I become an honest woman

View from Regression classroom window

No, I haven't got married (that would be unexpected), I've just paid my taxes. Finally after a year and a half of guilt I can hold my head up high, even if I did have to borrow the money from my parents. Of course the tax for 2005-2006 wasn't late, just very close to the deadline, but on the other hand that was only £202 whereas the tax for 2004-2005, which very much was late, was £1866.

I'm actually amazed by how simple the tax calculation was in the end. Yes, it involved about a hundred little boxes that all had to be filled in, yes there was a lot of copying stuff from other pages and comparing to see which figure was lower, yes it seemed to have picked the most convoluted way of calculating everything, and yes, it took about six hours. But compared to filling in the tax return it was simplicity itself. No digging around trying to find bank statements or P60s. No wondering which heading something comes under. No difficult decisions. Just solid arithmetic.

Today felt quite busy in spite of the seven hour gap. I joined in the launch event for Discover Islam Week: students standing in the John Watkins Plaza outside the Library in the shape of a giant 'Salam' (Arabic for 'Peace') and a photo being taken from the top floor of St Clement's, but mostly I was finding things to do on the computers so that I would get any emails as soon as they arrived: our motions were submitted late this afternoon so everyone was commenting on them throughout the day. I did of course also fit in paying the tax and sending off the returns, lunch, and a small amount of work (reading the papers for this week's Surveys and Experiment Design).

Tomorrow will really be busy though:

9-12 Multilevel methods (1 hour lecture + 2 hour computer class)
12-? Staff Student Liaison Committee (where we get to tell them what we think about the courses and they may or may not listen)
1-2 Sutherland meeting (if SSLC doesn't make it impossible for me)
2-3 Free
3-4 Multivariate Methods
4-5 Free
5-7 Regression computer class
7 Meet Ginger
8.45 See film at NFT

Though admittedly a lot of it is sitting listening to lecturers or other people and therefore not as stressful or challenging as your average job, it has to be said that, unless you're talking about the city or something similarly high-flying, there are not many jobs where you would be working from 9-2 without any break whatsoever (not even a quick coffee break), unless I have been very much mislead about the World of Work. Students: not all layabout dossers. :-)

Minor annoyances and Temporary setbacks

Indian food being served in the Brunch Bowl as part of India Week

We had the first computer class for Multivariate Methods today. Unfortunately I had to spend the first half hour of it not participating but instead sitting there deleting reams of stuff. This was because when I tried to save the data set that we needed for the class from the public folders it said my directory was full, and then I got an email saying I was using 206% of my quota. Now, I would swear I haven't been saving any 100MB files within even the last week. Which means that if I was using 206% of my 100MB quota this morning at 10 am, I must have been using more than 100% of my quota for some time. Judging by how much I had to get rid of, I would say I must have gone over the limit some time last term in fact. What I would like to know is why I wasn't sent an email when I first exceeded 100MB, instead of waiting till I exceeded 200%. I had no idea that I was so much over- I imagined I had plenty of space left. If I had been told I'd gone over I would have got rid of some stuff right then, and it would not have had to be so much that it took half an hour to do, and more importantly I wouldn't have had to do it during a computer class when I should have been learning. And I wouldn't have had to get rid of so much of last term's work which I slaved over for hours- I would have transferred it to my laptop by email or by some other means, and would thus not have lost it.

I was pretty annoyed by this at the time, but it soon came to seem like a minor annoyance when it was put in perspective by the UGM. It was quite a good week- there was a very low turn-out, but we got through a lot of motions, and it was all pretty entertaining. Though I didn't think it happened to be the best ever week from a point of view of representativeness for the lady from the BBC who had come to sit in on it. But the end was pretty depressing. Our Sutherland motion finally got its turn to be debated, and to begin with I was happy because there had been quite a few motions on the paper before it and I was worried we wouldn't get to it- and this was the last week it would be on the paper before having to be resubmitted and join the queue again. But about a third of the way through the debate it became clear to me that the applause was louder for the speakers and questionners against the motion, and I wasn't really surprised when it fell- though the vote was close enough for C&S to be called on stage to count the hands.

I don't quite understand how I never noticed or questionned it while we were all discussing the wording of the motion a few weeks ago before we submitted it, but a questionner drew attention to the first item in the Resolves section, 'to oppose the appointment of Peter Sutherland as LSE chair of council', and at that point I thought 'Oh no'. It didn't seem right to me to be putting that in the motion about the referendum, untill the first speaker for explained that this was because of his not having been appointed with sufficient student input. I could see what he meant, though it might have been better phrased 'oppose the appointment...pending a referendum', but I'm not sure he convinced those who were undecided or opposed.

Any impact this may have had though was probably negligeable compared to the effect of the composition of the audience present today. Though its being a small turn-out could have worked in favour of either side, depending on which viewpoint was represented even less than the other, in fact as was hinted at by the volume of applause for the respective speakers and questions, and then became clearer by the vote, the anti-Sutherlanders were apparently outnumbered. Or so I thought. But someone against the motion asked for it to be a carded vote like for the Palestine motion last week (where members have to vote holding their cards in the air to show that they are indeed members), and I heard later that actually some of the anti-Sutherlanders present didn't have their cards with them. I also found out that the motion fell by just six votes. So not such a defeat as it originally seemed.

I thought when it fell that that was that for that avenue- that even if there was no technical rule against submitting a fallen motion, in practice it would be pointless as those against would just point out that the UGM had already voted against it once and we were just wasting their time. But when I checked my email a few hours later, the plan seemed to be to revise the motion and submit it again. So now I am feeling more optimistic- with better phrasing, and most importantly with another chance to get the audience composition right (quite a few anti-Sutherlanders didn't make it this time) we may yet pass it!

Incidentally, a lot of the arguments used by the speakers against the motion seemed rather suspect to me. Not only were they coming from the firm standpoint that the appointment was legitimate (which it was if you ignore side issues like the 'blackmailing' and intimidation of the then General Secretary of the Students' Union which prevented him from disclosing Sutherland's name and guaging student opinion before the process was completed, and if you take legitimate in the sense of 'following the current process as set out in the constitution'- but that doesn't mean the process was fair or a good process or that we shouldn't be protesting against this process), but the General Secretary (who was the first speaker against) made the repeated point that although he was in favour of referenda on appointments in general, a referendum would be pointless in this case as it would be retrospective, since the appointment had already been settled. The big flaw here of course is that it was not possible to have a non-retrospective referendum, the previous General Secretary not being allowed to reveal the name till after the appointment was completed. And given that the process of appointment is not at the moment being changed (and would never be if all students took the speakers against's line and declared that an appointment could not be protested on procedural grounds if it followed the proceedure as currently defined), I'm not quite sure when the General Secretary imagines these future non-retrospective referenda that he is in favour of being carried out.

(Reluctantly) leaving the topic of the Sutherland motion, we had the first presentations in Surveys and Experiment Design today. I was slightly late because I went to the library after the UGM and checked my email, thinking 'Yeah, yeah, Surveys and Experiment Design is at 3, right?', but then when I actually looked in my diary I found it was two. Luckily I didn't miss very much (though I hope I didn't interrupt the flow of the poor guy doing his presentation as I came in). Though I'd read the papers for both presentations, as the lecturer said we were expected to, I didn't think I'd be able to contribute much- some points occurred to me for each paper but I thought they would probably be covered in the presentations or put better by other more statistically experienced students or just not in fact be any good because I was wrong about them or they were right but uninteresting. But actually I was happy to find I could make quite a contribution- including a point that the lecturer said he hadn't considered. So I felt pleased with that!

