Give the kids more credit

There was a good article in the Metro today. Essentially it questioned the way we downplay academic achievements at GCSE and A level every year, because ‘the exams are getting easier’. We (society) give the youth of today all sorts of grief for 99% of the time, and when they do work hard and apply themselves for once, we don’t give them any credit. Is it any wonder that youth culture, and with it culture in general, is spiralling downwards?
It is true that the exams are easier than they were, but teaching is also better, and the emphasis is changing from knowledge to skills, which are harder to examine. It’s not as simple as easier exams, and we should remember to give teenagers credit for the work they do.
Truth.

Belbin Team Roles

Belbin team roles

I just did a little test in a book on teamwork, to find out my Belbin team role. It wasn’t an official test, but nonetheless fun and interesting. Apparently, my primary role is a shaper, followed by coordinator, implementer and monitor-evaluator.

According to Wikipedia…

The shaper is a task-focused leader who abounds in nervous energy, who has a high motivation to achieve and for whom winning is the name of the game. The shaper is committed to achieving ends and will ‘shape’ others into achieving the aims of the team. He or she will challenge, argue or disagree and will display aggression in the pursuit of goal achievement. Two or three shapers in a group, according to Belbin, can lead to conflict, aggravation and in-fighting.

A Coordinator often becomes the default chairperson of a team, stepping back to see the big picture. Coordinators are confident, stable and mature and because they recognise abilities in others, they are very good at delegating tasks to the right person for the job. The Coordinator clarifies decisions, helping everyone else focus on their tasks. Coordinators are sometimes perceived to be manipulative, and will tend to delegate all work, leaving nothing but the delegating for them to do.

The Implementer takes what the other roles have suggested or asked, and turns their ideas into positive action. They are efficient and self-disciplined, and can always be relied on to deliver on time. They are motivated by their loyalty to the team or company, which means that they will often take on jobs everyone else avoids or dislikes. However, they may be seen as close-minded and inflexible since they will often have difficulty deviating from their own well-thought-out plans.

Monitor Evaluators are fair and logical observers and judges of what is going on. Because they are good at detaching themselves from bias, they are often the ones to see all available options with the greatest clarity. They take everything into account, and by moving slowly and analytically, will almost always come to the right decision. However, they can become excessively cynical, damping enthusiasm for anything without logical grounds, and they have a hard time inspiring themselves or others to be passionate about their work.

How enlightening.

Bluetree - Greater Things

British Christian Rock is in decline.

The days of Kato, Steve, Quench, Bottlerockit, Jars of Clay, Jennifer Knapp, Rebecca St. James etc are gone, and the likes of YFriday are left trying to fly the flag alone.






















Of course, there is one band who were around before any of these and are still going strong. They have a total of 13 studio and 4 live albums, a mix of heavy rock and calm worship, and have broken into America. I’m talking, of course, about Delirious, who number among their songs such brilliance as Lord You Have My Heart, Thank You For Saving Me, Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble, Obsession, Deeper, History Maker, King or Cripple, Investigate, My Glorious, Awaken the Dawn, Rain Down, Majesty, Inside Outside, Now Is The Time and Our God Reigns. Just in case you needed reminding. Delirious have single-handedly dominated the British Christian Rock scene for well over a decade. No-one else comes close. Fact.

However, Delirious have announced that they will be finishing as a band at the end of 2009. That is going to leave a huge gulf in the Christian music market, and I wonder which new bands will appear to fill it.

Well, until someone realises how great Strangeday are, I expect that one such band will be Bluetree. Bluetree are a 6-piece from Northern Ireland, whose debut album, Greater Things has been out for a few months now. I genuinely think these guys could be as good and as big as Delirious. That’s how much I rate them.

Greater Things has 13 tracks, but given that track 8 is a one-minute interlude and track 13 is a remix of track 11, the album basically divides into two halves – tracks 1 to 5 are lively, upbeat, passionate, and tracks 6 onwards (with the exception of Standing Out) are more chilled, calm and reflective. The two halves are very different in style, but the quality runs throughout. The songs are slightly more ‘churchy’ than the usual Delirious stuff – more like the old Cutting Edge albums. Some of the songs could be used in worship sets, others as reflections, but all are God-centred, which tends to be fairly standard for Christian debut albums.






















I could go on with a detailed breakdown of the album, but I can’t be bothered. All I’ll say is:
1. Visit the Bluetree Myspace to sample three of the sample tracks, God of this City, Life’s Noise (the opening track) and Each Day.
2. Order Greater Things from Bluetree’s shop or Purashop
3. Go to the website to see what the band is all about
4. Enjoy the album!

This could be the biggest Christian album of the decade – no exaggeration!

