They did not want to repudiate totally their previous policies, yet had to recognise the disaster of which they had been part.
Later on Bukharin was to present NEP, not as a retreat, but as a return to the early policies of 1918.
In Russia we started not with War Communism but with the so-called New Economic Policy.
This was followed by intervention, by an…intensification of the class struggle, which assumed the form of civil war. This gave rise to War Communism.
Then followed the return to NEP.
Despite this somewhat shilly-shallying attitude, Bukharin was very clear in one respect: “We can see the new course of our economic policies as a mighty strategic operation…intended to last for a number of years.”
The strategic aim, for Bukharin, was the development of large-scale industry as a springboard to communism: Once we have achieved this, we shall…”turn the rudder”.
But this new turn of the rudder in the opposite direction will not signify a return to the previous situation and that is and to the appropriation of surpluses and so forth .
For these methods, used to regulate consumption on the basis of a drop in the economic power of the town relative to the village, will be quite inappropriate to a state of affairs whose basis lies in developing the productive forces…
The “turn of the rudder” will be the gradual economic liquidation of the large private enterprises and the economic subordination of the small producer to large scale industry.
The small producer will be drawn into a socialised enterprise, not by means of non-economic coercion, but chiefly by the economic advantages which will provide him with a tractor, electric light bulbs, agricultural machinery and so on.
He will be enmeshed for his own good in the electric wires which bring with them life-giving energy to make the farm fertile.
Thus, in 1921, Bukharin was developing his theory of equilibrium both in the theoretical aspects and in its application to current questions.
As we have seen, his view of the transition to socialism was one of the breakdown of the fundamental equilibrium of capitalism and the creation of a new equilibrium by the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
They did not want to repudiate… July 27, 2010
As for drinking, we didn’t do badly on the day… July 15, 2010
As for drinking, we didn’t do badly on the day and more followed later.
When we returned from our honeymoon, feeling bronzed and glowing, a drinks party was held so that all the rest of the family and our friends might share in our celebration. Lucky me ” I reckon I was given the best of both worlds.
If I had a daughter getting married this summer I would be tempted to give her a twopart party in similar vein.
The wedding breakfast would have a Scottish flavour and the centrepiece would be a proper breakfast dish of kedgeree made with plenty of salmon, generously buttered, flecked with herbs and cucumber.
This would be prefaced by asparagus, a traditional choice for weddings in my family; and followed by raspberries and to my mind the most exquisite of summer fruits and served either pure and simple with a little cream, or combined with redcurrants and packed into a bread-lined basin to make summer pudding.
If I wanted to have just one, larger party, and bearing in mind the recession, I might copy a friend and give a wedding tea.
For tea, like breakfast, is a great British forte, and one of the most charming weddings I have ever been to in Britain took place at teatime.
It was one of those joyous occasions to which as many children as adults and elderly grannies were invited.
Everyone, whatever their age or status, was encouraged to wear white and the church brimmed with the milky-white and creamy-gold froth of buttercups, meadowsweet and Queen Anne’s lace.
We sang All things bright and beautiful as loud as we could and tucked into the tea-table contributions of aunts, cousins and friends with rare gusto.
My menu for a village wedding tea would include mountains of sandwiches made with many different sorts of breads, all politely crustless and cut into triangles.
There would be fillings of tomato with mint, cucumber and Marmite and scrambled egg and cress, cream cheese and greengage jam, honey with walnuts, potted shrimps and smoked trout with nasturtiums, ham with or without mustard, and chicken and toasted almond and mushroom mayonnaise.
There would be washstand-basin bowls of strawberries, and jugs and jugs of cream.
Maybe some wobbly gooseberry jellies, lemon possets or syllabubs, whim-wham or fresh raspberry trifle, brown bread and cinnamon ice-cream, blackcurrant leaf water ice, and sweet geranium sherbet.
There would be biscuits and little cakes galore (including gingerbread men and chocolate fancies iced with the initials of bride and groom) to flank the towering tiers of the wedding cake.
