Keys Corner

I was googling topics related to the EU, mainly looking for information on the EU Consitution (PDF file, 1 MB), when I stumbled across this link which plays the EU anthem (MP3 file recorded at 320 bps). I didn’t even know the EU had an anthem. Actually, it is part of the Ninth Symphony by Ludwig Van Beethoven. You can read more about it here. If it reminds you of the Soundtrack of Stanley Kubrik’s Clockwork Orange, then you are quite right – the film also had large chunks of Beethoven’s Ninth as background music.

At the University of Missouri a program, Qualrus, is being used to mark essays of students taking sociology courses. It doesn’t replace the professor’s marking, but is used to give students preliminary feedback – they can submit their work online, and get a detailed evaluation of their essay within seconds. The program analyses word patterns in the essay and compares them to work submitted by all previous candidates and information added by the course tutors. Students may use Qualrus as many times as they like before submitting their papers.

The program was surprisingly cheap to develop – it cost around $100 000. And it sounds as if, with time and further development, it has the potential to completely change the way students learn. I wonder whether it also ultimately has the potential to trigger a technology race, similar to that between spammers and anti-spam software – with people developing software to help write course work which marking programs give high marks to?

The Bush administration is focusing on abstinence as the best way to prevent unwanted teen pregnancies. Take this test and see how you would fare answering questions that test whether you know what the government is teaching American teens.

Wait for western spin-doctors to start playing with this news item in the Independent:

In a vivid demonstration of interconnectedness, Nasa scientists have found that one-third of the soot affecting the Arctic comes from South Asia. And Indian studies show that nearly half of the soot emitted in the region comes from cooking fires…

...The Nasa scientists were amazed to find that only one-third of the soot reaching the ice came from the nearby industrialised countries of Europe, and North America and the former Soviet Union. A similar amount results from burning vegetation around the world, with the final third coming from South Asia. And the Indian subcontinent provided most of the soot falling out on Greenland.

I can see superb potential for GW Bush to argue that the USA has no need to implement any measures to curb pollution, because the Indians and Asians are the ones polluting the rest of the world (and anyway, there is no such thing as Global Warming)...