Jesus and Moses

I received this one via email recently:

A burglar broke into a house one night. He shined his flashlight around, looking for valuables when a voice in the dark said,

'Jesus knows you're here.'

He nearly jumped out of his skin, clicked his flashlight off, and froze.

When he heard nothing more , after a bit, he shook his head and continued.

Just as he pulled the stereo out so he could disconnect the wires, clear as a bell he heard

'Jesus is watching you.'

Freaked out, he shined his light around frantically, looking for the source of the voice.

Finally, in the corner of the room, his flashlight beam came to rest on a parrot.

Did you say that?' he hissed at the parrot.

'Yep', the parrot confessed, then squawked, 'I'm just trying to warn you that he is watching you.'

The burglar relaxed. 'Warn me, huh? Who in the world are you?'

'Moses,' replied the bird.

'Moses?' the burglar laughed. 'What kind of people would name a bird Moses?'

'The kind of people that would name a Rottweiler Jesus.'

How much does crime pay

How much does crime pay? $22 per day for burglary, according to "When Brute Force Fails: How to have less crime and less punishment" as reviewed by Marginal Revolution.

I wonder if the reason for crime rates not falling proportionally can be explained by Sudhir Venkatesh's analysis of why drug dealers live with their mothers (also used in Freakonomics)


PS: Also love penguin bringing back their old paper back covers for a number of books (check out the Freakonomics link if you don't know what I mean)

Protest Banners: Left vs Right

Marbury makes an interesting comment about the different visual that you see at a left wing protest over a right wing protest commenting that:

... The [right's] protests were homemade, and touchingly so: unslick, amateur, unorganised... [At] rallies organised by the left - you see thousands of identical signs... At these tea parties, everyone made ... their own....

EDIT: Marbury writes: Um, not my comment. I'm quoting Jay Nordlingler. And the repulsive "homemade" sign in the picture is meant to draw your attention to what Nordlinger didn't say.

MMoM: Apologies for misquoting.

Chorizo and Potato Cassero'

I tried this is Odder on the Oxford Road and was inspired to try my own at home.

This is the best recipe I've managed to do:

Chorizo Potato Cassero'

Ingredients: Red onion(s), red pepper(s), Chorizo(s), tinned tomatoes/tomato sauce, paprika, tabasco, garlic, chicken stock. New potatoes.

To serve: Creme Fraiche and sour dough bread

1. Fry a red onion and red pepper (chopped roughly - this is a rustic style dish) in olive oil.
2. Add the chorizo (after cutting into chunks - about half a cm thick but about 3 cm long. If you cut 'on the diagonal' it looks prettier)
   
3. Add garlic salt/fresh garlic, lots (and a bit more) of paprika and a bit of tabasco. Bit of celery salt tastes good too. Or you can use fresh celery for a bit more texture.
   
4. Fry for a few minutes. (5-10 should do it). If it looks a little dry with the powders, don't worry as the oil from the chorizo will come out. If you are worried, add an eggcupful of water or so.
   
5. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes and tomato puree or add a red pepper and tomato pasta sauce
   
6. Add one of those Knorr liquid chicken stock things. Or a stock cube.
7. Season.
   
8. Simmer for a while.
9. Meanwhile, boil the potatoes.
10. Go and do something interesting for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
    
11. Chuck the potatoes in the stew after draining them.
    
12. Serve with a dollop of creme friache on the top and a chunk of the sour dough bread on the side.
    

I allow one chorizo sausage for 2-3 people and 1 onion and red pepper for each sausage.

Portal down?

Anyone else noticed pupillage portal down?


I'm getting the message to the left when I go to www.pupillage.com

Redirect Loop

Redirection limit for this URL exceeded. Unable to load the requested page. This may be caused by cookies that are blocked.

The browser has stopped trying to retrieve the requested item. The site is

redirecting the request in a way that will never complete.

* Have you disabled or blocked cookies required by this site?

* NOTE: If accepting the site's cookies does not resolve the problem, it is probably a server configuration issue and not your computer.

On Mourning Celebrities

Yes, he was talented. Yes, he broke new ground. Yes, it's sad when anyone dies.

But really, unless you are a family or friend, why on earth are you in floods of tears/joining a support group/setting up a shrine?

"Oh no, that's a shame. I wonder if anyone will make a joke about [insert here]" would seem a far more usual approach.

JK Rowling dying before Book 7 came out would have been upsetting. Obviously, it would be sad that she had died (again, because she is a person and it's always sad when a person dies) but it would be annoying because we would never have known the end of the series.

I wonder if I am a bad human being?

Ethics Questions

I'm busy cramming for the upcoming interview (having forgotten that areas such as 'contract' even existed) and so am sorting the legal knowledge for myself, have got my supervisor at work to run through with 'fluff HR questions' with me (eg: dinner party, biggest weakness, why the bar) but would like your collective opinions on two ethics questions. I don't think there is necessarily any 'right' answer, I would just like to know your thoughts.

1. You are prosecuting in the crown court. One of the jurors is wearing a 'I (heart) the BNP - whites rule' t-shirt (or similar). What do you do in the following scenarios (is your answer different in any of them):

a: A white man is accused of raping a white woman (ie: a crime with no race element and where a race element could not be perceived)

b: A black man is accused of raping a white woman (a crime with the potential to be perceived to have a race element)

c: A white man is accused of racially aggrevated assault towards his asian neighbour as it is said that he yelled a racist comment to his neighbour in the middle of a dispute in which he also spat on his neighbour. (ie: a crime where race is an inherent aspect of the offence).


