Jayeless

Huh?

Jess — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:11:22 +0000

I was procrastinating on some IS work, and hunting around my library for something to gaze at. I found a flow chart titled “Book Week”. “Oh, OK,” I thought, “let’s read it.” Unsurprisingly, the first item is “Books”. That makes sense. The next item is “Teachers”. Teachers do like people to read books, so that also makes sense. The third item? “Food”. Hey, wait — teachers are food?!

Land of the free?

Jess — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:59:21 +0000

Two days ago, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, President Bush condemned China’s human rights record. From the safety of Bangkok, Bush referred to Chinese crackdowns on dissenters in the lead-up to the Games, and declared¹:

The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings.

Impeccable timing! The very next day, the US announced their intention to deprive Salim Hamdan, a poverty-stricken Yemeni taxi driver, of his fundamental liberties. Hamdan’s crime was the identity of his employer — he was Osama bin Laden’s driver. For over five years he was locked up at Guantanamo Bay, awaiting trial. Over the last couple of weeks, he was duly tried, and the military tribunal decided that driving around a known terrorist is a crime, but that it was his only crime. He was sentenced to 66 months. He has already served 61.²

In any freedom-loving society governed by the rule of law, you’d expect that he would be released in five months. However, the US is no freedom-loving society governed by the rule of law. (As further proof of this, see again who tried him.) On the subject of Salim Hamdan’s fate once he’d served his time, the Pentagon had this to say³:

He’ll still be retained as an enemy combatant.

WTF, USA? You have established a military base on Cuba and decided no national law applies there. Among your inmates are respected journalists (e.g. Sami al-Hajj) and you torture these people for years on end hoping they’ll divulge something you can charge them with. You pretend all of this is legitimate, that you’re still the land of the free despite it all, but how can you keep pretending? That military tribunal was your pathetic attempt to restore some semblance of respectability to the joint, and you’ve just announced that you intend to ignore it?

China’s certainly not a free country, but China doesn’t pretend to be. There is no freedom of speech in China, no freedom of the press, and they even have labour camps they send their citizens to without trial⁴. However, China’s not the one pretending to be the “leader of the free world”. China makes no secret of where they stand. They cop a lot of flak because of it, but at least they’re honest. In that regard, they’re one step ahead of you, USA.

Failure

Jess — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:20:17 +0000

There is no year 12 history next year. We have failed, comrades.

Psychology paranoia

Jess — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:53:41 +0000

About a month ago, my Psychology class started studying unit 2. At the onset of this unit, our teacher smiled apologetically and said, “Now, I feel it’s only fair to warn you before we start. When you’re studying psychological diseases and their symptoms, you’ll start diagnosing yourself with every chemical imbalance and disease you read about. You don’t have them, OK? Everyone feels depressed sometimes, and everyone has trouble concentrating at times, and everyone gets the shakes occasionally… it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, OK? So don’t stress about it.”

At the time, this sounded like a really weird warning. Was she sure the entire class would start diagnosing themselves with everything we studied? But… why would we do that? It didn’t sound like a very rational — or likely — thing for us all to start doing. As a result, I completely disregarded this warning… and let my guard down.

I haven’t been feeling well today. It’s probably one of those all-too-common winter bugs, but a really weird one: no coughing, no sneezing, no sore throats, no aching joints. Instead, I feel like I’m just… not functioning. It’s hard to say that, because I clearly am getting by. It’s just that there’ve been so many little lapses in… functioning… and since we were studying neural diseases all morning they seemed a lot more significant than usual. Read more... (546 words)

Mm, vanilla milk

Jess — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:31:07 +0000

I’ve been having pseudo “panic attacks” all evening. Why does it have to be September so soon? What did I do to deserve this? What obscene crime do I commit each August that warrants the retaliatory “quality time with the abusive mother” September that always follows? The knowledge of my impending doom just hit me today, and I cracked. I’ve calmed down with the assistance of some sleep-inducing chemicals (see title), but I’m afraid of what’s coming.