It snowed a little again this morning, but it didn't settle- it was just falling as I stepped outside. It's certainly cold enough. I dread to think what it's like back home, where even while we were having the mild autumn in London last term I was having to sleep with two hot water bottles when I went back. Though it was mild there too in the day. I wonder if they've had snow too- and if it settled quite deeply?

Snow (just a tiny bit but still...)

You can't see it too well, but there's snow on the tree stump

We're finally having wintry weather- it's now as cold as it usually is in late November and December (and January, February and March as well though). And there was even some snow, which actually settled which is pretty unusual for London. I didn't know anything about it till about one in the afternoon though: I didn't get up that early because I don't have any classes on Wednesday morning, and I didn't notice anything as I left halls, but when I was walking through Lincoln's Inn Fields on my way from the bus stop to LSE I saw little rings of white round the plants in one of the flowerbeds. I thought 'Snow!', but then I thought maybe it was salt or something. But when I looked closely I saw that it really was snow. It must have been quite something to last that long (I assume it fell during the night). I'm sorry I missed it.

Easier to see in this picture, but it's not so nice!

It's certainly been cold enough, and unfortunately not all of LSE's buildings have perfect heating. I would say that at least it's saving energy and causing less carbon emissions, but sadly I think it has more to do with poor insulation, open windows etc than heaters not being turned on. Yesterday morning we had three hours of one course in the same room, and I had unwisely chosen to wear a skirt that finished just above the knee that day. While the lecturer was going through the notes I was sitting with my hands clasped to my knee-caps, but when on a couple of occasions he gave us 15 minutes to work through some calculations and I had to write, I had to just let them get cold.

There was an open meeting about the Sutherland appointment yesterday with the Students' Union General Secretary. Of course, almost everyone who turned up was anti-Sutherland, which at least meant we didn't lose time arguing about whether or not he was a Good Thing. The General Secretary seemed broadly sympathetic, but he also wanted us to make 'realistic' demands, the un-appointing of Sutherland not apparently counting as one. He said that he would convey all of our feelings to the Director, but was asking us for some kind of compromise demand, asking what Sutherland could do to be acceptable to us as Chair, and failing to realise in spite of our best efforts at explaining* that really there wasn't anything he could do: for example, I don't see how given his past record he can fulfill the part of the job description relating to being a figurehead- he doesn't represent us at all. Well, unless he's got a time machine of course to go back and change it... Unfortunately, I think the General Secretary also didn't grasp that we weren't being uncompromising for the sake of it, out of arrogance or to get attention or because we liked having our own way, but because we really really couldn't see any possible solution we could be happy with other than him not being chair. I mean, if the Director were to come up with some way for Sutherland to be Chair that we could be at least fairly satisfied with I'm sure we'd give it serious consideration; I don't actually think he could because I don't think one exists, but if he did... I could definitely see where the General Secretary was coming from- he was saying that what we were saying was quite vague (I think he was referring to some of the ideas about having more student input in the selection process) but if the Director was there he'd be asking for concrete solutions/ proposals, and I could see it as he said it: it was exactly like the individual proposal excercise in the Civil Service Fast Stream Assesment Day, and I could well believe that talking to the Director would be exactly like that. However, there is an important difference: on the Assessment Day I was trying to persuade them to give me a job, and if they had given me one then in future situations like that which would be for real I would be trying to keep it. In this situation however, I don't see why, were I to be talking to the Director which of course I won't be, I couldn't say 'Well, I can't actually think of a concrete proposal which would make Sutherland acceptable to us. But then I'm only a humble student and you're the one with all this management experience. Though I don't believe such a proposal exists, I'm prepared to accept that I could be wrong. If you think that there is something that would work, please give me some suggestions". After all, even if he just said the meeting was over and refused to consider anything unless we came up with the proposal ourselves, we wouldn't be any worse off than we are now. Anyway, this is all besides the point: we can't see a compromise and we are still asking for a binding referendum of students and staff on the appointment.

I've been to some interesting events this week. In addition to Monday's Islam and Feminism discussion, there was a talk by Hilary Benn yesterday** organised by the Labour society which I went to with some People and Planet people to ask questions about provision of AIDS treatment in developing countries, only I didn't know enough about it to ask any questions myself so I was really there for moral support I suppose. Then today there were a couple of films. I really wanted to see the first one but thought I wouldn't be able to because there was a Green Party committee meeting at the same time. However this turned out to be brief as only three people were able to make it and it had to be rescheduled. Though I turned up to the film about 20 minutes late it was only just starting. It was really good- it was about female genital mutilation (it was part of Women's Week), though it was a drama, not a documentary. It over-ran by ten or fifteen minutes but even though I had a lecture I couldn't not see how it ended so I was just late for the lecture. Though as it happened, though I was ten minutes or quarter of an hour late, the lecturer was still on the first slide, so I'm not quite sure what I missed (though annoyingly we have less than 50% of the slides on the hand-outs he gives us (which are identical with what's available in the public folders), and he doesn't leave the others up long enough for us to be able to copy all the stuff down- I'm a bit worried that while I get it as he's speaking about it and with the slides in front of me, it's going to be tough to revise). The evening film was a documentary about sex-workers which was part of India Week. It was really refreshing to see a non-stereotypical facet of Indian society, and also interesting in a broader context.

Back in halls, I cooked with Flatmates 3 and 7. We did spring rolls, vegetables in black bean sauce (me), vegetable stew in cheesy sauce (Flatmate 3), rice, pickled cucumbers, and tapioca and red bean dessert (Flatmate 7), and had tea with it as well, though we didn't have time to linger over it chatting for ages on this occasion. The black bean sauce was still too salty really, but it was better than last time I attempted it (in Fourth year). I put straw mushrooms and water chestnuts in as well as ordinary mushrooms, green peppers and courgettes (which last two I overcooked unfortunately) and onions (which I undercooked). The water chestnuts were interesting because the Chinese word on the tin was not the name they went by in Taiwan and Flatmate 7 didn't know what they were (though we both*** thought she had probably had them before), and I couldn't really describe them. Flatmate 3 did know what they were, but she told me when we were eating them that she didn't normally like them but she did in this case- maybe it's because she would normally have them fresh but these were tinned.

Flatmate 7 was telling us a bit about the purge of intellectuals and the middle classes by the Kuomintang in Taiwan a long time ago. It's interesting that in this country most people have heard about the Cultural Revolution in China, but not about this similar happening in Taiwan- I certainly hadn't before tonight.

I still haven't managed to find time to fit in my laundry. I've now postponed it to Friday- but then I was supposed to do it last Friday and the one before. Good thing I have so many pairs of knickers...

*some of them it has to be said made at somewhat greater volume than called for- there's one guy, bless him, who doesn't seem to be able to express his opinion to someone in opposition to it without ending up shouting rather heatedly; he also formed one half of a very loud (and extremely over-protracted) dialogue about whether or not the anti-Sutherland people should form a society at Monday's meeting (of just the anti-Sutherlanders), which ended with him storming out muttering about having 'things to do', but luckily both halves of this dialogue seemed to be the best of friends again at the Tuesday meeting!