As for drinks and there would be silvery twirled urns of tea on tap for the grown-ups and milk or fresh lemonade for the young.
Plus glasses of bubbly for toasting the newlyweds ” the real, fizzingly alcoholic stuff for those who like it, and elderflower champagne for the children and incurable romantics like me. …
AND THE BRIDE WORE MYRTLE
VICTORIAN WEDDING POSIES WERE ELOQUENT EXPRESSIONS OF A COUPLE’S LOVE.
The pressures on the professional librarian in issues… July 15, 2010
The pressures on the professional librarian in issues of censorship are enormous.
There is pressure from the society being served ” to respond this way and that; there is pressure from employers; and there is the pressure from within ” to be an individual and to express individual tastes and views. But these pressures are faced by all professionals in other fields.
Ultimately the requirement is to act professionally and that, at the very least and should ensure a consistent approach to the issue of censorship.
But because there is some uncertainty about what it is to be a professional librarian and how to respond professionally to many situations and there can be rather tao many difficult decisions to be made; and the dilemma is not helped by the weakness of the profession, both inherent and externally perceived, on the issue of censorship.
It is appropriate therefore to examine more fully the pressures or tensions that the professional librarian is faced with in questions of censorship, and to look for their resolution in terms of the Code of Professional Conduct.
The pressures might be conveniently categorized as follows: duties, obligations, loyalties and convictions, and arguably that is the order of priority in which they should be followed. The duty of the professional librarian
Members’ primary duty when acting in the capacity of librarian is to their clients, i.e. the persons or groups of persons for whose requirements and use are intended the resources and services which the members are engaged to provide.
In all professional considerations the interests of clients within their prescribed or legitimate requirements take precedence over all other interests.
So much mere lip-service is paid to the concept of the primacy of users’ needs, and so often are the users’ needs merely perceived rather than ascertained and that library services fall short of users’ real needs or requirements too often.
It then becomes easy in service provision to slip almost unwittingly from providing what we think the clientele requires to providing what we think they ought to have.
For that reason the word “interests” in the Code of Professional Conduct is perhaps an unfortunate guide in the context of censorship.
It encourages us to believe we can take a protective attitude, by acting in the clients’ ‘best interests’, in making decisions about what stock to provide.
The path of “best interests” is ironically the swiftest way to library censorship. The word “interests” could then blur the message of the Code.
The operative word in the duty of the professional librarian has to be the “requirements” of the user. The obligations of the professional librarian
Members must fulfil to the best of their ability the contractual obligations owed to their employer.
However circumstances may arise when the public interest or the reputation of the profession itself may be at variance with the narrower interests of an employer.
However and the sex allocation theory… June 29, 2010
However and the sex allocation theory that Eric Charnov has developed in his embracing monograph has further implications. Take two examples.
Females of several parasitic species of wasp sting weevil larvae, beside which they lay a single egg.
If the females release stored sperm and the egg becomes fertilised and develops as a female, otherwise it becomes a male.
Given two populations of hosts, one containing equal numbers of 1.0 and 1.4 mm larvae and the other containing 1.4 and 1.8 mm larvae, in each population more female wasps develop from the larger hosts and more males from the smaller.
This means that adult female wasps are determining the sex of their offspring in response to environmental variation ” in this case, changes in host size.
This is because females reared on larger hosts are able to lay more eggs, but males do not gain by being larger.
Apparently far removed from parasitic wasps, individuals of some species of shrimp from temperate and arctic waters undergo sex reversal.
After starting life as males they turn into females, while other shrimps in the same populations spend their whole lives as females.
The proportions of individuals with these alternative life styles differ between populations and so that in some areas of the world all individuals change sex.
The shrimps can live for several years and the average mortality rate in adults within a population is a good predictor of the proportion of individuals within a population which will change sex.
When the life expectancies of the shrimps are short then most of those which start life as males may not survive long enough to become females.
