Hmm...

Which Friends Character Are You?
	You are Ross. You're intelligent and adored by your parents. However, your lack of social skills causes you to talk too much and try too hard. While your friends pick on you for your nerdiness, they better watch our for your rage.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

Note to self

When making cannelloni, first check that you have cannelloni tubes...

Nice photo

I hope Matt doesn't mind this being online...


Much better than Mr Darcy!

I wish I had a spare couple of grand...

Click here.

Hello, my name is spam

I get a huge amount of junk email - sometimes amusing, sometimes incomprehensible. I thought these names were worth recording on here:

• Aquaplane T. Forging
• Eiderdown P. Beret

Am I really supposed to believe that these are real people?!

Awww...

Liz, Lara & Donna

This is me at Donna's 21st. Wasn't I cute when I was 21? I look good. The scary thing is that I probably thought I was overweight back then, but I look a lot better than I do now. I still have that outfit - no way it would fit me at the moment. I want to get back to looking like that, though perhaps without the fringe...

Shut up and drive

Catchy song, but somehow I don't think Rihanna is actually talking about driving...

Brooke Fraser rocks!

I'll write about the concert sometime soon (I hope!) but in the meantime, check out the video of her song Albertine.

Sign on the door

Open up the sky
All gather around
Praise the Lord and
Take a look at what I found
I got love that's as big as raging storm
I got walls coming down that I don't need no more
I got a sign on the door that says
Lonely don't live here anymore

Kasey Chambers

Faust in Copenhagen

This book, Faust in Copenhagen by Gino Segrè, looks very interesting. I read a review from the UK Telegraph written by Kenan Malik, a British lecturer, writer and broadcaster, with a background in neurobiology and history of science.

Malik critiques Segrè for not paying enough attention to the physics of quantum mechanics:

What interests Segrè is the context of scientific discovery, both personal and cultural. This is both the strength and the weakness of his book.

I don't see that this has to be a weakness. I haven't read much about quantum mechanics, but surely there are already books around which deal with the physics in detail. What's wrong with a book that deals more with the personalities involved, and the cultural context? It sounds like Segrè has a fascinating thesis:

Quantum mechanics, he suggests, was part of a broader development in which modernism overthrew classical concepts. Quantum theories resulted from the same kind of 'wild experimenting' that also produced James Joyce's Ulysses, Schoenberg's atonalism and Giorgio de Chirico's landscapes. In all these cases 'the outer world, carefully described for hundreds of years, did not seem to match the inner world that was being uncovered'.

Malik does not agree, however:

The strangeness of quantum mechanics is, however, not a reflection of the cultural context in which the theories developed - it is simply a reflection of the fact that the subatomic world is indeed a strange place... If, as Einstein said, God doesn't play dice with the universe, it's not because he hasn't read Ulysses.

I'm open to sociological treatments of science - not, perhaps, as a replacement for discussing the "science" or the "physics", but as a complementary viewpoint. Obviously, if quantum mechanics is an accurate depiction and explanation of the sub-atomic universe, it wasn't the culture of the early 20th-century that made the universe this way. However, the surrounding culture may have given the scientists involved the conceptual tools with which to understand the sub-atomic world.

I think this book would make a nice addition to my library and I'm looking forward to reading it. Shame about that pesky PhD...

Gwyneth

My "new" laptop (now nearly one year old) does not yet have a name. I refer to my old laptop as "Dell" - partly because she (yes, it's a girl) is a Dell, and partly in honour of Del, the main character in Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women, one of my favourite books.

I have decided that my current laptop will now be known as "Gwyneth." Since Gwyneth Paltrow named her daughter "Apple", it seems fitting to name my Apple "Gwyneth."

(By the way, this post was written on my other Apple - the computer I use at uni - which shall henceforth be known as... no, that's going a bit too far!)

Tee hee!

I was just writing an email and made a typo in the word "conversation". I have now decided that "coonversation" is a good word to describe talking about cheese!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Ouch, my sides!

(See, this is what doing a PhD can do to a person...)

Animator versus Animation

This is extremely cool. Click here.

Nice. Very nice.

"Don't you have to believe in the 39 articles?

"Only the evangelical ones."

Click here.

Ouch!

I went to the gym last night. I hadn't been since Saturday, because I'd been a bit lazy, but I was feeling pretty good so I didn't go too easy on myself. I spent 20 minutes walking briskly on the treadmill; 10 minutes on the exercise bike; 5 minutes on the rowing machine; 5 minutes on the cross-trainer; and then only 7.5 minutes on the treadmill again before I felt a stitch in my side and couldn't continue. I was a little surprised, because I generally work myself hard enough to get out of breath, but not hard enough to get a stitch (I don't know if that's a good thing, or a bad thing).