**I didn't do karaoke with my UCL friends in the end- we rearranged for various reasons

***I think, but maybe it was just me

Never want a drink of water/ Till the well runs dry

Snowdrops back home

Got back to halls around 8.30 this evening (after a computer class that finished at 7 and a trip to the supermarket in Chinatown), and started making supper, only to find that I couldn't get further than chopping up a courgette and a red pepper because there was no water* so I couldn't wash the mushrooms or cook the noodles. Still, everyone agreed that we were lucky- A and B blocks had no power.

In the end I used the tiny amount of water I had in a couple of bottles in my room, plus the pineapple juice from the tinned pineappIe I was using. It didn't turn out great, but I think that had more to do with using too many black beans (from the Chinese supermarket and not having any garlic than the water situation. The water eventually came on a few hours later, but not before Flatmate 2 had resorted to making coffee with flat sparkling water.

Today was quite a long day. Got to Regression just in time, had two hours of that (strangely comprehensible, which makes me feel quite optimistic about things), got invited by one of the Chinese girls on the course** to come to the cinema on Friday, went to the library and spent a couple of hours making notes on the methodology of one of the papers that will be presented in Surveys and Experiment Design on Thursday (still haven't started reading my one), went to meet a couple of UCL friends (S and I) for lunch, printed some lecture notes and some tax pages out on the library computers, did a bit more on the paper, went to a Women's Week event ('Islam and Feminism: an unlikely alliance?') but regrettably couldn't stay till the end as I had to go to a computer class. And it will be another long day tomorrow- 9 to 7 again plus I am meeting the same two friends afterwards for karaoke. Karaoke is actually something I will go a long way to avoid- when I say I can't sing I don't mean that I sing off key, I mean that I don't know the songs well enough to know what the tune is or how the words fit to it. It will give you some idea of the relationship between S and taking no for an answer if I tell you that in my whole time in Japan, in spite of having been at a fair few enkais where karaoke took place, and in spite of having a closest friend in Japan who was karaoke mad, I only sang about three or four times, but it took S about two times of asking to get me to practically promise to sing tomorrow. I'm not quite sure what it says about her that I'm actually vaguely looking forward to it...

*enough trickled out to wash the courgette and I'd already used some of the pepper the other day so that had had a wash too

**to my shame I only put her name to her face last week, along with another girl, though I had recently had an email exchange with her without knowing which one she was- I blame the fact that we got to hear everyone's names once at the beginning of the year and after that you didn't get another chance unless you wanted to ask someone outright

It was Dad's birthday today so we celebrated at the weekend

****************************************************************************************************************

I went home over the weekend and made these two skirts with material and trim I got in John Lewis on Friday evening (and the sewing machine I got for Christmas). The material were both remnants*** with the top one being only £4 and the bottom £8, so that was quite a bargain (though with the trim and the zip etc added in they came to £15 each- still, pretty decent compared to what you'd pay in the shops!). Even if the bottom one does have an interesting curvy shape. I'm going to claim it's the tulip look...


***Yeah, I know. But can you think of a way to put it that doesn't sound ungrammatical?

Rubbish photographs

I've been taking rather a lot of photos over the past couple of days. The one above is of the cooked breakfast I went and had on an impulse in the Brunch Bowl after my 9 o'clock lecture- normally cooked breakfasts aren't really my thing so I'm not quite sure why the craving, but anyway. The other photos however have been for The Beaver. I don't suppose they'll get published, but it's still fun. Some have been for the next issue, following the brief of 'anything environmental'. Others are for a calendar The Beaver's apparently going to be doing, for which the theme is simply LSE life. Some I've got a bit confused about which they're for halfway through- for example aerial photos of Houghton St showing the Environment Week banner and a lot of LSE life going on in front of it.

I'm not quite sure whether 'anything environmental' meant 'anything happening as part of Environment Week', or whether it really meant anything at all that could be labelled as in some way environmental. I probably could have got some photos of the events- I went to all but three of them, and I'm kicking myself for not having my camera at the film on Wednesday so as to capture a picture of the huge audience looking raptly at the screen (though it could have been a bit problematic fighting my way from my spot on the floor to a good viewpoint and back again)- but in actual fact I didn't. So, as well as pictures of the banner and of the Environment Week goody bags being handed out, I've taken quite a lot of broader environment concept pictures. This largely involved stopping every five seconds as I walked from LSE to Oxford St today on my way to do some shopping to take pictures of rubbish bags and loose litter, the idea being to make a picture from nine or sixteen shots of rubbish arranged in a rectangle, which would portray how much we throw away or how wastefull our society is and thus be Environmental. I'm sure I must have got some very odd looks, only I was concentrating on the photos too much to notice.


Besides the photos, what have I been doing? I went to the NFT yesterday with Ginger to see Belle de Jour, which was certainly good but very bizarre and quite hard to understand (in terms of what was actually supposed to have happened and what was all in her mind). I've been going to Environment Week events- the one today was pretty good, all about practical things that are being done to prevent climate change or try to mitigate its effects for local communities. And I've been doing some work, of course. Not much- there doesn't seem to be as much this term. I do have one project, or presentation rather, which involves critiquing a journal article. Who got what particular article was sorted out before we broke up for Christmas, but I have to say I haven't even read mine yet. Well, I did have that Computational Statistics project to do. I should probably already have got cracking earlier this week after I'd handed that one in, but anyway, I've printed it out now and intend to read it over the weekend, along with the two articles that people are doing presentations on this week (we have to read other people's as well so as to be able to talk about them intelligently afterwards). Anyway, my presentation isn't till week 9, so though I should probably get a move on, I'm not in dire straits yet. Besides that, I've been catching up on what I missed by oversleeping on Tuesday- I borrowed LJ's notes and copied them (though there wasn't much as you can print the lecture notes out from the Public Folders- what I was copying was anything extra the lecturer said that she'd thought worth putting down, plus the commands he used in a demonstration of the computer package), photocopied the computer class worksheet, and tried to do the excercises from it. Once I'd accepted that I wasn't going to find the data set that the lecturer had used in his demonstration, and so I wouldn't be able to type in all the commands from that and see what they did, it actually wasn't too hard- I used commands from the demonstration that looked likely, changing the variable names to the appropriate ones for the data set I was using and the question I was trying to answer, and though there were one or two bits of trial and error, mostly the first thing I typed in did what I was hoping. So it seems like STATA isn't going to be too hard to use.

Then I've also been to a few meetings. Today there was one for the programme representatives that was pretty interesting- it was held by the Education and Welfare Officer rather than staff from the School, and we probably spent more time talking than she (and the General Secretary who was also there) did- they were keen to hear our views on everything and we were really listened to. And yesterday was People and Planet- we started planning the Global Dinner for Global week. The basic principle is that everyone who comes gets allocated to be either rich or poor for the evening, with most people being poor- the rich people get a three course meal with alcohol while the poor people just get a simple meal, the idea being to highlight global inequality. We had some really good ideas for entertainment and the food itself, and I'm looking forward to helping organise it.