Under such conditions natural selection may favour some individuals occupying the all-female life style.
As is the case with the parasitic wasp, it seems that sex allocation is occurring in response to environmental variation.
The beauty of Charnov’s book is that it uses one simple theoretical technique, hat of the evolutionary stable strategy and to tackle apparently disparate problems in sex allocation theory.
Furthermore and the equilibrium allocation often reduces to the so-called Shaw-Mohler form and that selection favours mutants which alter life histories so that the per cent gain in fitness through one sex function exceeds the per cent loss through the other sex function.
Within this framework, Charnov deals with sex ratios in dioecious species (those having separate sexes), with the order and timing of sex change in sequential hermaphrodites, with the equilibrium allocation of resources for simultaneous hermaphrodites, with conditions favouring the transition between dioecy and hermaphroditism, and with the selective forces likely to alter the allocation to male versus female function (such as local mate and local resource competition). But Charnov’s feet are firmly on the ground.
He never strays far from elegant applications of the theory to field and laboratory studies, many of them his own.
In pursuit of relevant material, he has worked with or analysed data from parasitic and trap-nesting wasps and shrimps, fishes, barnacles, limpets and plants.
As he develops his theme, he concurrently reviews a wide literature and continually suggests plant and animal groups which will provide tests of alternative hypotheses.
There are numerous cross-references in the book where apparently different problems reduce to the same theoretical form. My only worry about the book is that Chapters 2 and 3 may deter some readers.
Much of the relevant theory is developed in these early chapters, but not with sufficient care.
Parts are telegraphic, and clarity is sometimes sacrificed for brevity, as with Charnov’s treatment of the graphical approach to sex allocation theory in Chapter 3.
And, although I agree with the author that the Shaw-Mohler equation is characterised by “its utter simplicity”, it seems a little brutal to derive it in a page of text by introducing 11 variables, when the equation itself can be reduced to three.
Nevertheless and such criticisms are minor compared with the achievements of this book, It is the first book to deal comprehensively with sex allocation theory, and it will surely remain a classic for years to come. Mind and body in battle
The second is that many processes… June 7, 2010
The second is that many processes simply cannot be shut down for the weekends.
Power stations, oil refineries, dairy farms, newspapers, hospitals and simply have to go on at the weekend, and often through nights as well as days.
Shift workers would enjoy far more normal social lives if their leisure was not superimposed on a seven day cycle of work and leisure, which they cannot share.
Our capital resources, both leisure facilities and industrial plant, would be more rationally used if we abolished the weekend.
An additional benefit would be that more people could find part-time work, and adjust their working hours to their family commitments, or to the demands of part-time study.
If our society began to move towards more flexible cycles, in which different communities and groups would adopt different patterns, we would create more employment, as employers would have to cover a shifting pattern of working activity. Christopher Roper Belton, Leicestershire
Good Ideas
Some years ago you published articles and follow-up correspondence on the problems of the individual inventor.
I am in the process of organising a conference which touches on this problem, and is concerned with getting the different sections of the innovative and business communities to talk to each other and try to understand each other ‘s point of view.
I would like to ask your readers if they would write to me concerning their experiences in trying to get an idea developed to the production stage, all of which will be treated in the strictest confidence.
I am interested in success stories as well as complaints about maltreatment, and would be glad to hear the point of view of anyone on the side of the investor.
The information will be of great help in preparing my remarks to the conference which will take place in Oxford in April. Michael Harris Irex.
Snow House 03 Southwark Street.
London
Not alone
I refer to Professor Frank Tipler’s arguments (” Are we alone in our galaxy?”vol 96, p 33) against the possibility of existence of extraterrestrial intelligent being. (His comments are in quotation mark).
First, “It is highly improbable that single-celled organisms (on another planet) could ever develop into complex intelligent beings.”
Nonetheless, here we are; if it can happen on one planet with humans, it could happen on others with non-human species. We are proof that the almost-impossible can occur.