2. You are prosecuting. The defendant is unrepresented. You have learned of a number of mitigating factors which the defendant fails to put forwards himself. To what extent are you obliged to put forward those matters on his behalf and how would you go about doing so?

Let's assume that 'asking a senior member of chambers' or 'phoning the Bar ethics hotline' are not options.

I know what I think my answers would be, but I would like to have them confirmed!


Thank you for your thoughts.

Points mean prizes

Well, I have accumulated 7 rejections over the past 2-3 weeks, a mixture of OLPAS and non-OLPAS.

Will review the rejections soon - some I genuinely like far more than others.

I think (though I seem to have lost track!) I have 9 applications outstanding at the moment. I also have two half completed which I need to submit.

How are you all doing on the win/lose/draw front? Many interviews? If so, at the moment, sod off and leave me (and others) to our collective misery!

The worst thing is the people who ask, and are trying to be nice, how the hunt is going. Damn them.

Bitter times.

Pupillage statistics: London v Provincial

Interestingly, it turns out one of my pupillage providers is less competitive than I had anticipated.

They have just sent me an email telling me that my form has been printed and who will be considering it - which is a nice touch in itself as it gives a warm fuzzy glow of positive progress before the inevitable rejection - but they have also been kind enough to tell people the odds.

There aree roughly 250 applications of whom they will interview 80 people.

Perhaps it's because this is the first time I've applied to London, but I'm pleasantly surprised. I get the impression that regional chambers tend to interview only about 10% of applicants. Whilst one of the reasons my London friends have far more interviews than me is no doubt their excellent CVs (including things like FRU, which we in the -impoverished - 'dark satanic mill' - cities of the North students can only dream of), perhaps part of the discrepancy is because London chambers interview more candidates.

Of course, I am basing this all on a single application - but I would be very interested to hear your thoughts and experiences on this one.

Or, of course, just plan scandal and rumour!

OLPAS clearing

What are you all doing re: the OLPAS clearing application when it comes to the various mini essays?

I can change many of mine to be fairly generic, but am currently unsure what to do about the 'why this chambers' section.

Provisionally, I have just written 'CLEARING' in the box and left it at that - but my clearing form isn't yet submitted so can change.

Other approaches?

To OLPAS or not to OLPAS, that is the question

Damn, 4 whole days off work and not a single word further into my OLPAS app. To the extent that I didn't actually log into OLPAS all weekend. Double damn.

Oh well, can feel marginally virtuous on the grounds I have now chosen the 12 sets I want to apply to. Some progress, I guess.

Google Stats

The lazy option for any blog post! This month's top key words, by order of number of hits:

1.	olpas 2009
2.	site:thissideofthehouse.blogspot.com marc_newcomb
3.	fat people
4.	this side of the house
5.	yakka recipe
6.	gdl league table
7.	superfreakonomics
8.	lpc league table
9.	miss middle of manchester
10.	"how i learned to despise christians"

Interestingly, or not, I usually sort my stats by time spent on page rather than hits. Is that merely vanity?

By time on site:

1.	"home education review" panel graham badman			00:23:26
2.	bvc provider statistics			00:18:30
3.	bvc at bpp or city icsl			00:18:08
4.	nmc, pupillage, london			00:15:56
5.	i want a pupillage			00:11:21
6.	marriage benefits men more than it benefits women			00:07:35
7.	bvc results 2008			00:06:49
8.	south africa vodka yakka			00:06:24
9.	bvc league table			00:05:57
10.	scholarship bvc 2008 times			00:05:57

Does this apply to pupillage applications?

BVC provider query

I have just been asked the following by a friend, and would be interested in your opinions:

He has applied for the BVC and has offers from MMU, UWE and City.

He did his undergraduate at MMU.

He cannot decide between MMU and City. The course fees for MMU are c£9,500 and the course fees for City are £14,500. He has applied for an Inns scholarship but does not know if he will get it. He has to make his choice on BVC provider before he will know this information.

I told him that knowing what I do now, I would probably still choose MMU as it looks after its students more (for all its flaws). OTOH, City has a higher pass rate (though having seen a sample exam and heard about the teaching, I think it may be due to different exames) and he wants to avoid being 'just' MMU all the time.

Your views? City or MMU?

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....

Coupling

Just spent most of the weekend watching coupling.

I'd seen the first series before, but not seen any of the others and had forgotten how funny it was.

I do recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it.

My only problem is how much sense Jeff makes. Ahem.

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.

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.

Chrystal Macmillan Prize

Well, I was pleasantly surprised to open the post today and find a letter from Middle Temple enclosing a cheque to me for being awarded the 'Chrystal Macmillan Prize' in 'recognition of [my] acheivements on the BVC'.

A brief research on the internet shows that Chrystal Macmillan was a suffragette and one of the first female barristers, the prize is therefore for women at the Bar. However, more than that, I have been completely unable to find out.

I have e-mailed Christa Richmond back and will update you all as soon as I have more information.

______

I also have some VERY exciting other news (not related to the Bar at all) but will have to wait for a few days before telling you. . .

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)