Author Archives: James - Page 43
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Immigration and Brexit
I've stood on the UK Border and welcomed tens of thousands of people to the UK. I've also refused entry to a much smaller number of people. As well as that I've had jobs in strategy and doing workforce planning. It gives me an unusual insight into how the system works. The one thing that has struck me, and why I'm writing this article, is the high level of nonsense being bandied about. I don't personally see the UK having an immigration problem, but our immigration narrative is wildly distorted and nowhere near the facts. Immigrants to the UK from the EU make a net contribution to the public funds. In fact all legal immigrants make a net contribution. You'd not get that story from listening to politicians. Also you'd miss that we can make the borders and immigration system…
1866 Megagame – Offside Report
The Prussian Team for Game 2 of 1866 and all that assembles. Yesterday I played in an 1866 megagame, well in one of two 1866 megagames. Megagame Makers ran two simultaneous megagames about the 1866 bruderkrieg (between the Prussians and the Italians on one side and the Austrians and their allies on the other). One of the most interesting things about today's 1866 megagame was that there were two entirely identical games going on at the same time. The only difference between the 1866 megagames were the players. Both games had the same briefings, maps, counters and mechanics. The end results were quite different, although in both cases fairly close to historic. Certainly within the bounds of plausibility. My role in the 1866 Megagame Unusually I was playing the megagame. This was because Alexander came to play in his first…
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T317 EMA Project Lessons
I'm now done studying until late September. For once I didn't finish the T317 EMA Project. Instead, I deferred until the next presentation. I keep the scores for the first three TMAs and need to repeat TMA4 and TMA5, which are linked to the T317 EMA Project. There were three reasons why I deferred, all linked to each other. In no particular order they were: - lack of time to study/work on my T317 EMA project - poor choice of T317 EMA project subject - unhappiness with quality of output & grades All of these are my fault. Partly they are circular. I had a downward spiral of motivation because I wasn't enthused by the project topic. This meant I didn't make the time to study. Also not studying meant that the grades deteriorated. The root cause for most of…
Attacked by a Zombie Baby (Story)
English: A participant of a Zombie walk, Asbury Park NJ, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) This week I have been attacked by a story about a zombie baby. After spending too much time thinking about what was wrong with some contemporary zombie stories I ended up writing a bit of one to get it out of my head. Zombie Baby Patient zero in my story is a zombie baby. I had an interesting Twitter conversation with some doctors about how an Accident and Emergency might approach it. On the face of it we have a baby that is alive, it reacts to sight and sound and tries to grab people and bite them. So it's alive. However, no discernible pulse or respiration. Here are just some of the tweets I've been writing my zombie baby story in the wattpad app because…
Up Against It by M.J. Locke [Book Review]
Up Against It by Locke My rating: 5 of 5 stars I spent a long time getting into this book. It spent time on the shelf between each of the first few chapters and the time when I make it my main read. I persevered because it was recommended via Charles Stross's blog. I'm glad I did, because I enjoyed it immensely. Up Against It - the review Up Against It is a relatively long book, not quite up with some of the fantasy genre, but over 450 dense pages. There are three interwoven plots, which is why it has a slow burn start. There is quite a bit of setup to be done. Once it gets going though it is fantastically good. There is a well defined world for it all to happen in which is internally consistent.…