Big Book, Small Book

I have just started reading Anathem, a scary five centimetres thick, 900-plus pages hard science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson. A review says that it takes 200 pages just to get the hang of it, so let’s just say that I pray that I’ll be patient enough to get there.

On the other hand, I am very excited (and relieved) that my latest Amazon order arrived today.

Amazon order #24 placed: October 24
Package shipped: October 27
Estimated delivery date: December 10
Package received: November 16

Amazon 24 contains Makers by Cory Doctorow and The Clone Betrayal by Steven L Kent. Guess which book I’ll read first (and postpone Anathem yet again)?

Of course, everyone can download and read Makers for free, but I buy it nevertheless because I think it’s worth paying for. It’s like taking a car for a test drive or downloading songs from the internet. If I like it I’ll pay for it. While you’re there, don’t forget to read what Cory Doctorow has to say.

The Clone Betrayal is the fifth book in Steven L Kent’s Clone series, a light military science fiction paperback the kind you can finish in a day. It’s the exact opposite kind of book to Anathem.

And, oh, there’s that marking thing I have to do too...

Exams, Part 2

Extracted from the Examination Guidelines for Invigilators

Part V: Instruction to Examiners
24. (a) The respective examiners of every paper must be present within the first 30 minutes of the examination to answer any queries related to the question paper or to correct any errors in the question paper. However, the examiner of any paper shall not in any manner to assist candidates in answering their papers, such as explaining a word or translating a question.

Examiners are usually also invigilators. So, while invigilating we aren’t supposed to help explain to a student even what a single word means. Fine, I suppose, if a student asks to define a critical term. What about, however, if a student asks to explain a word of trivial importance to the question? After all, the objective of the exam was not to test a student’s English vocabulary.

My second and last paper for the semester was this morning – with about 180 scripts to mark, AARGH! Here are the actual top two questions I received this semester. The first, from last week:

Other things being constant, what will be the effect of each of the following upon the equilibrium level of GDP?
(iii) A rapid upsurge in the rate of technological advance.

“Sir, what is upsurge?”

The second from today:

How did they financial crisis which originated in the US become a full-blown global financial crisis?

“Sir, what is the meaning of this word (full-blown)?”

So, two questions went through my mind each time:

1. Should I answer them (when the rules say no but the words don’t really matter)?
2. Should I answer them (when the words are common expressions everybody should know)?

Exams, Part 1

Extracted from the Examination Guidelines for Invigilators:

Part VI: Disciplinary Action for Breach of Rules and Regulations by Candidates
25. (b) Any breach of examination instructions, rules and regulations or parts thereof is a serious disciplinary offence, and candidates found guilty of such an offence shall be subject to an immediate disciplinary penalty as provided under Part V of the Disciplinary of Students Rules 1984.

Part VIII: Rules and Regulations for Candidates
27. (c) Candidates are not allowed to take into the examination hall/room, handphones, calculators, electronic diaries, purses and wallets, reference books (unless specified), booklets, diagrams or pieces of paper or any written material.

Part IX: Instruction to Candidates
37. Writing pads, booklets, pieces of paper, pictures, purses, handbags, handphones or any article on which writing is possible cannot be taken into the examination hall except stationery that is permitted by the Chief Invigilator. While in examination hall/room, candidates must not receive books, papers, booklets or pictures of any kind from anyone, but may receive these items from Invigilators authorised to do so by the Chief Invigilator.

Heard in the corridors this week, that a student was caught during one of the exams cheating using a smartphone containing pages and pages of notes.

“How could the student have slipped in the phone to the examination hall?”
“Apparently, now they are allowed to bring in their phones.”
“WTF?!”
“There were complaints in the previous semesters that some students lost the phones they left outside, so now we’re told to allow them to bring them in.”
“They already knew that phones weren’t allowed in the exam hall; it’s in the rules. So if they left their phones outside and they went missing, it’s not our problem. They shouldn’t have brought them in the first place.”
“Err...”

Mr. Policeman

I
People are now again talking about alleged shoot-to-kill policy of the police. Of course, the police are denying it.

In this country, citizens are generally not allowed to carry firearms, so carrying firearm illegally is only asking for trouble. Then using the firearm against trained police officers is plain stupid, and as proven often enough, deadly. So who goes around carrying guns and shooting at the police? They must be either idiots or hardened criminals. Of course, the two usually aren’t mutually exclusive.

Police officers are issued handguns and are trained to use them. Unlike what we see in movies, however, the level of training received by the typical police officer does not give him or her the ability to target and shoot specific parts of the body. Both the handgun and the training that goes along with it are meant primarily for deterrence and self-defence against, well, people who go around carrying illegal firearms and shooting at other people. When shot at, the training kicks in and the police officer, facing a mortal threat both to his or her own safety and that of the innocent public, shoots back.

Sure, people have rights, criminals too. However, when a person opens fire at officers of the law, endangering the public, he ceases to be part of the public that requires protection. He is, at that point, a threat the must dealt with swiftly and surely. We certainly do not want to have innocent bystanders die because the police failed to act swiftly and surely enough.

Perhaps our police officers do need better training, but we must never vilify them for doing their job.

II
I saw Malaya’s Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency by Leon Comber at the bookstore and picked it up immediately. Both the Emergency and the police Special Branch are two of my favorite reading subjects. The Special Branch, the country’s premier internal security intelligence organization, was also during the fight against Communism the best in Asia.

Leon Comber, a former Special Branch officer, gives an excellent account of the birth and development of the agency, which benefited from the professional training and guidance from such renowned British law enforcement and intelligence agencies as the UK Metropolitan Police/Scotland Yard and MI5/MI6.

928829

Recently, deviantART offered free shipping for print orders – to every address in the world. It was a big deal. People offer free shipping all the time, but to local addresses only. This was global. So I bought one, which involved quite a bit of drama in the process to get the payment cleared. Apparently, Citibank blocked me from making international online transactions by default when they issued me a new card, and I forgot from before that deviantART has a problem accepting payment using Malaysian credit cards, so I had to use PayPal.

Anyway, order #928829 was shipped on October 30 and arrived on Tuesday, November 10. Next, sending it to frame.

Original: Time to Fly by Risachantag at deviantART