Catechism

Finally finished typing in the old catechism, which didn't seem to be anywhere on the web. Been at it at odd times for over a year. My feelings about the old religion are rather mixed: they combine guilt, relief, anger, nostalgia and affection in roughly equal proportions.
One of the most interesting aspects concerns the stuff they just never mention any more, such as indulgences, the state of grace, mortal sin. Another is the number of iron rules that turned out to be malleable. And then there is the monumental consistency, certainty, and triumphalism of the establishment.
Another curiosity is that it all worked. I remember being very happy for years when I accepted all that. I had lots of questions, but had been trained to question within the system.
I just included, of the prayers, those I learned by heart as a child. I still like these, and am grateful to the people who made me learn them.
Perhaps the saddest Q+A in the whole thing is number 425, in the chapter on Extreme Unction and Holy Orders. Not many catholics have such an uncomplicated view of our priests as
this, nowadays.

B/S Bingo

Here's the source. Copy to bsbingo.c and compile with some command such as
cc -o bsbingo bsbingo.c
Then use the commands given under usage (or package them in a little script and put a handy link on your desktop).
The resulting random 5x5 grid is used to relieve the tedium of an otherwise boring meeting.
/***********************************************************/

/* bsbingo
Generates a random bsbingo card.
AOF 4-ii-2011. Copyleft...
Usage:
bsbingo > temp
lpr -o landscape -P <printername> temp
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

#define N 5  /* number of rows and columns*/
#define PHRASE_LENGTH 18
#define PHRASES {\
" outside the box  ",\
"end of the day    ",\
"   bottom line    ",\
"   iconic         ",\
"   leverage       ",\
\
"core competencies ",\
"   synergy        ",\
"   strategic fit  ",\
"   benchmark      ",\
"   24/7           ",\
\
"   empower        ",\
"   win-win        ",\
"   game plan      ",\
" above our weight ",\
"   bandwidth      ",\
\
"the good of the X ",\
"apples and oranges",\
" green field      ",\
" hopefully        ",\
" shoot ourselves  ",\
\
"game of two 1/2s  ",\
" rennaisance      ",\
"  transparent     ",\
" SWOT(any 2)      ",\
" meltdown         "\
}

void permutation(int* k, int M){
/* places a random permutation of 0,1,2,...,M-1
in the array k[0],...,k[M-1]
*/

int i,j,temp;
int P[M];

for (i=0;i<M;i++){ P[i]=i; }
/* start with the identity */

for (j=0;j<M;j++){
for(i=0;i<M;i++){
if (rand()%2){
/* randomly apply the transposition (ij) or not */
temp = P[j];
P[j] = P[i];
P[i] = temp;
}
}
}

/* copy P to k: */
for (i=0;i<M;i++){
k[i]=P[i];
}
}

void blanks(void){
/* print some spaces */
int i;
for(i=0;i<PHRASE_LENGTH;i++){
printf(" ");
}
}

void solids(void){
/* print some underscores */
int i;
for(i=0;i<PHRASE_LENGTH;i++){
printf("_");
}
}


int main(void)
{
int i,j;
int k[N*N];
char* phrase[N*N] = PHRASES;

srand( time(NULL) );

permutation(k,N*N);

printf("\n\n");

/* print the table, using k to randomise the entries: */


for(j=0;j<N;j++){
printf("_");
solids();
}
printf("\n");

for (i=0;i<N;i++){

printf("|");
for(j=0;j<N;j++){
blanks();
printf("|");
}
printf("\n");

for (j=0;j<N;j++){
printf("|%s", phrase[k[N*i+j]]);
}
printf("|\n");

printf("|");
for(j=0;j<N;j++){
blanks();
printf("|");
}
printf("\n");

for(j=0;j<N;j++){
printf("|");
solids();
}
printf("|\n");



}
printf("\n\n");
return 0;
}

/****************************************************************/

Speech Recognition Software that came with Vista

Speech recognition in action:


What is the second commandment of god?
The second commandment of the garden is: adult shalt not take the name of the lord thy garden in vain

What is forbidden by the second commandment?
The second commandment forbids us to offer garden and of his saints go to the end last line speak with you reverence and garden or his saints borrow sacred persons and things

What is commanded by the second commandment?
We are commanded by the second commandment two speak with reverence of god and of his saints, and of sacred persons and things, and to keep OUR LAW FOR and valves

How should we use the name of god you love?? Yes
We should always use the name of god we had great respect and reverence.

What is a vial?
I have our is a binding promise made to god to do something that is especially pleasing to him.

What is an awful
An old is the calling of god to witness that what we say is true, or that we would do what we promise.

When the is an awful lot for? Foreign ought to be lawful we must have sufficient reason for taking it and, and we must say only what is true, after all is only what is lawful.

What are the chief send some against a the second commandment?
But you sins against the second commandment, blasphemy, perjury and caressing.

What is blasphemy?
It is blasphemy to express contempt of garden, or of sacred persons or things in so far as they are dedicated to god.

What is your injury?

Hmmm. This software needs work.

Literacy and Numeracy

The draft plan (link from title of this) invites comments. I sent in this:
Dear Sir/Madam,
The quality and training of Primary teachers is critical
for success. We have to stop appointing teachers who
are afraid of Maths.
I favour making it a requirement for entry to ITE that
candidates have grade C in HLC maths, or an equivalent level
in some other jurisdiction. No ifs or buts.
Also, given my experience of incoming students with HLC Maths,
I favour further academic study (at least 15 ECTS credits)
in Maths (apart from study of Maths Education and methodology)
as part of teacher training courses.
This will ensure reasonable competence and
confidence in future teachers, in relation to Maths.

