Absent falling coal

... very big thank you to whoever it was who left chocolate in my pidge this morning (or possibly even last night - I found it this morning). You are lovely, whoever you are, and deserve lovely people to be lovely to you, and I am very very grateful.

Things revision is making me realise and ponder:

Some subjects are easier in Garamond, others in Calibri, still others hand written.

Is the fact that revision is easier if I colour code it with 12 pens a consequence or a cause of my OCD tendencies?

All the subjects refer to each other - all of them! This is very good news.

Lectures are awesome.

I have been using some of my personal shorthand symbols in the same way for a lot long than I realised. I was convinced that my shorthand for "right" only came into being in Paris when I nicked it from someone as a shorthand for "droit", but it seems to be used in that sense on my lecture notes from MT05.

No, none of this is interesting to anyone but me. It's keeping me happy though.

Problem: utter failure to learn jurisprudence

Solution: dig out A2 ethics revision notes

Result: laugh hysterically at over-simplified nature, think wistfully of the days when philosophy was easy, and wonder what I was thinking when I wrote "P3 revision: To Be Learnt"

After I don't know how many years of exams, I have learnt the benefit of writing essay plans for all four questions at the start of an exam.

No, I don't know how I ever used to manage either, but saints be praised. I even had time (actual and mental) to do my chiropractor's back stretchy exercises. Hopefully the essays were ok... I wrote stuff. After years of comments of "too much on the cases, not enough analysis!" I may have slipped the other way...

Anyway. Food now, and bouncy music, then looking at the past paper which-may-be-the-collection for this afternoon.

..except I don't think they were French. Not English, either, or at least not originally, but not French.

That aside, they were being sleazy French men.

Saturday, I was sitting having coffee with a friend, and a guy sitting at a nearby table came up to me and said:

"I just wanted to tell you you look fabulous"
"Er, thank you" (thinking, oh god, creep, and watching my friend being shocked/horrified/cracking up)
"May I join you?"
"Er, no, sorry, we're discussing rather private things, sorry"
"OH. Well, may I buy you another coffee?"
"No, I'm fine thanks"
"Oh. Well, I hope you have a good day, and you do look fabulous"
... and he left, and we cracked up.

Today, when I was walking back from the library up High Street, a guy ran after me. The conversation was largely similar, except without the coffee and with handing me an invite to a bible study group and asking if he could "get to know me as a friend". I was a bit more of a stuck record ("I'm sorry, I'm very busy") with this one, but he, like the other one, left me alone after a couple of minutes.

After a year of much worse in Paris, I'm really not that bothered. But why the hell are they all gonig after me? There were leggy blondes in miniskirts waiting to cross the road, why not them (rather than me in battered leather jacket, soft crumply boots, and a black/grey dress)?

Oh god. I have gone from studying the qualities needed to constitute a state and a governement, to assessing the legality and implications of "Wet Wet Wet: The Unauthorised Biography".

No, I don't have other content.

A person with citizenship granted by Germany is German.

A person with citizenship granted by Switzerland is Swiss.

A person with citizenship granted by Australia is Australian.

What the blazes is someone with citizenship granted by Liechtenstein?!


(Yes, this is a serious question. It's really bugging me. I've only just realised Liechtenstein isn't the same as Lichtenstein, but still don't know how to refer to this chap.)

Answers on a postcard (or, y'know, in an LJ comment) please... there may be a prize if any amuse me particularly (or are even right!)

I need help deciding my lecture notes.

In one of my public international law lectures, in the section on history and origins, I've written that IL was based on the divine right of kings under natural law until this idea was challenged by e.g. the French revolution.

After this, I have a margin note - c.f. Monty Python: Where's your mandate?

Where is this from?? And does this mean I can legitimately watch Python and call it revision?

So, I'm finally writing an essay on the question that everyone gets asked when they become a law student. Sadly, I will no longer be able to dodge the question. Oh dear.

Unfortunately, the answer is still, it seems, "I'm not really sure, no one can quite agree." Still, nice to know I wasn't lying all the times I said that before.


For those who are curious: Consider whether the following actions were lawful and, if so, what was their legal basis: (a) the coalition usage of force against Iraq in 1991 in order to retake Kuwait and the US-UK use of force against Iraq in 2003; (b) NATO’s intervention in Kosovo; (c) the Anglo-American intervention in Afghanistan.

