Vita Hilaritatis
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| Monday, April 27th, 2009 | | 5:31 pm |
How do you write a short story?
If any of my writerly friends wish to contribute, please do! If you'd prefer it if comments were screened, let me know and I will screen them. I seem to have forgotten how to do it. I used to have some idea, but there's still a blank there for me. I'm very satisfied with my progress in writing generally; since coming off fluoxetine a year ago, my writing skill has slowly come back. My 'voice' still seems a little hindered by the straight-jacket of academic writing, but I'm sure time and practice (in my oh-so-copious free time) will sort that out. But I seem to have forgotten how one writes a short story. | | Thursday, February 5th, 2009 | | 6:33 pm |
Imagine my astonishment to find that the reason I was feeling like it was hard work breathing was - because it was hard work breathing. This post brought to you by remembering that I had a peak flow meter, and using it. And finding that my peak flow was more a peak flibble. | | Friday, December 5th, 2008 | | 3:09 pm |
Grr
Dear Cambridgeshire Matters (or whatever piece of mass-produced junk magazine shite that has just been delivered), When you are delivering a piece of glossy tat I don't want, please do not leave it jammed in my letterbox. If it were visible from the road, it's just advertising that I'm out and would quite like to be burgled. Also, you jammed my letterbox open. This has let in a bloody great draught. I would be seriously peeved if I came home expecting to find a nice warm house, and instead found that all the heat had been leaking out of the front door. No love, Me. | | Friday, November 14th, 2008 | | 4:24 pm |
The words are all gone. I will try to post a proper update when I have words again. Edited to add: I should try not to get depressed when I haven't done anything much by 5pm, as the best part of my day is yet to come. (The words are all still gone, but I can often do other things.) | | Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 | | 5:28 pm |
A villanelle of sorts
On the Current Financial Crisis 'Greed is good!' the bankers cried, Their coffers filled with paper gold. Pensioners and the workers sighed. The protests on their lips had died As for twice their worth their homes were sold; 'Greed is good!' the bankers cried. The accountants and their lawyers lied As bankers' plans were over-bold; Pensioners and the workers sighed. The poorest were given a poor guide: 'You needn't live in houses dull and old.' 'Greed is good!' the bankers cried. They bought their homes and had their incomes tied And then the market started to go cold. Pensionsers and the workers sighed. Then came the day when bankers's hopes were fried: The poor would spend the winter in the cold. 'Greed is good!' the bankers cried; Pensioners and the workers sighed. | | Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | | 4:13 pm |
For Suffisaunce
If I could do anything, go anywhere, I'd love to visit Egypt and Iceland. I do love exploring ancient civilisations (preferably ones which have left impressive buildings behind), and I know lots about Iceland and would love to see it all properly. Conversely, I know a very little about Egyptian culture, and would rather like to go and have a look at some before learning more. Or I'd like to take the Orient Express to Istanbul. Which these days is all about the sybaritic lap of luxury, and less about exploration, but I'm sure one can combine the two. I don't have a particular yen to see e.g. early Buddhist cultural remains, because I don't really know enough about them. I'm pretty sure that a short course of reading would change that! Likewise, I'm not massive on the wonders of Nature. If I were passing near the Grand Canyon, I'd be interested enough to go and look, but I wouldn't want to make a special trip for that purpose. I prefer somewhere local and accessible, where I can go walking with a reasonable chance of not killing myself. (This doesn't preclude hill-walking in Scotland, but it does mean I'm not keen on say rock-climbing in the Alps in winter.) I've also no burning desire to go scuba -diving, or leap out of a helicopter. I have been abseiling, but frankly, high-adrenaline sports make me feel ill. I can confront my own mortality quite easily enough without having it shoved in my face by doing a dangerous sport. Part of me thinks it would be terribly romantic to sail one's own ship round the world, or fly something exotic or even mundane. But I get terribly sea-sick and air-sick, so I'll have to continue enjoying those things vicariously. I feel no need to prove myself by pushing boundaries like that. I know enough about myself that I know I can do something I find intensely stressful and unpleasant if I really have to, but I do feel bloody awful afterwards, so I don't feel the need to test that over again by say, bungee jumping or hang-gliding. So my ideal thing to do is go somewhere exciting where you can set your imagination free with all these exciting new inputs. | | Friday, September 5th, 2008 | | 7:11 pm |
Is there anything anyone would like me to write about? Serious, silly, whatever... I'm feeling I should write more, in whatever style, just to flex the writing muscles a bit... So I shall proceed to show everyone how wimpy I am ;) | | 3:48 pm |
Stupid Government
