One of Your Five A Day?

I've had a general background mistrust of the 'six litres of water/vitamin supplements/organic food/five a day" 'science' for a while. Too much seemed to be taken too literally with too few footnotes to seem wholly true.

I therefore found this article "Science and Pseudoscience in Adult Nutrition Research and Practice" by "CSI" (Committee for Sceptical Inquiry) quite interesting.

OLPAS 2009

Well, it would seem that it's the time of year when we all start complaining about how rubbish pupillages.com is - and with good cause.

This year, however, the site has been re-done which offers SO much more scope for comment.

Firstly, the good:

The ability to search by city/circuit is a very positive step. The old system of London/everywhere else showed the wonderfully London-centric view which ends with counsel trying to put forward the argument that his client would of course have time to drive from Manchester to Newcastle and back, in his lunch hour, because both are 'oop north' and therefore close to each other.

Ironically, this year I am applying to all non-OLPAS chambers in the order of application deadline rather than my approach last year which was to prioritise the North West, which makes this function less useful - but I will still give credit for it being there.

Secondly, the glitches:

I can only assume the 'search by deadline' date issue is a glitch. For those of you who haven't experimented with this one, let me explain it. I had assumed that 'search by deadline' would mean that if I typed in, say, 31 March, I would get all chambers with deadlines between today's date and 31 March. It turns out that isn't the case. When you type in a deadline, it will only give exact matches. Combine this with the loss of newsflash and it means that every week I'll be search the next 14 days using 14 separate searches. Again, I can only assume this is a glitch because who in their right mind would design this deliberately?

Thirdly, the bad:

Law minx and the comments on Andropov's page have covered this to a large extent but starting with no FAQ page and finishing with 'too many clicks'. The first is self explanatory, the second is that in order to see what is in a sub- sub- section, I have to click on it as the summary up front isn't detailed enough. I can see how having a long page time out on you is frustrating, but so is not being able to finish a page.

The other deeply annoying thing is how long the 'free text' boxes are. If you need 350 words for whatever it is they are asking about, I would suggest you probably need the skill of being concise. It also means that a pupillage committee has to spending longer reading waffle on forms meaning, ironically, they have less time to actually consider them.

I was surprised, last year to find out that pupillages.com doesn't charge for the service. That's commendable, but I wonder if it would be able to provide a better service were it to charge each applicant a small sum each year to use it - say £10. The sum isn't enough to put people off (even UCAS is £15) but would perhaps allow them to give better service.

Books

Well, this seems to be a more intellectual version of the '25 things' meme going around Facebook:
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
5) Tag some friends


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowlin x+
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x+
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x (done enough, anyway)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk x
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffingber
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x+
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x+3
7 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x+
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres *
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x+
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x+
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x+
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x+
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan x
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x+
52 Dune - Frank Herbert x
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth x
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon x
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x5
8 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x+
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov x
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt x+
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x+
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x+
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 7
2 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson x+
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome x
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell x
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom *
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton x+
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 9
2 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks *
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

TotalRead: 44
Loved: 19
Want to read: 3

I'm somewhat hindered by the fact I dislike most 19th century literature - if I could count the ones I've watched the BBC adaptations of, I'd be sorted :)

Ironically, I would guesstimate that I own at least 85% of these....

It's a panacea!

An Indian Court has been petitioned to ban Google Earth because it allegedly helped the Mumbai terrorists plan their attacks.

Yes, well, so did the map makers of paper maps. And the airlines/train companies who transported them. Don't forget the markets that fed them.

Ahem, for a far moer articulate rebuttal ofa silly idea, click here.

Riding out a recession? Training contract

Well, it seems the best way to ride out the recession is to be a trainee in a law firm as they are almost completely unsackable - even for gross misconduct, let alone minor details like profit margins.

In order to sack a trainee, you need the permission of the SRA....

More here.

Dreaming of Galbraith

Goodness knows what was going on in the depths of my subconscious last night but I merrily dreamt all about Galbraith submissions. That and images of plums and little piles of dust (representing duff, I imagine) were floating in an out... I think I need to drink more and eat less chocolate!

