My Physics lesson seems to be experiencing a bit of a boom time at the moment in finding creative alternatives to work. Our lovely new student teacher has been graced with the nickname ‘Ms Higgs Boson’ as a result of having a double-barrelled name, a geek joke if ever I heard one. My truly excellent cartoons on the backs of paper towels get stolen by Robert, while I’ve also invented the game of the century with the ‘Ran#’ button on my calculator. Yes, folks, up to know I wasn’t aware calculators could generate random numbers but now I do we’re all making up for lost time with outrages dares based on the unlikely probability of correctly picking the number it generates. I actually lost once – on the “you will buy a Mac” dare – so I’m hoping everyone at Babble has given up reading my blog else I’m in big trouble.
Not to feel outdone, History still features the admirable quest to cast a James Bond movie out of our school’s teachers. Out of interest, Mr Cain is definitely the main villain, while Mr Drummond is in the running for Bond. My dad helpfully suggested Mr Muchamore has to be Q, which I fully agree with. My vote is also with Ms Taylor for M. I hope I haven’t offended Mr Wrigley by telling him he’s slightly too moral to be a main character, probably getting killed off fairly early on. But doing something good. Like, being an informer. Sorry!
Moving swiftly on from school… last night I watched Paul Merton’s final show hosting Room 101. It’s never been amazingly laugh-out-loud funny but always interesting to ponder what you would put in yourself – at the moment my list includes buffets, Michael Winner and William Blake.
Checking the news this evening, I also see the shocking revelation that David Cameron smoked drugs at school. It is newsworthy, though, to note what common drug it was. Personally, I’m beginning to doubt whether Mr Cameron is telling the truth. This guy went to Eton and the best he could come up with was cannabis?! Mark my words – we’ll discover in 10 years time that he was actually brought up on a council estate attending Berkshire Comprehensive.
That reference to the class structure is, in fact, a neat link into my resurrected ‘shout out’ blog posts. Saoirse gets it today for deftly arguing the relative merits of Communism at lunchtime, which I’m sure is boring everyone else to death, but I love. One of the many ways in which I’m criticised is, of course, for sneakily promoting my website at school which – in a very indirect way – must surely bump up by Google AdSense by, ooh, about half a penny. But it’s still exploitation of children by indoctrinating them with advertising on Mr Kanj’s whiteboard. Hehe.
The past week or so has been rather hectic 
But History is cancelled so I’ll take the time to blog again!
Snowy garden
I guess I should start this blog with last Wednesday. There was fresh snow on the ground, you may remember, as mother and I ran (rather breathlessly) to catch a train to Birmingham for the university’s Open Day. Which I came out of rather enthused about, albeit with Cambridge still being the one to aim for 
We then travelled deep into the heart of the countryside (well OK, not really) to Cofton Hackett for dinner with Lucy and family. Well, I lie. We actually travelled to Rubery and then walked, which was condemned as Dominic ‘forcing his poor mother to walk through the freezing cold’. Soz, mother! Dinner was lovely though 
On Saturday there was another party at Catherine’s place, which was enjoyed by all \ all-who-didn’t-get-ill That night was rather eventful, actually, for a number of reasons I can’t really go onto on here. But suffice to say it set off some events which have upset me recently, but hey, I’m much happier now. I just get worried about other people sometimes 
Then jumping forward to last weekend (all you missed in the meantime was homework and coursework ) I saw Lucy again 
which was just very needed. I showed off at winning Connect 4 (sorry guys) and Matthew made us all laugh by reading Thumbelina complete with voices and a cynical commentary.
Oh that reminds me! Last Thursday I did get time to see Frost/Nixon which was absolutely fantastic and completely gripping. Not for everyone, certainly, but highly recommended for any one geeky about journalism or politics. Like me 
Final thought: walking home on Saturday night, I think I saw the most flagrant abuse of apostrophes I have ever seen in my life. A club in Willesden advertising a D’J? What… the hell… is that?
I’ll try and blog properly later but for now I just wanted to throw open a question to the (admittedly not huge) audience.
Is there an actual name for the situation where you believe someone’s argument is fundamentally wrong in two separate ways, but arguing against them both at once seems contradictory?