Part of Camden market has burnt down

... one of those "that's a film, right?" moments :s

I'm sitting here poking cases, swearing at[1] grumbling in the general direction of my tutor for giving me the wrong citations for all of them.

One of the cases reads: The applicant applied to register a trade mark... known as "the dark mark"

Yes, boys and girls, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is alive and well, and exploiting legal measures to regulate competition and access to the market.

I need tea.


[1] Having realised that I've started swearing like a navvy, I am giving it up for Lent. I have a pot in which to put monies as a self-imposed fine when I break this...

They are going to remake Gladiators

This was one of the odder things I've seen. It's just such an early 90s show... except a lot of the hair was very late 80s. I mean, seriously? It used to be part of my childhood Saturday night TV (which also included Noel's House Party and Big Break. Is it any wonder I turned out like this??) and then I saw several episodes re-run on Sky a couple of years ago and couldn't believe 1) how useless they all were and 2) just how dated it was, and how incredibly cheesy...

...well, that explains the terrible sense of humour and fondness for weak puns, I guess.

Oh god. I just had to run and hug a cushion and drink tea, all because of a pen.

See, my green pen (cases are green...) ran out - disaster! - so I had to buy a new one. Harder than you'd think, given I don't like biro for my notes, just gel pen, but I found one, and was quite happy.

I just made notes, and idly flicked the non-nib end of my pen over the paper while reading a case on screen.

When I looked down, stripes of the green writing had disappeared!

A search on the internet reveals my new pen to in fact be a magic pen.

I don't know whether to be scared, or buy hundreds...


Edit: Unrelatedly, reading cases about chocolate makes me crave 70% dark chocolate, which I don't have (...they were talking about how they make it. Damn them.) and now I'm reading a case about the Wombles.

doo-di-di-doo dee-di-di-doo...Welcome to the Twilight Zone... AKA my head.


Edit of Edit: ...dude. I only just realised why the defendant was trying to call his skips company "Wombles Skips".

All together now... #Remember you're a Womble!#


Edit Edit Edit: The next case is about Sesame Street and the MUPPETS!!! *loves*

Nicked from pozorvlak, ( Who comments the most on this journal? )

...that I sometimes loathe and detest our transport network.

It's going to take me 4 1/2 hours (3 trains and a bus) to get home on Sunday (when it takes me 3 hours and 2 trains to get there on Friday, gr); on 31st December, it is apparently going to take me 3 1/2 hours on buses to get to Oxford from Kettering (as for trains, don't even go there...)

Apologies, entirely inconsequential rant, but it's just tipped the balance and now I am fed up.

Bah. *many other sheep agree*.

I'm back in Somerset now, and not actually too discontent about living out of numerous boxes. It appears that I'm not actually going to be here very much long this vac, due to social/work commitments, which just is (in that it is neither particularly good or bad).

There has been much excitingness in the last week - admittedly much of it came from me quietly thrilling over little nuggets of law, and greeting half-remembered, re-discovered cases with squeals of delight, like they were old friends I hadn't seen for years, but I digress - and it wasn't all work related.

However, you will all have to wait with baited breath, because right now I'm quite tired, and a long rambly post about the events of last week will have to wait until tomorrow.

t seems to me that, if it be correct to isolate the phrase "for the purpose of criticism or review" then, although the tongue has to perform an act of no small intimacy with the cheek in making the argument, it is arguable that the offending publications can be characterised as criticism or review

This is why I like reading cases. Sometimes, I end up giggling and trying not to spit tea into my laptop.

Especially given the second one it comes up with is:



(Nicked from absinthe_shadow)

It's called Glyn v Weston Feature Film Co, [1916] 1 Ch 261

It's all about parody, and whether it infringes copyright - in this case, it's burlesque films based on a novel, and they say that despite burlesque being "as old as Aristophanes" there are no cases where it's been held to be an infringement of copyright.

However, they also said that the novel didn't deserve the protection of the court, because it was on a "hackneyed theme" and was "grossly immoral", being a "sexual adulterous intrigue".

