Re: Huf Haus on last night's Grand Designs

[Jerry.]

But you haven't snipped out your own words !

Just admit you're wrong, no one is going to laugh at you, just behind your back !...

[Jerry.]

Truth hurts does it ?

[Owain]

"IMM" wrote | > >When I was in a German office for a month, they would have the | > >odd celebration and out came the beer. We were never invited. | > I wonder why ? | Because we were better looking, better dressed, better dancers, | better singers and better at life than them.

And we won the war.

Owain

[Mike Mitchell]

Another misunderstanding is that children in Germany are generally not driven to school by their mothers or fathers like they are in the UK. On the contrary, many children, even at quite a young age (my niece was 8, I believe) make their own way in the company of other school children on the ordinary bus or by bike, using the proper footpaths which are located *away* from the road. Some mothers take their children to school by car sometimes, but there is nothing like the traffic chaos that features so heavily during the rush hour in the UK.

Another point: While Germany has just put away its first cannibal, the public have not descended in gibbering paranoiacs, afraid that cannibals may be lurking behind every hedge to eat their children. Such a silly idea, as we all know that only giant fe-fi-fo-fum monsters do *that* kind of thing, and Blunkett's now got them on Home Detention Curfew.

MM

[John Rumm]

OK fairy snuff.... that was the first big Georgian style one I remember

- I may have missed the other.

I think they had samples on site and the rest were in the process of being made. The cost of the change was something like 30K extra - hence it must have been more than just a last minute change to an as yet unfulfilled order. The slightly more surprising bit was that this is the episode that caused her to sack the architect (with the phrase "I would like you to put your professional indemnity insurers on notice...!") and take over management of the build herself...

Not intending to malign her at all really - in many respects I was in awe of her drive, ambition, and shear determination to realise her dream house. It was all the more impressive that she took on the management of a build of that magnitude without any prior experience of such things while at the same time as looking after a family and (IIRC) performing a day job as well.

[IMM]

I'm right.

[IMM]

I mentioned the war.

[IMM]

No. I accept the report. Very factual and true.

[Andy Hall]

That could be why you weren't invited to the parties.... .andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[IMM]

NO, we were just better looking and would take all the girls. They were ugly bastards, even the women.

[geoff]

C'mon andy - you know that's not true

[The Natural Philosopher]

IMM?

[IMM]

LOL. snotty uni humour, so funny. Do you tell you pone about the dog with no nose too.

[IMM]

That is true Maxie. Our stunning good looks put them off us.

[Mike Mitchell]

No, the *Americans* won the war! We put them up for three years.

MM

[IMM]

NO. We won the war with their weapons, doing their fighting and they charged us with interest. Something sounds not right in that.

[Owain]

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote | PoP wrote: | > Take the worlds biggest w*nker, apply a | > liberal dose of newspaper, and what do you get? | IMM?

Soggy newspaper?

Ink on your willy?

Owain

[Capitol]

I always found that asking people if they used to go to the Nuremberg rallies produced the same response. Particularly effective in disrupting meetings!

Regards Capitol

[The Natural Philosopher]

The russkies won the war.

[stefek.zaba]

I profoundly wish there was no truth in your assertion; but in my direct experience of regular guest lecturing at a couple of universities ("established", "traditional", or whatever we're supposed to call "real" ones - incidentally dissing a few excellent poly departments such as Hatfield's comp sci course), and confirmed by several friends who do Uni teaching full time - there is at least a substantial minority of students who expect detailed handholding and ludicrously explicit guidance about what will be On The Exam.

I'm sure this attitude isn't totally a recent invention: equally, I'm sure it's more prevalent, and much more vocally expressed, than 20-30 years ago when Uni education was shamelessly "elitist", i.e. aimed to nurture the critical thinking skills of those able to string a few coherent thoughts together. There are still plenty of bright, self-motivated, intellectually curious students coming through: but the 'teaching quality exercises' seem to be geared towards making Uni teaching more and more like school teaching.

Fortunately, most of the lecturers I know are still insisting on telling their students that it's an *education* they're getting, not some narrow "training", and that final exam questions and intermediate assessments/assignments are there to demonstrate reasoning from appropriately understood principles and an ability to do some unguided fact-gathering and sifting, rather than regurgitaion of last term's lecture notes. But as I say, there is more of an objection to this discipline than there once was: and it comes strongly, incidentally, from some students who are paying full (overseas) fees, and will say, more or less explicitly, "I [or more accurately, my parents or my country' government] have paid scads of money to send me on this course, when I have this qualification I can get a Good Job, it's your job to make sure I get this qualification".

Indeed, one of the (presumably) unintended consequences of making students pay increasing amounts of their own money for their tuition - rather than treating their education as an investment by the whole of society in the minds of the best-and-brightest - is that it may well reinforce this narrow, selfish, consumerist approach to ones university education. Depressing... but, as noted, not universal, or even yet the majority viewpoint in the few institutions I have close contact with.

Now here, oh Naturally Philosophical one, you stray in my view into the world of rant. No doubt there's some 'customer culture' element to the whinges of the wannabe spoonfeds, as I've already alluded to above: but regular legal action for teaching at an appropriate level has yet to rear its ugly head in UK academe!

Stefek