Oh, and of course there was the UGM yesterday. At the UGM that I missed at the end of last term they appointed a Keeper of the UGM to try to combat paper throwing, who certainly adds a decorative presence to the stage (he's been wearing white trousers, a vaguely military looking long navy coat with silver buttons and a hat somewhere between a top hat and a bowler, as well as being quite attractive, or at any rate charismatic, in himself), but seems to lack teeth as far as the paper throwing goes- there has been less, I think, but I find it hard to attribute it to him as all he does is point a finger at the culprit, and doesn't even give them a verbal warning or call out their name. Still, we got a lot done compared to last week- several motions passed, including quite a few where I really wasn't sure which way I felt, which made things more interesting, though it came to an end ten or fifteen minutes before time with many more motions still on the agenda as about half those present suddenly rushed out when someone said there was a fight going on outside the lecture theatre (apparently it was between some pro-Israel and some pro-Palestine girls- the first motion was to twin with a Palestinian university, and the proposed amendments, which didn't pass, were to twin with an Israeli one as well among other things). I was in the half that followed more slowly once the Chair person had reacted to the sudden exodus by ending the meeting, and I didn't see anything. I hung around a bit in case the meeting was re-opened, as people were going back into the Old Theatre, but that appeared to be it.

Environment Week

This week is Environment Week. It's funny, but I've found it harder to get into than Climate Change Awareness Week. I mean, I was really invested in Climate Change Awareness Week. For five days the most important thing, the objective right at the front of my mind, was convincing people to take action on global warming- in fact really that focus lasted pretty much till the end of term, only fading slightly with the rigours and demands of the Group Project. But, even though I still believe all that is really important, on Monday and Tuesday I found myself without any enthusiasm or desire to throw myself into it, and though I was sad to miss both evenings' events (computer classes on both days, for different courses, would you believe), because they looked to be particular highlights of the programme (a question session with MPs on Monday and a debate on animal testing on Tuesday), I wasn't sorry that I was too busy to make it down to help with the stall. (Though in fact I found out today that there isn't actually a stall run by People and Planet, the Green Party, or even CMCC in his capacity as Students' Union Enviroment and Ethics Officer- the stall where they were handing out the goody bags on Monday was run by the Independent, though probably arranged by or at least in liaison with CMCC. So I might not have been able to help anyway).

Maybe it's because I wasn't involved with the planning stages. I believe I was hard at work preparing the presentation for the project with the rest of my group when the meeting to plan Environment week happened (and then of course ironically I missed the presentation). So (a) I don't really know what's going on apart from the events and (b) even if I did I haven't been fired up about it or taken ownership of it in any way through having at least been present at a discussion of it, if not actually contributing anything. And I missed last week's People and Planet meeting where I believe a bit more planning might have taken place (I was working on my individual project). I actually had an idea that may have been a rubbish idea (though it may equally have been brilliant) that I would have liked to put forward if I had been able to attend the original meeting: to have an exhibit, either in the Quad or on a Houghton St stall, which consisted of the rubbish produced by a person living normally over the course of the week (or at least that portion of it which could be cleaned up enough to go on display, I'm not suggesting half eaten portions of chips should make it in there), so they would spend the week not throwing anything away but putting it in the exhibit each day instead, and then the same thing produced by someone trying to create as little waste as possible, to show (a) how much waste the average person actually generates, because I suspect it's more than we would instinctively guess it to be, and (b) how much of a difference we can make if we try, because it's hard to be inspired to do anything unless we feel that it is going to have a real effect.

Anyway, I did get into it a bit more today. I went to all three events, which happened to occur in order of increasing interest, and learnt quite a bit, and managed to make my first real contribution to the week after the evening's event (a showing of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth in the Quad) by staying to help with the clearing up. The event was amazingly well attended. I thought a lot of people turned up to the rather interesting screening in Climate Change Awareness week of the documentary narrated by Alanis Morisette and Keanu Reeves, since there were four or five rows of seats all pretty much occupied. But that was nothing in comparison to tonight. The Quad was packed. Although I got there quite early, I was helping put food out and get plastic cups so I didn't get round to securing a place to sit until about the time it was due to start, and at that point R (who arrived about then) and I had to go for sitting on the floor at the front as all the seats were taken. If we'd left it about five minutes later I think there wouldn't have been room even on the floor.

If it hadn't been so crowded, I would have been faced with a difficult dilemma- both Flatmate 1 and SC2 (who don't know each other as far as I know though of course they're both in my halls) were there, at different tables, and I wouldn't have known which to go and sit with, but actually it was too crowded to get to either so I was spared that! I went to go and say hello at the end, but SC2 had disappeared. Flatmate 1 left with some friends- including some from halls that I hadn't met before, though one turned out to live across from me but one floor up- and I stayed to help with the clearing up, but I saw him again back at halls- we were both making late supper (though mine was just a case of heating up a can of soup- he made a stir fry). I'm actually quite getting to like him in a you-know kind of way- though he certainly isn't the only person who, if they asked me out, I would say yes. Then Flatmate 3 and her boyfriend came in and we all had a pretty interesting conversation- the kind of thing I really enjoy about living in halls, whilst it's actually happening and afterwards, though strangely enough frequently not before: I often take my supper into my room precisely so I don't have to put effort into talking to people...

Goodbye, Project!

Well, I finally got rid of the project. No, I didn't push it off a bridge, I took the boring way out and just worked and worked until it was good enough to hand in. Sadly, I realised quite suddenly yesterday that it was a pretty bad project which shows up my lack of statistical knowledge quite considerably. It was the way that, confronted with all the graphs I'd done of the various variables, which I could see were quite good graphs for illustrating usefull things about the variables, I still couldn't come up with anything interesting to say about many of them. The original draft had lots of stuff along the lines of 'BV91 has a negatively-skew distribution. This means that in most local authorities a greater than average proportion of the population is served by a kerbside recycling service, and the gap between the lowest proportion and the mean is greater than the gap between the highest proportion and the mean'. Luckily I realised on reading it through again that this both sounded silly and wasn't really saying anything very interesting, so it mostly got chopped to 'BV91 has a negatively-skew distribution' with the assumption that the reader would know what that meant. I also think I neither had a great method for my investigation nor explained it with stunning clarity. So I think the most that can be hoped for is a C, and that only if I'm lucky. If I'm unlucky it could even be an E.

Oh, and I just realised I forgot to indent the paragraphs. Whoops. Was going to go and do that at the end.

But that doesn't matter, because it's finally finished! Last night and this morning I was feeling so awful, and now I feel fine. A little tired, but fine. I'd been at home over the weekend (given the deadline I wouldn't normally have gone back then, but I needed to sort some stuff out to do with my tax), and it took ages to get back yesterday evening- the train that was supposed to go all the way as usual had to terminate at Reading due to staff shortages, and then there was a 20 minute wait for the next train, and then that train took a very very long time to get to Paddington due to engineering works meaning there were speed restrictions in place. Actually I didn't quite get it with that last train- it left Reading at 8.30, and the man doing the announcements was claiming simultaneously that it would arrive at Paddington in 40 minutes time and at 9.28.

