5.03.2005
laundry and ugly people
Sadly, it's laundry time again.
And laundry in this stupid country gets expensive, for certain... It's £1 per load per machine, so 1 load of laundry takes £2 (washer and dryer), and that's only if you hit a good dryer. Otherwise, it can cost an extra £1 to get it fully dry. And at any given time, only three of the dryers are worth using, and of the remaining three, one actually runs cold. But there's no telling which is which.
I forgot to mention that on on April 30th, right before May Day, St. John's College just next door set off a massive fireworks display for no apparent reason. We were all watching a movie in the MCR when stuff we heard things exploding outside. We ran out and were treated to a fabulous display of light and sound for which we had perfect seats. I think it lasted about 10 minutes, which is impressive, considering how much those things cost. We were jokingly trying to determine how many foreign students' tuition was used to light up the skies for those 10 minutes. Oxford is expanding its non-European graduate student enrollment, as it can charge us more than it can UK or EU students. We're cash cows to Oxford. Moo...
Also down at Magdalen Bridge on May Day, this was sufficiently far away that I didn't know about it until afterward, people were jumping into the river. Now, this is a sort of almost time honored (honoured?) tradition dating who knows how far back. The problem is that Magdalen Bridge is kind of a sketchy part of town, and people throw very strange things into the river from the bridge on inebriated excapades out. So the river has shopping carts, bikes, and the odd snipped of barbed wire in it. Police divers usually go down and clear the bottom of the river before May Day in anticipation of idiots jumping. This year, though, in addition, they measured how deep the river was. THREE FEET. So that's like jumping off the 25-foot high dive into the shallow end of the pool. So the police set up barriers to prevent people from jumping but, as one student was quoted in the newspaper as saying, "the police tried to stop us, be we weren't having any of it." More than 100 people are reported to have jumped, though more reputable news sources scale that number back to fifty. And of those, at least twenty-five were treated by paramedics, and at least twelve were taken to the hospital. Among the injuries, a plethora of crushed bones, lacerations, a reported spinal injury when someone in the river was landed upon, and an impalement of someone's knee onto the spikes on a gate. Pictures, video, and news stories can be found here.
Finally, today's New York Times includes an article stating that Ugly Children May Get Parental Short Shrift. In other words, parents treat cute kids better than ugly ones. The findings are a bit contentious, as one might imagine. Still, I'd rather take it up with one of the respondents of to the report, quoted in the article thus: "Wealthier parents can feed, clothe and take care of their children better due to greater resources," Dr. Sternberg said, possibly making them more attractive. "The link to evolutionary theory is speculative." I think it's interesting that Dr. Sternberg makes the link from wealth to physical attractiveness. It's a bold move, and one that I'd reckon not many agree with. Sure, wealthier parents can do a lot more for their kids, but making them more attractive? Maybe they're paying for cosmetic surgery...
And laundry in this stupid country gets expensive, for certain... It's £1 per load per machine, so 1 load of laundry takes £2 (washer and dryer), and that's only if you hit a good dryer. Otherwise, it can cost an extra £1 to get it fully dry. And at any given time, only three of the dryers are worth using, and of the remaining three, one actually runs cold. But there's no telling which is which.
I forgot to mention that on on April 30th, right before May Day, St. John's College just next door set off a massive fireworks display for no apparent reason. We were all watching a movie in the MCR when stuff we heard things exploding outside. We ran out and were treated to a fabulous display of light and sound for which we had perfect seats. I think it lasted about 10 minutes, which is impressive, considering how much those things cost. We were jokingly trying to determine how many foreign students' tuition was used to light up the skies for those 10 minutes. Oxford is expanding its non-European graduate student enrollment, as it can charge us more than it can UK or EU students. We're cash cows to Oxford. Moo...
Also down at Magdalen Bridge on May Day, this was sufficiently far away that I didn't know about it until afterward, people were jumping into the river. Now, this is a sort of almost time honored (honoured?) tradition dating who knows how far back. The problem is that Magdalen Bridge is kind of a sketchy part of town, and people throw very strange things into the river from the bridge on inebriated excapades out. So the river has shopping carts, bikes, and the odd snipped of barbed wire in it. Police divers usually go down and clear the bottom of the river before May Day in anticipation of idiots jumping. This year, though, in addition, they measured how deep the river was. THREE FEET. So that's like jumping off the 25-foot high dive into the shallow end of the pool. So the police set up barriers to prevent people from jumping but, as one student was quoted in the newspaper as saying, "the police tried to stop us, be we weren't having any of it." More than 100 people are reported to have jumped, though more reputable news sources scale that number back to fifty. And of those, at least twenty-five were treated by paramedics, and at least twelve were taken to the hospital. Among the injuries, a plethora of crushed bones, lacerations, a reported spinal injury when someone in the river was landed upon, and an impalement of someone's knee onto the spikes on a gate. Pictures, video, and news stories can be found here.
Finally, today's New York Times includes an article stating that Ugly Children May Get Parental Short Shrift. In other words, parents treat cute kids better than ugly ones. The findings are a bit contentious, as one might imagine. Still, I'd rather take it up with one of the respondents of to the report, quoted in the article thus: "Wealthier parents can feed, clothe and take care of their children better due to greater resources," Dr. Sternberg said, possibly making them more attractive. "The link to evolutionary theory is speculative." I think it's interesting that Dr. Sternberg makes the link from wealth to physical attractiveness. It's a bold move, and one that I'd reckon not many agree with. Sure, wealthier parents can do a lot more for their kids, but making them more attractive? Maybe they're paying for cosmetic surgery...
