Blue Monday and Feelgood Tuesday
No, not the New Order classic. What I’m talking about here is Monday 21 January, which is apparently the most depressing day of the year.
A Cardiff University psychologist has developed a formula that “takes into account… weather, debt, time since Christmas, time since failing our New Year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and the feeling of a need to take action”. Luckily, though, us Brits have been found to be optimists and more than 85% of us “expect the future to be happier than it is now”.
I’m not normally a Monday person* (there’s another study that says that Sunday night is the one night of the week when you’ll get a bad night’s sleep, so maybe that’s why) but I was relatively cheerful this morning - until I heard about Blue Monday. The very concept is depressing and demotivational; and its such an abstract concept too, masquerading as proper science.
So I’ve decided that tomorrow will be Feelgood Tuesday. The most depressing day of the year is out of the way already (and we’re only three weeks in), so everything’s getting better from now on. Don’t wait for the future to be happy; be happy now!
[*there are those that would say I'm not an any day of the week person, and they may be right!]
Advanced number theory
Just had to share this one with everyone:
A friend of mine has just moved his credit card from one provider to another. He’s paid off the balance on the one he’s moving from and wrote to them to ask them to close the account. They sent him a final bill - a few pounds worth of interest charges - which he paid, and they duly sent him a statement of account that showed his balance was £0.00.
What they didn’t send him was confirmation that the account was now closed, so he wrote to them again asking them to confirm in writing that the account was indeed closed (he’s a bit of a completist when it comes to things like this). This week he received a letter from them saying that while they had received his request to close the account, they couldn’t do so unless it had “a nil balance”. Helpfully, the letter indicated what the balance was: £0.00.
Now, when I was at school £0.00 was the same as nil but that’s obviously not the case anymore. But what I’m not sure of is whether they think he owes them money or whether they owe him.
Of course, this is actually another example of the way that the software has taken over the asylum. Somewhere there’s an algorithm that doesn’t look to see if an account balance is actually zero, just whether it’s less than or greater than zero. Then the human that sits in front of the screen just prints the letter when the computer tells them to and off it goes.
It’s going to be interesting to see how they explain the difference between £0.00 and nil.
Contributors needed
If you haven’t already checked it out, why not head on over to The New Wolfs Howl Forum? It’s a start-up message board that’s only been going for a few days and so you’ve got the chance to get in on the ground floor, as they say, and help to shape its future direction.
Because it’s so new, there aren’t too many topics started yet so to encourage new members and get everyone talking about new things I’ve created “Task of the Week” and this week’s task is to a) start a new topic and b) contribute to at least two others. Easy really, so what’s stopping you?
Registration takes about two seconds - you just need a username, email address and password - and then you’re away. So come and join us and let’s have some fun!
At it once again
Leading on from my recent posts about data security, both nationally with the UK Government and internationally with Facebook I’m now getting somewhat jaded about the whole subject; it seems that almost everyday there’s some new story about data being treated irresponsibly some Government department that’s supposed to be looking after it.
Today we’re treated to two cases; the first is a little less HMG’s fault as it involves the theft of a Royal Navy laptop with details of around 600,000 people. Chances are, though, that as it was left in a parked car the thief wasn’t after the data, he just wanted the laptop to sell for drug money.
The second case is more serious, as it involves confidential documents from the Department for Work and Pensions being found on a roundabout near Exeter airport. Three things about this story are worrying; firstly that these documents should end in this place, secondly that similar documents were found in the same place only a couple of months ago and thirdly that no-one seems to know who should have been in control of the documents at the time they went missing.
I’ve asked this question before, but I’ll ask it once again; how can a Government that systematically and regularly fails to protect the data of its citizens, either through its own ineptitude or that of the outside companies it chooses to employ, really expect to be taken seriously when it says it can be entrusted with the type of data that its new ID card scheme will require?
Formula 1 2008: the season starts here
And let’s hope its a better one that last year. While the racing was at least slightly better than in 2006, especially with Brit interest at a height with the amazing debut season of Lewis Hamilton, the whole sport became mired in what can only be called farce with the “Spygate” scandal involving McLaren and Ferrari.
This year, hopefully, the FIA will allow all of that to be laid to rest (they’ll have to think up some other ruse to make sure Ferrari win) and we can get on with some proper racing.
There’s been some moving about in the off-season; former champion Fernando Alonso has moved back to Renault - who had a bad season last year without him (and were also found guilty in the off-season of spying, but escaped punishment due to the inadequate nature of the FIA) but good things are promised for 2008. He swaps with Heikki Kovalainen who says that he expects to be treated as an equal to his new team-mate Hamilton at McLaren. Time will tell. Meanwhile Alonso is joined at Renault by Nelsinho Piquet - bringing back one of the all-time great racing names to the Formula One paddock. You can see the full drive line-up on the F1 site.
Not too many of the cars have shown their colours yet, but Hamilton’s been out in the new McLaren and says that “It was fantastic to get my hands on the MP4-23 this morning in Jerez” and he thinks good things will happen. Meanwhile, Alonso called his first drive of the Renault “encouraging”.
BMW Sauber have thrown down the gauntlet to the big two teams, saying that they “are confident we can turn the battle in front into a battle of more than two teams” and challenge for race wins. They scored points at every race last season, but were over 100 points behind false champions Ferrari at the end of the season. It remains to be seen whether they can really do it.
So as usual all the pre-season feather-ruffling is in full swing; lets hope that this year we get some decent races and honest results to bring some credibility back to the sport.
Wolfs Stuff
Wolfs Helpers
-