The state of play with my project when I left the house was that it was about twice as long as the limit. Maybe I had a lot of stuff in there I didn't need, but I really couldn't tell which stuff that was and so I didn't want to lose anything in case it turned out to be the only good bit. So I was stressing quite a bit about how I was going to get it all cut down- and finish off putting a few extra bits in and sort out the files that had to be handed in on disk. I was actually feeling quite lousy on the bus back across London- stressed, with a temperature and a little sick (I didn't have supper before I left home so as not to waste valuable project time, so I ended up snacking on the way: big bag of cheese and onion crisps, big bag of maltesers, and then an egg sandwich from Sainsbury's once I got to Paddington so I would have had something healthy). But I got right down to it when I got back to halls. Even so, it took simply ages- hours just to get the Bibliography in order before I started on anything else. It ended up 8 pages long, mostly because I'd looked at so many local council websites to get information about their political composition. That was obviously a non-starter- since the whole thing had to be no more than 20 pages I wasn't about to waste 8 of them on the bibliography. I took out all the council websites and put in a footnote explaining that I would provide the references if asked (This may not have been entirely wise, and the tone may not have been 100% strictly professional- but I was very tired and not feeling so good- did I mention that?). It then took a long time to cut it down to size. I managed to lop off 10 pages by that bibliography cut and putting it into Times New Roman instead of Arial (shame, I like Arial better), and making the graphs a bit smaller. And I got rid of another six or seven by making the graphs all half-size and putting some on the same line as each other. The rest pretty much had to come from taking bits out (though not a whole 3 pages- the last page only had a couple of lines on, and there was quite a bit of blank space scattered througout where the graphs hadn't been able to quite fit and had to start a new page- with just a couple of lines moved they could all shift up a quarter or half a page. Some bits were probably best removed; others were maybe unfortunate losses. In the end I got it down to 20 pages and breathed a sigh of relief that I had had to cut no more than that. I started sorting out the files that had to be handed in on disk, but my brain wasn't working and it was just too hard, so I abandoned the orginal plan of getting everything done that evening (to be on the safe side) and decided to take advantage of the fact that the deadline wasn't till 3pm.

I got a couple of hours of sleep that, although not of course as refreshing, actually felt like seven or eight in terms of duration- I think because I was too stressed to sleep properly (I was still doing the project in my dreams) so it was more like a nap. At 8 o'clock this morning when the point was reached where if I didn't get up I would be late for my lecture, I was seriously tempted to skip it, have another couple of hours sleep and then finish off the project. I wavered back and forth for a couple of minutes, but in the end I got up and went, because I remembered that last week the lecturer had done totally different stuff in the lecture to in the notes, and I would therefore be missing out big-time if I wasn't there to take it all down.

I lugged my laptop in with me, because I hadn't saved the project on a disk or disc or emailed it to myself (it was a bit large), and because there were many many files that were needed to sort out the ones to be handed in on the disk (they needed weaving together, with the mistaken commands taken out and all the bits where I went wrong removed) and it was easier just to take the computer than to copy all of them onto some more portable format. (I should probably get a USB key). I suppose it was also partly a comfort blanket- reassurance that I wouldn't be sitting there finding I couldn't open my copy of the project on the LSE computers with mine sitting back in halls. Anyway, it was very annoying to drag round all day because it's pretty heavy, but I quite enjoyed plugging it in at the special work area in the library for the first time (or the tiny bit of me that wasn't stressing did, anyway).

However, I discovered that my project had betrayed me. I could have sworn it was 20 pages when I went to bed, but this morning, using the same program on the same machine it was 22. So that necessitated more cutting. At least the files didn't take too long, now I was more awake, and in just over 2 hours I had it all ready, including a couple of extra graphs I'd realised yesterday were important but hadn't had a chance to put in yet (they fitted into some gaps in already existing rectangular arrays of graphs so didn't push me over the page limit again. After that it was just a matter of rushing around buying floppy disks, a file to present it in, getting it printed out on the University computers (having written it onto a CD from mine)- including the technical problems of colour printing a couple of pages (the C120 colour printer got a bit confused and thought it was jammed when it wasn't, so I had to send it to the Library colour printer and go back over there to print it out)-, printing plagiarism declarations (and finding the plagiarism declaration on the LSE website- it wasn't easy), and finding out my exam candidate number. Interestingly, the LSE computers decided it only came to 19 pages, which was fine by me as it meant I could have a title page. And then I finally dropped it in the box 15 minutes before the deadline, feeling rather surprised that it was apparently all there and all done.

I wasn't the only last-minute person, I hasten to add- LJ still had a bit to do when I spoke to her in the lecture this morning, and I spotted another girl from the course still at it when I got to C120 at about 12 (she finished an hour or more before me though. No, I know, it's not a race!)
Meanwhile, it's Environment Week this week, but I felt too out of it after handing the project in to feel I could make a usefull contribution today. There's an event in the evening with MPs speaking that I'd have liked to go to, but I have a computer class. I have a computer class at the same time as tomorrow's event as well, but I might miss that because last week there wasn't really anything that wasn't on the sheet. Or maybe there was. Well, we'll see- but the event does sound pretty interesting. It's a debate about animal testing. Anyway, I'll probably see if I can help with the stall tomorrow, between lectures.

Tonight, though, after the computer class, it's recouperation- a DVD, a Spinach and Goats' Cheese Tarte Flamme that by amazing good fortune they had in Paddington Sainsbury's yesterday (they don't normally stock it in that branch), and an early night!

I'm Alice to the lecturers' Red Queen

Still in the throes of the project. But is more rewarding now- where before nothing much seemed to be correlated, have now fitted a linear model which suggests that (although all the effects are tiny) several things are significant- the percentage of people between 5 and 15 is fairly significant, the amount of rubbish produced per household and the percentage voting Labour or Green are significant, and the percentage served by a kerbside recycling collection or within 1km of recycling facilities (as you might expect) and the income are very significant. The last two have a positive effect, ie a greater percentage of rubbish is recycled in areas with more people served by a kerbside recycling collection or with a higher income, while the others have a negative effect, which is perhaps not what you would guess- but of course the fact that areas with more 5 to 15 year olds or more people voting Labour/ Green recycle less doesn't mean that the actual 5 to 15 year olds or Labour/ Green voters recycle less, as we learnt (in the context of different data) in Multivariate Methods yesterday!

Multivariate Methods actually did live up to my hopes in terms of interest, and it looks to be another course that's firmly grounded in What Can We Use This For? And the Regression computer course also tied the theory from the lecture nicely to actual calculation- though it went at quite a pace and the lecturer seemed constitutionally incapable of letting us just get on with it, pausing for about 2 seconds each time before getting the doctoral student who helps with the class to do the relevant calculation on the data projector. And I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to have done it all already in our own time. This made it kind of hard to think properly and fully let the understanding of how to compute stuff and how that relates to what we did in the lecture sink in. He then progressed to doing some stuff with Maple, which he assumed we were all familiar with- even after he asked how many of us had used it before and scarcely any hands went up (I for one hadn't ever set eyes on it though it did turn out to resemble Mathematica in many ways, which I did a term of at UCL before forgetting it all). He appears to be one of those people who, just because something computer-related is easy for them now, forget how much effort went into learning it all in the first place and assume it will be childishly simple for even complete novices and they will not require any actual teaching. So instead of saying anything at all about using Maple- for example that you can go back and change previous lines (unlike R) or that (I deduce from observation during that lesson) every line has to end with a semi-colon- he just got the graduate student to type up all the stuff he wanted to calculate and we were left to type it into our own machines copying from the big screen. The poor student was hard pressed to keep up as he kept starting to dictate a line then changing his mind and he was going pretty fast. And I certainly was having problems- you can't type as fast when you're having to keep looking at a screen at the other end of the room to get what you need to write- and when due to never having used the thing before and going at such a pace differences creep in between what's up there and what you enter in your computer, and you then have to correct the errors (luckily I found out pretty quickly that you can go back and change lines). And when you have to try and notice every time they altar an earlier line... I did just about keep up though.

