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

Actually, the Ethics and Values exam seems quite likely to be the one I least need to worry about; and having had life-defining exams last year(A2), and the year before that (AS), and the year before that (GCSE), with annual non-life-defining exams before those, it's got to the stage where I regard the prospect of yet another round of exams with more weariness than fear. Besides, the first year exams don't count towards the final grades, and with a pass mark of 40% for the year -- including summative essays -- it's reportedly almost impossible to fail; but naturally I'd like to achieve rather more than 40%. Papers covered in my finest terribly-neat-yet-so-small-that-nobody-else-can-read-it handwriting are strewn over my bed; I'm by this time of night too tired to look over them again; everything else in my life -- h2g2 Entry writing included -- has been swept at least partially aside by revision; despite official 'exam quiet' my corridor can still be pretty noisy at times (thank goodness for earphones); and last night I had someone banging on my door wanting a chat about the Ethics and Values module and asking me whether there was any way in which it could be deontologically permissible for him to rape my next-door neighbour. (There isn't; Kant was explicit about not using people as means, rather than as ends, and I'm not aware of any applicable loopholes in any other deontological theory either.)

This year's E3 has been interesting to read about; I shall be fascinated to see how the Nintendo DS develops, and to what extent developers do manage to innovate. I've been around long enough to be often cynical about 'revolutionary' ideas, but I'm also of the opinion that interface design is not always given the attention it deserves -- it's ironic that the main mark of a good interface is its being intuitive enough not to be noticed -- and I think the DS's approach could prove very effective in overcoming the traditional limitations of console and handheld interfaces.

I have downloaded the trailer of the new GC Zelda, and watched it with the obligatory mixture of Platonic love and utter lust.

I didn't enjoy the E3 Advent Children trailer as much as I'd expected, mainly because of the voiceover; even allowing for my predispositions as one firmly (if not often vocally) on the sub side of the eternal sub/dub controversy in anime fandom, the commentary tried too hard to be dramatic, and I much preferred listening to the Japanese vocals on the previous trailer, even though I could interpret only odd words and phrases. Plus, this trailer uses the pronunciation 'je-no'va' (with a long 'o'), so the debate isn't settled after all. (If I only knew where I could see the name written in kana I could find out the vowel length; Japanese phonetic script is very specific about that.) Anyway, the trailer raised plenty of tantalising questions, and the film continues to look gorgeous.

The final volume of 'Noir' -- http://www.advfilms.co.uk/noir/index.html -- was released in the U.K. today, but I haven't found time to watch any of it yet; it'll have to wait until after the exam. There are still several volumes of the Excel Saga manga I intend to order, too, but I daren't have very many distractions around during the next three weeks. For anyone else intending to purcase Noir Vol. 7, be warned: the inlay booklet contains spoilers.

I hope your exam went well!

Well, I got the stock moral relativism question I hoped for (which I may or may not have messed up to some degree; I'm not sure whether or not I was okay focusing exclusively on cultural relativism, since I can't remember what the question actually was) and another question that was similar to the one I did for an essay last term, so it was reasonable. A pity to be doing exams when the weather's so glorious, but it makes having a twenty-to-thirty-odd-minute walk to the exam room a much more pleasurable experience than it would otherwise be.