My only possible reason for this is that the case with Scary Defence Barrister has finished and in the last two cases against her, she has made submissions of no case to answer (and she was successful on one but not on the other, if you're interested in the record) at half time.

The way that hearings work is that, unlike criminal trials where there usually aren't too many allegations, there tend to be a great many made. It is therefore possible to have withdrawn, admitted and lost 50% of these at half time, but still have enough left to make up a case which could potentially lead to impairment. By way of example, the case that is starting on Monday has about 80 allegations (from memory).

However, many allegations aren't in themselves perjorative, it is only when they are added together that they may become so.

Whilst I'm on the theme, the hearing process is also different from a normal criminal trial because there are three stages rather than 2. Obviously, in a trial the facts are decided upon and then it is sentancing. At a hearing, the panel firstly decides which facts are found proved. They then decide whether, on ther basis of the facts found proved, that the practioner's Fitness to Practice is impaired. Finally, if they have decided that there is impaired FTP, they decide what sanction, if any, is appropriate.

Ok, a very boring post and possibly the most detail on my job that I have ever - or will ever - blog!

Needed to get it out of my system less the crazy dreams start again!

Real time, real life, dead people tweets

Genny Spencer is twittering a day-by-day diary of a 1937 farm girl.

You can follow her here. Definitely worth a visit.

Japan and languages

Well, I got the Japanese tour so I'm very excited about that. I go in October, which is useful in terms of annual leave.

Decided that seeing as the Japanese are allegedly about as good at foreign languages as the English it would be a good idea to spend the next few months being able to read and speak some Japanese before I go.

Turns out, after a very brief bit of internet research, that having learned Chinese for a year is helpful when it comes to one of the three scripts that they use. More helpfully, Salford University offers evening classes which I think I might take up as they seem reasonably priced and I can (just) get from the office to the classroom by 6.

I have to say, I've missed learning stuff since leaving uni. The job has been quite good in that repsect as most of it is still new, but I like to learn for it's own sake and I think languages could be useful in this regard.

I'm too old to become fluent in another language - though I am encouraging the Boy to get work in Germany if he can because that would be my best bet for a second fluent language - but I think it would be good to have c250-1000 words in say 15-20 languages and a smattering of grammar. Means you can be understood literally anywhere in the world and could usually get around.

So far on that list I probably only have 4 - good German, basic French, very basic Chinese and very very basic Turkish. By very, very basic I mean I can count to ten, ask where stuff is, order various foods and drinks and haggle at a market as well as the various 'polite words' - it's all vocab, no grammar.

In non-Roman scripts, learning how to look a word up in a dictionary can take ages in its own right. Try "我是英国人" without using an online dictionary. And typing into a computer is also a lesson in itself (in this case, I typed the pinyin in making sure it was on Chinese input setting and the computer converted the pinyin into characters)

ESU interviews

I recently applied for ESU debate tours and went to London for the interviews today.

Was asked what I was doing in life and I am increasigly glad for The Barristers as I now get to say "well, I've just finished Bar school but I'm working as a paralegal whilst I search for pupillage which is like a barrister apprenitceship" and the response is "oh yes, I watched the TV programme on that..."

My first choice is Hong Kong, then Japan, then Lebanon, then Bermuda, then Austria and then Armenia.

More details on interview tomorrow - tired and bedtime now. Yawn, zzzzzz

Fingers crossed!

Home Schooling

I was reading one of NHS's facebook notes and so have directly stolen the following from him, needless to say, I like it. for those of you who do know him, the link is here . EDIT: Forgot he has a blog, the original post can therefore be seen here.

_____
The government loves micro-managing classrooms in the state sector. And why not, you might ask? It's their money, and if they want to decide what consitutes great literature, a major historical event or the right way to introduce literacy, then who are we taxpayers to quibble?

