Hiatus

I honestly do not know how people blog. How they have so many opinions about so many things, and can keep writing about it all.

Anyway, my opinions have mostly dried up and my weeks shall only get busier. Hopefully, this will all start up again, first Saturday of September.

Farewell,
Lucy

So...

Saturday post this week?
Yep.


Eleventh-hour guest posts appreciated.

Lucy

Faith Vs. Science

Fortnight:
- New Pope
- Horsemeat FINALLY falls out of the news.
- The Tories open their mouths
- Inquiries into various hospitals occur
- I get my results back.

So, in the light of the Pope being elected, I decided to turn to religion for this fortnight. Makes a change from my reasonably middle-of-the-road posts.

Even then, this is still very middle-of-the-road, as far as I'm concerned. That's just how I roll.

Recently (also known as the last three months or so), I read an article on the BBC, about the "first atheist church". Apparently, it involved an informal meeting of a collection of atheists, and in it, there was "a power-point presentation from a particle physicist, Dr Harry Cliff, who explains the origins of antimatter theory."

It wasn't completely science-centric, but it had science in it. I'm not going to bash the "atheist church". If they want to congregate and create an organised religion out of having no religion, then go for it. As long as they're having fun.

But the science presentation is something I may bash, oh-so-slightly. It's not the presentation itself I have an issue with, but the idea that surrounds it.

There's some kind of myth going around, and I find this especially with both militant Christians and militant atheists, that you're either a man of "science" or a man of "faith". You either call out scientists on bullshit or are one, so to speak. This came to a head, not to long ago, with my incredibly specific example, as follows. A reasonably well-known atheist died, and on twitter there were some few tweets by other reasonably well-known atheists talking about something along the lines of "we cannot let faith override us and let us seek sanctuary in science".

Maybe when On Origins of Species was released, this was most likely true*. It was most likely* a case of "you're either science or faith". But we've moved on from that, and there are times when science and faith can mingle. Scientists can be Christians and Christians can be scientists. Case in point: I met a couple of priests a few years back, and I got the chance to question them. They both took the line that it wasn't a case of "faith or science", and they gave me a few examples that lead to the Bible proving evolution. Agnostic me naturally took this a little dubiously, but that wasn't the point.

The point is that it doesn't have to be a split. Atheists can't just be all about science, science, science. The two priests I met had kept themselves open to alternative ideas, and were more interesting people for it. Why can't some atheists do the same?

*I'm not guaranteeing anything I haven't googled.

Picking Up On Themes

Newsreels:
- Much more coverage than is really necessary of Oscar Pistorius
- Catholic church keeps resigning
- Daniel Day-Lewis is awesome and of course anybody who watched Lincoln knows this
- Horsemeat takes over the world
- Egyptian balloon crash
- I break a finger by doing absolutely nothing
- I cried like a baby at Cloud Atlas

"Check out Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell"

I asked, about a year ago, a question relating to a book I'm writing. This was an answer to the question.

The book in question has more or less taken over my life, as my fortnightly round-up evidences. When I saw Cloud Atlas last Saturday, I spent most of the credits sat in my seat, sobbing. But when the guy who had sat in front of me saw the exact same film as me, he spent most of the credits walking out of the cinema, shortly after saying "Don't know what that was all about".

To put it simply, he didn't pick up on the main themes of the novel/film, which were about the way we are all connected. He would have probably had an easier time had he instead watched An Inspector Calls, which has the incredibly easy to interpret* speech from the Inspector, which goes as follows:

"But just remember this. One Eva Smith has gone - but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives, and what we think and say and do. We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night."

Naturally, he didn't talk in bold, although that would be awesome. The play itself is a message about being responsible for one another, and the way in which we are connected. That theme is relatively obvious, but what might be less obvious is the way in which this is an anti-capitalism play, and each of the characters either represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins or an ill of society (and in most cases - both).

I define a truly excellent novel as one with themes. One that presents you with a story, and gives you so much more underneath it. And more often than not, the enjoyment of a novel (As I discovered when reading Never Let You Go by Kazuo Ishiguro) hangs on the understanding of not just what's happening, but what the author is trying to tell you through the medium of themes, carefully laid in the novel.

Sometimes, it's not about was has been said, but what hasn't.

*Although that's coming from me, and I'm doing AIC in an English Literature course

Well, this is awkward

Let's wait until Saturday for a post, alright?

The Media

Fortnight:
- Horses here
- Horses there
- Horses everywhere
- And also some pork
- A politician lies, but this time, he gets into trouble
- Gove has some -gasp- good ideas for once
- Pope resigns.
- We discover that guns don't mix with more than just primary schools, and sometimes they don't mix with Paralympic athletes.
- An asteriod may either look pretty or kill thousands of people, depending on the maths skills of some scientists

Today, I think I might discuss a little about the formal media (printed press, television news etc) vs social media.