Non-linear Dynamics, which we had today, seems interesting but could well turn out to be pretty difficult. It's also rather more related to economics than I could wish, being concerned with time series (which can be anything but in practice the examples in courses tend to be financial because a lot of people are interested in that stuff, believe it or not- I suppose it is the London School of Economics). The lecturer says that it will be very much about real-life applications, promising us a toolbox of statistical techniques by the end, and even advice on writing consultancy contracts (not sure how serious he was about that but he didn't sound like he was joking), and there will be computer classes for this module too, so hopefully this will indeed prove to be the case- but so far we've only really had an introduction, and all I can tell from that is that it's going to be hard to get decent notes (only some of the slides he used were in the handout, and he went through the others too quickly for me to copy them down, even though they seemed quite important).

Sometimes I feel like Alice to the lecturers' Red Queen...

Goal for tomorrow: get project half written up. I'd like to believe it's possible...

New term, new timetable

The project is progressing. I now have all the areas selected that I need from the National Statistics website, and just have to download the last bit of data. Meanwhile, I've been scatter plotting what I already have, and it looks as though only about two of my variables could be correllated with the percentage of household waste recycled, and those only very very loosely. Which is a bit of an anticlimax, but I'm a firm believer that negative results are as important as positive results in science so will keep telling myself that.

I've also started making notes on what I'm going to say about the collection and measurement of the various variables that I'm using, but haven't yet taken the plunge of actually typing any of it up in proper sentences.

Regression and something something was a bit of a mixed lot. It doesn't seem that interesting to be honest (it was always going to be the least exciting of my choices this term), and it seems quite difficult- but the teacher is apparently not bad. He actually does examples, which is refreshing after some of the teaching we had last term, he recalls in asides things such as bits of matrix theory that of course we should already know but which may have temporarily slipped our minds (and he doesn't do it in a patronising way), which I'm very gratefull for, and he seems keen to bring the link between the theory and practice to the fore, or at least that's what he was saying when he was talking about the course, but I have to say I'm not entirely clear how one would use what we learnt today in a practical calculation situation. Maybe you don't.

I'm proposing a motion at the UGM- a motion drawn up by someone else and which other people will be speaking in favour of, so admittedly it's not something for which I am due any credit, but at least I could be usefull in some way. It's the anti-Sutherland motion that we'd planned last term. I was sitting in one of the computer rooms (wrestling with the Neighbourhood Statistics website) when I got an email from the bloke drawing the thing up saying that they still needed a proposer, and that he was in that computer room. We'd agreed that it was best that the proposer not be the bloke himself (though he seconded it up) or any of several other heavily union-involved people because there is a certain fairly large section of UGM attendees who will vote against anything proposed by these people regardless of what it actually is, and we wanted it to get a fair hearing unclouded by personal bias. There had been various emails during the day proposing various wordings and so on but I really wasn't sure what would be most likely to win over the greatest number of people, so I didn't weigh in. And I wouldn't have done anything in response to this latest one either, since someone had sent an email shortly before proposing someone else as the proposer and saying if not they'd do it. But since this email arrived after and said they didn't have a proposer, and since I was in the same room, I looked around, located the guy and went over to offer my name. I said I would only do it if it didn't involve speaking or anything, just putting my name to the paper, and I said if anyone else wanted to do it then that was great, thinking of the other email. In fact though, it was as well that I did because the girl who sent the email didn't turn up till after the motion had been submitted- and of course it wasn't just a matter of saying she'd do it, the proposer needs to give their student number and sign the piece of paper. I think she's going to speak in favour of it, though, so that works out nicely.

I feel a bit wierd though about having my name on the paper when I had 0 input into it, almost like plagiarism. At least most of the people at the UGM who actually know who I am will also know I didn't write it. And anyway if it helps with the whole getting rid of Sutherland thing it's worth it!

Back again

Warwick Castle, where we went skating yesterday

Well, here I am, back again, hard though it seems to believe. My room is much messier than I remembered it, but on the positive side my herbs seem to have coped quite well on a few weeks without water and are positively flourishing.

Strangely, considering how much I enjoyed last term, and considering how I haven't really been able to make the most of the holiday what with the project, I'm actually not that thrilled to be back. Actually, I'm kind of disappointed. Still, that's only to be expected with the end of the holidays, and I'm sure it won't take me long to get back into things.

This term, I have one day a week without any lectures (Friday), and only three early mornings. Though I do have a couple of six o'clock lectures, so it's not all good. It also gets very complicated with many classes running only in alternate weeks- in some cases that's a lecture for everyone and in others it's a computer class for which there are two groups with one doing even and one odd weeks.

I'm looking forward to starting the new modules- they sound pretty interesting. More so than most of the ones last term.

With the new term, I'm also going to have a new policy: I shall try not to write down absolutely everything that happens each day, since it takes far too long, and the past term's entries have hopefully given an idea of what my typical day is like. However, I may well fall into the temptation of recounting everything despite my best efforts.

View from our front garden

Evidence that my Memory is Not What it Was

I think I mentioned that I lost my copy of Hogfather on a bus when I went to see Ginger? And also that I bought it because I couldn't find my original copy in spite of much looking, and really wanted to read it? Well, yesterday I was looking in the bookcase that I have tucked away behind the rocking chair in my room because although I remembered putting in there only books for which I had quite a few by the same author, I couldn't remember quite which authors those were. And what should I find but Hogfather? So I was able to finish it at least, but I can't believe I didn't look there in my original search. I mean, it's a bookcase! It's the obvious place to look.

The other night I wanted to watch ER, and thought I remembered bringing home the discs for the series I was in the middle of, in case I wanted to watch any over Christmas. But I looked where I keep my DVDs and couldn't find it. So I thought ok, I didn't bring it home after all, why don't I start watching series 9 instead, which I got in Japan but have postponed breaking into because I don't have series 7 or 8 yet? I took the box downstairs, and took out the first case. No DVD. I looked in the other cases. No DVDs there either. Damn, I thought, I've been diddled. Entirely unintentionally, I'm sure, they forgot to put the discs in the case in the shop. Well, two years later and several thousand miles away the chance has probably passed to do anything about it. Live and learn. Then today I was unpacking from my massive suitcase the books I'd brought home since I'd read them and didn't need them at uni any more, so that I could pack all the stuff I did want to take back. And what should I find among them but the ER DVDs that I had thought I'd brought home. And why didn't I think of looking for them in my suitcase, when I knew there was still some stuff in there? Then I was putting the new DVDs I got when I went to visit Ginger in my DVD/CD travelling wallet (in which I have all my DVDs apart from box sets and a few I thought I probably wouldn't want to watch, so that all the cases didn't take up unnecessary space in my luggage or in my room in halls), and came upon the series 9 DVDs, which I'd put in there to take them to university, and then completely forgotten about it. Oh dear.

Bluewater

I went to visit Ginger on Tuesday. In the past, when I've gone to see her we've often gone to Bluewater shopping centre because it's quite close to her. There's been plenty of time for that because I've usually stayed two nights. This time however I couldn't spare that long because of my project. So since we still wanted to go to Bluewater I proposed meeting her there, as otherwise by the time I'd arrived at the nearest station to her house, dumped my stuff, and we'd got the bus to Bluewater, there wouldn't have been much time to actually do anything. Luckily there is a station on a different line that's closer to Bluewater, with a good bus service that only takes five minutes to get there.