Here's how it was described:

The plaintiff is the authoress of the novel in debate. It is entitled "Three Weeks." First published in 1907, the book was from the point of view of notoriety fortunate enough to be condemned almost unanimously by the critics and to be banned by all the libraries. In consequence, I doubt not, of these attentions it has enjoyed a vogue denied to less daring rivals, and it has reached a sale in this*266 country and America in numerous editions, expensive and cheap, of, I was told, far over a million copies.
The book is said to be an episode in a young Englishman's life without any real beginning or end. In a sense this is a correct enough description of the novel, but the episode referred to absorbs little more than half the book - 160 pages out of a total of 319. The rest is taken up with a description of the young man's life and surroundings before the episode commenced and with a portrayal of the permanent influence upon his moral character and career which the authoress is pleased to attribute to the experience he went through during the episode in question.
The episode itself is a chance meeting at a Lucerne hotel between a beautiful lady of uncertain age and mysterious origin and the young Englishman sent by his parents on the grand tour to cure him of an unsuitable attachment at home. The meeting developed into a liaison which lasted for three weeks, after which the lady returned to the shadowy realm from which she had emerged and of which she was, as it happened, the queen. There, having given birth to a son of whom the young Englishman was the father, she was murdered by her husband, the dissolute king of the country. He in turn was assassinated by a faithful attendant of the queen's, leaving the child, the image of his handsome English father, to succeed to the throne.
In all its essentials the so-called episode is as hackneyed and commonplace a story as could well be conceived. If it is to be distinguished at all from innumerable anticipations in erotic literature, the distinction is to be found in the accessories of the tale. Mystery surrounds the lady. Of a loveliness unaffected by the passage of time, she is said to be polished, blasee, soignee. Even in a Swiss country hotel, but notably at Lucerne and Venice, she is pervaded by a luxury as sybaritic as it is incongruous: no wine can pass her lips which is not either of the deepest red or the richest gold; the roses she wears are matched in colour only by the red of her lips; the fruit with which she toys has to be out of season in order that it may be fabulously expensive. Although attended only by an elderly dignified male servant, the lady apparently carries about with her to Lucerne and Venice - if one may omit so-called mountain excursions to the Right and the Burgenstock - baggage*267 sufficient to fill an ordinary train; it is no extraordinary achievement for her dignified attendant in the space of a week-end to go from Lucerne to Venice, engage a palace on the Grand Canal, supplied with the essential convenience of a side door, and have it equipped with a retinue of Italian servants and, it would seem, an orchestra from Paris, in time to receive the lady on the following Monday travelling from Lucerne with all her baggage and apparently quite unaccompanied. These exaggerated incidents or others like them are of course quite absurd enough to be destitute of novelty in literature of the kind; but if the particular cachet of the plaintiff's novel is not to be found in this setting, then, so far as I can see, it has no cachet at all. At the best, the plaintiff has chosen a hackneyed theme for her episode, and her privilege as an authoress must be strictly confined to the method of treating it which she has adopted.

Stuffy lawyers, much? I now want to find the book and see if it's as badly written as he thought...

Godamnit, why can't law be dull? Then I wouldn't keep getting distracted!

Walking down Broad Street on my way to Blackwells, I heard shouts behind me calling my name.

I turned round, and saw a blonde girl dashing up to me, saying, "I just spotted you, we were at school together - Dodger?"

I'd recognised her straight away, she was 4 years below me and played oboe with me in orchestra and was, as she rightly pointed out, the Artful Dodger to my Mr Bumble. I suppose I should be grateful she didn't yell that out down the street, I think I'd have still turned round to it!

Like me, she was a huge geek, doing Latin A-level; she's on a gap year now, going to Paris later in the year, and then to Cambridge to study English.

It was terribly lovely, and somehow, terribly Oxford - of course, a perfectly logical place to bump into her.

I just spent 20 minutes trawling the internet to fill the inside cover of my brother's birthday card with footnotes.

He'll never forgive me....

Just realised I've forgotten to drink tea all day. No wonder I'm feeling odd.

...so forgive my excitement.

But, drapey velvet dress = so beautiful.

We do have a slight issue in that I can barely talk at the moment - husky whispers is pretty much all I've managed today - but never fear!

I have a cunning solution... just think Hush from Bufyy (yeah, ok, not screaming to kill the bad guys, the other solution)

IP (intellectual property) is a wonderful subject to study. The articles with impenetrable economic theory littering their pages aside, other academics fill their articles with quotations from Yeats and references to Les Misérables.