I am a bit irritated with the government's plans to tackle fuel poverty. Their focus is on the long-term, making homes more energy efficient. Now that's fine if you own your own home, and can therefore take advantage of grants for solar panels, better insulation etc. It's no bloody use at all if you rent, because you don't have control over putting in insulation etc., and the landlord has no interest in doing so, because there are plenty of people to rent to, and they get no benefit from making your fuel costs lower. I wonder if more poor people rent, and whether this planned measure is going to help them not one jot. | | Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | | 6:47 pm |
Biblical Reliability
Note - I haven't done active research in this area for at least 3 years. This is written from the perspective of someone who is primarily an Anglo-Saxonist. I have no particular religious or anti-religious view to push. I can't remember any specific citations. The Bible (especially the Old Testament) is a written record of oral tradition. The New Testament can be divided into the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), John's Gospel, Acts and the Letters. The Synoptic Gospels were the first Gospels to be written, around 100 years after the death of their main figure. They share a common source, or sources, which to the best of my knowledge date from around 50 years after Christ's death. John's Gospel was written rather later. As I understand it, the historical evidence is not inconsistent with some bloke hanging round leading a religious movement at around the right time. If one compares the Synoptic Gospels with John's, one finds that Christ's divinity is most fully explored in John's Gospel. While the synoptics agree that Jesus is the Son of God, it's in John that we find suggestions of his equality with God. (Note - this is a description of the texts and not a statement about whether any of these things are true or not.) In Acts and the Letters, we can find signs of schism in the early Church. There was a definite difference of opinion between Peter and Paul. Firstly, this was about the acceptance of converts by revelation and converts from outside Judaism - Paul famously won this fight. But there were also some subsidiary issues - particularly the acceptance of women (and possibly homosexuals). Paul's letters come out against female leadership and against homosexuality; the Petrine group certainly included deaconesses, and probably female priests. The standing of these documents is in my mind, equivalent to the kind of weight we should lend to Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and several Anglo-Saxon saints' lives. In my experience, there is a period of up to about 150 years after someone of note dies, in which oral tradition forms a reasonably certain basis for subsequent narrations. After that, people tend to make up total bollocks. Even within the 150-yr period, there is plenty of opportunity for people to bend the truth, omit things etc., but there's usually a core of information one can deduce from the narrative, especially if one is informed as to the kinds of changes people will make. This gives us the rough outline that most of the NT is within this period, and is able to be trusted to a certain extent. (It's notable that John's Gospel might well have been produced towards the end of this period.) This also shows us that the OT is far more remote and unreliable as an historical record, though certain essential truths are preserved (think of the Flood narrative for example.) The other thing worth noting is that selection of canon began fairly early on, and may thus also have a certain measure of reliability. It's worth noting that some of the fun Apocryphal Gospels are clearly bollocks, based on later extrapolations (particularly one about Jesus' childhood, something that's not well covered in the source texts). But even if one believes the Bible to be the directly revealed Word of God, it has certainly undergone changes. Different groups select different books to be included in the Bible (the Catholic church includes more of these than the Anglican one for example). Also, texts do change over time; the synoptic gospels are an excellent example of how three people dealing with very similar source material managed to produce three different versions. Also, when copying, words get lost, punctuation gets inserted and amended (there's a whole bit of John's Gospel that I think Augustine mispunctuated in his analysis), and scribes amend the story. After around the 4th century, scribes copying the Bible were meant to strive for accuracy, but obviously they're not perfect. I find myself that there may be enough core truths in there to base an ethical system on them. I personally would not take the Bible literally, nor believe it to be the unadulterated Word of God. What we have is a snap-shot of a complicated text, revealing what a multitude of people thought about their God. | | Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 | | 6:41 pm |
Memesheep
If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don't speak often, please post a comment with a memory of you and me. Anything you want, good or bad. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised about what people remember about you. | | Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 | | 5:46 pm |
Went to Ely today! More probably when I get photos together. | | Monday, April 14th, 2008 | | 4:41 pm |
Whooo!
