Vivat Libertas

Distinguished readers, I have a confession to make: I write fanfiction. Now, I know what you might be thinking. If you're active within fanfiction communities, you might think "oh, cool". If you're not, you might think that I lack social skills, have poor hygiene and spend my time pairing up fictional characters with my impossibly perfect original characters. I'm not going to get into shipping wars, because I think they're the one of the nastiest parts of any fandom. Nor am I going to try to prove to everyone that I'm a normal person, because while I do hold to socially acceptable standards of hygiene and conversational ability, I've made my fair share of terrible, overpowered characters. I might write about how this isn't necessarily a bad thing at some point, but this is not the post for that. Rather, I want to talk about fluff - light, happy fanfiction with characters acting adorably together. I think that in some fandoms, fluff is overloo...

So, more rambling from me. I don't know why this is happening. A transformation has taken place in me - very slowly, to be sure, but it has taken place and it is terrifying . Yesterday I was volunteering at Z-arts in Hulme and spent a few hours being mobbed by tiny, adorable children who love robots. It was fun. I really enjoyed it. But it was...a bit weird, I guess? You see, I was a sciencey kid and my parents always used to take me to work on big arty or sciencey projects. Guess what I was doing? Yep, helping to run artsy, sciencey projects where we programmed a robot's light sensor and tested it out on patterns we drew ourselves. (I came up with the idea in 5 minutes after not being able to carry a mat bigger than I am and transport a trolley loaded with relatively pricey electrical goodies. It worked much better than expected.) It just feels a bit strange to me, because I still have very clear memories and feelings of being a child wondering at how awesome the univ...

I'm not very good at this reality business, me. When I was a little girl, I wanted to become a scientist. I used to daydream about being a proper grown-up student learning science. Then, of course, I grew up to be an angsty and annoying adolescent, but "being dead" and "science" were my two main goals. And then my brain decided to fuck out on me big time during my last two years of school, during which my grades plummeted, I actually had to work to do even moderately well compared to GCSEs, and I was rejected from my dream university. Yeah, sixth form sucked. Actually, I was rejected from four out of the five universities I applied to. Let me tell you, this does absolutely nothing for your confidence or self-esteem. I spent most of sixth form crying and feeling like a failure - clearly, I did not use my hard-won independence well at all. Only Manchester gave me an offer and it was 2 A*s and an A. Reader, I missed my offer. I worked so hard I fell ill for...

I should totally become a theoretical physicist. A cascade of things has happened at exactly the wrong time: my lab partner has been sick, I have a zillion deadlines, my copy of MATLAB doesn't work as revenge for me pirating it, scilab is being wholly uncooperative, and best of all, I don't understand second year lab! Truly, I am a genius! Anyway, I was happily sitting around playing with radioactive material (as you do) when the head of second year lab came up to us. We'd forgotten to arrange an interview, since they're not automatically assigned, and unless we did it today we'd be slapped with a huge penalty for lateness. You know, today. When I hadn't finished any of my analysis because I couldn't work scilab properly. Shit . My lab partner had to calm me down and help me do data analysis, since I was on the verge of an anxiety attack. Perfectly normal thing that happens on a Friday afternoon, you know. (And we still entered the errors wrong. F...

5 words a girl* never wants to hear: "My Matlab install's not working." *for girl, read lazy physics trash So I up and googled things and stumbled upon SciLab, which is good because it took like 10 minutes to install and looks a lot like Matlab on the surface. The documentation is plentiful (and man, I have never been more glad I can read French because about half the help documentation is French). This is good because I haven't done any serious data analysis since last June. Yes, it's been eight months since I've analysed lab data using a computer program. There are downsides to missing a semester of lab after all. I feel like such a noob! (on the plus, setting up scilab to take my data is about 1000 times easier now that I know how to program...but I now need to learn to get it to spit out nice graphs) Yay! By mucking around with style = a negative number I got it to plot points. But datafit is an actual function and I have to write actual code. ...

