Less Than 20% Of "Fresh Trims" Actually Fresh, Study Finds

New research by scientists at The Norf Weezy Institute for Cultural and Aesthetic Studies has revealed that less than 20% of "fresh trims" are actually fresh.

Using complex statistical analysis, the team of leading research scientists based at the Institute for Cultural and Aesthetic Studies were able to determine that pretty much any alteration to ones hairline will garner at least 8 declarations of freshness within the first day, with the second and third days featuring incrementally less praise, until the desperate attempts of a yung yout to counteract the widespread cultural disintegration of the age, by projecting a ready-made conceptual mold in the form of a friendly greeting onto others and their actions, are relegated to the realm of the subconscious.

Crucially however, closer examination revealed that not all trims are created equal, with most trims having a freshness half-life below the legal minimum for freshness:

Where t is the time since the trim, and N is the number of times someone has gone out of their way to say "fresh trim", the formula shows that the verbal accolade afforded to most trims is far less on the second, third and fourth days than it is on the ideal fresh trim as defined by the Aesthetic and Statistics Manual XI. True fresh trims, it has emerged, stay sharper than a buzz-cut for weeks, even months on end, with the approving remarks per day decay ratio being on average 61 times less than the mediocre trims sported by most.

Critics of the study have argued that while the efforts of the Norf Weezy Institute for Cultural and Aesthetic Studies to quantify and calcify the "dynamic and spontaneous Big Other embodied in the vital river of youth culture" are noble, they didn't use a control variable.

DISCLAIMER: This article is a spoof. 

Stress and Strain

The atmosphere at Hampstead School hasn't been so palpably tense for several years - at least not in my experience. In the bland style of a liberal columnist, an awkward reference to the "era of political upheaval which we now inhabit" is due, as is some spiel about how life imitates life, and the endless slew of fights are somehow reflective of how Marine "A" La Penn is polling.

But really, there are problems. Joe and Jane SLT are as anal as ever in their neurotic enforcement of  their rules. By 9:00 AM, after harassment at the gates, at least a third of the school has developed a very clear conception of where exactly they can shove it. At 10:00 AM, if your lesson has been cancelled or moved without you being informed, you may end up caught out on the verge of cardinal sin; going down the up stairs. As "every minute is a learning minute", regardless of how many steps up the stairs you have taken, a cow-faced member of the SLT is more happy to send you further up the staircase and all the way around, making you roughly two minutes late to your lesson. After another hour of the pointless and mundane, it's break. Like when dogs are let out of the cage, but not out of range of the whip, there is a unique electricity in the air. The kind that makes you too anxious to notice just how crap your over-priced, undersized carton of "Chocolate Flavoured Milk" is. Like scum, the entirety of  the lower school (Years 7 to 11) are often (usually for the first 10 minutes of every break) forced to queue on one side at the entrance to the dining hall, as Sixth Formers saunter by, waved in to Cricklewood's most exclusive party establishment. There is still something of a commitment to equality however, as everyone is forced to remove their coats at the door. In the spirit of the season, cuts are made to everything deemed non-essential, with students often being told that break is over 5 minutes before it actually is.

Lunch is no better, with the communal mess dining hall being heavily overcrowded most days, as Year 10s push past Year 9s push past Year 8s... All of them vying for a stop in the queue for the ever-shrinking, ever-more exensive food on offer. Naturally memebers of Hampstead's Red Army of Prefects are required to take a role in the chaos, securing back-doors and reprimanding those who use them. Previously, each Year Room would require staff supervision, and indeed some days would require more staff. It wasn't quite so haphazard though, as, ya know, it wasn't the entire school being served within a space no larger than three Year Rooms.

There are fewer banners than ever, yet something even more deceptive and sinister seems to be going on. It may be a bit of a stretch, but it seems that the mechanisms of denial and doublespeak have been fully internalized, both in school policy and in school action and reaction: "It doesn't matter what they're doing, or why". That's not to say the school's sustained mistakes and mistaken policies don't cause considerable frustration or anguish to students, but it is simply the case that many people's reaction to this is to simply leave at the end of Year 11, after years of watching it happen, having had enough.

DISCLAIMER: This is a critical article and so is comprised of the personal opinions of the author.

SUBWAY's Sandwich Artist "Apprenticeship"

In Gateshead, Subway is offering 8 positions for an 35hr/week, £3.40/hr (for those under-19), 14 month long apprenticeship. Apprentices will "greet and serves guests, prepare food and maintain food safety and sanitation standards".

Last time I checked, shoving sterile-tasting rations of meat and "salad" into hunks of bread under the watchful gaze of a hungry punter whose current dilemma is whether the extra pickles are worth it does not really constitute a substantial educative experience, and so it is fairly dishonest to pitch doing so as an apprenticeship.

