Trumpets

Having accepted an impromptu invitation to make up a foursome for a trumpet quartet, standing in for an absent member, I had a pleasant couple of hours blowing on Friday evening. After running through several well-known tunes arranged for 3-4 trumpets, the conductor of their band, who happens to be the conductor of my orchestra, arrived and we spent an enjoyable half an hour or so working on a difficult and complex piece that they are rehearsing in their band. Saturday morning saw the first rehearsal of the new term for the Saturday Morning Orchestra. The usual conductor was not well, and the deputy conductor was not available, so we had a deputy deputy conductor who coped rather well under the circumstances, being the first play through of the pieces we had. We creaked and struggled our way through Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Mendelsohn's Violin Concerto. It'll get better, I'm sure...

Three papers

Friday morning was interesting. My first appointment was with Sam Laryea and we spent the best part of an hour discussing a draft of our paper for the Dubrovnik conference in the autumn. The paper, which is about standardization of procurement in construction, has to be submitted at the end of this month. We went through the draft together, and agreed some changes to the literature review and context, then looked at the table comparing various tendering methods, finally agreeing the basis of the conclusions. We will bounce the next draft off the British Standard committee with whom we are working. We meet next week, so we have to move quickly.

The second meeting was with Professor Said Boukendour, who is spending his sabbatical with us, from University of Quebec. We are working on a paper about a new way of arriving at a price for a Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) contract. We spent our time talking about the similarity that Said had noticed between these contracts and call options. In traditional GMP contract, the bidder is incentivized to push the GMP up. This will increase the contractor's profit because of the way that the difference between the outturn and the GMP is shared with the contractor. Competition between contractors would overcome this, except that the evidence is that GMP is usually a negotiation with a sole contractor. So, it the GMP is artifically high, then this sets up a low-risk, high-compensation deal which goes against the rational, economic approach. Perhaps this is an unintended consequence. Without competition, this situation can be overcome through open-book accounting, by enabling transparency. But this seems to be saying that even though GMP incentivizes the behaviours we wuold like to see, we still need to check the detail, being unable to trust the contractor to behave. Does this mean that GMP inherently fails to incentivise the contractor adequately? This was the issue that Said had dealt with in an earlier paper. I was thinking that if a contractor offered open-book, then this is a gesture of goodwill, whereas if a client insisted upon it, then it implies that GMP is not a sufficient incentive and is being reinforced with intrusive monitoring. Said's point is that if there was an effective financial incentive, then there would be no need for all the detailed analysis of open books. This was the thrust of his 2001 paper. Simplifying the construction situation, a GMP contract based on one lump-sum payment at the end of the contract is exactly the same as a call option in other types of market. This means that the GMP can be seen as a cost-plus contract with an option to switch to a lump-sum. This is interesting because there has already been a lot of work on call options. Using this understanding as basis, we are developing an approach to incentivizing construction contracts in a very effective way.

The third meeting was with Jan Hillig who had finished a very detailed edit of our chapter in a forthcoming book about procuring complex performance. Wisdom Kwawu had developed the initial draft from my outlinem and I'd thought the chapter was just about complete until Jan worked his magic and added some detailed sections on legal aspects as well as editing the rest of the chapter in considerable detail.

By the time I was walking over to a seminar with 20-odd industry people to launch our new Technology for Sustainable Built Environments, I was feeling that we'd had a very productive and enjoyable morning. What a team!

Abd alah Helmey

I bought three music CDs when I was in Dubai not long ago, and they are all excellent. I found a disc by Nazem Al-Ghazali, an accomplished and celebrated Iraqi singer, who died in 1963. This is an evocative, vibrant recording of a concert that seems to have featured some of his greatest songs, judging by the enthusiastic reception of the audience to each new piece. The next disc was also Iraqi music, Munir Bashir and Omar Bashir, playing duets on the 'Ud, a traditional Arabic stringed instrument that is the predecessor of the western lute. This is beautiful music played by real masters of the art. The final disc was Egyptian. Taksim Kawala 3, by Abd alah Helmey. This is incredibly beautiful traditional music played on a wooden flute, but it is very difficult to find out anything about the music or the performer. The real problem with this CD is that the disc pressing is not very good, and the CD skips in the final two tracks, which makes it unplayable past that point. And the worst of it is that although I can find the recording on the internet from the people who made the disc, they only sell it in Egypt! I'll have to wait until I get another visit that way, unless anyone can bring me one back from their next visit...