“Few people realise just how far ahead the French have… May 24, 2010
“Few people realise just how far ahead the French have gone”, he says. Their isolation has engendered self doubt in some quarters.
Current predictions for the cost of generating electricity with the Super-Phenix put it at about the same as coal but twice as expensive as a conventional reactor.
The new plans, which have yet to receive official blessing, would drop this to 16 times.
Probreeder sources in France say that the premium is worth paying because of the energy independence given by a breeder, which “breeds” its own plutonium fuel. But reduced forecasts of energy needs.
coupled with French spending cuts mean that government funds for future breeders will be that much more difficult to win. Alvey follow-ups planned
MORE BIG collaborative projects involving the government, academic researchers and industry are in the pipeline following the go-ahead given by British ministers this week to a £350 million programme in information technology.
The five-year project, mooted by a committee of electronics specialists chaired by John Alvey of British Telecom, will draw together the country’s top researchers.
Kenneth Baker and the minister for information technology and said this week the government will contribute £210-£250 million of the project’s cost. Civil servants are already examining what could follow the Alvey proposals. Baker is keen on more collaborative projects in key technologies. He has earmarked surface chemistry.
sensor technology and materials research as candidates for the joint approach.
Like the project on information technology and this work could be administered by small directorates within the Department of Industry.
Baker also plans schemes that help industry to exploit technologies developed by universities.
He visits a university a month and talking to academics, and is impressed by the “tremendous potential of the work. “Britain has not been very good at getting the ideas out of universities. I want to do what I can to open the gateways,” he told New Scientist . Depo’s side-effects repealed
UPJOHN and the maker of the controversial injectable contraceptive, Depo-Provera faces much more than the unspecified objections of health minister, Kenneth Clarke, if it is to reverse Clarke’s decision to ban the use of the drug as a long-term contraceptive in Britain.
A pressure group, which calls itself the Coordinating Committee on Depo-Provera, has submitted 400 pages of evidence to the appeal panel, which began hearings this week.
Elected only ten months ago and the current… May 17, 2010
Elected only ten months ago and the current council had made several changes.
They had renamed the footpaths and bridleways committee the “Open Spaces” to give a broader view of their work.
They had defined the activities and work committees, carried out a financial review and reorganisation of staff at Radford Park and the recreation ground.
The building of the bypass and a grant of land meant ground was now available for allotments and a new committee had been set up.
Parish and committees now meet on Mondays and council meetings are held in the Peak Centre. “We are,” he said, “an open parish council.
Please come and see what we do and bring us any problem you feel we can solve.”
The bypass is progressing well and is scheduled to open in July with a parish celebration on July 19th.
After the bypass completion the parish would be looking forward to the de-trunking of the A3 which would become a B road. At last the parish would have some say in lighting and maintenance. There would also be an opportunity to enhance the Square.
Devolution, either from county or district, would mean more local information and reporting back to the relevant authorities by the parish clerk and her assistant.
It was important to remember the parish office was the first point of contact; it had the advantage of local knowledge and should be used.
He concluded by thanking vice-chairman Tony Rudgard who has produced the useful monthly newsletter for parish councillors.
Explaining that the parish precept had risen to 8 percent less than the 111/2 percent predicted for many other councils, David Clark, finance and general purposes chairman, was questioned by Col. John Dabson.
Col. Dabson wanted to know why so much money was to be spent on open spaces such as Radford Park and the recreation ground. “It is more than Alton, Petersfield and Whitehill, all towns. It is out of all proportion,” he said.
Mr. Clark said that the figures included costs of administration and rates on those places.
The first of these is when the teacher is asked… May 10, 2010
The first of these is when the teacher is asked to do a manageable job, where he is working within his intellectual capacity and has that confidence which proceeds from really knowing more about what he is teaching than the children do.
Such confidence is further strengthened when there is positive and practical help available to the teacher in the form of clear sequenced teachers’ notes with practical advice.