14 months is far too long for such a repetitive and simple task - from a standpoint of actually providing something useful to apprentices, it makes no sense to run the scheme for so long. What the scheme actually does provide is a Level 2 diploma in work based food production and cookery, but the conditions under which this is provided are unsavoury, to say the least.

It isn't to say that "theHospitality Sector" is illegitimate or somehow beneath people, but the relations between the employer and the apprentices in this case are profoundly unequal. Teenagers who become "Apprentice Sandwich Artists" are told they'll be treated like crap but will have to smile like they enjoy it. This is the ultimate perversion of many jobs as they are marketed to today's youth.

While this is just a single franchise (so it's still "morally permissible" for you to get a cheeky sub after school, don't worry), it calls the legitimacy of both Subway as corporation which has "business ethics" and the Apprenticeships Service, which is supposed to help young people instead of screwing them over, into disrepute.

Apply here. 

DISCLAIMER: This is a critical article and so is comprised of the personal opinions of the author.

Caption Competition #10

Sexual Reeling

After the Department of Education recently announced that children should be taught about sexting, the government has announced that sex and relationships education is to be made compulsory in all schools in England.

All children from the age of four will be taught about safe and healthy relationships, Education Secretary Justine Greening said, as until now, sex education has been compulsory only in council-run schools. Children will also be taught, at an appropriate age, about sex. But parents will still have the right to withdraw their children from these classes.

I don't know entirely where I stand on this one. The idea of children not properly learning about sex and relationships is one that should be avoided. The only way to minimise sexual harassment, abuse and rape in our society will be through education. So it seems that sex education is the best answer. We want to grow into adults who can treat each other with respect, and have a relationship without fear of accidentally abusing a partner or being abused.

Yet, the evidence of the standard of sex education in state schools is gravely unsatisfactory. I can only vouch for experiences of Hampstead's Sex Ed, but different students from varying years have conveyed vastly differing degrees of education. Rather than learning how to put a condom on, or using the pill, or learning who to go to in the case of an STD or an unwanted pregnancy, I was 'taught' about what love was - the most intangible concept I can think of - and graphically what it looked like to have herpes. Other people from other years told me that they had better experiences, some had worse, some had none at all. 

If in just one school different people can have wholly different understandings of sex, then I hate to think of the vast divergence of knowledge that children are leaving school with. Our Sex Ed needs to be standardised and greatly improved. In the new proposals, no mention was made of any new information to be given about abortion, and the system has yet to teach how to be safe in gay relationships. If the whole point of Sex Ed is to make people safer, then because of purely political ideologies swathes of young people may be ill-equipped for a healthy sex life.

Critics of the proposal, such as Christian Concern said "Children need to be protected, and certainly when they're [still at primary school], we need to be guarding their innocence." Because the clergy are so good at doing that.  "We need to be protecting them from things, working with parents to ensure that what they might need to know - which will be different for every child, different in every context across the country - is properly looked at." Bollocks. Every child has the same reproductive organs, most likely the same concerns, and, unless someone finds a new and innovative way of involving the ears, will have sex the same too. The advice should be the same across the board so no one is less equipped with the information and no one is more likely to be taken advantage of.

National co-ordinator of The Safe at School Campaign, run by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: "Parents will be absolutely powerless to protect their children from presentations of sexual activity, which we know is part of many sex education teaching resources for primary school children. [...] The state simply cannot safeguard children in the same way that parents can. This proposal is sending a huge message to parents that they are unfit to teach their own children about sex." Absolutely powerless and in complete command of the situation are two very different things. As stated above, parents will still be able to remove their children from Sex Ed classes - a move that further diminishes the principle of all children having equal understanding - in fact, they can pull them out of school entirely if they feel so inclined. When it comes to safeguarding, unless those parents are going to be there in the room when the kid has his or her first awkward fumble in the dark, they're probably going to have to tell the child the exact same stuff as the school. 

The bit that got me was that the government may be "sending a huge message to parents that they are unfit to teach their own children about sex." You don't say. If parents were such perfect humans that they could provide a helpful understanding of sex and relationships without embarrassment to their children then we wouldn't have boys growing up thinking women are objects of pleasure, or rape is acceptable (or, more commonly, acceptable if the two are married) or girls thinking they are only worthy if they are a virgin or that they can't have sex even if they want to, etc. The problem with shrouding sex in religious ideology is that it removes the child's ability to choose the type of life they want to lead.

In short, sex education in schools may not be perfect, in fact it may not be anywhere close to satisfactory, but it is way better than anything else.

Wavy Wednesday #9

Pictured: Mr Szemadcowdiseaski nurturing himself on the fat and proteins of a human.