And no, it's not about the merits of "citizen journalism" or anything. I just find that sometimes the formal media tries to force our hand and way of thinking.

This is mostly in light of the horsemeat "scandal", when I discovered that actually nobody cares. Yes, there is the occasional person who worries a little, but overall nobody much minds. It was a simple case of mislabelling, and you find most messages online are merely jokes relating to it. Yet we find the media panicking over and dedicating more time to this story, telling us multiple times that this is something we should worry about, something we should care about. But it's hard to care when every interview they do with a minister follows this line:

Media: "Should we be worried about horsemeat?"
Minister: "No, it's safe to eat and just a case of simple mislabelling."
Media: "What should people do if they're worried?"
Minister: "They can return the product to point of purchase, but it's perfectly safe to eat."
Media: "So, is it a cause for concern?"
Minister: "No."

And yet somehow these interviews drag on and on, with the interviewer attempting to ask the same questions in as many different ways as possible. They're trying to make us scared so they can drag out this story for as long as they can, and as far as I can see their only motivation is to just yell at some ministers for a while, because everybody knows that news without ministers cast in a bad light is no news at all.

Rather than dragging out "scandals" that people have given up caring about, how about some new news stories, yeah?

The Failing Student

The fifteen days in news:
- Algerian hostage crisis comes to a sad end
- Gove fucks about again
- Horsemeat takes over the WORLD
- And then there's some pork in the mix.
- I get my exam entry list and it looks scary.

I apologise this is a day late etc. Down to business.

So, as my tiny round-up says, Gove is messing about with things again. This time, it's with A-levels. At the moment, students study for two years: The first year studying for AS levels (generally taking four), finishing with an exam, and then studying for A2 levels (generally taking three), leaving them with one AS level and three A-levels*. Universities often use a mix of AS level results and predictions in order to offer places. Gove's ideas would mean that students would continue to study to, in most cases, one AS level and three A-levels. However, AS levels would be a standalone qualification and not be a stepping-stone to A2. All exams for it would be taken at the end of the two years.

I'm not quite sure how that would work, but I would assume a student would have to choose which one of their options would be an AS right from the word go, so the AS could be taught at a slower pace to the full A-level. Schools would also have to run every course twice: the AS run and the A2 run, rather than just teaching one class with some students dropping out after the first year (or in the case of my sixth form's language department: stopping after the AS level). And then there'd be the over-achieving student** who'd think that because they're having to take the course for two years they might as well take the full A2 anyway.

Universities are in outrage over this. They'd have to base a student's progress on GCSEs, which are totally different to A-levels (example: French GCSE requires two five-minutes speaking pieces in which you get two weeks to prepare. A level requires a fifteen minute speaking in which you get twenty minutes to prepare). It wouldn't give a reliable view of a student, and someone who didn't do so well in GCSEs may be turned down for a university place when they end up with top marks at A-level.

Many people are saying that this is the wrong way to go about changes. I agree. I could screech all day about the faults of the Ebacc (and I already have). There are many things wrong with the system and A-levels are the ones with the least fault (at the very least, A-levels are the ones I have only a fleeting experience with). We need to start with league tables. Hence my title.

League tables started with a good idea: people can tell good schools from bad. But it's become much more than that, it's become an all-consuming focus of schools. Resources are poured into getting children into that precious A*-C bracket, noticably the few D students who have the potential for a C. That's what, twenty or thirty students? Suddenly, catch-up sessions in core subjects that used to be open for over a thousand students now become the preserve of a closed few, a closed few who often don't bother turning up. It means students like me, who spent a year as a "C" student in Maths despite having the potential of an "A", are completely ignored whilst someone who boasted about getting only six marks on a mock paper can skip out of the much-despised Core PE in order to go from a D to a C. It means a student who gets a C in their Chemistry paper and has the potential for an A must pay for their retake whilst a student who got a D gets it for free, although they don't actually want to take the paper again.

No, the education system isn't perfect. But we need to stop using the idea of the token "failing student", who are realistically very few in number, to mess things up for everybody else.

*This is mostly where my scuffle with my school comes in as I *hope* to finish sixth form with three AS levels and three A-levels. It's complicated.
**Or just the student who attempts to over-achieve *points to self*

The 18 Barrier

The first full blog fortnight of 2013 brings us:
- The potential end of HMV
- The potential end of Blockbuster
- The potential end of my sanity
- Drugs + Cycling = No.
- David Cameron gets his panties in a twist about various things
- Algerian hostage crisis
- In Britain, snow means certain death and apocalypse provisions
- January exams are taking place, watch this space for ~controversies~

Today, I'll talk about that irritating "18 or over" age barrier that dominates everything. This comes after reading the i and seeing that they were running a competition. It was a regular competition to write in an opinion article, but this time I noticed a little rule saying "no schoolchildren, please". In basic terms, this means that they only want entries from higher education, or those above 18.

