‘WE’blog

Today is Halloween. While in Denmark it is an imported ‘festival’ from the US, in fact Halloween has its origins in the Celtic New Year. Apparently, the souls of the dead visited the living world as the old year changed to the new, leading people to protect themselves from any evil spirits that might be about. When I was a child in Scotland, we used to make lanterns from what we call ‘swedes’ or turnips. You carved out a face, put a candle in it, tied a string to it, and then carried out into the street when you went ‘guising’ (now known as ‘trick or treat’). Guising was nothing like trick or treat I hasten to add…not that I was allowed to do it…the few who did it mostly collected money to buy fireworks for Guy Fawkes night on the 5^th November (when people in the UK light bonfires and set off fireworks). Costumes consisted of anything old and black. We ‘dooked’ for apples (ie trying to catch apples floating about in water) or tried to eat a treacle scone covered in butter with your hands tied behind your back while some evil person held it up on a string.

Thinking about games (very weak link), a national video game archive has been started in the UK to document the history of gaming. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7695043.stm Looks like an interesting project and they are looking for contributions.

PS Anyone looking for pumpkin carving inspiration http://www.extremepumpkins.com/

PPS I have discovered that the Celtic festival or ‘samhuinn’ has been ‘revived’ or reinvented in some parts of Scotland…I make no comment…but look on YouTube if you want to see what goes on.

A couple of months ago, there was a posting here about robots. I read today that there will be three times the number of robots in the world as there are today by 2011. These will both be cuddly toy types and those that are used by the military. Personally, I would love one of those ones that does the housework, especially hoovering (ie using a vacuum cleaner or ‘en støvsuger’). http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog.

I also read today the results of the latest Turing test, the test that sets out to see if we can be fooled into thinking that we are talking to a person and not a computer, which still remains to be achieved it seems. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7670050.stm. No surprise there.

Those of you going to Berlin – have fun!

Last week, as some of you are aware, I was away at another week of the ‘pædagogikum’. This took up a lot of time that I could have spent on other things such as listening to third semester presentations, making scones, reading interesting articles or wasting time on Facebook.

Wasting time….what exactly does that mean? One definition is that “to waste time you have to have a clear idea of what you should be doing with your time if you weren’t wasting it” (Guy Browning, The Guardian, 4^th March 2006). So, being in one place when you could be in another, spending time on Twitter or watching clips of cats and photocopiers on YouTube instead of typing up a report, could all be cited as time wasting activities.

There have been many surveys that highlight the time ‘wasted’ by workers ‘playing about on the Internet’. For example, one study from 2007 by an employment law firm claimed that workers who spend time on sites such as Facebook could be costing firms over £130m a day. Another one claimed that the cost to British industry due to ‘questionable bandwidth usage’ (what a lovely expression) could be £6.5 billion per annum (timesonline 12 March 2008). The phrase social not-working, used to describe spending time on personal emails or on social networking sites instead of working, has even entered the language.

However is wasting time all bad? Staring out of the window, just sitting doing nothing while we collect our thoughts are valuable moments in time to reflect, be inspired or just switch off. Spending 10 minutes emailing a friend can be a welcome break in a busy work day, letting you then go back to your work with a cleared mind. Time wasting is something that can be productive and creative. What you think is time wasting, another might think of as being productive. Take standing at the photocopier as a good example….time to plan a party or time wasted waiting for bits of paper?

Check out http://idler.co.uk/ – “the magazine for people that live to loaf”