Statistics are amazing. You can spin and bend them to your will (or the will of whoever is sponsoring your research). For instance, did you know that 75% of people constitute three-quarters of the population? It’s true I tell you!
After the guys at Opera announced that version 9.5 (Kestral) will have full CSS 3 selector support I ran a few tests to see how various Windows-based browsers compare:
- Firefox 2.0.0.4
43 selectors, 26 passed, 10 buggy and 7 unsupported (Passed 357 of 578 tests)
- IE 6
43 selectors, 10 passed, 1 buggy and 32 unsupported (Passed 276 of 578 tests)
- IE 7
43 selectors, 13 passed, 4 buggy and 26 unsupported (Passed 330 of 578 tests)
- Opera 9.21
43 selectors, 25 passed, 3 buggy and 15 unsupported (Passed 346 of 578 tests)
- Safari 3.0.1
43 selectors, 25 passed, 9 buggy and 9 unsupported (Passed 346 of 578 tests)
Safari and Opera were both blazingly fast. IE7 was painfully slow.
Notice that IE6 only had a single buggy result! The fact that is achieves this by simply not supporting anything is neither here nor there.
“I’m so smart it’s almost scary. I guess I’m a child progeny.”
– Bill Watterston, Calvin and Hobbes
I’ve been thinking about intelligence a little since seeing a two-year-old Mensa member in the news recently. Being first-born, male and vegetarian have all been linked to high intelligence but the reasoning in all of these studies are particularly spurious.
If you’ll excuse me a little indulgence for a second, I’d like to think that I’m a pretty smart guy. At times my brilliance is second only to my modesty. Aged three, my mum used to find me glued to the Open University Lectures on BBC2 at 6am. I also remember being Mensa tested around the age of 10 and scoring in the 140s. I tested myself the other week and was in the high 130s.
Academically, I learnt enough to pick up a 2:2 at degree level. A friend of my fathers once advised me to “try and know a little about a lot and a lot about a little”. Or at least words to that effect. I’m a bit of a philomath. I love to learn but can have quite a low boredom threshold. As such, I do know a lot of random pieces of trivia (as members of the Pinking Shears pub quiz team will testify) but just retaining facts isn’t a true sign of intelligence.
I had my eyes opened to a broad mix of new experiences and people. I was a strong proponent of the notion of not letting University get in the way of my education and enjoyed myself, a lot – even for a student. More than one person expressed concern with my drinking and with hindsight I’d probably say now that I probably had a bit of a problem.
While I’d love to subscribe to the Buffalo Theory I’m still left with the conclusion that University has made me dumber. At least, I think that’s the cromulant superlative.
The times aren’t the only things changing around here either.
I moved to a new hosting company for my personal site over the weekend. After a lot of deliberating a eventually plumped for WebFaction over DreamHost due to worrying increase in dissatisfied feedback I’d been hearing lately.
I’ll get everything else imported and uploaded when I find time over the coming week once I’ve found my way around and had a nosey at some new toys available.
It may no longer be fashionable to be be British but it was refreshing to see a celebration of probably one of the last bastions of Britishness today – The Falkland islands. My brother was part of the II Para battalion representation in the parade in London today and for the soldiers to be cheered by crowds who are usually expressing exactly the opposite emotions over the current-day situation in Iraq meant a great deal to them.
Political devolution I can understand but the Cornish National Liberation Army attacking restaurants owned by Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver last week was just beyond me. It seems that nobody wants to be called British anymore. From Newcastle, down through Yorkshire to Cornwall and everywhere in between it seems that everyone wants to be thought of as disparate. Is it a need for identity, a backlash against an ever-looming European constitution or are these two sides of the same coin?
I’m not trying to gloss over any of the terrible things that the Empire was responsible for in the past but it seems to me that by shunning this concept that’s exactly what is going on.
I’m a big fan of things that make my life simpler. I could easily spend most of a (if not a complete) day on websites like unclutterer, instructables and, of course, lifehacker.
A little tip of my own is loading my cup and glass to the back of the dishwasher before I leave the office so that they’ll be at the front of the cupboard when I first get to work in the morning.
Got any to share?