(Note: ‘arrogance’ will not be accepted )
Examples:
Homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural
(It is natural, but why would it matter if it wasn’t?)
Darwin recounted evolutionary theory on his deathbed
(He didn’t, but even if he did, it wouldn’t affect the validity of evolutionary theory?)
Chemicals are bad because they are man-made
(Well a great many clearly aren’t, but since when has man-made meant ‘bad’ anyway?)
…and I’m sure you can think of your own. I think it needs a snappier title than ‘you’re-wrong-but-even-if-you-were-right-you’d-still-be-wrong’ syndrome. (Note – I’m not actually asking for a debate on these particular arguments themselves (!) – if you disagree with me on their content, I’m sure you can still think of your own situations where this applies…)
I’ve become a little bit addicted to this lovely little flash game featured in the B3ta newsletter a week or two back. “How addicted?” I imagine you ask. Well, addicted enough that I was playing it until 3.30 early Saturday morning, which then caused me to oversleep and be late for meeting Emily and Robert for our Oxford Street trip.
I’m still playing with the camera phone…
Yes, our ‘let’s abuse the 10% Topshop discount Sixth Former students’ trip was a great success, in the end. There are lots of stories about Dominic not knowing any London landmarks (“Marble Arch? Ooh… look! It’s an arch!… probably made out of some sort of marble material I’d say…”) which I’d advise you to disregard if you hear. Not because they’re not true – they blatantly are – but because they come from Robert and he has hit me enough to make up for it. Hit me – with a bag.
Also – proving that we clearly are mature and grown-up students well deserving of our 10% discount, we decided to play condoms in Topshop. “Oh?” I imagine you ask, again, in a slightly bored tone. Well it’s simply the Boogies game played on Dick and Dom where you shout ‘condoms!’ in ever increasing tones until you’re too embarrassed – or hoarse – to continue. Emily won, incidentally, but that was because she has no fear in shouting “CONDOMS!” in the middle of Kensal Rise. In the dark.
(Look, before you complain, it’s better than shouting “UNPROTECTED SEX WITH MULTIPLE UNTESTED PARTNERS!”, isn’t it?)
Oh, and hah – if any Physics teachers are reading this, yes I did manage to do a bit of revision for today’s exam in the midst of all of this. “Oh, how did the exam go?” I imagine you barely attempting to stifle a yawn saying. It went OK thanks, hypothetical you Last year I’m sure I would have been much more concerned, because I know I didn’t do that well, but to be honest I’m slightly less motivated now that I don’t need Physics for next year. Having said that, I still want to do well, and I hope I scraped by as usual 
There’s nothing like reading a friend’s blog post entitled Reflections to put you into a reflective mood yourself. I’ll start with the news first though – I sat Maths, Core 3 today. It was OKish, to be honest. 
I didn’t come out of it super-confident, I wasn’t at my best (it being very noisy with wind for a start!) and I kinda have the feeling I’ll come out of it with a solid B or something, and then retake in June with everyone else. Which is fine really, nothing lost, except it’d still be nice to get Core 3 well and truly out of the way. As ever, we shall see!
Back to the teenagery reflection then. The trouble is that I don’t have that much to be reflective about. I’m mildly stressed from all the work I know I have to do, certainly. But then it’ll all be over by June, and it’s not making me unhappy, and when I think about it too much I’ll just end up shrugging and going to bed. I did wonder today – “if I was ever really unhappy, would anyone notice?” – but it’s a stupid question because I’ve never really been properly unhappy. Even the day before a Physics Practical
People keep asking me if I’m excited about university, and the answer – to be honest – is no. Am I looking forward to it? Yes. Do I think I’ll enjoy it and have the time of my life? Course! But I’m not excited about it because I don’t like looking forward to these sorts of things with any emotional expectations. Everything could always go wrong at any moment, so I’ve always lived in the present and tried to make sure I was happy right here, right now. And it’s so very different to the voices at school I’ve blogged about before who want you to focus on a career and a bright shining future.
But then again, I can hardly go around advocating my philosophy. Take Andy Kings, for example. (Sorry to embarrass you, Andy.) He’ll grow up saving lives, and I won’t, and as much as I admire him I couldn’t do it because of the commitment you have to throw your life into. So maybe I’m just lucky that other people are taking the harder routes in life…
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
