Invigilator's diary (2)

Let n be a positive integer, and let p be a prime. State
Legendre's Theorm for determining the exponent ep
of p in the canonical representation of n! Hence find the
canonical representation of 17!.

Three mathematics and statistics exams this morning. I was invigilating with a crystallographer who started her PhD this year. After years of supervising exams with so many crystallographers, and still I can't quite understand what they do. I guess it has something to do with crystals.

She came from Sri Lanka. "Such a waste of paper, all these exams" I said. I'm always annoyed by the amounts of paper that goes to waste at the end of the exams; and by those students who insist on writing with a gap of three rows between each of their lines. "And there's not even a recycling bin in this room".

As it was a science exam we were distributing notebooks and graph papers. She told me she used to do invigilations as an MSc student in Sri Lanka, and there they would only give the students one graph paper. "We would tell them that they have only one page, that they should be very careful not to make mistakes because we cannot give them extra paper, the university cannot afford it. We would repeat it about three times. But then there would always be someone pleading for an extra paper, and we would give them one."

"But here we give them out as if they were nothing. And the students take it for granted, as if it is only natural that they are allowed to use three papers for one question".

No bread? Let them drive to the supermarket instead

Yesterday was a black day. The Rome emergency summit on food prices ended with a watered-down statement, some peanuts thrown at the global poor, and nothing that could actually stop the price escalation. More specifically, nothing on stopping, limiting, or even re-considering grain-biofuels.

It is hard, if not impossible, to assess the exact impact of biofuels on the recent doubling of wheat and rice prices. This is how I see it, from the reading I've done: biofuel demand pushed maize prices, and this had a knock-on effect on other agricultural commodities, something like a balling game. Hysteria builds up, governments become worried about feeding their citizens (otherwise they will overthrow them) so they block exports of grains, and this drives prices even higher.

True, other factors play as well: more people in Asia eat meat, and meat eats grains. Climate changes have caused a 10-year drought in places like Morocco and Australia; and the rising price of oil makes everything more expensive. And then there's the speculators: they smell the blood and circle above the commodity market, making a profit from bread-queues and empty stomachs. Yes, whatever we do, we have a problem, and it is not going away. But one thing is clear: the answer is not to burn the food we've got in fuel tanks.

How did this happen? Firstly because of US and EU subsidies and mandates, which saw 100 million tonnes of corn diverted into fuel last year. But with oil at US$ 138 a barrel, it may well be that biofuel subsidies are not necessary. That is, it might be profitable anyway to turn corn (or wheat, or rice, or any other grain) into fuel. It needs to be stopped now, and taking the subsidies away will not do. We need a moratorium on grain-based biofuel. We can't allow the world's car drivers to compete with the world's poor and hungry. This is the biggest food crisis we've ever seen, and it's only beginning.

Do you agree with the statement "Operations management can 'make or break' any business"? Explain why.

It's the fifth year that I am supervising exams in college. It's been an element of constancy in my life which otherwise has been far from constant. In almost each exams period, every year April to June, I found myself moving home. But then this exams job gave me something to do, a job to attend to. Amid confusion and transience, spending hours in quiet concentration in Bloomsbury can do no harm. And then there's this strange novelty, of having to be somewhere every morning at 9.30am.

The predicament of the freelancer laptop-nomad is the flexibility in time and space. It may appear sexy on adverts but we who have been doing it for a while know it feels like ball and chain leg shackles. Wouldn't it be great to have a normal job where you go in the morning and forget about it in the evening? Well, probably it wouldn't, but still for a few weeks in spring time it's great. Just leaving home at 9am makes one feel a beneficial member of society. Parents taking their kids to the nursery, office people on the way to work, cyclists and more cyclists, the smell of shampoo and eyes still half closed.

On my last day in London I was waiting in the queue at the chemist. In front of me was a man in his late twenties, lean, and unshaven. Too busy or too poor to care how he looked; or perhaps it was the black dust in the air outside, the long hours on the bus, the pains of a Hackney morning, that made his look seem out of synch.

The chemist handed him a paper bag with his medication. He opened it hastily, took out a small bottle of cough syrup, and drank it all. He seemed relieved.

I am in Jerusalem/Tel Aviv for the next month. Will mainly write on my Jerusalem Blog.

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt....

Now this is not the right place for this - I should be posting it on my Jerusalem (middle east) blog - but it is very satisfying to watch - nothing like smashing up a tyrant's statue (or poster). Plus, it is Passover next week, where we celebrate the emancipation of the Egyptian proleteriat through mass exodus and direct action. At least that's my take on it.

This is from the Mahalle, a big industrial centre north of Cairo, where workers have been taking industrial action and meeting with state violence. There are a number of underlying issues but the most urgent one is food prices inflation. We are going to see more images like this in 2008 and 2009, not only in Egypt.

Via Arabawy.

Notice how everybody takes the mobile phone out to get a good picture of the dethroned king.

Forty five words (the last paragraph of my abstract) are all that separates me from the completion of my phd. That, and an elaborate bureaucratic procedure as well as an oral examination some time this summer. For those who keep checking this blog, thank you for sticking in with me, I hope to be writing more soon.

Two nights ago somebody threw a big stone through the window of the Research Students room in college. Must have been a frustrated PhD student. It smashed the window and also damaged the screen of the computer I use, leaving a black blot where the Gmail chat window usually pops-up.

College IT are very efficient and they came today to replace the screen. I asked what's going to happen with the old one, after all it's only a small patch, and if they were throwing it away, I would be happy to take it home.

The IT woman was nice and asked her manager, who said, we can give equipment to students, but before that we have to test it. And this one is faulty, can't you see? Sorry we can't give it to you.

The invincible logic of the health-and-safety society.