h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I hate it when they start that way. Do you get points for being controversial?

so long as I can back it up.
I made up the essay title - and it might well change, within the same defined topic area, but just to fit whatever answer I decide to come up with. I'm basically picking the most likely points from all my reading and going with it.

Oh the extreme excitement of writing essays.

yep, though it's not quite coursing round my veins yet pumping adrenelin and all that. Got stuck somewhere I think...

Any thoughts on 'to what extent is learning adaptive?'
Got set it a week ago, told 'you've got ages to write it', lectures on learning only happened thurs and sat, and aren't very useful anyway. Great.

y'mean to what extent is learning the process of adapting to things? In what kind of context - rather, what kind of learning? practical, theoretical. Is it learning how to do stuff, or accepting thinking stuff (or that other people think stuff)... in either way I would say to a fairly large extent.

the essay title did change btw - became "What problems motivated Tiberius Gracchus’ Lex Sempronia Agraria and how was it designed to meet them?" It's now 3000 words long, and needs some editing before I get down to a topic switch and deal with the Jameson Raid...

After I wrote mine, got told that the word 'evolutionarily' was missed from the title. Efficient supervisor I have, huh?

incredibly!

Well, I'm moving onto an essay on Roman Law - devastatingly exciting I must say!
going for something along the lines of what they texts of the laws that I'm supposed to be looking at say about Roman internal politics... joyous.

Roman Law. Because that's relevant to anything, how?
Oh, well I guess if you absolutely have to study history that's what you're gonna get.
One of my options fr next year could be Histopry and Philosophy of Science. It's very art-studenty, doesn't even have lectures in the morning like every other single subject I could be doing.

no, actually Roman Law is probably the most relevant - a lot of stuff is built from it - including the US constitution, which has ideas about the separation of powers which are detailed in Polybius Book Six when he talks about why Rome is so great - because they separate everything and have checks and balances. Unfortunately I don't get to write about that...

What do you get to write about?

I think I'm going for what the statutes show us about Roman government of it's provinces. Though I did think of "Why my life would have been easier if Rome was an anarchic state: the problems with understanding Roman Law" - except I couldn't get my argument past - they're full of gaps and b****y hard to read...

Have you seen Adaptation?
(writing an essay about writing an essay...)