Protip

Jess — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:35:16 +0000

If you have some kind of birth defect in either of your ears (or both), for the love of everything you hold dear do not try to buy in-ear earphones. Well, you can buy them, but never ever try to use them. Why not? Untold agony, immense suffering, that kind of thing. You’ll never forgive yourself. Take it from someone who learnt the hard way.

Classroom Communism

Jess — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:08:23 +0000

I am becoming increasingly sure that my History teacher’s goal in life is to establish his own Democratic People’s Republic. How do I come to a crazy conclusion like this, you ask? One thing: “re-education classes”. After school, every afternoon, for those year 11 History students¹ who aren’t “good citizens”.

It all began on Tuesday, when we were given a wonderful assignment. In pairs (”like on Sesame Street”), we were to research and formulate a ten-minute presentation on a topic which would be assigned to us. It could take any form so long as we got the information across “in a coherent format understandable to the populace at large”, was “pretty”, and used primary sources and more than one viewpoint. It was then that one of my classmates, Terence, noticed the unusual heading at the bottom of the page — “Why are we doing this?” Read more... (708 words)

Coal is useless

Jess — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 05:14:05 +0000

Most electricity in Australia is generated by burning coal. This leads to a few problems, most notably global warming — coal is roughly 80% carbon — but Australia swears by its coal anyway. We have to have electricity, and electricity is produced by burning coal. Therefore, Australia must burn coal. We’ll shame people into using less electricity, so less coal will have to be burned. We’ll up prices to force them to use less electricity, too. We’ll insist on the existence of “clean coal”, a truly mythical form of coal that will not contribute to global warming.

All of this really pisses me off. Why? Because coal is completely extraneous to electricity generation. Electricity is generated by the movement of metal parts. All coal is used for is boiling water such that the steam may move the metal parts. People waving these parts around would generate electricity. You could make bikes with the parts attached to the pedals, and when ridden they would generate electricity. You could stick the parts in the ocean and the tides would generate electricity. You could get some wind to blow the parts around, and you would generate electricity. The only reason we use coal is because thousands of miners would be put out of work otherwise. Well, that and coal generates electricity faster, but that could easily be compensated for with extra generators. The main reason is the miners. Read more... (270 words)

WordPress 2.6

Jess — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:33:37 +0000

Unlike last time, today’s Wordpress upgrade was smooth and almost painless. I wasted a considerable amount of time figuring out why asides weren’t appearing on the front page as they should have been. It was the fault of an incompatible plugin. Plugin deactivated, problem fixed. I’m relieved just to have not lost my entries again!

Where’s my yellow jersey?

Jess — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:34:57 +0000

I heard on the radio this morning that Cadel Evans is now in the lead in the Tour de France. I don’t really care that he’s in the lead, but I still thought this was amazing. How do you fall off your bike, get covered in cuts and bruises, spend the day being tended to by a doctor, and emerge at the end of the next day in the lead of the Tour de France?

I mean, this strategy has never once worked for me! As I reminisced about the past, I found myself overcome by jealousy. When I had a bike, I always fell off it less than ten seconds after deciding to ride. (Usually in less than five.) My arms are different lengths, and it was impossible for me to steer the damn thing. I usually crashed into my own leg and collapsed in a jumbled mess. My dad always insisted that I could ride, but that I just wouldn’t practise enough. Determined to prove him wrong, I spent three hours practising one day. I emerged so bruised and battered that he had to give up on his dream of having a daughter who could ride. (He still teases me about not trying, though.) And you know what? Not once did I get a yellow jersey out of the deal! If falling off = yellow jersey, where’s mine? I felt so ripped off.

After spending an hour or two getting over my disappointment, though, I began to understand the basic difference between myself and Cadel Evans. He’s a skilled cyclist who fell off his bike once. I’m a committed pedestrian who has fallen off my bike so many times that staying on would be a surprise. I’d say that’s a pretty fundamental difference right there. After remembering that little fact, I was instantly over my jealousy, and would like to congratulate Evans for succeeding where I failed.