What I'm actually studying at the moment is copyright, which is in my opinion the most interesting area of the subject. More specifically, I'm looking into the question of the duration of copyright protection.

( Cut for what appears to have almost turned into my essay for this week. Please read and discuss? I'd love to know what people coming at it from a non-legal point of view think of it all... )

The lecture this afternoon was a big French-and-CC enclave. It was lovely - surrounded by hordes of people I know and who know me terrifyingly wonderfully well. The lecture was good too - comforting that my work for EC seems to have been on more or less the right track, but there were a couple of extra interesting bits too.

Being diligent, I'd be doing PIL now - but instead, I've had tea with Sophie, and we've just been to fetch Francesco, French student of our Civil classes last year, from the bus station and are about to go for more tea.

PIL can happen later/tonight, around OUSGG - more lovely people.

This is why I wanted to be back in Oxford.

Number is still the same, but, ooooohhh... It is shiny and pretty and all hi-tech.

Best of all, it works.

Or, er, will do, when I've worked out how to use it.

Technology in general I have no problem with, but phones are alien to me, I have no intuition on how they work at all. Generally a capable young woman (well, mostly, anyway), when I go into a phone shop I am reduced to the most feeble blithering fool you ever had the misfortune to meet.

"Um, one that works? And isn't too flashy or fancy, I just need calls and messages..." seems to be my usual line. Beyond looking at what band they work on, whether it has bluetooth if it has a camera, and looking at battery life, I am completely clueless.

This, then, is the reason why I am so delighted when I jump all the hurdles to getting a new phone.

Never mind the latest Who news.

BBC's Alan Johnston has been released.

I know he was only one man; I know that he was far more fortunate than others in that he wasn't tortured or really harmed in any significant physical way; I know he was lucky because everybody knew him and he had thousands of people working to free him for the 16 weeks he was in captivity.

It still matters to me, because I was, like everyone else, shocked and horrified when he was taken. Call him stupid for staying there when all the other Western journalists had left, and I'll defend your right to that opinion - but I don't agree. In my eyes, he was incredibly brave, staying there, forging links and friendships with the locals, and making sure that Gaza didn't just become a media black hole. Maybe it was just the case that he would always be taken eventually, but it doesn't change the fact that he was brave - braver for knowing it, and also standing the risk of being killed in fighting - and deserved people working to set him free, just like everyone deserves it.

Like I say, for me this outshadows any announcements about s.4 of Who (no, I'm not even going to link, I'm too scared of being lambasted for spoilers...) but you're entitled to disagree (/disclaimer)

..."never hit your tennis partner with the racket, only with the ball."

No, seriously. If you hit them with the racket, even if it slips out your hand, they'll sue you for injuring them; however, they can't sue you for hitting them with the ball because (1) during the game they've got equal powers of control over it and (2) you can't prove any fault on their part for hitting it wrong.

Thankfully, if I ever do play tennis here, hitting the ball straight in front of you when you're serving (instead of on the diagonal) doesn't constitute a fault on your part, meaning they can't sue you for damages if they get hit. Not sure what happens if, like me, you hit it into a different court though...

Apparently they're fighting back, but given Watford would have to score 3 goals in 9 minutes, I am left with no choice.

I never thought I'd say this, but...

Come on Man U!!!

Otherwise the programme won't end at 7:40 and I'll be very sad...

Edit 12:10 GMT: It's been fixed now, so use the cut text below.

Someone at the BBC put their work online without bothering to finish it - either that, or they were drunk/falling asleep/pratting about.

The good bit's the last paragraph.

Just in case it gets corrected, text as I saw it at 11:40 GMT ( here )

Dear Sky,

You lose. I wanted to see the eclipse and you chose tonight to get modest and cover yourself in clouds. Why tonight? Other nights you're a brazen hussy all uncovered for the world to see. But when there's something interesting, oh no, up come the clouds.

This is useless behaviour, and should be punished.

No love,

Me.

OK. More advice seeking. Sakes, I'm useless.

