A Time of Magic

When you think of astronomy people basically skip binoculars and go directly to considering telescopes, but should they?

Telescopes are certainly the instrument of choice for professional astronomers but that’s down to a whole bunch of reasons that don’t really apply to amateurs. For one thing there’s the sheer practicality of binoculars in terms of portability: even the largest binoculars are extremely portable (albeit needing a tripod at the high end) whereas telescopes are generally much less portable aside from those at the smaller end of the range.

One notable exception to this is the Skywatcher Infinity which is billed as a childs’ telescope but is a better telescope than many up to five times the price and it’s portable too.

These days it seems to be accepted that children will be violent in schools whilst teachers can’t respond with a touch never mind a smack.

Whilst it seems wrong to return to the days when caning was there as an option, it seems as though the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. For example, we recently found out that it’s forbidden to touch a child in any circumstances. That sounds a laudable thing on the whole but the problem was that the child was touched (restrained) because he was violently beating another child. Not a fight mind you, just a brutal attack by one child on another.

Interestingly, the subsequent interview was entirely focused on the business of touching a child and didn’t even enquire as to the injuries which the victim received. That’s definitely very, very wrong. The whole process ended up seeming to give approval to the violence which I’m quite sure was never the intent behind the rules which it drew upon and yet that’s what happened with punishment actually being, unbelievably, applied to the victim as well as the aggressor.

In this school, it would appear that nothing effective can be done either to stop violence nor to protect the victim of any violence.

There seem to be more and more teenagers about these days so the shelves are starting to groan under the rows of acne treatment cream.

Is there any difference between them though? There certainly is in terms of the price with prices ranging from sensible to crazy. However, by and large, the price difference reflects the packaging and the brand rather than the content of the box.

In practical terms, the easiest way to choose is simply to pick the cheapest one and if it works go with it.