Justice secretary signals start of programme of selling off ‘ageing and ineffective Victorian prisons in our major cities’ to fund more modern jails
Michael Gove has vowed to close down “ageing and ineffective” Victorian jails and sell off their sites to fund new buildings to replace them, in his first major speech on prisons policy.
The justice secretary firmly put north London’s Pentonville prison in the frame for the first major closure and sell-off under a “new for old” prisons policy by citing it as the “most conspicuous” and “most dramatic example of failure within the prison estate”.
The robbing of Nosferatu director FW Murnau’s grave may have had occult motives. But as with Goya or Beethoven, it’s probably just extreme autograph hunting
The cemetery workers who discovered this week that the skull of the great film director FW Murnau had gone missing were not the first to stumble on the theft of a famous person’s head, and probably won’t be the last. Murnau, best known for his horror masterpiece Nosferatu and the Academy-award winning Sunrise, has been dead for more than 70 years, but this didn’t stop persons unknown from digging up his remains and making off with his head. It was not, cemetery officials said, the first time his grave has been disturbed.
The police appear to have few clues as to the identity or motives of the thieves, but one tantalising detail – the discovery of wax residue at the site – may suggest “occult motives”. It’s certainly possible; in the autumn of 2014, a cache of 21 skulls were found under a bridge in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, having been stolen from graveyards for use in black magic. But participants in such rituals aren’t usually picky about whose skull gets used, so the fact that the graves next to Murnau’s went undisturbed leaves open the possibility that something else might be going on here.
It’s good for books so why are so many publishers hostile to the online giant?
The 20th birthday of Amazon this week should, in my view, be a cause for celebration in the book world. Amazon has made more books available, more cheaply, than ever before. It kick-started the ebook revolution. It has enabled aspiring authors, who until recently might have been ripped off by vanity presses, to publish their books at little expense, or even for nothing. It has a website that is a pleasure to use, and it offers outstanding customer service. Yet in certain quarters Amazon is seen as the nastiest, most threatening company since the heyday of Microsoft.
Romanian music event teams up with blood transfusion centre in bid to fight country’s shortage of blood donations
Two tickets for the Transylvania music festival? That’ll be two pints of blood, please. It may sound like a bad episode of Scooby Doo, but organisers of the Untold festival in northern Romania are offering festivalgoers discounts if they donate blood before buying tickets.
Romania ranks second to last in Europe regarding the number of active blood donors, according to data from the National Institute of Blood Transfusion, with only 1.7% of the population donating blood, and most only after someone close to them needed a transfusion.
Kaggle has a competition to predict who will die on the famous Titanic ‘Machine Learning from Disaster”. It is placed as knowledge competition. Just up there to learn. I am late to the party, it has been been for 1 1/2 year, to end by end 2015. It is a small data set, hence interesting to learn from. It is also a competition with a number of entries which have perfect predictions.
Kaggle has a competition to predict who will die on the famous Titanic ‘Machine Learning from Disaster”. It is placed as knowledge competition. Just up there to learn. I am late to the party, it has been been for 1 1/2 year, to end by end 2015. It is a small data set, hence interesting to learn from. It is also a competition with a number of entries which have perfect predictions.
I gave a tutorial at useR on testing R code, which turned out to be a great way of getting feedback on my code! Based on the suggestions by attendees, I’ve made a big update to the package, which is now on CRAN. Full details of the new features can be access in the ?changes help page within the package.
I gave a tutorial at useR on testing R code, which turned out to be a great way of getting feedback on my code! Based on the suggestions by attendees, I’ve made a big update to the package, which is now on CRAN. Full details of the new features can be access in the ?changes help page within the package.
After useR! 2015 in Aalborg I had some time to reflect and think back on the phase leading up to the actual conference. The story of useR! 2015 began in 2013 when Søren Højsgaard, Head of Department of Mathematical Sciences, Aalborg University, popped the idea of hosting useR! 2015 or 2017 in Aalborg. He had made some informal enquiries to the R Foundation and R Core members about the possibility. With some positive indications we sat down and wrote the first draft for the bidding material. This included a description of Aalborg, the conference venue, our thoughts on the scientific and social programme together with our first budget. This five page document was sent to the R Foundation by the end of October 2013 and after some communication back and forth we received the final "go!" in January 2014.
You might find that loading data into R can be quite frustrating. Almost every single type of file that you want to get into R seems to require its own function, and even then you might get lost in the functions’ arguments. In short, it can be fairly easy to mix up things from time to time, whether you are a beginner or a more advanced R user…
Senator Graham’s phone flooded with calls as GOP frustration over Trump’s campaign rises after a series of incendiary comments made by the frontrunner
Donald Trump has hit back at fellow Republicans fed up with his behaviour in a fiery speech on Tuesday in which he revealed a rival presidential candidate’s cell phone number.
Civil Aviation Authority issues ‘drone code’ after several near misses when drones buzzed passenger jets using British airports
Drone pilots who “buzz” passenger jets as they take off and land at British airports have been warned they face jail if caught as the number of companies and unlicensed individuals making use of the relatively low cost flight technology continues to grow.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which issued the warning on Wednesday, has recorded six serious incidents in the past year when drones came within 20ft of airliners at airports around the country including Heathrow.
Simon Wiesenthal Centre asks police in Copenhagen to investigate Helmuth Leif Rasmussen, aka Rasboel, aged 90, over wartime mass killings of Jews in Belarus
A leading Nazi hunter has asked Denmark to investigate a 90-year-old Dane over possible involvement in the mass murder of Jews in Belarus during the second world war.
Ephraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre contacted the Copenhagen police on Tuesday after the justice ministry in 2014 turned down a similar request saying it was not their matter.