Nürburgring

I am going to the Nürburgring in Germany! The local group of Advanced Motorcyclists is organizing the trip in October, and there will be about 110 of us. We have hired the track for a whole day, so it will be members only, and motorcycles only, rather than the usual mayhem where anyone who turns up can drive anything they want around the course. Apparently, the usual thing is to have bikes, cars, vans, all sorts, racing around together and getting in each others' way. So this will be nice way to get introduced to perhaps the world's most dangerous and difficult race track. Never having been near a race track before, I think I'll have to do some preparation!

Political leaders from construction professions

In the Co-operative Network for Building Researchers, an international e-mail list of people in the same field as me, a question was raised by Leonhard Bernold: "...our profession lacks direct connections into the political sphere, despite our crucial roles everywhere you look. How many politicians are there in the country you live with an engineering education?"

That got me thinking, and I started to make a list, to which others then added, so (probably a pointless exercise) this is a place where I can maintain and edit a list of construction professionals who achieved political influence:

• Boris Yeltsin, became president of Russia


• Osama bin Laden is sometimes said to be have qualified as a civil engineer, but it is not too clear


• Yasser Arafat (1929-2004), Palestinian Leader


• Heberto Castillo Martinez, 68, Leftist Political Leader in Mexico


• Ismail Abu Shanab: prominent leader, co-founder of Hamas


• Hundreds of engineers and architects are challenging the official 9/11 Commission Report


• Herbert Macaulay (1864-1945) was a Nigerian political leader. One of the first leaders of the Nigerian opposition to British colonial rule, he was also a civil engineer, journalist, and accomplished musician.


• Mohamed Ahmad Mahgoub, Sudanese political leader, very interesting life. A poet, a lawyer, and a very active politician at the centre of the Suez crisis in 1956.


• Robert Stephenson (1803-1859) Conservative Member of Parliament for Whitby 1847-59


• Lee Myung-bak (b1941) President of South Korea since 2008. Although he ran Hyundai Construction, his University education was Business Administration, so maybe this does not count.


• Ernest Marples, UK Minister of Transport


• Sir Keith Joseph, Director of Bovis, UK Member of Parliament 1956-87, Secretary of State for Social Services 1970-4, Secretary of State for Industry 1979-81, Secretary of State for Education and Science 1981-6.


• Paul Channon, UK Member of Parliament 1959-97,Minister for the Arts 1981-3, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry 1986–7, Secretary of State for Transport 1987–9.


• Nick Ridley (1929-93), UK Member of Parliament 1959-92, Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1981–3, Secretary of State for Transport 1983–6, Secretary of State for the Environment 1986–9, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry 1989–90.


• John Gilbert (b1927), UK Member of Parliament 1970-97, Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1974-5, Minister for Transport 1975-6, Minister of State for Defence 1976-9


• Nasir El Rufai (b.1960) Director General of The Bureau of Public Enterprises, and former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja from 16 July 2003 to 29 May 2007. Member of the ruling People's Democratic Party.


• President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran - A civil engineer with a PhD in civil engineering and traffic transportation planning. Also a lecturer and member of faculty at Iran University of Science and Technology.

We could go on and on with this, but I think the point is made that there are senior politicians all over the place who are engineers! What I don't understand is why people jump to conclusions like this without attempting to find out the truth of the matter first.

Brighton on the bike

The trip from Reading to the Brighton Conference of HaCIRIC (Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Information Centre) was uneventful and somewhat dull. I took the shortest route to the motorway, and then had the pleasure of riding in heavy traffic on the M3, M25 and M23. The morning traffic was heavy, but when it slowed to a crawl, I could filter between the more or less stationary vehicles, so I arrived in Brighton in time to check in to the hotel and catch the opening speeches of the conference. The conference finished mid-afternoon on Friday, and the weather was a bit misty in Brighton, but as I left the coast at Shoreham, the skies cleared and it was a beautiful bright afternoon.

