Friday 11th February

Big news of my day is that my next presentation has been moved up by a week - no idea why, but I presume that someone can't make the date it was arranged for and hence it has to be moved. This may be all very well for lecturers, but it's not exactly helpful for us poor old students. Still I've spent today making notes from about 30 odd pages of Third Sex, Third Gender - the presentation is going to be on Byzantine Eunuchs, of which there were rather a lot. I won't go into the details, but the guys in the class are going to be doing a bit of squirming I think.
What else have I done? Translated a chunk of a book by Aline Rouselle, which frankly should be available in an English version, but it's not, so hence the translating. I should point out that I'm doing this by translation engine rather than by hand, my French is schoolgirl level! Mind you given that I recognise more words that you'd think, maybe the Latin is coming in handy.
Frankly apart from this I haven't done a lot. You'd think this sounds awfully boring and frankly you'd be right - but it's got to be done and there's an end to it. I have more of this to do over the weekend as well, only for Constructing Faith this time - a riveting little (ha!) article on Scale-free Networks - I think this is some one's theory that heresy spreads like a virus, ok, so I haven't read it yet, but it's top of my list for tomorrow morning, then I still have to find my copy of Lambert. This infuriatingly I saw only a few days ago, and needless to say now it's turned up on a reading list I cannot find for love nor money. I have a ton of stuff to get done for essays and the like, and blow me down, two workshops to attend next week. One is on Creative Writing for Academics, or some such and I'm hoping that it might brush up my writing style somewhat. I feel it lacks that final touch, you know? I'm pretty sure it'll be here's how to write a plan, but nevertheless, for a couple of hours I will get a grip and do my best to get the most out of it. Who knows, it could get me a couple of extra marks that will make the difference between a grade.

There's rather a stunning interview with Sven in tomorrow's Guardian about this business going on at Notts County - so much so that you rather wonder why the police aren't involved. It sounds like fraud to me. And God knows there are enough football clubs in trouble at the moment. What really makes you saddest though is the little fact tucked away at the bottom, that the supporters club handed over their holdings for free. They owned a reasonable chunk of the club, and these monster's come along promising huge investments and mythical dreams of European football in eighteen months, etc, they somehow talked Sven, Sol Campbell et al into it, and before you know where you are, the little guys are conned out of their precious bit of their local club. If that isn't worth a quick chat with the desk sergeant at the local cop shop I don't know what is. Having read this interview, my guess is that by tomorrow midday, there'll be a statement coming from the local fraud squad to the effect that they'll be looking in to it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/12/sven-goran-eriksson-notts-county-interview

Anyhow I just have to thank my lucky stars that Villa seem to be in a reasonable good order, and Martin O'Neil said he didn't aim to bankrupt us in order to get us into Europe. There's a lot to be said for a good academy and youth policy. Ah well. Then on the news all this stuff about the big thing going off in Afghanistan - one of my uni mates has a brother that's just gone out there. I suppose he'll be part of it. Hopefully it will all work out well, but lord your heart goes out to the families of these people. And as for this business with MI5, words fail me. At the very least they appear to be trying to pull the wool over the publics eyes with all this withdrawn judgement and everything. In fact the whole news just makes you feel more and more down over the past couple of days, except for the baby that they've managed to get out of Haiti. This gorgeous little scrap of a girl, who's about three months old, called Landina was caught up in the earthquake and suffered a major skull injury and her arm was crushed - so badly it had to be amputated, and because her parents are lost or dead, she had no paperwork. Medecin Sans Frontiere have been funding a surgeon from Britain over there, and she must have really got to him, because he's moved heaven and earth to get her the right papers and someone - no names, but someone has personally funded her flight, and the surgeon and a colleague actually carried her all that way on the plane and she arrived at Great Ormond Street earlier today. Hopefully she'll get her operation within the next few days - she has to have tests, and then 6 months recuperation or so, and all being well, she'll be able to go home.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/baby+landinaaposs+journey+for+lifesaving+treatment/3538437
There you go, you can read it for yourself. Best story of the week, if not the month.