In the event, my train up to London was delayed by an hour, but we still had time to do everything we wanted- and I still had time to pop into Foyles while I was transferring across London to get her a birthday present as it's her birthday today. We had lunch in Bluewater at, in a strikingly novel departure for us, not the Amoy restaurant, and I splurged on a whole 5 DVDs (but the most expensive was only £7, and the least expensive £3), and got some new clothes as well, including a shorter skirt than I've ever worn before (but it's still only ten or fifteen centimetres above the knee). We also tried on some plain silly clothes, just for a laugh. And while we were waiting for the bus home we ended up, for some reason, pretending to be happy slappers by pretending to hit each other (without actually hurting) and videoing it on Ginger's phone. No, it doesn't seem in the best of taste, and goodness only knows what the other shoppers thought, and I'm really not sure now how it started, even, but we had a good time doing it. We carried on on the bus, moving on to impressions of the man in a film Ginger told me about who was given the hand of a murderer in a transplant and it tried to kill him. Sadly though I was using the book I'd brought with me as a prop in my rendition of this, which involved dropping it as the attack of the hand stepped up, and I realised later that evening that I'd forgotten to pick it up again. It was the second copy of that book I'd bought as well, because I couldn't find my copy when I wanted to read it a few weeks ago, and succumbed to the temptation to get a new one.

I couldn't work out whether it's just that it's the first time I've been shopping since Christmas, or whether Bluewater is the Heelies capital of Britain. Every other child seemed to be whizzing by on a pair, but it may be that everywhere's like that now as they've all been asking for a pair for Christmas since June and have now finally got them.

We ended up watching three of the five DVDs I'd bought at Ginger's: Flightplan and The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the evening and TransAmerica the next morning. I'd never seen any of them before, and nor had Ginger, but they were all really good. Which was a relief, even at £7!
I'm terribly behind with my project- I'm still doing all that stuff with the list of Super Output Area Middle Layers, and haven't even started on the actual analysis of the data- but I'm hoping that I just allowed far more time than necessary and that once I've got all the data in the rest will take no time at all. Hmm.

Inventory of Personal Views 2007

I'm sitting at my computer going through the incredibly protracted process of choosing areas that I want data for on the Neighbourhood Statistics portion of the National Statistics website- instead of being able to simply choose 'All Middle Layer Super Output Areas*', you have to, as far as I can tell, go through a big list and select them all. The list is a hierarchical list that starts with big regions like North East, North West and so on, and you have to click a plus symbol by the region to get the district in that region- only some districts are located inside counties inside the region with their own plus symbol. There is another plus symbol to be clicked by each district, and that gets you down to the Middle Layer Super Output Area level, and thankfully instead of ticking the box by each of those to include it you can tick a box that includes all the Middle Layer Super Output Areas for that district. But that still means clicking on the plus symbol for every one of three hundred and fifty districts, plus of course a fair few counties, and each region. And clicking on the minus symbol for each one afterwards before moving onto the next (if you don't then eventually it tells you you have too many open). Doesn't sound too onerous? Well, it seems to take up to a minute to reload after clicking each plus, after ticking the box, and after clicking the minus. At three minutes per district, you can see why it might take several hours to complete.

Anyway, I'm taking the opportunity of all that waiting for it to load to do an Inventory of Personal Views. It's something I wish I'd done years ago when my opinions were still being formed and changed a lot more rapidly than they do now- it would have been interesting to look back on. As it is, this is the first time I've done it- but I had the idea last January or February, only I'd just missed New Year then so thought I'd wait.

I'd just like to stress that, however certainly phrased, what follows are just my own opinions.

Inventory of Personal Views

Abortion
I don't think I have a problem with abortion- though I might feel differently were I actually pregnant. At any rate I think it's important that the law lets women choose what they think is right. The question of the father's involvement is more problematic- what if the woman doesn't want to keep the child but the father does? It's her body, so does he have the right to compel her to carry the child to term and give birth? But it's his child too, so does she have the right to kill it? I'm not sure.

Capital Punishment
No. Capital punishment is just wrong- even for someone like Saddam Hussein.

Child Pornography
Assuming non-child pornography to be fine (but see below):
If no children were involved in the making of it, ie it's a drawing entirely from the artist's imagination, I think that's probably ok.
If it's a drawing or photo using actual child models, but not being harmed in any way, just pictured naked, then I'm not sure- rationally it's not hurting them if they don't know about it but it still doesn't feel quite right.
If children were raped or otherwise hurt in its making, then it's definitely wrong

Contraception
Fine- no problem with it, in any form.

Corporal Punishment
Against it, I think, but not really strongly and passionately- that is to say, I probably am strongly and passionately against its use on a very frequent basis but only mildly against its extremely occasional (say once in a childhood) use. However I'm probably really not qualified to pass a judgment untill I've brought up children myself.

Drugs (Illegal)
Certainly I'm against them, but mostly because they just seem like a Very Bad Idea, partly on health grounds and partly because getting yourself into a position of addiction where you're dependent on something seems like one to avoid. Though I'll admit to consuming a fair bit of alcohol which of course is no health tonic- I think many drugs are worse but I recognise that in some cases it's debateable so the first part may seem hypocritical. Anyway, morally I don't see a problem with drugs in themselves, but their current illegal status means that the supply chains they go through are often rather dodgy and so using them can equate to funding organised crime and supporting human rights abuses in countries such as Colombia. I think. So practically speaking, it is in fact morally wrong to use them. As for legalisation, I'm not quite sure any more- I used to think that people had the right to choose whether or not to harm themselves, and I still do, but now I also think it's not as simple as that. Maybe currently illegal drugs should only be legalised if effective policies can be put in place to encourage people to choose not to use them. I would like to think that if drugs were legalised conditions would be better for people along the supply chain, but sadly I'm not totally convinced that's the case.
I also think smoking is a bad idea, but obviously that's not immoral

Education
I'm for as much streaming as possible, so that students can learn at their own pace, rather than the brightest kids getting bored going over the same stuff, or those who find it harder being left behind. So I used to think it would be best to have selective schools, with further streaming within these. Now I'm realising the problems with that: for a start I don't want children to only mix with others of a similar ability, and for another thing, what about a child who's brilliant at maths but has real problems even learning to read? There probably won't be very many with wildly differing ability levels in different subjects, but there will be some and they need to be catered for too- no school that is set up with only a narrow ability range in mind will suit them. And then there's the problem that the children at the lower level schools will feel stigmatised- and quite apart from the effect on their feelings that isn't conducive to achieving their best. So now I'm wondering if very very large schools with many sets for each subject based on ability would be better. It would deal with the first two problems if not the third. It should also have an ethos that suggests that traditional academic subjects are not the only things of value, but should also place emphasis on sport, art and music, and at secondary level vocational subjects. Most people will be good at something- and after all in the real world, things like carpentry, hair dressing or plumbing are just as important and worthwhile.

