qualities but self-publicity is not high on the list of their priorities. Some official government education bodies, like the National Grid for Learning even link to the out of date site, though others are more helpful on statistics and general information about the school, like the DfEE. See the Department’s page for Camp Hill Girls. This is what the school says about itself:
As a voluntary aided selective grammar school - part of the nationally renowned Birmingham-based Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI - we offer a genuinely first rate education to girls 11 - 18.
The school consistently achieves top positions in national league tables of examination results and our most recent inspection rated the school as excellent. There are around 850 girls on our school roll from all parts of Birmingham and the West Midlands.
When they say that they achieve top positions they really mean it. The school has developed an art for the understatement. As indicated in the BBC 2005 GCSE League Tables, the measurement of success in exams at the 15/16 year old age group, Camp Hill Girls came second in the country. That’s quite sad because my former school, King Edwards School Birmingham, came 27th. Old rivals, my sister and me but she doesn’t hold it over me, despite her superior brain.
Whatever the measure, when you look at the BBC’s results assessment, or any other really, a 100 percent rating for exams is pretty darn good.
So she’s had a problem getting recognised because everyone is linking to either the boys school next-door, or they’re thinking of the old website. The only way to get yourself online is to be interactive with everyone else online, to constantly add new content and information, to update news on school plays and activities. People only link to you, if you link to them.
King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls
Patrick Byrne, the 42-year-old president of Overstock.com, a seller of excess retail inventory, apologized to investors yesterday for a $14.2 million third-quarter loss thusly, and we quote: “My bad.”
Later in his conference call, he warned of a potential hostile takeover of his company being orchestrated by a “Sith lord,” forcing the poor Bloomberg writer to explain what a Sith lord is. Perhaps investors can look forward to the company’s Q4 earnings being dramatized with the aid of scale models and action figures. “Okay. Here’s the Ewoks. That’s us . . .”
Wa Po: Is There a Grown-Up Here? Anywhere?
Trendwatching firm iconoculture.com points me in the direction of a startup networking company called AirTroductions. The premise of this firm is that since ‘we’re’ in the air travelling between jobs and vacations so much, we ought to leverage that time flying to find interesting people to talk to, to handpick our travelling partners. There’s nothing worse than overzealous conversationalists when you’re flying but the flipside is that when you’re bored it can be great to talk to someone fascinating. I’ve met plenty of interesting people on flights and enough dull ones to see the value of planning who one might sit next to.
First you input your details and photo into a database of members, listing interests and things you’re most comfortable with: Vodka Martini, Paris at night, Sneakers, The W Hotel and so forth. When you’re taking a flight you tell the site which flight you’re taking and it will show you the details of any other users who’re taking the same flight and for $5 would offer to put you in touch.
So whether you’re looking for a date in Los Angeles, a business networking partner in Tokyo, or just someone to share a cab from Kennedy to Midtown, look no further. You’ve found AirTroductions. If you’ve got any ideas on how to make AirTroductions even better, then we want to hear from you!
-Peter Shankman,
Founder AirTroductions
The simple advantage of this is in using the downtime that flights create to either network or make friends or develop romances. The system can clearly be used as whatever the user wants it to be, which is the strength of other networking sites such as LinkedIn and Ecademy, but with the advantage of the fact that you don’t have to actively go to AirTroductions events because you’re already there and simply making your flying time more efficient and enjoyable.
Iconoculture: AirTroductions online match service helps jetsetters find flight partners
AirTroductions
In one of our lectures this evening, preparing for the freak weather conditions that will no doubt accompany the ‘agressive camping’ that we’ll be doing over the weekend, we discussed extremes of temperature. First aid teaches us that when someone exhibits the following signs, they’re likely to be suffering from Hyperthermia:
- Headaches
- Thirst
- Clammy skin
- Weak and rapid pulse
- Increased respiratory rate
- Dizzy and confused
These are, funnily enough, many of the signs that I’m ‘exhibiting’ everyday at the moment. Seriously man… too much work. It’s not fun.
DETROIT (AP) — Latoya Smiley was driving a bus in Detroit when a passenger told her Rosa Parks had died.
Upon hearing the news, she invited her riders to sit at the front of the bus.
Smiley, 27, was one of many Detroiters remembering Parks after the civil rights pioneer died Monday.
I could cry. I hate it when amazing, dedicated and inspirational people die.
Detroit-area residents remember Rosa Parks’ legacy
Guardian: Rosa Parks Dies Aged 92
News comes that the UK has had its first encounter with Bird Flu from a parrot that died of the H5** strain while in quarantine with birds from Taiwan. Far more interesting to me than the article instelf that i was reading, on a technology news site (don’t ask…) was the reaction of readers. It’s worth checking out.
Was the parrot a Norwegian Blue? Just asking, maybe he is just resting.
Nobel Intent: H5 anyone?
I was asked a question today by a Gent called Luke, and it’s something that I’ve been thinking about recently as it’s something that ought to be rectified.