The road was vary varied, because I had programmed the satnav for the most direct route, rather than the quickest, which was motorway. There was some really nice looking pubs and villages. The best part of the route was around Loxwood and along the A281 to Guildford. Really good road surface, nice sweeping bends and hardly any traffic at all. It was so pleasant to be putting the bike through its paces for the first time since the winter. Now that the roads have got some grip, the bike is rock solid in the corners, and I was reminded how good the handling was. What a great way to end a conference.

HaCIRIC Conference

The second annual conference of HaCIRIC (Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre) took place in Brighton these last two days. It was in the Brighton Metropole Hotel, on the seafront, although the location could have been anywhere, because, typically, none of the rooms we used had any windows, and the decor was standard 1980s stuff, which could have been anywhere in the world. But when we ate, we had great views of the sea. The presentations at the conference were very good indeed, ranging from strategic health planning through to the way that stroke patients were dealt with in UK compared with USA. It was really useful being able to connect the way that health services are planned with the funding, design and construction of the facilities themselves. As before, many of us found ourselves questioning why the health service needs capital assets, and struggling with the tensions between the needs for operational efficiency on the one hand, and the iconic value a hospital has for the community in which it is based. It seems that local politics demands that every community can identify itself with a hospital of some kind. National politics demands that vote-catching policies are more important than evidence-based health care. And no one wants to pay for health care, apparently. It certainly brought home to me the difficulty of developing a rational and effective health service. Within this complex and difficult context, the HaCIRIC researchers are trying to develop understanding,and provide tools and techniques that will help to resolve some of the inherent difficulties in the provision of the built environment for health care. The conference brought together people from all aspects of the health service, and provided some enlightening and informative moments for all of us.

British Standard on Construction Procurement

Today we had another meeting in London of a BSI Committee which is developing a new standard for construction procurement. The group is organized by Construction Excellence and has met quite a few times since the work started last year. After several meetings, we are now all familiar with each others' foibles and it is very easy to work together. There is representation from across the industry, although with an industry so diverse and complex, no group like this can ever be fully representative. But with a group of experienced people, we are touching a lot of diverse concerns about how to go about the process of construction procurement. Interestingly, this is taking place at the same time as the International Standards Organization is drafting an eight volume standard on construction procurement. The first part of the ISO is currently in draft form and out for consultation until end of April, so when I got back to my office I notified a few thousand people in our field about this, through a couple of mailing lists. I am hoping that this will generate some discussion and feedback, but there is a niggling doubt in my mind that a lot of people will not prioritise this or, perhaps, even see the point of commenting. I am keen to get as many people to comment on this Draft International Standard as I can, so if you have in interest in construction procurement, contact me and I can let you know how to get hold of the draft and comment on it.

Crowthorne Orchestra

Our Spring Concert well. Although I only brought 9 of the audience, there was a good crowd in the Old Gym at Wellington College. We played several pieces:

• Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite No.1, Op.46
• Dvorak: The Noon Witch, Op.108
• Leopold Mozart: Sinfonia Pastorella for Alphorn and String Orchestra
• Mussorgsky: Night on the Bare Mountain
• Smetana: The Moldau (Vltava) from Ma Vlast
• Khachaturian: Spartacus Ballet Suite No.2

and they all went very well indeed. I was particularly pleased with the Mussorgsky and the Smetana, both big pieces with plenty of trumpet to play. It was a real thrill to be playing such powerful and well-known music. I also really enjoyed getting to know Dvorak's Noon Witch, a piece I had never come across before, but it has really grown on me.

The audience were suitably amazed by the carbon fibre, telescopic Alphorn played by Frances Jones who explained how the real ones are made (and how heavy they are, being wooden and three metres long) and played a few solo pieces before playing her solo with the orchestra in Leopold Mozart's Sinfonia Pastorella. As there are no parts for brass in this piece, I was able to join the audience and see this part of the performance from the front, which was excellent.