Euthanasia
Not sure. Euthanasia where a doctor or relative just decides that a patient who can no longer communicate is suffering too much and that the time has come to bring things to an end is almost certainly a bad idea. Euthanasia where someone decides to die but is too ill to be able to commit suicide is trickier. I'm inclined to think it should be allowed- but on the other hand, although I agree that suicide should be legal, I still think that one should in most cases try to stop someone from comitting suicide if in a position to. Euthanasia is a bit different because the person in question may be in terrible pain, and may be going to die soon anyway- but there is always the possibility that if they are not killed they may be thankfull later to still be alive after all. Admittedly it's not going to happen in very many cases, but still. And what if they change their mind but become unable to communicate and thus prevent it? Then there is the problem of people saying they want to die simply to avoid being a burden. However, on the whole I think it probably should be allowed as the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Free Speech
I suppose there have to be some limits to it, but I would like to place them as far back as possible. Generally I think people should be allowed (by law) to voice things such as racist comments or disrespectfull insults to other people's religions, but I wish that people wouldn't want to make use of that right. That doesn't mean that people who want to say things like that should have to be given a platform to do so however, or that no-one should attempt to stop them doing so. They just shouldn't be arrested for it is all.

Global Warming
Definitely happening- I believe there is general scientific consensus, in spite of what many people think. And we definitely need to do something about it.

Green Taxes/ Carbon Credit Schemes
Something along those lines needs to happen; I like the carbon credit idea best because it seems fairest- and there is the possibility of actually receiving money if you can live efficiently enough!

Israel
The creation of Israel was a mistake, because of what it meant for those non-Jews already living there who had to resettle, but it's here now and it wouldn't be right to get rid of it, even were that possible. But it needs to keep to the originally agreed boundaries, recognise Palestine's existence, and stop its human rights abuses.
Ideally, it would be nice if it could be a jointly Arab and Jewish country with shared power... no, I know that's not going to happen.

Life after Death
Rationally speaking, I believe no. But strangely I find myself subconsciously assuming yes quite frequently- a result of a vaguely religious upbringing, I suppose.

Men vs Women
Certainly neither gender is superior. And 99.9%** of things can be done equally well by your average man or your average woman (those which can't being things like certain sports for which a different body type makes a difference, or male and female roles in ballet, about which the same is probably true). That said, men and women are not the same. The non-anatomical differences may all be down growing up in and living in a society which treats the genders differently, but even if they don't actually have to be there the reality is that they are, and I will, largely subconsciously, interact in a different way with men to women (of course there is the possibility that this could be more due to my growing up and living in a society which treats men and women differently than due to said society having produced actual differences...)

Other Races
Apart from, again, physical differences that are only relevant in an extremely limited range of contexts such as sport, people from all races are exactly the same. The differences that we observe in people from other countries are entirely down to culture, and if for example a white child is brought up by black African Muslims, or a Japanese child by a white British family then (provided the children are treated no differently from any other child, which admittedly is a bit of a big if) the white child will differ from a black African Muslim solely and purely in looks, and the Japanese child will differ from a white Briton solely and purely in looks.

Other Cultures
As I say, cultures are the important difference between different peoples, not race. And unlike with race, clearly all cultures, and people from all cultures, once you get past certain fundamental things, are not the same. However, with a few caveats, they are all equal and all valid. Those caveats are: 1 No part of a culture which involves the abuse of human rights should be considered good, valid, or worthy of preservation- but the rest of that culture is still important and valid and should not be lost
2 Not all truths are equal. Though the culture of a lost tribe in the Amazon may be neither superior nor inferior to Western culture, that doesn't mean that the tribe's understanding of how disease is caused (for example) is neither superior nor inferior to the Western scientific understanding.
As for the preservation of cultures, as I say, all cultures are worthy of preservation- but it's not as simple as that, because a culture relies on people, and aspects of a culture neither can nor should be preserved if the people concerned want to change them. Though I would be sad to see a single global monoculture, and I hope that people of individual cultures will recognise what's valuable about their way of life and not wish to lose it, but only to adapt it.

Pornography
Harmless enjoyment or exploitation or women? I incline towards the former, but I'm not sure. Of course pornography that consists of, for example, a drawing from the artist's imagination using no models, or written pornographic fiction is surely fine.

Prostitution
Again, I'm not sure. I would imagine that few if any prostitutes consider their occupation to be their ideal career, and certainly there should be help available to try to provide other options in the first place, and to existing prostitutes. But is it immoral? I think not, but it's not a strongly held belief.

Religion
I'm an agnostic tending towards the atheistic side, at least on paper- but I do often find myself subconsciously assuming that God exists, and that there is life after death; I'm hoping that that will gradually go because it's at odds with my conscious beliefs.
As for other people's religions, well, when I was religious myself I believed that all religions worship the same God in different ways, and that the reason for these different ways is not that one is right and the rest are wrong but that people are different. Thus all are equally valid- provided they do not involve abuse of human rights (which very few do). Now that I'm almost sure God doesn't exist, I still believe the above in the unlikely event that in fact he does.
Even if one religion were right and the rest wrong, since we can't know with absolute certainty which one it is that's correct, other people's religions should still be treated with respect. And even if it was certain which religion was right, that would still be the correct approach- even though in that case it would be in other people's interests to convert, their current beliefs should still be treated respectfully, and they should be left to take the decision to abandon them themselves- if only because active efforts in that direction are likely to be counter productive.
That said, I do find it very hard to practise what I preach and be respectfull towards the beliefs of fundamentalists of any religion.

Sex outside of Marriage
Fine

Sex outside a Relationship
Certainly not immoral, but probably not for me purely on grounds of personal preference

Torture
In itself, certainly a very bad thing that should not happen. But I'm not quite sure about the hypothetical situation where you have terrorists who know the location of a bomb, and the question is should you torture them to make them reveal it, thus allowing you to disable it and save massive loss of life and injury? I think maybe if you can be 100% sure that they will reveal the location under torture, and if you can be 100% sure that the suffering you are causing them is less than the suffering that would be caused by the bomb, then yes. But in the real world, you can't be sure they'll give up the information, and you can't be sure the suffering will be less- it's hard to measure, especially when you have different degrees of suffering and different numbers undergoing that suffering. So I suppose in the real world the answer is probably no.
I'm shocked and appalled by what has been happening in places like Guantanamo Bay. There is no question that that is wrong.

Terrorism
Of course terrorism is wrong. But what I mean by this heading is 'What is the proper approach to terrorism?' I don't have anything like a complete answer, but I do think that too much effort put into attempting to prevent it can be a bad thing. For one thing, it puts the civil liberties of everyone in the country at risk. And yes, civil liberties are worth preserving even at the expense of lives. After all, we are prepared to accept deaths as the cost of being able to move around fast and conveniently- since we could prevent all road accidents by banning cars, but most of us would not even consider that as an option. And civil liberties are even more important. The other problem is that groups that were not in fact persecuted to begin with can end up being persecuted in the process of trying to prevent terrorism, which can lead to a legitimate grievance which a tiny minority may then decide to pursue in illegitimate ways- in other words an increase in terrorism.

The Islamic Veil
Muslim women have a perfect right to wear the full veil if they want to, but I wish they didn't want to. And if they don't want to, no-one has the right to make them, so laws in some Muslim countries which make wearing the veil compulsory are wrong. So are cases in countries where it's not compulsory but a woman feels she should wear one even though she doesn't want to.

War in Iraq
I'm now against it. It seems to have caused more suffering than allowing Saddam Hussein's regime to continue would have (yes, I know that's not what it was about). And I'm horrified that a war that my country has taken part in has involved the appalling practices in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, and the use of the death penalty on the former leaders.

*don't ask

**No, this is not a rigourously calculated statistic. I made it up.