When I got home, my chest was feeling rather constricted, as though something were pressing on it, preventing me from taking a deep breath. I figured I must be coming down with a cold or something (not good!) This morning, when I woke up, I could still feel the spot where I had a stitch. I'm not in a lot of pain - it just feels uncomfortable. I'm wondering if I actually pulled a muscle while I was on the rowing machine or cross-trainer. Not good at all!

I'm back!

I figured it was about time I updated my blog. I've been back in the country for just over two weeks; back at uni for one week; and back at my thesis for one day. Perhaps I'll get around to finishing my travel blog some day (I had a great time in Oxford, Lancaster, Walsall and Edinburgh!) but at the moment I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the PhD.

Today I've been looking over my first three chapters and various notes I've made to try to figure out how to improve them. I just came across this little note that I wrote on 24-5-07. I was working on my conference papers, and thinking through my "model" of natural theology. I wrote:

I really need to read all natural theological works again to see if this all fits! Aack! Exhaustion!!

Ecclesiastes 12:12 is the favourite Bible verse of students everywhere, but I think it is even more appropriate for PhD students:

Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Not only are there more books made by the time you finish your PhD so that the literature review that you wrote at the beginning is now out of date, but your ideas change, so you need to go back and look again at all the stuff you've read over the first few years because you'll now see it in a different light... I get exhausted just thinking about it!

2007 New College Lectures

Prof Oliver O'Donovan will present the New College Lectures in 2007 on the topic of 'moral wakefulness'-the mind alert to shape decisions and actions. Professor O'Donovan is one of the foremost scholars in the field of Christian ethics. He is currently Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh School of Divinity, Scotland (since 2006). He has published 10 major works which have had a significant impact in the world of political theology and ethics.

Much has been said about the need for moral judgment, foundational values and ethical practice in business, public and personal life. Professor O'Donovan suggests that "the experience of moral wakefulness is universal, and ways of describing the experience, and the philosophical puzzles they pose, are legion". In this lecture series he will explore how we overcome the constant tensions that arise between the objective and subjective, valuing and deciding, 'good' and the 'right'? Professor O'Donovan believes that Christian faith can shed light on this commonest and yet most mysterious of human experiences. He will explore this topic in three public lectures over three nights:

Tuesday 4th September: 'Waking'
The metaphor of wakefulness is constantly drawn on in the Gospels to focus the heart of moral sensibility. How does the invocation of God serve to make the moral stance conceivable to us?
Drinks and canapés in Scientia building UNSW from 6:15 pm with lectures to follow from 7:15pm, question time and supper.

Wednesday 5th September: 'Admiring'
Moral attentiveness to the world is a task of affective intelligence, of 'admiration', not merely of 'cognition'. What kind of coherence and order do we suppose in our world and how do assertions about a 'Word of God' serve to underpin that coherence?
7:30pm Main Common Room, New College , UNSW. Question time and supper to follow the lecture.

Thursday 6th September: 'Resolving'
How can we make the transition of reason from what is the case to what we are to do? How may we intelligently 'frame' an action to perform without arbitrariness?
7:30pm Main Common Room, New College, UNSW. Question time and supper to follow the lecture.

Entrance is Free
New College is located on Anzac Pde, Kensington @ UNSW
RSVP essential for all lectures by 31st August
Phone (02) 9381 1999 or email newcollege@unsw.edu.au

Apologies...

...for the lack of posts recently. I haven't been able to connect my laptop to the internet since I left Oxford, and I haven't had a lot of time to use other computers either. Since session 2 has started back home, my online Science & Religion class is on again so I have to keep up with that. The students seem very eager so far, so I think I'll be busy!

Not a lot of time to write now, but here's a quick update. At the moment I'm staying with friends in Walsall, in the Midlands. Yesterday we went on a drive around Derbyshire and to Cheshire to visit 'Pemberley' (Lyme Park). My goodness, the English countryside is just beautiful! Tomorrow I'm leaving for Edinburgh, where I have a few days of sightseeing and then the final conference. Only 8 sleeps and 3 packings until I come home!

Oxford was fantastic, as always. I spent most of my time in the Bodleian Library, but I did get out a little bit. I went to a Baroque music performance in the Sheldonian Theatre and saw Hamlet performed at Oxford Castle. I almost didn't make it out of Oxford due to flooding. There were no trains in or out of Oxford for several days, but fortunately I managed to get a lift to Lancaster with a colleague from Oxford.

The Science and Religion conference in Lancaster has been the highlight of my trip so far. It was exciting to meet so many people whose work has been influential in the development of my own ideas, and just such a nice change to have so many people working in a similar area to me all at the same conference. There were even quite a few early modern scholars, which is unusual, as it doesn't seem to be the most fashionable area these days. My paper was very well-received, and I met a number of very nice and interesting people who I hope to see again sometime.

Anyway, I have to do some work for my online class now, so I'd better end this here. More to come (including photos) in the next few days, I hope...