Similar requirements in English would be reasonable.

Your report does not deal with Irish, the state of which just makes
me weep. But there is a point to make. I date the really catastrophic
decline in the teaching and learning of Irish as following the
elimination of the HLC Irish requirement for entry to
the training colleges. After that, I started meeting teachers
at Parent-teacher meetings who could not conduct a simple
discussion with me in Irish about my childrens' progress.
You can't improve or even maintain
standards, if the teachers are incompetent.

We also need another report about science in primary schools.

Best regards,
Tony O'Farrell

The Recorded Music Business

OK, so now I see that perhaps the industry has a future, after all. My first reaction to Youtube was that it should completely kill the business: Why would anyone ever buy a record again? But it turns out that you can listen to a song, but not a whole quartet, sometimes not even a whole movement, without interruption. For instance, I find half of the Beethoven Grosse Fuge, and the thing just stops slap in the middle. It seems the Youtube rules don't let you upload the whole movement. In the sixties, I used to hate turning over LP's in the middle of a piece, although it was better than what our parents had, when they had to play twenty or thirty 78 rpm records to hear a single piece. I thought we were finished with that kind of thing.
Also, I don't care much for the videos that go with the music. Is there a purely aural equivalent of Youtube? Youspeakers?

Mathematical Studies

This is a letter to a blogger called Stewart Griffin who send me a link to his blog in which he denigrated Maths Studies degree programmes at Irish universities:

Dear Stewart,
Thank you for your message.
I looked at your blog.  It does not appear to
take comments, so I am writing to you.
You are seriously misinformed about Maths Studies,
if you think that this order is reasonable:

Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Physics, Engineering (with significant maths content), Computer Science, Mathematical Studies, Chemistry, Biology

as a ranking of fitness of degrees to prepare maths teachers.
I suggest that you start by getting the facts about the maths
content of these various kinds of degree programmes, before
you lay about you in this way.  You will find that you have put
ahead of maths studies a number of programme-types that typically
involve the study of some rather small (typically well less than 50%)
subset of a maths studies programme, and certainly at no higher
level of rigour, to say the least.  Maths studies programmes entail
between 80 and 110 ECTS credits in Maths courses, depending on
whether the student takes a double-hons or single-hons degree. You
make fun of the occurrence of a 5-credit module on History of Maths
in our programme. But this is an entirely appropriate module for a
prospective maths teacher, and it was not in put there  to make the
programme easier.  A maths teacher should have an understanding
of the origins and development of the discipline, and a broad and
sufficiently deep exposure to all the mainstream areas of maths.
Fifty years ago, the standard training for a maths teacher involved
the 3-subject general degree, with maths as one of the three.  This
translates, in modern terms into 55 ECTS credits (15+20+20) in
maths, involving so-called general-level,  (pass-level) courses.  An
engineering graduate from UCD would have had a greater level
of exposure to maths, over the four years, except that they would
have been light on areas such as groups, rings, fields, and
number theory.  Many people were, and
are teaching maths with much less exposure than this, such as
Arts, Science, and Commerce graduates with as little as
one year of maths (15 ECTS credits).  With the elimination of
general degrees, the maths studies programmes were created by
adding to the general maths programmes.  The additions, typically,
involve more exposure to proof, to modern geometries, and to
subjects that have become more important in the modern world,
such as symbolic computation, combinatorics, coding theory,
cryptography, as well as history and philosophy of maths. 
In the meantime, most S+T programmes have gone
in the opposite direction, reducing exposure to maths to the
absolute minimum required for the later courses in the
application, usually confining it to the first two years,
emphasising drill at the expense of concept,
paying no attention to rigour, in short giving a narrower
and shallower maths education.
As a consequence, your school principal should on no account
send in recent graduates in any of the S+T areas you list,
except Maths, Applied Maths and Maths Studies, to teach
maths to his students, unless they have taken steps to
deepen and broaden their mathematical education.

Best regards,
Tony O'Farrell.

Sabbatical over

Too much life for blogging, since July. Freud is supposed to have said  that all that really matters is Love and Work.  If that be so, then I live as one should, because all I do is love, and work.  Term began on the 20th, and I enjoy the contact with bright, hopeful youngsters again.
In the tail end of the Summer, I read through some engaging stuff: (the English and Irish text of) a parallel-text anthology of  Irish poetry with Czech translations (ISBN 80-86055-80-9), a collection of essays about Ireland, by a German journalist (Ralph Sotscheck, Saint Patrick in der Bingohalle, Irische Einblicke, ISBN 3-85452-718-7), Collected Stories by V.S. Pritchett (ISBN 0-7011-2305-2), a collection by Isaac Bashevis Singer (A Crown of Feathers  and other stories, ISBN 0-224-00986-9),
a translation of The Analects of Confucius (ISBN 978-1853-26462-7), a biography of the poet Attila Josef, by Thomas Kabdebo (ISBN 1-89792202-7), a couple of rather dated books on cosmology:
G.J. Whitrow, the Structure and Evolution of the Universe, Hutchinson, 1959; and G.C. McVittie, Fact and Theory in Cosmology, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961, and I reread a translation of J.L. Borges collection Ficciones, Grove Press 1962 and Feynman's sparkling and provocative memoir, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!    Pritchett and Singer are just brilliant, but  I can't imagine what I saw in Borges. 
Now I'm just reading Maths, apart from occasional dips into the Tale of Genji.  It looks as though this novel will take me a long, long time.
I'm teaching introductory mathematical computing, with Maple, and basic real analysis.
I'm currently investigating the distribution of cubic residues to composite moduli, with an application in view to Diophantine approximation.  I like number theory, but have a lot to learn.