Brains working towards machine consciousness

 Occasionally something reminds me to Google myself.  I thought this time, it might be useful to record the results (in case Google loses me somewhere! - or, actually, to compare against later).  There are several pages of results ...  These are the results from searching for Pat Parslow (without quotes, and without any extra hint words).  Those which are not about me have been crossed-through and italicised.

 Apologies for the other formatting issues - I will try to sort them out later!

Perhaps these aren't definitions that everyone is used to using, so for the sake of clarity:

Drivers

There are increasing numbers seeking qualifications from the Higher Education institutions in the UK, and static or decreasing budgets available.  

Additionally, some institutions are seeking to re-align themselves to focus more on research, which means they have a need to reduce the teaching 'overhead' for staff to free up time for them to conduct quality research.

Issues

With the increase in numbers of students, it is hardly surprising that many staff report that ability levels appear to be declining, on average.  

 I guess I am a little naive.  

With the Icelandic volcano, Eyafallajökull erupting and causing problems for air traffic because of microscopic ash particles, it seems we are deluged with comments from the media about how the economy is suffering.  Now, don't get me wrong, there are certainly elements of society who are bearing the brunt of this - the small scale farmers in Kenya, for instance, and the airlines are obviously not without cause for concern.

 The Digital Economy Bill (known as #debill on Twitter) looks set to be passed in to law in the UK, following one of the most shameful performances in the House of Commons by MPs I have witnessed.  To be sure, they have previously passed some shockingly bad laws (the Civil Contingencies Act 2002, for instance) but at least that had parliamentary time, even if it does open up ridiculous loopholes for a future government to abuse at their leisure.  This one was rushed through, for no real discernible reason.

In general, Research and Learning are treated as separate entities in the HE sector, which, if we look at definitions of the words, might seem a bit incongruous:

Research 

Research is work that involves studying something and trying to discover facts about it

 Over at TestFirst.org there is a nice (early stages) learning resource which I believe will be useful for helping people learn to program.  Using the Ruby language, and the RSpec gem as the basis for test driven design, the learning materials provide specifications which the learner then writes short programs to satisfy.

 This is my transfer report. I can’t claim to be overly happy with it, but there are constraints on size, and although I haven’t actually exploited them to the full, giving a full treatment of the content of the subject areas would require several times the limit.  This is largely unchanged since the last time it was submitted, with a new section on Digital Identity replacing an old one, now included in the appendices, on bio-acoustic signal analysis. 

 My Godson is two years old.  He can, after a fashion, clothe himself.  He actively searches out new experiences, and tries to learn how to do things.  If he can't figure something out, and if he reckons he won't get into trouble for trying to do whatever it is he is focussing on, he will ask for help.  He doesn't expect, in general, to be spoon-fed, and shows a definite preference for us to respect his independence.

Many undergraduates on the other hand...

 I don't know whether anything will come of the actual project, in this case, but the idea came up of an open source application to make it simple for teachers (or other staff) to be able to 'aggregate' reports from subject teachers for a particular pupil or student.