Now, I can understand this to a degree. My blog is comparatively shit to what a promising journalism student in their second year of university would write, for example. They don't want to have to shift through thousands of entries from young kids who can barely string together a coherent argument (yeah, there is that whole "age =/= quality" argument but that's for another time).

My problem is with everything else (on the internet mostly) - you must be "18 or over" for everything.

And I mean everything. Some sites I can understand why they would have such an age barrier - PayPal, for example. Others I understand less so. I bought The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists (watch it), which came with a "UV Copy". The "UV Copy" was basically a digital copy of the film that I could keep on my computer so I wouldn't be tempted to do anything illegal. To do this, I needed to sign in. To sign in, I need to be over 18. Why? I didn't have to be over 18 to buy the film, I certainly didn't have to be over 18 to watch the film. So why do I need to be over 18 to access a copy of a film I have just bought. Presumably, their reasoning would be along the lines of "to stop me accessing inappropriate content", but surely if I'd bought an 18 film then it's the store I bought it from that would be at fault, not the company who gave me the download for it.

Another argument I suppose they could give would be "child protection". However, sites like Goodreads manage to allow under-18's perfectly fine - so why is it such a problem everywhere else? On gaiaonline.com, they ban swearing, which brings me to another point. Under 18's can't sign up to certain things because of the "language and content" but I can guarantee you that in their home life they would have heard much worse. Especially by the time they are 16.

Why is it that, until recently, a 16 year-old can leave school but not get a YouTube account in the UK? Why is it that a 16 year-old must pay tax on all their earnings but can't download a film they paid for online? Sites believe they're protecting children, when actually they're just forcing them to lie about their age over and over. If they really want to help, I would suggest following Goodreads' example and setting under-18 accounts to private. That is true safeguarding, not the "must be 18 or over" clause that it's so easy to hide behind. The internet is being used by all ages and people, not just the over-18's.

A Letter to a Train Ticket

The fortnight in a list:
- We didn't get a white Christmas
- We got a wet Christmas
- And a wet Christmas Eve
- And a wet Boxing Day
- And a wet New Year's Eve
- And a wet New Year's Day
- Do you sense a theme here.
- A horrific car crash kills two kids on the motorway
- 2013 happens.

I would do the year in news but A) I can't remember and B) Charlie Brooker does it so much better in Charlie Brooker's 2012 Wipe (Brits - look it up on iPlayer. Rest of the World - go find a streaming link or something)

Before I start my post properly, I'd just like to say that I discovered "Google Stats". Now, because I still use Internet Explorer (and also because Blogger is the most user-unfriendly site ever) I don't venture to the Blogger site often, and I email my posts through to noiwouldnotlikesometea. However about a week ago, I decided to log in just to check that everything was hunky-dory. This was when I found the "Google Stats" thingy. It tells me how many page views I get, when and where. I discovered with this that I get a lot (and I mean a lot) of views from Russia. How exactly did this happen? Most of my babbling is either barely making sense or vaguely political, and I can't help but wonder why exactly it is so appealing. Please, put me out of my misery. Even this week, I have 8 page views from Russia, and only one from the UK (and that was most likely me in the last few minutes). If you happen to live in Russia, tell me why you read my blog.

Onto the second little bit before I start my post properly, this is just a little bit of background. I came back from Wales the other day, on the train (first class!). On one of the three trains I would take that day, I happened to slouch in my chair and notice, underneath the table and in the chair opposite was a train ticket. I'm a bit weird and like to collect train tickets, so I picked it up. Then, being the wax-lyrical person I am, I started to think of the person who bought the ticket. It wasn't a ticket per se, just a receipt announcing somebody had bought tickets. This fortnight, I've decided to write a letter to this unknown person.

Dear Ticketholder,

I notice you do not pay much attention to your accounts, otherwise you would've taken this ticket receipt. Maybe it was just an accident, and you're now sat at home worrying. I highly doubt this, your ticket cost £2.

Where can you go for £2? I was sat in the first class section, so you must have been too. Where can you go, first class, for £2? You bought with a Visa card, and few under-16's wander around with a card as the only source of money, so I can only assume you're an adult. You must've only gone one or two stops. Was it a journey to work? I wouldn't suppose it would be, otherwise you would probably by a season ticket. Just a day out shopping, perhaps? Or did you go to visit a friend?

