So I read that the uk.gov (as it was known in the old days of Janet when they did domain names backwards) has managed to lose the personal details of around 10,000 habitual offenders and all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales. The data was on a USB key, unencrypted natch, and includes their names, addresses and dates of birth.
Am I the only one to imagine what would happen if some wannabee crim found it and used it as identity theft fodder. And whether there'd be a certain poetic justice in that?
Friday, August 22, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
"But what is it for?"
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, wrote Bertrand Russell, and let's face it, he got through enough work to know a thing or two about the stuff.
Paradoxically however, the primary strategy most people employ to survive the three, four or five years of solitary enquiry which entails a Ph.D. in many parts of the world, is to maintain such a solipsistic belief. (We don't treat here with the vanishingly rare cases where a student's work actually is important, sub specie aeternitatis: this is a blog for cynics and luddites remember.)
How then is the poor student to stave off the nervous breakdown awaiting after their viva when it begins to dawn on them that the subject which has obsessed them for the greater part of their recent existence has no more importance in the greater scheme of things than, well almost anyone else's completed Ph.D. thesis? Why, a post-doc of course!
Post-doctoral research years are an ingenious invention of the academic community whose ostensible purpose is to separate relatively functioning members of the newly graduated doctoral cohort (those who's theses are actually worth further investigation, or, more frequently, those who wish to pursue careers in academia) from those greater numbers thinking, well, what the hell do I do now?
For the latter it plays an extremely valuable role as decompression period in which this cognitive dissonance can be resolved, allowing the freshly-minted dr to play with their shiny new title before putting it away in the back of a drawer where it belongs.
Those of you who have led more normal existences may like to use the analogy of those Sundays where you come down from two or three days' partying before the inevitable Monday-return to work.
Paradoxically however, the primary strategy most people employ to survive the three, four or five years of solitary enquiry which entails a Ph.D. in many parts of the world, is to maintain such a solipsistic belief. (We don't treat here with the vanishingly rare cases where a student's work actually is important, sub specie aeternitatis: this is a blog for cynics and luddites remember.)
How then is the poor student to stave off the nervous breakdown awaiting after their viva when it begins to dawn on them that the subject which has obsessed them for the greater part of their recent existence has no more importance in the greater scheme of things than, well almost anyone else's completed Ph.D. thesis? Why, a post-doc of course!
Post-doctoral research years are an ingenious invention of the academic community whose ostensible purpose is to separate relatively functioning members of the newly graduated doctoral cohort (those who's theses are actually worth further investigation, or, more frequently, those who wish to pursue careers in academia) from those greater numbers thinking, well, what the hell do I do now?
For the latter it plays an extremely valuable role as decompression period in which this cognitive dissonance can be resolved, allowing the freshly-minted dr to play with their shiny new title before putting it away in the back of a drawer where it belongs.
Those of you who have led more normal existences may like to use the analogy of those Sundays where you come down from two or three days' partying before the inevitable Monday-return to work.
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