England Football Team

This is what the team should be, assuming all players are available:

------------------------James-------------------------

Richards/Neville---Ferdinand--Terry/Woodgate---A. Cole

-----------2 of Hargreaves/Barry/Carrick------------

----Gerrard----------Rooney-----------J. Cole----

------------------Owen/Crouch


The full-back should be encouraged to play high up the pitch to provide extra width. The 2 central midfielders give extra defensive cover and act as the playmakers. Gerrard, Rooney and Joe Cole should mix it up. If Crouch plays, he is a target man and should not drop off too much. Ferdinand should be captain.

Thoughts anyone?

Olympic Thoughts and Awards

Now it's all over, I have some thoughts on the Olympics...

• I’d forgotten how much I enjoy watching athletics.

• The medal table should be done on points, with Gold = 3, Silver = 2, Bronze = 3. We still come 4th.

• I don’t care what anyone says, the athletics are the core of the Olympics – sport at its purest. The athletics matter more than any of the other sports.

• The only sports that should be in the Olympics are those where the Olympic Gold is the biggest thing you can win. Therefore football, for example, should be removed, because the world cup is bigger.

• Rebecca Adlington was brilliant. But she does not deserve to become a Dame.

• What was with the weird pig and monkey on the TV intro?

• The GB performance was very good. However, all we did was fulfil potential. Unexpectedly good performances came in gymnastics, womens 400 hurdles, mens high jump, boxing, sailing, swimming and taekwondo – about 8 medals. Disappointments were: heptathlon, 4 track relays, BMX, mens 800, womens 1500, sailing, mixed doubles badminton, gymnastics, womens javelin, womens marathon – that’s 13 just off the top of my head. We could have done so much better. Which shows the potential is there, it’s just about producing the goods on the day.

• Having said that, we still underperformed in the athletics. Danvers, Mason and Ohurogou were great, but Sotherton, Idowu, Radcliffe, Farah, Rimmer, Sayers, Tomlinson, Pickering, Baddeley, and all 4 relays were below par. This saddens me immensely.

• Horses failed drugs tests – that just makes me laugh.

• The opening ceremony was great, but no-one will EVER beat lighting the torch with a flaming arrow. Ever.

• When were flags invented?

• Volleyball is very cool; I would like to play it sometime.

• Diving commentator Leon Taylor is incredibly annoying.

• Why are records broken much more in swimming than anything else?

• Usain Bolt is a really nice guy.

• Kelly Sotherton made me cry.

• The judging in the boxing, diving and taekwondo was a joke, and clearly biased towards the host nation. Something must be done, though I have no idea what.

• The Jamaican Olympic team was 51-strong. 39 were sprinters. Wow.

• Beth Tweddle was robbed in the high bars. She did four moves which were harder than anything anyone else did, including an original move, and only made one mistake (a step on the landing). She came 4th. Robbed.

• Jake Humphrey is an excellent presenter

• Gabby Logan is a lot better on the BBC than ITV

• Adrian Childs has annoyed me for a long time, but he’s actually quite good as a vice-presenter. But he cannot anchor.

• Hazel Irvine is the greatest – she presented over 100 hours of live action from Beijing.

• Sue Barker is past it. She says ‘er’ too much.

• Lisa Dobriskey should win a gold medal just for being the sweetest person on the planet. However, what an error – she should have won, but got boxed in, twice, and then tried to overtake on the inside. Error.

• We could have got 4 medals in the track relays. We got none. That is not good enough.

• Do not select a heptathlete and an 800m runner in the 4x4 relay. You idiot.

• Michael Johnson is the greatest pundit, in any sport, ever. Fact.

• Sarah Stevenson’s story was crazy, but not the craziest. She was denied 3 points (one head shot and one body shot). But 17-year-old Aaron Cook was denied about 8 in his Bronze playoff. Bit of a sham.

• We compete as Great Britain, but have Northern Irish athletes in our team. Therefore we should really be competing as the UK, which includes GB (England, Wales and Scotland) and Northern Ireland. This angers me.

• The British national anthem at the closing ceremony had harmonies, and the second verse! And it sounded like a Christmas carol.

• Why Leona Lewis?! Get someone with a bit of pedigree.

• I think Beckham’s a great guy, but getting him in just to kick a ball is lame. Talk about milking it.

• The symbol of the London 2012 Olympics thus far is an umbrella. Great.

• The anthem should be changed for 2012, to Land of Hope and Glory.


And my Olympic awards...

Best British moment – Rebecca Adlington in the 400m freestyle

Best British overall performance – Chris Hoy. Three Golds, ‘nuff said.

Biggest British disappointment – Kelly Sotherton came 4th. I think this was her big
chance to win

Best British newcomer – Rebecca Adlington

Best international performances – Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps, obviously

Biggest farce – Sarah Stevenson and Aaron Cook, and the taekwondo saga

Best commentary – The athletics team. Always.