But the government often tires of its own toys and experiences an irrepressible desire to reach out and play with the education of children who don't use state schools. This would seem not to be their business, until you remember this is the 21st century and they hold both the rights'n'responsibilities card and the child protection card.

The latest finger-dipping is yet another review into home education, the Elective Home Education Review, which will be the fourth review into home education since 2005. Education, education, education, education: if only reviews were outcomes...

Headed by Graham Badman, the EHER will consider
1) Whether local authorities and other public agencies are able to effectively discharge their duties and responsibilities for safeguarding and ensuring a suitable education for all children.
2) Whether home educating parents are receiving the support and advice they want to ensure they provide a good, balanced education for their children.
3) What evidence there is to support claims that home education could be used as a ‘cover’ for child abuse such as neglect, forced marriage, sexual exploitation or domestic servitude.

Allow me to translate.

1) In 2006, The Education and Inspections Act placed a duty on all local authorities to make arrangements to identify children not receiving "a suitable education". Without knowing what happens in your living room, they can't make that judgement. So inspectors need to be sent into people's homes to gather that information. But we don't know how many children are home educated - between 20,000 (DCSF) and 50,000 (Education Otherwise) - so expect a policy requiring parents to register their home-educated children with the local education authority.

2) Home educating parents often do not want or seek advice from the LEA: it is, after all, the organisation whose schools they are avoiding. Nor are they under any obligation to receive such advice. But as Mr Badman reminded the BBC "Legislation affords every parent the right to choose to educate their child at home but with those rights go responsibilities, not least being to secure a suitable education." Expect the word "suitable" to be defined by Mr Badman and the inspectors to have a strong mandate.

3) The child protection card. If the government can find a single example of neglect or abuse, it gives it the green light to investigateand regulate the lives of all home educators. You can only find a bad apple by checking all your apples. The government hasn't yet given an example of alleged abuse - Education Otherwise asked for the evidence and none was provided - but making the claim means that a claim has been made and must, therefore, be investigated.

Parents have a right to educate their children privately or using the state system. This private education can be in a school or at home. Parents who choose home education are often helping their children to escape the abuse of bullying, or get out from the anti-learning culture of their LEA schools. The government is heaping review after review on these people and branding them as potential abusers.

The government wants to control and regulate the education of every child. How else can it guarantee every child an equal start in life? Parents may play the freedom card, but rights'n'responsibilities and child protection will surely beat it.

Grimm and Grimmer

Child abuse, abandonment, slavery, cannibalism and being burnt alive - the recipe for a good story, usually, as Hanzel and Gretel would seem to show.

However, these sorts of tales are now 'too scary' for children, apparently.

I remember as a child, one of my favourite books was a complete collection of Grimm's fairy tales. There were loads of stories in there that aren't in the 'usual' fairytale collections, which I loved. Might get the copy which is at my parents house and see if it is still as good today.

Shame that some parents are so good at projecting their own fears onto their children that a generation will lose out.

The Barristers (part 2)

I've just watched the second episode of the Barristers and it made me miss dining quite a lot as I always really enjoyed it (perhaps I'm odd in that regard?). I do like seeing Middle Temple on there though - and I did like that they interviewed the porter (who holds a special place in my heart for letting us park the MDU mini bus there for a weekend instead of paying extortionate London car parking charges. Brick court went BMW, porsche, audi, 25 year old decrepit minibus with chipped paint and no brakes, porsche, mercedes....Well, you get the picture. Raise the tone of the neighbourhood, we did not!)

How on earth did that guy get pupillage (I can't remember his name). Having sat down over the last week with various people and chatted about the programme, we were all sure he wouldn't.

Without wanting to be unkind to all of the candidates, I do hope that the programme doesn't show everyone succeeding as it would somewhat undermine the 'only 1 in 5...beware....BEWARE!!!!!' statistics and would make it inconsolably unrealistic.

Put it all down to insane jealousy.