I think maths is beautiful. I've been saying this since I was in my teens and I don't think I'll stop until the day I stop being able to add one and one to make two. At the same time, I understand that a lot of people find maths very abstract and difficult to make sense of. (To me, maths is pretty much concrete, so I've had to actually put effort into understanding that other people don't see the world the same way.) I also think music is beautiful. I try my hardest to keep an open mind; I frequently fail, but hey, my music taste is now pretty eclectic. Or maybe just random, if you're feeling uncharitable. Over the summer, I had to write a vacation essay. Quite unsurprisingly, I chose to work on the physics of music. Slightly more surprisingly (at least to me), my friends all thought I was insane for working on something so boring. I don't blame them; the basic physics of a simple harmonic oscillator is important, but it's not exactly the most exc...

The other day I read a comment that really annoyed me about how normal people just can't get classical music, so classical musicians have a gift that they should share with the world. I am fully in support of the second part. I think art music might be complex, but it's amazingly fun to make and I want as many people as possible to have the chance to make that music. The first part? Not so much. I'm one of those "normal people" (well, not quite, but I'll come onto that later). I'm not a particularly talented musician, mostly because while I like music it doesn't have the same attraction for me that other subjects do. I got into music because of my amazing, gifted director John and because of practising a lot. That's all that happened. I don't have some sort of special classical music organ (pun unintended - sorry!) in my body. I'm an average schmo who trained a bit. I don't deserve to be elevated to an elite class. People who don...

I have a fear of death. It is perhaps more accurate to say that I have existential anxiety about death – the knowledge that everyone around me is going to die and that the last thing I ever do will be failing and shutting down my bodily functions. At the moment, it’s inevitable and in some ways there’s an upside to that – poor quality of life can be unbearable. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m a selfish, moody little bugger; I want to experience the world and learn and see and do, and I’m upset that I won’t get to learn and see and do everything before I die. I’m also upset that death is, as far as we know, permanent; I’m going to lose the people I love and never get them back, and one day I’m going to lose my consciousness permanently. The atoms that made me up will go into the earth and the air and help to make up different people, and maybe I will leave a legacy – love, kindness or knowledge – but that’s no substitute for losing my entire being and never, ever being conscious a...

On Sunday I got up early to pack up laptops and LEGO onto trolleys, strike out into Greater Manchester, and hope for the best. I had to get up on a freezing morning, spend most of the day on my feet, and pack up after everyone. I loved it. Why? Well, on that day something called CoderDojo happened. Manchester CoderDojo takes place on the second Sunday of every month. Broadly speaking, a bunch of volunteers come together, take some computing bits and bobs with them, and teach kids about the joys of programming. When I was a little girl, I used to be a member of something called NAGC (the National Association for Gifted Children), which you might know better as Potential Plus UK. Broadly speaking, it puts on events for gifted and talented children (in the top 5% of the population) where they can meet each other and learn about things beyond an often restrictive school curriculum. To children who are often isolated, bored and restless, this is a lifeline. I credit NAGC with helping ...

I feel like I should clarify a few things. I am Israeli. It's a part of me I can't get rid of. This doesn't make me special or exotic. I'm just me. All of this becomes relevant. If you know anything about international politics, you'll know about Israel and Palestine. Some of you will say that Israel is illegitimate, others that Palestine was not and never will be a state. Some of you will argue for Israel, others for Palestine. Some of you will say that they're both awful. Either way, everyone expects you to choose a tribe. It's a funny old thing, being a naturalised British citizen. Seen as a Briton it is natural and accepted that I have individual opinions. It is nothing remarkable that I should disagree with my government, and people are generally happy for me to speak about my experiences. Seen as an Israeli, things are very different. Suddenly, I'm not Osnat who lives down the road; I'm Osnat the foreigner, Osnat who is the ambassador f...