What's funny is the fact you bought this ticket on the 30th December at 19;41. I traveled up to Wales on the 30th, and I would have been travelling at the same time as you. This is what always astounds me about the world. How we can all go about our own lives without any direct contact with one another. There are many things that we have in common: We both took a train at that time, we both held a ticket for the train, we both travelled on First Great Western service. And yet we possibly have many things that are different, if only we knew each other.

I think of all the places you could be going, and then I realise all I wish is that you got there in the end.

Waiting for Doomsday

It's the fortnightly round-up!
- A woman goes missing with her son because apparently the possibility of a few lost IQ points is worse than the possibility of him dying in the next few months.
- Shitstorm at the BBC enters it's next month
- Shitstorm at the Met Police
- Britain floods.
- Typhoon in Philippines
- Guns and primary schools do not mix
- The world almost ends
- I drown in christmas quizzes
- I win money for no real reason

This post has to be about the end of the world. Anything else would just look weird.

It's always curious, the end of the world. Just think, an entire planet just disappearing.
It's much like the notion of death. Just... ending in such a way.

I heard quite a few theories about what would happen. Zombie apocalypse sounds like good fun in theory, but I don't you'll be saying that when night falls and you're curled up in an abandoned house, freezing cold and hungry, hiding from your dear beloved Nan. Also, it's bloody difficult to get a good swing on a blunt weapon to ward the zombies off.
Epic flooding of lands? Yes, you'd probably look awesome stood on a raft with your face to the wind, but your socks would be wet. All the time. You would be cold from the fact your clothes are wet. All the time. Your hair would be full of salt. All the time.
Insane inferno? Efficient. We'd all die from smoke inhalation very quickly.
Yellowstone? Too slow.
Asteriod? Again, fairly efficient. Especially since a scientist would wise on very quickly, the media would find out and people who begin to pack up their things and try and get out of their town as soon as possible. Not sure why, we'd all be dead anyway.
Time repeats and we just relive the 21st over and over? Well, surely someone would con on at last and we'd just start recounting time again. Which as I understand it, is roughly how the Mayans worked.

Of course, the end of the world could have already happened, and we could have died on the stroke of midnight. The afterlife may just be us assuming a continuation of our life, and everything supposedly continues as normal.

I'll leave that for you to ponder.
See you in a fortnight.

Kew Gardens

Fortnight at a glance:
- The Autumn Statement was announced and basically everybody's fucked
- Something really unimportant happens re the Royal Family
- The Leveson Inquiry result was announced and Cameron has decided to ignore... all of it
- Looks like the entire BBC should have been renamed "House of Peodophiles" in the 70's according to the tabloids
- No-one communicates in my potential sixth form and so I have to endure weeks of stress.


Today, I traveled to Kew Gardens as part of my Art BTEC. My sub-topic was Buildings and Structures, and so I visited the Treetop Walkway, the Pagoda, the Palm House, the Princess of Wales Conservatory and the Alpine House. We didn't have much time, so I saw (but didn't enter) the Temperate House.



See you in a fortnight.

Alpine House





Treetop Walkway

Temperate House

The Pagoda

Palm House



Princess of Wales Conservatory



Rules of the Television

Fortnightly round-up:
- Gaza and Israel have serious shit to sort out
- Newsnight have a complete balls-up
- Lord McAlpine plans to sue the world
- George Entwistle loses it and still gets away with £450,000
- Abu Qatada sticks two fingers up at Britain, yet again

This time, I shall talk about rules of the television. Things that shall happen, no question.
Trust me on this.

-- Before the Credits rule (Or the "first-60-seconds" rule)
With the exception of pilots, any new character introduced either before the credits or in the first 60 seconds of a tv show will be murdered.
Sometimes they're already dead, proving that writers know that we're not stupid.

-- Anybody Can Handle a Firearm rule
Unless convenient to the plot, anybody (from small children to near-death elderly) can shoot any kind of gun at anyone and not miss. Ever.

-- No Inter-gender Friendships rule
If a male and female appear with one another on screen, they will fall in love. And sleep together. And then have a big argument. And then it's awkward until they die.

-- Death is Never Permanent rule
Found in sci-fi and fantasy shows, anyone who dies too easily (or are in the named cast) will never stay dead. A thousand and one things, varying from vaguely sane to seriously out there will bring them back to life. See: Supernatural

-- Cast are Never in Danger rule
Mostly relating to LOST, in which "48" people survive, although for some reason only about twelve seem to be around. This does mean, of course, when the health of the survivors is threatened, no-one interesting will die. Until 36 of the uninteresting characters die, then we're in trouble.

-- Home Alone rule
If a person is alone in the house, a strange noise will happen at night. The person will go investigate it. They will probably end up dead.