The large volume of sound (if somewhat stereotyped) English teaching in lower and middle classes and the solid and sensible teaching of basic arithmetical processes are all, I believe, a product of such a sense of security, as are the generally more creative attitudes and approaches of teachers in the lower classes of primary schools.
The official and actual curricula are also brought close together whenever there is genuine interest and enthusiasm on the part of the teacher (which is almost invariably communicated to the children).
This is noticeable when short term goals can be identified and seen to be worth reaching and may well account for the very impressive efforts by schools in agricultural and sports and music competitions.
But it is most evident whenever a teacher has developed a real interest in some school subject or area of the curriculum, often the result of some form of limited subject specialisation by the teacher. Sometimes this is officially encouraged.
More often it is not, for administrators would have a manoeuvrable teacher, and any form of specialisation decreases manoeuvrability.
Yet it is doubtful whether this argument outweighs the benefits a teacher gains from being able to concentrate his interests.
For if he considers himself in some small way a specialist, not only can he spend a good proportion of his time teaching what he likes and probably and therefore, understands better, but he also has more of a chance of keeping up to date on his chosen subjects, particularly if he has support, as many of the teachers I observed had, from local subject advisers, associations or selective in-service programmes. One popular myth needs, perhaps and to be dispelled at this stage.
That is the belief that teachers and children “don’t like getting their hands dirty”.
Indeed I detect a genuine and growing support for Agriculture in schools, evident from pupils and their parents, whenever leadership is given by an enthusiastic teacher, and I have met a number of these, giving freely of their own time and sometimes of their limited funds as well.
The assessment of practical subjects and their funding remains a problem, but the negative attitudes towards Agriculture, which I remember so clearly in the years just preceding and just after independence in the countries where I worked and travelled and seems virtually dead.
Instead there comes the realisation and surely necessary all over the world and that every African, whatever else he is, is also a food producer and must learn to be an efficient one. HOPES AND FACTS
“Objectives are like targets,” says Richmond, “the nearer they are and the easier they are to hit.”
In this chapter I have attempted to draw a distinction between the targets we set and our ability to hit them.
No one expects every one to hit these targets in the middle, but at least they should be in sight and the marksman should be provided with a gun that shoots straight.
The fact that many syllabuses and teachers’ books are full of relevant and challenging content and that in every country schools can be found where interesting and exciting work is in progress, must not obscure the central problem.
To the average teacher in the average school the official curriculum plan is unattainable . He just can’t hit the target however hard he tries.
Unless and until more knowledge is gathered concerning the aspirations, capabilities and limitations of schools and the people who work in them, and until sufficient flexibility is built into syllabus planning to allow for the necessary variations that are inherent in planning and providing learning for different people in different contexts and the gap between prescription and reality will remain an unconscionably wide one.
Perhaps those of you, my readers, who are involved, like me, in curriculum design, might join me in a New Year’s resolution to keep our wishful thinking in check and face reality more consistently.
Those of you who are teaching and training teachers for school, I would invite to rebellion.
It is high time that more of you spoke up in protest against us whenever we invite you to do that which is impractical or inappropriate. Out of our argument, a better and more workable curriculum could emerge.
When the engineers are needed, all the… May 6, 2010
When the engineers are needed, all the duty staff have to do is call the computer through an office terminal, and enter the type of emergency.
The computer goes through its list of 7000 engineers and site workers, classified into five groups depending on location and qualifications, and decides how many to call.
Each employee has a code word, which the computer’s voice recognition chip checks.
If the right person answers, a pre-recorded message asks him whether he is available and gives information on the emergency.
With 16 telephone lines and the system can call 150 people, get their responses, and print out a list in under 20 minutes.
And if the wrong person answers, or the engineer cannot give the code word and the computer apologises for the disturbance and hangs up. Sound of history
AFTER a 35-year gestation period, Britain’s National Sound Archive is finally opening early in April.