This question might sound a
little dumb but, what is the website that you link to? I find it confusing, is it a blog or a series of news items?
In answer, I actively haven’t had an ‘about’ page on here for the simple reason that I like to not be too obvious. I think telling the ‘Whole World’ what you do and who you are all in one easy page makes life too simple. I like the fact that to know anything about me from my site you have to read it quite a bit, you have to have read it for a while to build up a picture and I think the best websites are like that. If you really like what someone has to say, you’ll stick around. I don’t have the ego for thoughts like this, from one of my favorite sites,
Thousands of individuals visit this site every day. No, I’m serious. And, presumably, it’s not just for the photos of me, shirtless, sometimes covered in beer.
If you were to describe me in less than 300 words, in a positive and very flattering light (that’s the ego taking hold), how would you do it? I’ll select the photo if you help with the words.
Oh, and Luke, it’s a blog with news. A blog just about me 24/7: far too tedious!
On Monday the American Association of Magazine Editors unveiled their top 40 magazine covers of the last 40 years, with John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s cover shot by Annie Leibovitz for Rolling Stone topping the list. The image was taken on the day before Lennon was shot dead outside his apartment. Leibovitz features heavily in the list with the number two shot as well (of Demi Moore) as do the themes of September 11th 2001 in Time, Fortune and New Yorker covers, and celebrity portraits of people like Princess Diana, Andy Warhol, The Dixie Chicks and Bill Clinton.
ASME created the “Magazine 40/40” competition earlier this year. A judging panel of 52 magazine editors, design directors, art directors and photography editors was charged with picking the 40 top covers from a pool of 444 images representing 136 magazines. The contest was open to all consumer magazines published in the United States. Magazines were invited to submit up to four entries from their respective publications. Entrants were also encouraged to nominate covers of magazines that were not published by their company or were no longer being published.
-ASME Press Release
The Top 40/40 in visual form
Use of sleeping pills has gone up by 85% in the time between 2000 and 2004, which the New York Times says indicates another sign that “parents and doctors are increasingly turning to prescription medications to solve childhood health and behavioral problems.”
I honestly think it might just be that people are trying to fit so much into their time that they end up so buzzing at the end of the day that they need something to keep them down. If their parents can take a night cap, why can’t the kids take a Nytol? But then at the same time:
Dr. Andrew D. Krystal, director of the insomnia and sleep research program at Duke Medical Center, said that insomnia had long been undertreated, and that few doctors recognized how much insomnia could worsen other medical problems. Long-term medication can help relieve these problems, he said.
Dr. Krystal said he [also] consulted for and did research paid for by several drug companies.
NYTimes: Sleeping Pill Use by Youths Soars, Study Says
At the same time as kids are taking drugs to get away from it all, the Natural Resources Defense Council is suing the US Navy in Los Angeles courts to halt or cut down the use of active mid-frequency sonar during training exercising because of the damage the systems do to whales and other sonar-prone mammals. The group wants the Navy to avoid known calving and migration routes but does not request any change in behaviour for sonar use during critical periods.
The lawsuit blames the Navy for the January stranding and deaths of at least 37 whales on North Carolina’s Outer Banks after a mid-frequency sonar exercise. The Navy said it was unlikely the whales were harmed by sonar because the exercises were too far away.
The NRDC sued the federal government in a New York federal court in June, seeking documents about the mass stranding and other marine mammal deaths. The new lawsuit also cites a May 2003 case in which orcas behaved erratically and porpoises were found dead in northern Puget Sound following exercises by the USS Shoup, a Navy guided-missile destroyer.
Seattle PI & AP: LA lawsuit claims Navy sonar beaches whales and dolphinsPast Research: Tests on marine mammals to look for sonar link to injuries
The US Pentagon has created a type of defensive material that can be used in new vehicular armour protection. This is news because it’s a form of modified transparent aluminium.
Aluminum Oxynitride (ALON) transparent armor has been demonstrated to provide nearly equivalent ballistic protection as conventional armor at approximately half the weight and thickness. Performance testing of different thickness and laminate armor is being conducted to determine the best design for use in large size multi-hit samples. The selected design will be evaluated for use in a vehicle application to assess the mechanical properties and robustness in this type of application.
from the Technical Support Working Group Combating Terrorism webpage
The only problem at the moment is pricing. Right now production costs around $10-15 per square inch while traditional armour costs $4-5. Economies of scale will bring this high down to more reasonable levels, but right now, you’d have to just bite the bullet to protect yourself.
In a test this summer, the product held up to a .50-caliber sniper’s rifle with amor-piercing bullets. Traditional glass armor did not survive the test. Officials hope the product will prove even more useful when considering more severe threats, such as explosives.
“The higher the threat, the more savings you’re going to get,” La Monica said. “With glass, to get the protection against higher threats, you have to keep building layers upon layers. But with [the new product], the material only needs to be increased a few millimeters.”
“Achieving protection at lighter weights will allow the armor to be more easily integrated into vehicles,” said Ron Hoffman, a researcher at University of Dayton Research Institute.
Livescience.com