This concert included some quite ambitious music for us, but the next one is even more ambitious, Sibelius Symphony No 2 in D Minor, one of my all-time favourite symphonies. I am really looking forward to playing that!

Multiple authorship

New Scientist, in its Feedback column of 18 July 1998, wondered how may scientists it takes to write a research paper. Their readers discovered some remarkable papers. One with 562 authors in Physics Letters B (vol 231, p 539). Then another with 596 authors in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research (vol 289, p 35). 718 authors were found on one paper in The Canadian Journal of Cardiology (vol 12, p 127). But the clear winner appears to be something identified by the judges of the 1993 Ig Nobel Prize for literature. They deemed E. Topol, R. Califf, F. Van de Werf, P. W. Armstrong and their 972 coauthors (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 329, p 673) worthy of the award for their achievement in "publishing a medical research paper which has one hundred times as many authors as pages". Can that record be beaten?

They also thought about which paper cited the largest number of institutions. One reader found 143 institutions listed in a single paper in The Lancet (vol 342, p 821).

And we thought multiple authorship was getting excessive!

Active vs passive voice

Some authors struggle with the problem of whether to use active or passive voice. I get the sense that they have a vague notion that the tradition in scientific writing is to write in the third person. This is manifest in their fear of using first person, or an active voice. I think of it as fear for two reasons. First, it's irrational. Second, they go to great lengths to avoid active voice or first person. I say it is irrational because when I ask them about it, they don't even understand what active or passive voice is. Just to clarify: if the verb relates to the person or thing, then we are using active voice, whereas if the verb is not connected to the doer, then passive voice is used. For example, in the preceding sentence, "use" is used in both voices, first actively then passively. The differences between first and third person is, perhaps, a little more straightforward.

I think that the fundamental problem is about using passive or active voice, and a lot of people seem to get very confused about this. Active voice is good, if you want to engage the reader. Passive voice is good if you want to stand to one side and look at the data, analysis and conclusions dispassionately. The confusion arises when authors pretend to change active to passive by changing "I" to "the writer" or "the author", which is just a clumsy way of revealing that they do not know what this active/passive thing is all about!

Power in construction contracts

We had an industry seminar about our research into the relationship between power and innovation. Among other things, we were talking about how power shifts from the client, thtough the design team, ultimately to the contractor, as the project progresses. Much of this was explained in Building Design Management by Colin Gray and Will Hughes (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001) One of the participants in the seminar, Innocent Okorji, a barrister, wrote after the event that the shift of power may not be between people at all.

He suggested that there was a metaphor in the field of administrative law. He said, "in military dictatorship or feudal system, parliamentary or presidential State, power initially resides with who ever wields the preponderance of force. As soon as the wielder of the force/power enacts a constitution (repressive or not), power is then transfered to that constitution. The constitution does not change during the process of governance. If there are any amendments to be made in any form or manner, including re-allocating authorities/powers within the polity/state executives, the amendments will usually be based on the provisions of the existing constitution. It follows therefore, in an organization such as [a construction client], power, ... initially resides with the [client organization]. Once the [client organization] adopts one form or the other of a governance structure within their organization or in relation with outside parties, the power is automatically transferred not to any individual or construction organization per se, but to the institutional matrix that regulates the integrity of the relationships within such organization and/or with outside organizations.

The governance structure once it is adopted, it remains in force. Any variation whatsoever to the status quo may only happen according to the provisions of the governance structure. In a construction project scenario, once the employer enters into a contract with external organization or chain of organizations, power to regulate the transaction automatically resides in the provisions of the contract."