The British Institute of Recorded Sound conceived the idea at a conference just after the war, and the record companies EMI and Decca backed the scheme with a few hundred pounds.
But because there is no legal requirement to deposit records (as with books) the institute has had to rely on voluntary donations over the years. Despite this, it has amassed over 400000 discs and 20000 hours of tape.
Although the institute now has a staff of 28 at its Kensington headquarters, it copes with the collection only because few people know about the free public listening service that it offers.
But now the British Library is to provide cash and storage space, and help with a computerised catalogue.
The public now has a better chance of listening to treasures such as the massive 40-cm 78-rpm discs cut during the Nuremburg Trials, or the 40 hours of tape recorded during the 0z trial.
But visitors will still not be able to hear a clutch of tapes that the School of Scottish Studies donated. They were given on the express condition that they will never be played. Astronomy ” the next space race
He was also impressed by the school’s four professors (in… May 5, 2010
He was also impressed by the school’s four professors (in contrast and the London College was to start with only one professor).
Young wrote of the Alfort school that “the establishment does honour to the Government of France.
There are at present over 100 pupils from every country in Europe except England, a strange exception considering how grossly ignorant our farriers are”.
Again in 1788, James Clark of Edinburgh, in the preface to his Treatise on the Prevention of Diseases Incidental to Horses wrote: “In France, a regular academy for the Instruction of young Farriers has been instituted. The attempt is laudable and worthy of imitation.
The Physician and Surgeon enjoy the greatest opportunities for receiving instruction in their professions, by a regular education.
The analogy between the diseases of the human body and those to which the horse is liable is very great.
Hence it must be obvious that the cure of those diseases must depend on the same principles as the former: from which it is likewise evident that a regular education is necessary to the Farrier”.
In June 1788 Charles Vial and the Frenchman who was to become the first Professor of the London Veterinary College in 1791, arrived in England with letters of introduction from Pierre-Marie Auguste Broussonet (17611807) to Sir Joseph Banks PRS (17431820), Samuel Foart Simmons MD, FRS (17501813) and Dr P.D. Layard MD, FRS (17211802).
Sir Joseph, botanist and explorer, with an interest in plants of agricultural importance, was president of the Royal Society for 42 years.
Dr Simmons was physician-extraordinary to George III, and was called to treat the King in his “mad” periods.
Dr Layard, physician to the Princess Dowager of Wales, was the author of a book on Contagious distemper among horned cattle .
In September, Vial published proposals for the creation of an English veterinary school.
It is assumed that, having married an Englishwoman, he returned to France in December 1788 at the end of his six months’ leave.
He was back in England by February 1789, when he directed and possibly assisted Edmund Bond in his dissection of the magnificent racehorse Eclipse which, like his grandsire Regulus, was never beaten.
At meetings in May 1788, March and June 1789 and the Odiham Society, in its leisurely way and resolved to advertise its intention to educate two or more boys “at the great School of Farriery in the neighbourhood of Paris, where children from every part of Europe are taught the business of Farriery scientifically and practically, and solicit the contributions of the Public at large”.
The matter was to be brought more closely to the notice of “noblemen, gentlemen and farmers” by a circular letter signed by the society’s treasurer, Rev William St John, calling for subscriptions.
The name of Granville Penn first appears in the Odiham Society minutes of 5 August 1789, as a subscriber to this farriery fund.
While the Odiham Society has earned and received its fair share of credit, it must be concluded that this modest proposal and so long in incubation, was likely even if put into effect and to have had only a marginal impact on the situation it was meant to remedy”as the society soon realised.
In October 1789 Charles Vial announced proposals to deliver lectures in England on the veterinary art.
On the 9th of that month, James Clark of Edinburgh was elected an honorary and subscribing member of the Odiham Society.
This was the same Clark who had stressed that a regular education was necessary for a farrier.
Whether the preface to his treatise in which this comment was made was ever actually read by the society’s members is not known, although they did order two copies of his “two publications on Farriery”.
