Jonathan's Blog: One geek's way in the universe

AS module results from May/June exams:

• Philosophy Unit 2: 80/100 – A;
• Maths: Core 2: 100/100 – A;
• Maths: Core 3: 100/100 – A*;
• Maths: Mechanics 2: 93/100 – A (Includes ~5% special consideration for getting a migraine — I think);
• Maths: Decision 2: 90/100 – A, despite giving up half-way through with the afore-mentioned migraine (back-to-back exams FTL) — I think they must have more-or-less doubled my raw mark because of that.
• Physics Unit 2: 120/120 – A;
• Physics ISA: 54/60 – A;
• Chemistry Unit 2: 140/140 – A;
• Chemistry ISA: 56/60 – A;

Overall AS results including January modules and D1:

• Philosophy: 180/200 – A;
• Physics: 294/300 – A;
• Chemistry: 293/300 – A;
• Maths: Slightly complicated as which modules go into Maths and which into Further Maths all depends, but:
  • Total of all modules taken: 760/800;
  • I will get an A in maths even if I get 0/100 in C4;
  • If I get ≥ 80/100 in C4 I will get A* in maths.

My new tumblelog is up at http://mu.sinewave42.com, for stuff too long for a microblog post and too short for a blog post. Enjoy!

I’ve been planning to build myself a computer since last summer, and I’ve finally got the parts list together. I should get it ordered within a few days, and then it’s build time. My box naming scheme is going to be Nobel Prize winners in Physics, and this one is called planck. Components are as follows:

• CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black edition 3.1GHz, dual core (I believe our current family PC is something like a 3.2GHz dual core, but it’s a Pentium D, so, yeah.) Actually a quad-core with two cores deactivated, which can sometimes be reactivated. /me rubs hands in glee.
• Motherboard: MSI 770-C45. A fairly basic motherboard, but it’s cheap and the reviews are good.
• Graphics: HIS HD 5770 1GB
• RAM: 2x2GB Crucial DDR3 1600MHz
• PSU: OCZ 500W Mod XStream Pro
• HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB
• Case: Antec 300
• Cooler: Gelid Tranquillo
• DVD drive: The cheapest DVD-rewriter eBuyer have
• OS: Evil Corporate OS v7 Pro (Aquired for £30 thanks to a student deal and Sean), and Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid
• Peripherals:
  • Monitor: BenQ G2220HD: 22″, 1920×1080 pixels.
  • Speakers: Logitech S220
  • Keyboard: Some cheapo Logitech
  • Mouse: Logitech RX1000 (Mouse and keyboard are both wired – wireless peripherals make no sense.)

Most stuff is from eBuyer, but they don’t have the motherboard or cooler, so they’re coming from Scan. Total cost: £673.13, not including Windoze.

Component and build picspam to come when I get my hands on those lovely lumps of silicon, copper and whatever PCBs are made of.

Edit 2010-06-18: monitor changed from an Acer P225HQ to a BenQ G2220HD based on a good Custom PC review of it that Ben showed me. It’s all of 14p more expensive.

2010-06-20: Parts list given to Dad. He says he’ll try and order on Tuesday.

Edit 2010-06-25: Memory changed to equivalent and graphics card from an ATI 4870 to an ATI 5770 due to eBuyer selling out before Dad got round to ordering. Parts finally ordered.

What the hell have we been doing while North Korea turned itself from a comedy Stalinist dictatorship with a mad leader in charge of a ridiculously large military which occasionally exchanged small-arms fire over a disputed sea border into a comedy Stalinist dictatorship with a mad leader in charge of a ridiculously large military which torpedoes non-hostile ships across a disputed sea border, and has half-a-dozen-plus nuclear warheads and medium-range missiles to put everyone off doing anything about it? Seriously, what the hell. What. The. Actual. Hell.

We let a state run by an absolute nutter (and his dead father) aquire nuclear weapons in basically the last decade. And what did we do? Slap on a few sanctions which will not affect the ruling élite one jot. Nothing to stop it getting to the point where we essentially cannot take any action beyond token sanctions for fear of nuclear retaliation – the “they won’t actually use them” argument is unconvincing when it comes to Kim Jong-il.

Why? In a word, China. In a few more, China and its UN Security Council veto. But also a fairly serious lack of will to take any other route – a UN General Assembly resolution, over which China has no veto; or unilateral military action without a UN resolution, something neither the Bush Administration or the Blair Government were particularly averse to. OK, so there are some issues with taking unilateral military action (even just airstrikes against reactors) against a country with 1.21 million people in the armed forces, but the threat would have been an awful lot more persuasive if North Korea knew they couldn’t rely on their Chinese buddies to stop it.

The UN is fundamentally broken. It gives ridiculous influence to one outright undemocratic country and one Chinesely-undemocratic country. It is incapable of anything more than sending peacekeepers – if you’re lucky. International law prohibiting unilateral military action would make sense (not that it would stop Israel) if the UN were capable of authorising liberal intervention. But it isn’t, and so protecting people from dictators has to be done illegally, with the tacit understanding that no-one cares as long as it works; or not at all. If the UN is to be good for anything, it needs to be a club of democratic nations, dedicated to spreading democracy, via the barrel of a gun if neccessary.

If the UN had been capable of taking action against Saddam, which was needed and justified, we would have been able to do it in such a way that Iraq did not collapse into anarchy the moment his statue got dusted with the Stars and Stripes. It would have worked. If Bush and Blair are morally guilty, it is for failing to plan and implement an ordered replacement of Saddam, and for failing to protect civilians. An undemocratic state is an illegitimate state is no state, so they had every right to invade in the interests of the people of Iraq. But much of the blame also has to lie with the framework of the UN.

Liberal democracy is an ideal we should not be afraid to spread with the assault rifle and the targeted bomb, the paratrooper and the jet fighter. But we are, and that is why we have to be afraid of Stalinist personality cults spread by the hand grenade and the nuclear missile, the torpedo and the million-strong Red horde.

I’ll do a proper post soon, I promise…

Anyway, AS module results from January exams (subjects listed in descending order of purity/awesome):

• Philosophy Unit 1: 100/100 – A (duh): Woo-hoo!
• Maths: Core 1: 97/100 – A;
• Maths: Mechanics 1: 86/100 – A: slightly fail, but probably only one question messed up, not worth resitting unless I desperately need marks next year. I think I was a bit slapdash (read: cocky) in preparing for Maths, to be honest.
• Maths: Statistics 1: 94/100 – A;
• Physics Unit 1: 120/120 – A: Woo-hoo again;
• Chemistry Unit 1: 97/100 – A.

I’ve also got 100/100 in Decision Maths 1 from last January. Pretty happy with those results, but I need to revise harder (read: at all outside lessons) for Maths in June.