I've had my first exams of the season, neither of which I looked forward to. The first was a take-home International Law of Human Rights (ILHR) exam and the other was a sat Administrative Law exam. Although I don't think I did particularly stellar in either, I do think I did alright. I comfort myself by saying that one day this will all be 10 years ago. I did have a little boost just before my administrative law exam and that was that I received 2 marks from ILHR, a High Distinction for class participation and a Distinction for a class presentation. I really needed the boost. I later found out that I sat my administrative law exam on the coldest day in Canberra for 43 years! The day was quite miserable as a fog didn't burn away like it was supposed to and trapped colder air beneath it. The daytime high was 4C, which for me isn't that cold, but for Canberra it's freezing. And another interesting thing happened with administrative law. My professor contacted me and said that he had somehow neglected to record my mark for a particular assignment and asked if I could send him the mark by e-mail. I told him the truth, a Credit and offered to bring it in as proof. He replied that it wouldn't be necessary. I later asked him if I had said I'd received a Distinction or High Distinction would he have checked, and he said no, at least not for a Distinction. I think I deserve honesty bonus points.
The cold weather I just spoke of also brought snow to the hills, though none has actually fallen in Canberra. I want to see snow! Snow can actually be classified as a mineral, in much the same way as ice. Ice is a naturally occurring, inorganic, crystalline compound which is the definition of a mineral; snow is exactly the same. I'm not kidding, geologists do classify ice this way. Snow, then, is the sedimentary version and ice is the metamorphic version --- created by heat and/or pressure.
Last Monday was the Queen's Birthday public holiday, one of only 2 days of the year, the other being Australia Day, that Canberrans are allowed to set off fireworks. There were fireworks everywhere. I went to the roof of Fenner Hall and looked out over the city and you could see fireworks from every point. It was actually quite amazing.
I had another great round of picks at the AFL, getting another 8 of 8. This means that my tally is now 70% correctness. If only I'd been putting money on this, I'd be making it hand over fist.
I read on the internet that the trial of Larry O'Brien has adjourned while the judge considers whether or not to grant a directed verdict. Reviewing the evidence, I think there is reasonable doubt but I'm not so sure I'd be ready to grant a directed verdict quite yet. I think judges when considering such matter as an assumption take the Crown's case at its highest, that is to say they consider, for the sake of argument, that the Crown's evidence is true. The judge would then see if even at this high standard, could a jury reasonably find a person guilty. Luckily, I'll be in Ottawa when the directed verdict is scheduled to be handed down. Maybe I can get a front row seat.
I've been reading, as I'm sure you have too, about the Air France flight that disappeared and the statement about contradictory speeds from the instruments made me think of another disaster. About 10 years ago an AeroPeru flight crashed at night into the sea. Shortly after takeoff, the instruments began relaying conflicting information, for example stall warnings, overspeed warnings (too fast) and different altitudes. It is actually impossible to be going too fast and be stalling. The crew decided to turn around but because it was night, there was no horizon or any landmarks. They eventually just sort of landed in the ocean as they lost altitude. It turned out that the pitot tubes had been blocked by tape when cleaning the tape hadn't been removed again. The pitot tubes use the external air pressure to gauge altitude and airspeed and then relay this information back to the instrumentation. If this is blocked, it can wreak havoc and create contradictory information. From what I've read about the Air France flight, this is very similar. There has even been talk about the pitot tubes being iced over although the manufacturer has questioned this conclusion. Hopefully, we'll find out what happened.
Finally, I'll leave you with this slightly less than politically correct event that happened last week. Sreeja, a young woman from India on my floor, was having trouble with her computer so she called one of Fenner Hall's IT support people. I think she got through to Ian. I then pointed out that in an ironic twist, and Indian was calling a Caucasian for tech support. I think it's funny even if you don't.
No comments:
Post a Comment