-- Let's Split Up! rule
A noise sounds late at night in a forest/haunted house/large establishment. An initially large group decide to split up. The least interesting of the group will die. They will generally be a woman. (more common in films)

The Strange Thing about History

Dear lord, I am tired.
So, as a result I've googled one of my favourite things to eat and I'm pasting a recipe for it (link below).

See you in a fortnight, when maybe I will bring you what was actually meant to go below this title.


Swedish Meatballs with Ligonberry/Cranberry Sauce
Lingonberry or Cranberry Sauce

500 g lingonberries or 500 g cranberries
1 lemons, juice and zest of, finely grated
150 g caster sugar

Swedish Meatballs

50 g butter
1 onions, peeled and very finely diced
2 teaspoons allspice
100 g fresh brown breadcrumbs
150 ml milk
1/2 kg fresh minced beef
1/2 kg fresh ground pork
1 eggs, beaten
salt
pepper
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 tablespoons flour
400 ml beef stock
200 g sour cream or 200 g creme fraiche
4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill
Directions
To make the sauce, put the lingonberries or cranberries into a heavy bottomed saucepan with about 100 to 120 mls of water, the lemon juice and zest & bring to the boil.

Then turn the heat down to a gentle simmer and cook for 10 to 15 minutes. As soon as the berries have started to burst - add the caster sugar and cook until the sugar has completely dissolved.

Take off the heat and allow to cool. Check for sweetness, if it is too sour, add more sugar to taste and cook until dissolved. To make the meatballs, first melt a little of the butter in a frying pan and add the finely chopped onion - sauté until soft & then add the allspice.

Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk - until the milk has been absorbed, about 30 to 45 minutes. Mix the fried onion in with the soaked bread and then add the meat and beaten egg, season and mix well.

Dampen your hands and form the mixture into balls about the size of large walnuts.

Heat half of the remaining butter with half of the oil and fry the meatballs in batches - until they are golden brown in colour and hold their shape.

Allow to meatballs to cool slightly.

Heat up the remaining butter and oil in the pan and add the flour - cooking over a low heat until the flour is golden and sandy in appearance (like a roux base).

Take the pan off the heat and gradually add the beef stock, stirring and blending well after each addition. Put the pan back on the heat and bring to the boil - then add the sour cream (creme fraiche). Turn the heat down and add the meatballs - cover and cook over a low heat for about 15 to 20 minutes, until the sauce has thickened.

Check and adjust the seasoning before adding the chopped dill to the meatball and sauce mixture.

Serve with the Lingonberry or Cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes or broad ribbon noodles

http://www.food.com/recipe/swedish-meatballs-with-lingonberry-or-cranberry-sauce-235024

Your Opinion is Irrelevant

In the news this fortnight:
- A crazy Austrian does crazy Austrian things
- One million people tuned in to see Felix Baumgar-whatsit go splat on his landing to Earth (seriously - when his parachute opened safely, one million people stopped watching)
- A man goes and hits multiple people in an area of Cardiff I used to live near.
- A car bomb goes off in Syria, and people in Lebanon worry that the war could spill over to their country.
- Flooding happens on flood planes
- Half of the BBC may be taken out by Jimmy Savile alone
- Syria begin a ceasefire
- Berlusconi is sentenced to four years for tax fraud
- Complaints continue about GCSEs
- I finally choose my A-levels
- I have roughly a term to get my Maths grade up otherwise they may not let me into Physics and Maths A-level

Today, I'm talking about the vote at 16.

As Scotland want to do the independence referendum including 16-year olds, re-igniting the debate over whether or not the vote should be lowered to 16-year olds. As I will be just under 18 when the next general election rolls around, I'm naturally a big supporter of this.

I hear one argument that nobody under 18 would vote, yet a quick scan of two polls* indicate that turnout among the 18-24's is actually increasing from 2001 (31% turnout in 2001, 44% in 2010). Admittedly, this is still older than their elder counterparts, but looking at the trend it could be that the 16-18 year-olds would have a roughly 40% turnout. And I don't have a confirmation on this, but there's every possibility that the first time around could garner an interest in some 16/17 year-olds as wanting to vote in the "first one".

Another argument is "16-year olds are too immature". I remember one anecdote saying that a "19-year old said to me that she'd vote for Boris Johnson because she finds him funny". The thing is, these aren't the people who will actually bother to vote in the long run. Or, they'll turn up to the polling station, see the long queues, and bugger off again. The people who would vote, however, are people like my friend and I. While in Switzerland, we ended up discussing the merits of the Eurozone (I'm anti, she's pro). It's alright for her, she'll be old enough to vote when the time comes around.