Now, I found this very interesting, and responded thus. It sounds right to me because in practice, the people who best understand the governance structure are those most likely to be able to turn it to their benefit. So clients will perceive that the power base has shifted after they sign the contract, but also they may, perhaps, perceive the power base to be with the contractor, even though it is in the contract. In an ideal world, to run the contracts the way they were written, a Chartered Engineer or an Architect would hold the power, as they have roles which spring solely from the contract. They represent the contract. But in most places we have either moved away from that position, or perhaps not even got there. So the contract ends up as a two-way relationship between buyer and seller, with very little effective third party involvement. Presumably, this is why we had to invent statutory adjudication in the UK, to deal with the problem caused by contract administrators failing to fulfill adequately the role envisaged for them in contracts?

Annotated bibliographies

All research involves starting with what is known on a topic and building on it. All research projects need some basic work to enable the researchers to produce something that is developmental and useful. Comprehensive literature searchers are important, but probably quite rare, especially in our field. Here is a process that ought to be followed, and that research supervisors and funders should encourage and support:

1. Discovery – find out what has been published based on a shortlist of keywords agreed among the members of the research team, or between student and supervisor.
2. Retrieval – acquire the documents, preferably electronically, so that they can be placed in a closed repository for the research team.
   
3. Evaluation – for each document, ascertain whether it is relevant, perhaps revising the list of search terms as a result, and develop definitions of terms for a glossary of concepts that cites publications where specific definitions are used, given or implied.
4. Classification – for each document decide what this is about in relation to the emerging glossary of concepts (terms) and also in terms of whether it appears to the result of research, experience or personal opinion.
5. Description – for each document, provide a few sentences that summarize its relevance to the project

There are two outputs from this process. First, a list of key concepts, with associated keywords for searching on, with each concept defined by reference to the literature, including the full range of referenced definitions for concepts that are contentious, and definitive definitions for those where there is consensus. Second, an annotated bibliography, probably in bibliographic software such as EndNote, which will provide the research team with the basis on which they can critically evaluate the quality of past research and write up a strong literature review. Both the Glossary of Concepts and the Annotated Bibliography can form appendices of any published research report.

Snow on the road

The snow came in across England today, heavy and cold. With the temperature around -2°C, we were all expecting the country to grind to a halt. Sure enough, railway lines were closed, airports closed, buses were cancelled, and during the early morning, one-by-one, all but a few schools were closed. Total chaos. Mind you, there is some merit in the argument that with this kind of weather being so rare (last time it was like this was 18 years ago), it is clearly not worth investing in the kind of infrastructure that could withstand all this, so many people worked at home or just took the day off.

My daughter was due to do a day observing communication in a primary school across the valley, and my son wanted to spend the day at his friend's house near to the same school. So I gave them a lift and we got in the car and headed to the school, sticking to the main roads, which were gritted because they were bus routes. We were surprised that the primary school was open, and Vicky went in, after I told her I would wait until she told me it was definitely on. After ten minutes, she was on the phone in a bit of a quandary, because the teacher whose class she was observing told her that she should not have bothered, and should have stayed home. Vicky was perplexed, to say the least, since she had actually turned up and was ready to do the observation, but clearly, she was not wanted, so we picked her up again and set of for Dan's friend's house, which was on a small road off a narrow lane, which plunged into a valley. Although this road was not gritted, and was a steep narrow hill, I assumed we would be OK, because we were not going down the hill, but turning off, just beyond the crown.

As we approached the turning, the road was completely covered with snow, and quite slippy. I touched the brakes, as we were already on a slight incline, and the car lost all grip and started to slide completely out of control, but at a very low speed. We slid past the turning, and I could not regain control, as the hill grew steeper. and the car continued to slide, completely out of control, but finally the front end hit the left bank of the road, and the rear swing around until it hit the right bank of the lane. There we were, completely stuck, right across a narrow lane on an a hill. I had completely blocked the road, and nearly hit a pedestrian and her dog in the process. Some neighbours came out with their shovels, and we emptied a nearby grit bin all over the road. A couple of policemen came to help, too, and after an hour I finally managed to get us out without damaging the car. It was a bit stressful and quite hard work. I had stationed my son at the top of the hill, around the corner, to turn back any other cars, and he managed to get about 20 of them to not come through. One insisted on coming through because he thought he could park up and help, but he also lost control and only stopped by crashing into the grit bin! He tried to help, but just kept getting in the way. Finally, we got the grit on to the road, and the salt in the grit melted the snow, and I was able to manoevre the car back up the hill. It had taken about an hour, and I was pleased that there was no major damage to the people or to the car.

