The Laboratory

We hope you have now received enough Christmas cards to make it worthwhile hanging up the card holder or stringing some seasonal clips across the lounge ready to display your haul (to be honest, we never took it down last year). With postal prices rising, some people are no longer sending cards, and those Charity Card displays in church halls have moved online, sadly. Looking at the cards we have, it seems that glitter has survived its supposed EU ban (thanks Terry for including bonus glitter in the envelope), and robins and country cottages are popular themes this year. No doubles yet! In the news we have seen pictures of politicians/celebrity Christmas cards: and for balance, from 2022: Here's a comic song about getting Christmas cards, from Cantabile. We sang this at our school Carol Concert this year!

If you are looking for a nice Christmas card activity, you could look at this great article by Oxford's Vicky Neale (who also features in a new video of a 1st Year lecture  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP7Ujbyu-NE ) How To Make Mathematical Christmas Cards Bonus beats! Here's a list of Maths Advent Calendars, thanks to all of you for putting them together: Women in Stem:  https://findingada.com/blog/category/advent-2018/ Transum Maths:  https://www.transum.org/ChristMaths/Advent.asp Nrich Primary:  https://nrich.maths.org/adventprimary Nrich Secondary:  https://nrich.maths.org/adventsecondary Plus Maths:  https://plus.maths.org/content/plus-advent-calendar-2018 Aperiodical:  https://aperiodical.com/2018/12/aperiodvent-2018-a-month-of-mathematical-things/ M Scroggs:  https://www.mscroggs.co.uk/

Every year, the great and the good have to choose a Christmas card design to show how serious/family-friendly/famous they are (delete as appropriate). If you haven't seen the ones from the three party leaders, you can find them here (I'm not going to spoil your day by putting Cameron on this calendar). But others are more imaginative. MPs, for example, will want to get children in their constituency to design a card, because Christmas is all about the children. In first place, Maisie Jackson from Harrogate has designed the card for Harrogate MP Andrew Jones. She received a special certificate signed by Mr Jones. Edinburgh South MP Ian Murray had a hard job choosing his winning card, shown here with creator Louis Renwick. " My team and I are still covered in glitter.”, he said. Chris Grayling MP chose this card by six-year-old Emily Reeh. In particularly exciting news, one of Emily's cards will be sent to the Prime Minister. Another will be sent t...

All the posts this week are guest-contributed by Twitter friends. First up, @mistertumnus talks about Christmas cards: On the whole I agree with this article by David Mitchell about the commercialisation of Christmas, and the tradition of sending Christmas cards in particular. It is too commercial and it is pointless to send cards and presents just for the sake of it, because you feel you have to. But the older I get the more I appreciate the excuse that the commercialisation creates for actual goodwill. I know, I know, you don't need an excuse, you could just send a card when you felt like it, to anyone. But, woolly lefty that I am, I know that I can't escape capitalism. We're not going to get to turn the clock back on this one. People are busy because of work and the busyness directly impacts how we socialise and for many people it's just a thought too weird to contemplate that you should send a card at a time outside that prescribed by Hallmark. You could ge...