There's also the fact that 16-year olds pay taxes to consider. Sometimes, the government's one-sided thinking amuses me. They believe that we're mature enough to pay taxes, to make a contribution to society. But we're not mature enough to have a say in who we think should run the country, who should represent our beliefs, who should speak for us.

Like everything, it's ultimately politics. No government wants to be the government who lost power because they gave the 16 year olds the vote. And keeping them quiet is ultimately the only way they can continue.
 
*Sources:
http://www.idea.int/vt/by_age.cfm (26 Oct '12)
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId=2613&view=wide (26 Oct '12)

O television, O television, wherefore doth thou break my heart into a million little pieces whilst cackling?

Fortnightly round-up:
- Exam boards allow students whose dreams were crushed to retake English exams.
- A little girl goes missing in mid-Wales, and a man is charged with her murder.
- They finally manage to get the runaway maths teacher home
- Tensions in Syria/Turkey grow
- Spain are splitting apart at the seams
- And again with Greece
- Jimmy Saville is apparently not a tv legend but a rapist.
- The Conservatives say something unimportant
- They want to build another airport in the South East, thus possibly increasing my choice of airports within two hours to six.
- I go to CERN and begin to seriously doubt my potential A-level choices
- I check out a sixth form's prospectus and seriously doubt my potential sixth form
- I gain my very first A*
- I go to Switzerland (hence, CERN) and discover my slight fear of plane landings.

Although today, my topic of conversation today is television. See, I do have fun alongside all my complaining!

Well, no. I'm going to complain really.

Currently, I'm "watching" Firefly, which was cancelled after fourteen episodes. I put 'watching' in inverted commas because I'm avoiding the last episode. After watching the first thirteen episodes, I have grown so attached to the show that I cannot bear to watch the final episode and say goodbye to it. It shall, in short, break my heart.
Not that Firefly hasn't already done so. While watching Out of Gas (episode eight), I sobbed to the point of hyperventilating*. I have also been known to require a good half-hour to calm down after certain scenes.

Maybe I'm just susceptible to sobbing, but this isn't the first time I've sobbed uncontrollably at a TV show. I'll make a list (I like lists).
-- Chuck (season 1, episode 8)
-- Scrubs (more than I should for a comedy)
-- Doctor Who (like, every episode)
-- Supernatural
-- The Hour

I've also gone incredibly weak at the knees for both Lilyhammer and Borgen.

Do show writers enjoy watching our down-hearted tweets, generally in block capitals and saying "MY HEART </3 D:"?
Certainly, it does make for a better show.

I suppose it is my fault, really. It is a habit of mine, as is most people when they love a show, to get very included in the world. Hell, there are fanfictions that are many hundreds of thousands words long. And then the show will end, or be cancelled, or be forced into a very abrupt demise, leading to the destruction of any happy emotion I may feel for the next few days.

I'll watch Firefly tonight, I promise.

Education, Education and God knows what else

Fortnight round-up:
- A thousand parents make a thousand unfunny jokes about teachers
- The unfunny jokes relate to a child who ran away with her teacher
- They were both from a town covered by the same local news as the town I am in, hence knowing every single detail of the story
- Gove stops the GCSEs
- Canadian cheese smuggling rings are broken
- *Topless* photos of Kate where published everywhere
- Apple are useless
- My school promptly ban the ability to use time wisely, to the downfall of my BTEC

Today I talk of Gove.
No wait, I don't talk of him, I will talk about him and his hair-brained ideas.

As I've been in a bad mood all day (Apparently, you can drop a GCSE at my school, but not the IT you must take with Triple Science. I digress), I'll start with his good ideas.
-
-
-

Okay, so that was mean. He does have one good point. The multiple exam boards. They were never going to work out, and it also makes it as hard as hell to buy second-hand revision guides (Oh brilliant! A cheap maths guide! Oh no wait, it's on AQA. Wait, which exam board am I on?*). However, the old system it does make quality control easier. If Edexcel reported an 80% pass rate in the English Language exam, whilst OCR only recorded a 30% pass, something is wrong. But of course, there would be no need for quality control with multiple exam boards, they would just do great exams. To attempt to conclude a minor-half argument so terrible it would reduce my Critical Thinking teacher to tears of pain, a rare glimmer of good idea sometimes crosses his mind.

I'm not denying that GCSE's have their faults. My Chemistry exam, taken in January of this year, was insane to learn. I was given four months to learn the first three units (Of which there seven, one is the equivalent of three units), which wasn't enough so it was all crammed in at once. I didn't revise, so on the day I was bullshitting it. Chemistry is not my strongest science, and yet I managed to get 86/100 UMS points, or an A. Yet in Physics, I had a year before taking the equivalent exam. I got a B. Admittedly, I'm even worse at Physics than I am Chemistry, but had the exams be switched around I'm fairly sure that the grades would too. Whilst I don't agree with the all-exams-at-the-end idea**, I do think they shouldn't be taken in the first January of the course.