Anyway, we all got home safely, and now I am in the warm having a cup of coffee. And I am staying put!

Double-blind refereeing

The habit of double-blind refereeing (reviewing) of academic papers has evolved over the years and is quite common in academic journals. The idea is that when an author submits a paper, the editor makes sure the author's name and address are not evident, then chooses other experts in the field to review it and provide a critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the research and of the way in which the paper is written. It is the basis of scientific quality control, and is also used in reviewing research grant applications, especially when public money us involved. As an editor myself, I am very dependent on the referees' advice when deciding the fate of a paper. But the fate of a paper is my decision, not the referees', and sometimes I don't follow their advice, which can confuse authors and referees.

One interesting thing that frequently happens is that authors refer to their own previous work and thereby reveal their identity to the referees. Sometimes, a conscientious referee will then contact me and ask what to do because they have noticed the authors' identity. My attitude is always the same. It does not matter too much! If authors choose to reveal their identity to referees, they are either not worried about the lack of anonymity, or too naive to realise what they are doing. The key point is that many referees would recognise the writing of someone who was well-known. So the invention of blind refereeing was obviously not to protect well-known people. It was for the benefit of less well known people. It means the judgement of the referee is solely based on the merits of the paper. An unknown research student who submits a paper will have it reviewed by people who cannot guess whether the author is a student or a professor, so junior academics are the ones who benefit the most from blind refereeing.

Of course, referees often think they know who wrote the paper, and they often guess wrong. I have often sent to famous professors comments from encouraging referees who say that with practice and in time, they might be able to get their work up to scratch!

Authors who reveal their identity are either already so well-known that it does not really matter, or they are too naive to realise that blind refereeing requires that they don't reveal their identity. Either way, the conclusion is that the paper can still be refereed by the referee to whom we have sent it.

Profound misunderstandings

I came across some notes I had made at a meeting with some industry people back in 2005. The purpose of the meeting was a launch of some research these business people had done which was about the construction sector. Interestingly, one of the opening statements was that they had interviewed people from 50 major private sector organizations, which by anyone's reckoning (because of the collective spending power of these organizations) made it a major study. Should I have been pointing out how many papers we had published in CM&E that has larger samples? They were confident that no one had done such a significant study before or since. I remember thinking that they were so confident, they did not need to do a literature search in order to ascertain this for sure.

Another speaker declaimed that if you do not know what kind of health care you need 25 years from now, then you should not let a 25 year PFI contract. And if you do not know how we will be educating children in ten years' time, then do not let a 25-year PFI contract. I wondered what he thought of 999-year leases on land. I wondered if he had a 25 year mortgage on his own house, even though he did not know what his lifestyle would be like ten years from now, or where he would be working. I wondered if he knew what it meant for a business to own real estate, and then I wondered how he had become so important in our industry.

He went on to talk about "value", a word that still makes me squirm. Why does it make me squirm? It is indefinable because it means all things to all people, and it usually is introduced into conversations about the impoverished nature of the kind of objectives that business set themselves for their "key performance indicators". This guy defined value as what you wake up worrying about in the morning. Ha! What wonderful mumbo-jumbo.

The session included some e-voting opportunities where each audience member had a little device to select from options that were presented to them. Fascinating. Questions appeared on the screen, with 4-5 options to choose from. Often, the last option would be "other", and the speaker clearly had not wanted this, because in putting each question to us, he described this option as being there for those who could not make up their minds between the specific options he had listed. We could see the collective choices being counted on the screen in real time. The speaker knew what he wanted us to answer, because whenever the majority chose the option that he favoured, he used the phrase "finally being honest"! What was even worse, he then told us that he was going to use this as "data" to inform the policy for the organization he represented. I despaired.

