feeling listless

On The Fly The show is drawing to a close. I'll be back again tomorrow I think for the George Harrison tribute.

Law A growing trend in Samoa is the theft of belongings to be sold to shops, affording us this banal article from The Samoa Observer looking at the details of this pawn industry: "At the bottom of each form the customer must declare lawful ownership of goods they bring. "We cannot help it if people lie to us," Mr. Russo said. "But in keeping personal details we can identify people who may have brought stolen items."

Education One of my golden school moments was during a Physics class when the teacher was reading out the answers to a homework he had set a week before. We'd all puzzled over one particular question which made no sense and when the teacher read out the answer it just seemed wrong somehow -- but he tried to gloss over it, until my friend Richard, got up, walked to the front of the class and took it upon himself to prove how it was wrong on the blackboard, offering the correct answer... I'm reminded of this after the recent story of the exam paper with an incorrect question on it. It now seems that the examination board knew about the mistake even before the students sat down (a class in Hong Kong had sat the exam a full eight hours earlier) but did nothing about it. Richard has gone on to pastures new (well Leeds) but his spirit remains in these chaps who saw the error straight away: "Amit said the mistake had affected his concentration and he might miss the grades he needed to study medicine at university. "The calculations I was doing I kept getting wrong and I did not know why," he said. "First I thought that it was just basic arithmetic - but then, when I looked at it, the numbers had been written wrongly." Adam said they both felt they could have done better on the paper, had it not been for the mistake. "My friend had referred back to the question book and answer book, and had used a mixture of the correct and incorrect figures, thus wasting time," he said." It's all very well saying that the papers will be marked without this question, but it's clear that the rest of the paper will have been ruined all of those taking them because they will have spent the rest of the time worrying about that one answer, especially maths kids who are notorious perfectionists.

People For international readers who will have missed it. Mariella Frostrup, British entertainment journalist went to interview George Clooney on the set of his directorial debut 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind', a biopic of Chuck Norris (yes really). She figured it would be a long wait for a few days and then a quick interview when he could find the time. He didn't leave her alone for five days, presenting her with everything from the script for Stephen Soderberg's next movie 'Solaris' (guess George'll be in that one) to the dailies from his own film. The whole article, in which Frostrup all but makes a marriage proposal is summed up in one image: "I sit on the sofa. George disconcertingly lies at my feet. Having watched him at work for two days I'm amazed at the slight regard he pays his status."

Kids And finally, now that The X-Files is winding up, let's not forget there is always Gladys The Travelling Cow.