And as far as I can see, there are academic-only subjects in the Ebacc. Yes, there may be an idea to introduce more "creative" subjects later (music/art/drama/dance), but I see nothing of vocational subjects. Gove forgets that not everybody is destined for Oxford. There are students, and I do know a couple of them, who will never get a decent GCSE. Instead, they take a vocational course in health and social care, or hair and beauty. Admittedly, they're not as great as 5 A*'s, but it'll get them a job. The English Baccalaureate will run their abilities into the ground, passing them through with bad qualifications and no life skills.

The GCSEs/BTECs have faults, no doubt. But they did encompass the range of students, and that's all that really matters.

*Edexcel
**Over the two years, I have to take more than 17 exams. Imagine having them all in one month. And all the revision.

Atos

Fortnight round up:
- Wales want the whole English GCSE saga cleaned up, while Michael Gove is being a stubborn little shit by not asking for a nationwide review.
- Topless photos of Kate Middleton are posted by a *regulated* French magazine
- "Sam" gets the US into a shitload of trouble
- Middle-eastern countries may *possibly* be using the dodgy US video as a front for a backlash against the US presence in their countries
- Brits are murdered in France
- My first week at school is full of homework and catch-up
- I start fencing and manage to injure myself before we even start fencing

Today, I shall talk about Atos.

For those unaware, Atos is a company hired by the government to sort everybody claiming incapacity benefit (and DLA - disability living allowance) into three groups: Those who can work, those who can't work, and those who can do a "work related activity" (working with extra support etc). The general idea is to stop people claiming the benefit when they can work.

However, there are questions surrounding the contract between the government and Atos. Some people believe that they are paid more to declare people fit to work - thus causing the government to have to pay out less.

Now, when the complaints first started (on shows like Saints & Scroungers, Rip Off Britain etc), I just thought it was one of those few that slip through the net, as always happens. A few stories of someone with severe asthma, someone with trouble walking, ones like that. These people had either worked for most of their life and then had to stop, or attempted to work but physically couldn't. They also have multiple health records from their GPs and doctors in hospital proving they are ill. Yet their assessors would look at them on one day, ask them a few questions and decide their capacity to work based on that short time. As one arthritis sufferer said, "I have good days and bad days. You can't judge based on a single day."

It caught my attention when these little stories popped up repeatedly did I think something was up. Looking into it, it seems that Atos have declared that nobody is disabled and everybody is fine. Woo! Good thing they've sponsored the Paralympics.

Wait, what?

Yes, amid all their controversies, they thought it was suitable.

But that is not a point I shall explore.

I find myself much without an ending, as anything I say can be said better in an old article by Mark Steel. See you in a fortnight.
http://www.independent.co.uk/hei-fi/views/mark-steel-odd-choice-for-a-paralympics-sponsor-8091782.html

I dislike making excuses.

But since Kingsoft Office:
- Threw away my work
- Refuses to now open

I cannot post until tomorrow (I type all of my posts into a word processor for spelling, grammar and formatting purposes)

Hate that this is the second time in a row that I've done this, argh! Might have to change posting day to Saturday at this rate.

Competition

A fortnight round-up:
- Apparently, the state of our country is so dull the BBC decide that both the state of American politics and weather are more important than something Nick Clegg said, and so in the morning I had to wait until the third news story before I actually heard about something that happened in Britain.
- Nick Clegg said something unimportant about tax, which doesn't affect me as I don't earn anything.
- Burma took loads of people off their blacklist
- Mitt Romney says so many stupid things I'm happy he's not running for PM in the UK
- Exam boards ruin children's future
- Lack of communication with my school means I don't know my results until the beginning of term
- Everybody buys Paralympic tickets before me :(

But today, I shall talk about statistics, sports and schools.

After the Olympics, in which Team GB won more or less everything when it came to cycling (the general consensus is that Rio shouldn't bother building a velodrome and just give us all the golds for cycling instead), the government needed to think how to build a legacy after hosting the Games, a promise which awarded the city the Games in the first place. And so, discussion of sport provisions in schools was brought up.

This is where Gove and I differ (as is the case on many education issues). He believes that, in order to get kids into sport, the minimum amount required is an hour per day. Per day! I agree that's good for personal fitness, but it has no place in schools. The average (state) secondary school has a six hour day. Five one-hour lessons and an hour of break (although I do know one school in the South East that does two three-hour lessons a day instead). Within a week, currently, two hours of sport are squeezed in. And in the GCSE years, few people ever participate in these two hours anyway, at least that's what the situation is for the two lower-set groups in my year. I'm a lower set, and whilst I don't fake notes, I haven't done full-blown participation all year either (I missed about a week of lessons to paint a flag, of all things). We're a sports college (apparently one of the first sixteen in the country), and so you'd expect the school to do something to tackle the fact that very little participation happens in the upper years both in general PE and on the sports day. But no, they cease to care past your third year. What they do care about, however, is the few groups that go to other schools and play. It makes them look good on paper, to the cost of most of the students.

