Being in Griffith (part 10)

• Today is the 2nd last day of term. Everything is winding down, especially the students.
• I was in the staff common room the other day and a teacher was telling a story of an oral report one of her students was giving, a Turkish girl in year 7. The oral report was about her favourite teachers. Apparently during the report she said she likes Mr Cameron because "he is the only teacher who is able to control this class". That made me feel nice and warm and gooey inside.
• It's amazing how some students who are badly behaved can actually respond well in different circumstances. One of my year 8 students who gives me a hard time actually began to learn and ask intelligent on-topic questions just because his other badly-behaved mate wasn't there. This happened twice.
• My 24 year old neice, Leah, is getting married!
• Here's a link to a great PBF comic that addresses, I think, the issue of global warming. (LANGUAGE WARNING)
• How great is Mystery Men? It was obvious that there were difficulties in the script and in the production, but all the characters are loveable and the humour is sharp. It's the only film with Ben Stiller in it that I like (probably because he gets beaten up a lot). Problems included the disappearence without explanation of one of the main bad guys (Cassanova Frankenstein's Psychiatrist), the lame "Skunk scene" as well as continuity issues. It's a rough diamond.
• The reasons for going to war in Iraq have pretty much evaporated. It's pretty clear now that there were no WMDs or even a WMD program, which means Iraq was not a threat. It's also pretty clear now that Iraq was not involved in 9/11. The hundreds of Iraqis that keep turning up dead every week indicates that the current situation is worse than what it was under Saddam. Finally, it seems now that the Iraq war has actually made the world less safe from terrorist attack. Our PM, John Howard, has gone on the airwaves and said that this recent intelligence report is form the same agencies that said that Iraq had WMDs. At the time, though, there were enough contrary reports to pretty much prove that someone (ie Bush, Cheny, Rumsfeld) was pressuring these intelligence agencies to report falsehoods. I'm thinking of the "Dodgy Dossier", the Yellowcake Forgery, the Aluminium Tubes affair, the fact that pre-war weapons inspectors found nothing and the pre-invasion resignation of Andrew Wilkie from the Australian Office of National Assessments. For those who were being objective and careful, enough evidence existed at the time that brought into question the upcoming invasion. It's all well and good to say "the CIA told us there was a threat" - but even at the time it was obvious that there was political interference within the CIA to create a false report. I guess that's why countries like Italy, France and Germany refused to support the invasion.
• Being Ramadan means that some of my students are fasting. Apparently they can't eat or drink during daylight hours, which means that many muslim students can't participate in school sport at the moment. That didn't seem to stop a few muslim girls from playing handball in the playground yesterday, though.
• I spoke to an Afghan year 7 student a few weeks ago. He told me that when he was a boy he witnessed war and killing first hand, and that used to cause him nightmares. Now that he is in Australia, the nightmares have stopped.