Worst commentary – Leon Taylor in the diving

Biggest hopes for 2012 – Martyn Rooney, Jason Kenny, Rebecca Adlington, Lisa Dobriskey and Tom Daley

Unluckiest moment – Shanaze Read – crashing in the heats, semis and final

Most jaw-dropping moment – when Sarah Stevenson was originally not given the quarter-final win

Funniest commentary – “Oh, what a dismount! That man deserves a biscuit!”

Random Humour

Christianity magazine sometimes has little cartoons. I found a couple of old ones which amused me...

(shown as a bookshelf)
Apocryphal books of the Bible not included in the final shortlist:
The Letter to the Editor
Psalm Like It Hot
Ready Steady Habakkuk
The Proverbs of Nancy
The Epistle to the Epistlonians
The Book of 1st Class Stamps
The Book of ASDA
The DaVinci Code: Revealed
The Gospel According to Gary
The Axe of the Apostles
The Catalogue of Argos
The Guinness Book of Records
The Illustrated 4th Book of Moses, commonly known as Painting by Numbers
The Jokes of John the Baptist - "You'll Laugh Your Head Off"


(with a picture of CS Lewis working at his desk)
One Evening, C.S. Lewis is struck by a brilliant idea for a series of books...
The Chronicles of Banarnaramia:
The Magician's Nostril
The Iron, the Fridge and the Bathrobe
The Horse and His Boil
Prince Caspar the Friendly Ghost
The Voyage of Dawn French
The Silver Stairlift
The Second to Last Battle
The Last Battle
The Timetable of the Last Train to Battle

Great Britain > Australia

The Aussies are clearly jealous of our current Olympic success, because their latest insult is 'You can only win when you're sitting down', referring, I assume, to our success in cycling and rowing. Indeed, as of 11.20 GMT 21/08/08, 19 of our 40 medals (47.5%) have come in these disciplines, plus canoeing and equestrian, which are clearly included in sitting down.
My initial comeback was "well you can only win when you're lying down". How mature of me. Indeed, looking at Australia's own tally, 21 of their 38 medals (55.2%) have come in swimming, triathlon and water polo, which involve lying down. That amused me.
Mock the Week tonight had a better comeback: "At least we're good in sports where humans are the best. Look at you - you're only good at swimming, and every fish on the planet is better at it than you!"
This could be extended - even Usain Bolt and the Jamaican sprint team would lose to a cheetah. Incidentally, did you know that Jamaica sent 51 sportspeople to the Olympics, 39 of whom are sprinters? Fact.
Anyway, put any animal in a boat or on a bike and they'd be stumped. So whatever the Aussies say, at least our heroes really are the best on the planet, not just the best of our species.
While I'm on the topic, if you were to enter an animal into each Olympic discipline, what would you choose and why?

Fast runners

Well done to Usain Bolt. Massive congratulations. Two Olympic Golds with two world records is unprecedented, and he looks able to go faster. And he’s only 21.

What makes him so fast? Easy – he’s 6 foot 5, and has very long legs.

Well, based on that theory, England striker Peter Crouch, at 6 foot 7, should be even faster, but in fact Crouch is slower than a lame, 3-legged, 90-year-old sloth.

Whenever I walk or run fast, people tend to complain that they can’t keep up because they have shorter legs. Tired of explaining their error, I’m writing my explanation down, so I can simply say ‘I refer you to my blog’.

Running speed is based on two things: stride length (the length of each stride, duh) and stride rate (the rate of strides, e.g. 100 per minute). To run faster, you can either take longer strides, or take them more quickly.

PhD studies show that up to speeds of about 6 metres per second, both these factors play a part in running speed, but above 6 metres per second, the factor that increases speed is in fact stride rate, not stride length. So if you want to run faster, take quicker strides. My long legs are of no help to me above 6m/s.


















If you are already bored of the science and maths, think back to Peter Crouch – why is he so much slower than England compatriot Michael Owen? Because Owen moves his legs faster, even though he has little legs.

On top of this, it is possible to overstride, which means taking strides that are too long for your body to cope with. This slows you down. There is an optimal stride length for each person. Mine is probably longer than yours, but that means that each of my strides takes more energy, because I move my leg further. Each of your strides takes less energy, but you can take more of them.

There is an argument that taking more strides is more tiring because of the energy needed to lift the feet against gravity. Probably true, but I suspect insignificant. If it was significant, Crouch would be faster than Owen, and you’d be Olympic champion.

I said I'd turn to Mexico

In an earlier rant, I said that if John Terry regained the England football captaincy I would start supporting Mexico.

Damn.

I was semi-serious, because of my disapproval of Terry, not only as a captain, but as a human being. I was pretty sure Rio Ferdinand would get the job, so wasn't too worried about making such rash promises. Now, however, Terry has been named captain by manager Fabio Capello.

Unfortunately I can't bring myself to abandon England, but I'm definitely not happy with the choice. Just wanted to reiterate that.