Here's the list of options available:

Commercial Leases
Company Law
Comparative Law of Contract
Copyright, Patents & Allied Rights
Copyright, Trademarks and Allied Rights (erm, I think this is meant to be the same as the one before...? It's not in the handbook with descriptions) - apparently it is different. So now, I have to decide which...
Criminal Justice & Penology
EC Competition Law and Policy
Environmental Law
Ethics
EU Human Rights Law
Family Law
History of English Law
International Trade
Labour Law
Personal Property
Principles of Commercial Law
Public International Law
Roman Law:Delict
Taxation Law

Ok. Ones crossed through I definitely don't want to do (have done much history already, interesting as it would be...), ones in bold I am keener on than others.

PIL seems to include some Human Rights, as well as some of the internation crimes I studied in DPI . I enjoyed DPI - do I want to do something different, though? But, do I want to do just Human Rights? Edit: According to College Father Of Joy, his PIL didn't have much HR or Crim in it. INternational Court of Justice and other such fun things, though...

I'm pretty sure I want to do the Copyright (Imtellectual Property). Or maybe something else entirely?

Help and advice rewarded with drinks and eternal gratitude...

I am back, though this is not the proper post to speak of my trip away (or rather, back to the right place, depending how one chooses to look at it...).

I need help.

I start lectures tomorrow and I don't know what to do. I know I want to do INtellectual Property (copyright, trademarks, etc) and will also probably do it for Finals (need to pick them too, but that's a slightly less pressing concern). However. Out of the others, narrowed down as below based on Things That Clash Or Happen On Friday Or Saturday (I need my weekends. I need to be able to get away...), which should I do? You know me, you know stuff I like and how much of a geek I am...

Poll #915836 Second Semester Options...
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Which of the following should I take?

Oh - and also, the History of Obligations (Contract and Tort) which had been my first original thought. Comment if you think that one *nods*

Fact for the day:

According to Mlle. Gannages of Paris II, the notion of "genocide" appeared at the end of WWII in the work of a Polish jurist, Raphael Lemkin, who referred to it from 1944 onward


Well, I'm excited. It's a fact, and not a useful one - hence I will know it for ever. Don't ever let me set a pub quiz....


Oh, and the title is lyrics from a song by Carla Bruni, which my computer put on as I started the section on genocide. Clever little goblin in the computer!

Marmite and sugar in hot water tastes horrible.

Most of you would probably be intelligent enough not to try this - I'm getting somewhat desperate to get my throat less tickly (it's not even properly sore... but I'm worried it'll turn into tonsilitis and then I'll get scarlet fever like Helen did here in November and I'll be in bed for 3 weeks like she was and *hypochondriacs*) - but just don't, it's horrible, but having concocted it I now feel obliged to drink it.

It's probably not even doing any good :(

Until the last candle flickers out. Only one left, now.

And then tomorrow - tomorrow's another day, and there'll be more after it, because the world won't stop turning, and it'll keep on looking like the sun's coming up over the horizon.

Paris has been covered over by a freezing mist, that makes the lights sparkle through it and catches in my hair where it tucks into my scarf. It's all over everywhere, I could barely see across the lawn to my building when I got back. It's cold, and chill in my lungs - but dry and crisp, and beautiful.

Now, I'm inside, and my room is warm. There's a mug of hot chocolate at my elbow waiting for me to finish it, and my candles are flickering on the side table, while the fairy lights are lighting up the fabric that hangs down over my bed.

Just for a moment, it's all very beautiful.

Just for these moments, everything else becomes worth struggling through.

For those of you upon whom I've inflicted Artisan - and those of you I haven't - here's an excerpt from their latest email:

Anyone who's interested in what we're doing now should follow the links from the Artisan main page to Hilary's QuickSilver page, Brian's Recording Studio page and Jacey's pages for Folk Agency and SF writing.

We hope you all have a lovely Solstice/Christmas or whatever MidWinter Holiday you favour

Very best wishes from all of us, Brian and Hilary and me, Jacey.

Hugs all round.

Bless! It's not just them usic, they're a genuinely lovely bunch. Website here, if you're interested.

Finished work for the week, so I'm watching rom coms. Yeah, that sort of mood, and that productive. Trying to convince myself geography's just a social construct. It's a pretty solid one... Damn it. More chocolate, and more DVDs, and I'll swim it off on Saturday, if I don't shop it off tomorrow.

Little things please me inordinately much, expecially when I'm lazy and not working - like cooking rice and chicken. Now eating yoghurt made of wild savage blackberries. It's raining and I love this place stupidly much. Everything just seems to be working. Though I am counting. 16 days.