There were many other presentations that day, from a series of industrial captains, many of whom had been involved in the preparation of the reports being launched. There were some interesting points that I took away from the meeting. One speaker asked why people were so preoccupied about capacity when efficiency (productivity) was so low. Surely we should first improve productivity, before trying to increase the capacity of such an inefficient sector. Another questioned the tone of the rhetoric surrounding partnering in the industry. He said that driving improvements from the client side is not as effective as equal partnership. Even radical change can be made step-by-step. But it is rare to find partnering agreements that are genuinely equal in terms of commitment.

As is often the case, I wondered about how we could bring industry and academia closer together. This was five years ago. I think we are making progress.

Test Department

Today I was rediscovering Test Dept, a UK group from the 1980s who used large pieces of metal, assorted hammers, buzz-saws and so on to create a mesmeric industrial sound that was hugely original at the time, and ultimately lead to the whole "industrial music" scene I guess. They still sound good to me. Check them out here. I always appreciate musicians who are sensitive the economic and political context of their music. Too much music is de-contextualized and lacks meaning. This stuff might not be to everyone's taste, but at least you can see where they are coming from! This is not sugar-coated, over-produced, escapist pap. I wonder what happened to these guys. The bass player from one incarnation of the group is Vic Reeves, and he's been quite successful with his surreal brand of knockabout comedy.

Presumably this would be called performance art these days, and I guess that anyone making this kind of noise these days would create the sounds with synthesizers and sampling, rather than smashing real lumps of metal with huge great hammers! They were good.

First week back

The first full week back at work has been a time for tidying up. Hundred of e-mails that I've read and not answered, and thousands of files on my computer that have been cluttering up my workspace for too long. I have spent several hours a day revisiting these old e-mails, deleting anything that is not absolutely necessary. Some e-mails I had kept thinking that I would get around to taking some action on them later, when there is time. But now I have to acknowledge to myself that there won't be time. One consequence of sorting through them all was finally finishing off a major paper jointly-authored with Stephen Gruneberg, on Performance-based contracting. Finally we can get this submitted. I still have two book chapters and a couple of journal papers to finish, as well. One book chapter I had committed to has disappeared. The editor of that book decided that it was going to take too long to wait for me, so he asked someone else instead, and now has the chapter he needs. In terms of tidying up my computer, I have got in quite a mess with trying to syncrhonize the documents on the various computers that I use. Every time I synchronize two of the computers with each other, all the files I had deleted from one are resinstated unless I deleted them from the other! I have ended up with four different locations for all my document files, so I was finding it impossible to lose and files that I had tried to delete. The solution? Make an "old documents" folder on all four computers, and then move anything I want from there to a fresh new documents folder, which can be synchronized across all locations. Now I can pick up everything I need from a sub-folder, and then remember to delete the whol sub-folder in all four locations. All this for data security. It is remarkable how difficult it is to maintain a usable and robust backup regime with computers.

Saturday morning orchestra

Feeling that I was not getting enough time to play my trumpet, I accepted the invitation of a fellow trumpet player, Dave Johnson, to tag along to another orchestra. This one is quite handy as it rehearses exactly the same time, as the orchestra in which my son plays double bass, and just across the road. Since he needs taking and collecting every Saturday morning anyway, it is very convenient for me to join in. I took part for the first time today, and they were a very friendly bunch. Not too bad at sight reading. The timps and harp parts were put in by a guy on a keyboard with an amp, which was novel. We worked through Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, McCunn's Land of the Mountain and Flood, and Wagner's Prelude from Tristan und Isolde. Not much for the trumpets in this latter one, but enough to keep us busy in the other two pieces. This also gives ma an opportunity to use my new trumpets because each piece demands a different instrument. Indeed, the Wagner starts with an F trumpet and then changes to an E trumpet, neither of which I have! However, Dave had a useful tip. Using the C Trumpet, the transposition is pretty straightforward because the key signature is obvious. It's good to be practicing and learning more!

Pig-headed scientists

"Scientists, especially when they leave the particular field in which they have specialized, are just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous..."

Eysenck, H.J. (1957) Sense and nonsense in psychology. Penguin.