1 term down, 2 to go!

As the end of my term came around, I found that I had little time to update the blog. However, now that the term is over (okay...I have one paper due Thurs., but my grades are already in) I guess I should fill in some of the details from the past few weeks:

I spent Thanksgiving weekend in London, visiting with friends, frantically running between museums, and seeing the Sound of Music. I'm not sure which of these three things was the most exciting part (probably the friends) but together they made for a pretty amazing break from work right around when I needed it. My camera is being fussy, but I do have a bunch of pictures of Trafalgar square to post eventually. Also, doesn't Trafalgar sound like a cool city from a Tolkien book or video game? I'm still having trouble believing it's the name of a real place in Spain. Maybe I'll go there.

I got to meet with my tutors/instructors for next term, and I think it's going to be an even better learning experience. My two classes are on Plato's Dialogues and Shakespeare, both things I've long intended to study and look forward to knowing well enough to quote sagaciously at cocktail parties.

I haven't been following the U.S. news as much as I'd like to, but I'll try to post some more political thoughts after my paper is done. I was going to go on a long, heartfelt rant about how sad it was when that Wal-Mart worker was killed on Black Friday, but I didn't get to it in a timely manner and now I think it's pretty much been covered to death.

As far as news from the U.K., the biggest story recently has been the scandal surrounding the death of Baby P, a baby that died in London due to neglect despite dozens of missed opportunities to save him. Child protective services here are taking a press beating, though I thought the most striking failure was the doctor who examined him a few days before his death and didn't notice that his "crankiness" was probably due to his back already being broken. A general overview is here. I don't usually spend too much time following stories like this, but since I was studying social services and the NHS the whole time it was going on, I couldn't put the paper down. It seems sort of ironic to me that society has reached a point where scholars spend their lives picking apart the finer points of social policy in the U.K. (Are benefits in kind demoralizing? If families are rational, self-interested actors, is a welfare system really more effective than market reliance?), but someone with needs so basic and obvious can still fall through the cracks.