I hate Virgin

If I can help it, I'm not going to fly, travel by train, book tickets or do anything else associated with Virgin ever again.

Walter Charleton on Love

One of the manuscripts I've been looking at in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is a collection of various papers of Walter Charleton, a seventeenth-century natural philosopher and physician. In my thesis, I'll be looking at his main natural theological work, The Darkness of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature (1652), and I like to peruse these collections (as I do for each of the main people I'm studying) to see if I can find anything interesting that might shed some light on his personality and ideas. In this collection I came across a couple of intriguing pieces - nothing at all to do with my research, but intriguing nonetheless. I don't quite know what to make of them!

A civil Valediction to a Mistress, written at the request of a Friend

I’ll tell you news, Irene, strange and surprising news. Who of all men in the world, can you imagine, is lately changed from a most licentious wanton, to an austere teacher of chastity? Even Don Cupid himself. Nay start not, Madame; this is neither the greatest miracle that [an] invisible magician has wrought, nor a poetic fiction. For, I have it from the mouth (and if I be not very much deceived, from the heart also) of no worse man than your most passionate admirer and favourite, Eugenio; that while he sought to preserve his faith to you alone, during your three months absence, he found it not impossible to abstain from your whole sex for ever: and that by reducing all the streams of his desires into one channel, he learned the art of making them flow more calmly and within the banks of reason. By keeping one Lent out of devotion to you, his Saint; he has discovered it to be no such hard matter to profess himself a Carthusian during life. You see then, sweet Irene, how two contrary effects may arise from one and the same cause: that the same ardent passion which so long together urged him to pursue you for enjoyment, now moves him to decline it. Thus is he become the convert of his own love: and his fidelity has proved the sole cause of his change. It was neither want nor satiety, he swears, that brought him to understand the advantages of fasting; nor an appetite to any new dish, that made him loathe his Chapon bouille; nor weakness of stomach, that hinders him from feasting upon your dainties. No, Irene, trust me there has been nothing like disdain or contempt in the case: only excess of constancy has acquainted him with the pleasures of abstinence. By the rigorous experiment upon which you put him, he has learned, that not to covet, is altogether as sweet as to enjoy; and that to a man of reason, a lasting quiet, though a little dull and melancholic, ought yet to be more grateful, that a few tumultuous moments of that sensual pleasure, which is common also to his horses and dogs.
But let not this so unexpected alteration discompose you, madame. For, Eugenio is still your votary, as full of respect and submission, as when he breathed forth his first vows to you. He will always continue to offer sacrifices to you; but instead of the bulls and goats he used to lead to your altars, he intends henceforth to bring perfumes and spices for incense. His flame is not extinct, but only refined; his affection still equally fervent, only removed from the temple to the Deity, from the fading beauties of your body, to the more charming and permanent excellencies of your mind. And you have only exchanged an importunate servant, for a perfect friend: one from whose innocent conversation, you may reap the fruit of more solid content and solace, than can be expected from the highest transports of a sensual amour; which in truth does often debauch and inflame, never satisfy the appetite. I would have you, therefore, to congratulate as well your own, as his felicity in this his admirable transformation, and to applaud in him that virtue, which results entirely from his justice and loyalty to you, and which only can give him a right to the honor of your generous amity. Whereof no man is, or can ever be more zealously ambitious, than honest and grateful Eugenio will (I am most confident) always demonstrate himself to be. So will also his and your
Most faithful
Lysimachus

I wonder what Irene made of this?! I confess I did like the bit about his affection being removed "from the fading beauties of your body, to the more charming and permanent excellencies of your mind," but what girl wants to be informed that the result of her lover attempting to remain faithful to her while she was away for three months was that he has given up on women completely and decided to become chaste? And that a man "of reason" will value quietness of temper and desire above sensual pleasures that his horses and dogs also engage in? Very strange indeed.

And then further on in the book was this poem:

Love Refined

Since we met last, Irene, I am grown
Entirely yours, by being more my own.
By self-denial, I at once obey
Your power, and re-assume my reason's sway.
Subduing my desires, I them possess;
And out of want extract a happiness.
From holy precepts I have learned the art,
To purge my passion, and refine my heart.
Instead of bulls and goats, I used to bring
(To wanton Love a grateful offering)
I’ll henceforth on your altar burn sweet spice,
And fragrant gums, in purer sacrifice:
With pious thoughts, your shrine I will frequent;
And in chaste vows my saint-like ardors vent.
My guilty flame’s extinct, and in its room
Is kindled such as lived in Tullia's tomb,
Watching her ashes fifteen hundred years;
A flame exempt from lust, from grief, from fears.
This shall your honour, and my faith secure;
And make our secret kindness still endure.
Lamps give light longest, where the air is calm:
And only virtue friendship can embalm.