Thought the post-interview rejection feedback was very interesting, however, and made me realise that perhaps I did make the right decision on the paralegal front. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my job quite a lot (though it's pretty intense at the moment on the piles of work front) but when I was offered this job, the same day, I was offered another, non-legal job paying £8000-£10000 per year more. As anyone would find, it was a difficult decision. Ultimately, I decided that I like the atmosphere of Law Firm better than the other place, but when I get my paycheque though, there is always that little bit of doubt lingering....! Had I enjoyed the atmosphere of the other place (having temped there) I might have found the decision much harder and gone the other way - and then watched the feedback given to the applicant tonight with my heart sinking through the floor!

Oh well, back to watching QI.

Paralegal jobs going at Law Firm in Manchester

I have been told today that Law Firm may be seeking to hire a new paralegal in their Manchester office.

If you are interested in public regulatory work in Manchester, please leave a comment and I will arrange to send you the details (and/or chat to you about applications)

I can assure you, they are a lovely firm to work for and the work is interesting/fun/public spirited and the pay isn't bad at all for paralegalling in Manchester.

How babies are made: the 6 year old view

This is quite sweet.

5 Children were asked how they thought babies were made.

To be fair to them, they are quite accurate on the whole and even where wrong, it's the result of a wrong logical leap rather than anything their parents seem to have told them.

Admittedly, though, most of them ge a little lost after 'an egg hatches in Mummy's tummy' analysis....

Who goes? You Decide!

As this article points out, words come in and out of fashion and use.

When a word has not been used for a while, it is culled from paper versions of dictionaries. (The internet is changing cyberspace preservation)

The Times has a list of words 'up for eviction', cast your vote here to save the ones you like the best.

Teaching evolution in schools

This is a really interesting article about how one biology teacher is teaching evolution in US schools and the type of difficulties he is encountering whilst doing so.

I especially like the conversation he has with a student about the purpose - and limits - of science:

Teacher (Mr Campbell):“Can anybody think of a question science can’t answer?”

A student: “Is there a God?”

“Good,” said Mr. Campbell, an Anglican who attends church most Sundays. “Can’t test it. Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it. It’s not a question for science.”

Bryce (a student who reads the Bible as literally true) raised his hand.

“But there is scientific proof that there is a God,” he said. “Over in Turkey there’s a piece of wood from Noah’s ark that came out of a glacier.”

Mr. Campbell chose his words carefully.

“If I could prove, tomorrow, that that chunk of wood is not from the ark, is not even 500 years old and not even from the right kind of tree — would that damage your religious faith at all?”

Bryce thought for a moment.

“No,” he said.

The room was unusually quiet.

“Faith is not based on science,” Mr. Campbell said. “And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks.”

1990

I find it most worrying that many of the applicants I'm speaking to at the moment have their birthdays in 1990.

Shouldn't they still be playing with barbies? How are they possibly old enough to drink, let alone come to university!

This is probably the first time in my life I've felt old. It's upsetting.

Law school league tables (BVC, LPC and GDL)

QEDlaw is fantastic news as it is wishing to publish the full results of various law schools and course providers.

To quote from them directly:

The information will show

1. The total number of the students enrolled on each of the university’s full time GDL, LPC and/or BVC in the academic years 1997/8 and 2007/8
2. The number awarded a ‘pass’ at the first attempt in 1998 and 2008
3. The number awarded a ‘distinction’ at the first attempt in 1998 and 2008
4. The number awarded a ‘commendation’ at the first attempt in 1998 and 2008
5. The number failing / failing to complete the course at the first attempt in 1998 and 2008.

I looked for this information when I applied, but I could not find it.

Given that I feel that when making potentially expensive, yet risky, decisions a person should have as much information as possible, this is a very welcome idea.

On A-level grades and Illiteracy

I was surprised (given its usual political leanings) to find this piece on A-level reform in the Telegraph. Nevertheless, IMHO, it's well written and considered and points out that the real problem in education sin't 27% of candidates getting A grades (that's only a problem for admissions tutors) but the scandal that children are still leaving school unable to read because of Marie Antoinette "let them read Beowulf" approach.