What we need is a better variety of sport. If you're bad at a sport, you'll dislike it. If you dislike it, you're disinclined to play it. In my last school, I had to play rounders (Google it if you don't know. It's a little bit like softball) all day, every day for quite a few weeks during my final term. Of course, now I know how to play rounders, and so do many of my old schoolmates, but it doesn't mean we like it. We still groan and put little effort into each game. More hours of sport won't change that. The sports I choose to do are fencing, kayaking and snowboarding. I'm not a fast runner, particularly good field athelete nor can I swim very well. According to my school, I'm not a very sporty person. The only reason I ever managed to access those sports was due to enough personal drive to actually want to do something. I'll be honest, I'm not the greatest at any of the three, but I enjoy them enough to search out for clubs and opportunities to play them. If a student looks to be failing or disinclined to play in the sports the school has on offer, then maybe they'd enjoy an alternative sports. That way, everyone gets a chance to find something they like. And obviously, every school in the country won't have the opportunity to ferry multiple children here, there and everywhere weekly to do each and every sport that they excel it, but there can be compromises. If someone shows they participate in a club outside of school, and it's not a sport the school offers, then why not allow a child out of one lesson a week, or allow them to practise that sport within the lesson (if possible). There, you've got everybody involved in sport for two hours a week.

Making someone do something they dislike over and over won't make them enjoy it, however letting them do something they enjoy once will make them do it over and over.

Trains

So, I postponed a day, which gives me fifteen days to summarise (this may become a regular thing):
- Assange hides in a building and more or less messes everybody up
- The Olympics end and everybody cries
- Cameron/Clegg say something idiotic
- Milliband replies with something equally idiotic
- America messes in affairs it probably doesn't need to mess in
- Richard Branson stopped being smug about everything.
- I have a birthday
- I gain an addiction to iced gems
- I buy lots of books and am very happy.

But today, I was going to do something about YA novels but instead, I shall rate the state of our trains. For those not in the know, the trains (and possibly stations, but that would need checking) are controlled by private companies, with the rail lines themselves belonging to National Rail. On my way from one parent to another, I can travel on up to three companies (four types of train).

-- The Southern Service

I have always found their seats to be a bit worn, but at least they always have enough. I've never had to stand on a Southern train, and I have taken some pretty high-demand trains before. The train sometimes rocks a tiny bit, but it's barely noticable. They are also always quiet, and as they have few windows they have a good air-conditioning service, so yesterday I was quite cold despite it being horribly muggy outside. Unfortunately, there's no designated luggage holder other than above the seats, which I can't lift my suitcase up to. 8/10

-- First Great Western (Short-haul)

These trains are deployed when the journey is max an hour and a half. There are always newspapers on the seats, and there are either too many seats and I feel like we're being packed in like cattle, or there are not enough seats and I stand for an hour. They also rock a lot and I feel quite unsafe. In lieu of air-conditioning a few windows open by a fraction. As a result yesterday I was boiling hot and was actually tempted to add another change to my journey in order to get on a Southern train faster. However no matter how small the train there is always a luggage holder about mid-carriage. 5/10

-- First Great Western (Long-haul)

These trains are in service for journeys over about an hour/hour and a half. I've used this type of train about seven times, however only once have I found a train that gives you the four/six seat with a table set up, and even then it was only in one carriage. The taps in the toilets never work, and again it packs everybody in like cattle. I don't remember seeing many windows, so there was possibly air-conditioning. The train rocks and is so loud that I feel like I'm travelling in a tin can at times. There is a buffet car, although I've only ever bought water on them. As they generally get holidaying passengers, their luggage holds are very generous. My main gripe is the fact their is no "Open Door" button on the inside of the train, and to open the door you must pull the door window down, reach out the train and push the handle down. 7/10

-- Arriva Trains Wales

I have never wanted to travel on a train service less. The carriages are too thin to hold four seats and a decent walkway across, and so everybody is SQUISHED in. There are also never enough carriages and I rarely get a seat. Unlike FGW, they don't bother with a buffet car and instead try a trolley service. Of course, the carriages only fit the trolley if nobody else is on the train, so I spend most of the journey with overpriced sandwiches shoved in my face. The toilets are blocked and never work, let alone the taps. The tin-can feel is worse in these trains than in FGW ones. 4/10