Thoughts on Who stories I've seen recently. There may be spoilers. | | 3:40 pm |
| | 3:26 pm |
Book reviews: SF
Spoilers may lurk below! And if anyone has follow-up recs based on what I say here, do go ahead! | | Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 | | 6:41 pm |
Sci-fi
Since people are back from Eastercon, and there have been Constitution-shaped mutterings (yes, I am coming, I just have not got round to joining), I wish to expand my sci-fi range. I have read Asimov and Clarke, and some Guy Gavriel Kaye. (and a lot of Star Trek novels, sssshhhh.) I have a rec list of: Iain M Banks - Use of Weapons, Consider Phlebas Jo Walton - [lots] Ian MacDonald - River of Gods Michael Marshall Smith - Only Forward Some Bester A Philip K Dick I should probably also read Cryptonomicon. Any other recs? (No more than 3 per person, and a brief genre description would be useful.) Locals beware: I may ask to borrow stuff off you, as Cambridge Central Library is closed for the foreseeable. | | Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 | | 3:33 pm |
After leaving a lot of comments on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kaet's LJ... I thought I ought to write something here about HEFCE and the governance of the University of Cambridge.
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/current/special/07/section_a.pdf contains the details of the University's income etc.
We received c. £600m last academic year. Of this £183m was from funding council grants, mainly HEFCE.
HEFCE would like the university to be governed in accordance with the guidelines set down here: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2004/04%5F40/. As bjh21 pointed out, these guidelines don't exactly agree with how Cambridge is governed. However, I'm not sure that we should be listening to HEFCE about this. There are two main reasons: 1) Cambridge is consistently in the top 10 universities internationally, on whatever the metric du jour is. 2) They're trying to run education as a business. Before I go on, there are problems with the University. It's not perfect. We should make our procedures more transparent. I'm not sure to whom we should be accountable, other than ourselves (i.e. researchers, students, staff, alumni). But there is scope for making it clear(er) how decisions are made. The implications, in my view of (1) above, are that whatever we're doing, we're doing it right. Either our governance in helping this, or at least it isn't hindering it. HEFCE need to present a prima facie case that their way would lead to substantial improvments in our performance. In any case, perhaps we need to be looking at the governance of other top ten universities, rather than at HEFCE. The implications of (2) are rather more insidious. It's measuring us against business standards. This means targets etc. Now this is a good thing with regard to budgets. But is it a good thing when it comes to teaching and research? Each year one has the problem about how one weighs up one big book against ten papers, or a solo author paper against three co-authored ones. And how one works out how much 'research' was done in a year given that under some circumstances you can be published in three-six months and in others in three-six years. How does one measure exactly what a first-class essay looks like? Or a 2.i? Employers seem to like you to have them, because you will have demonstrated a mix of analysis, communication, interpretation, learning, application in order to get them, but not necessarily in predetermined mixes or in a specific area. You may well also have displayed originality. I think that these guidelines are intended for people in the middle of the road, in order to make improvements. I'm not sure they're for the best. Education systems don't always bring out the best of their very brightest; the very brightest need room to manoeuvre without being overly confined by systems that help middle-rankers maximise their achievement. I think that HEFCE business-style control is the latter, whereas Cambridge exemplifies the former, set up, as it was, by a breakaway group. Has it really changed so much today? What will happen about it all? There are three options (as I said in reply to Ingi). a) We cave in to HEFCE. b) We split off and go private. c) we noodle about with small changes until HEFCE give up and go away. Of all UK universities, Cambridge is probably in the best position to do b). a) would seem disasterous, and c) seems most likely. But it would be rather nice if we could limit government interference in something that's been working perfectly well until they got their hands on it. | | Monday, January 28th, 2008 | | 2:45 pm |
My advice to aspiring doctoral students
1) Have funding for at least 4-5 years. Have some back-up in place in case you get ill. 2) Have somewhere nice to live 3) Have something to do other than the doctorate 4) Try not to do more than 3hrs a day of serious brain work. There’s tons of adminny stuff to do instead 5) Do a doctorate somewhere where you already have friends 6) Make sure your mental and physical health is at its best before you start 7) Consider doing it part-time 8) Go to conferences 9) Don’t take too much extra stuff on 10) Take regular holidays 11) Get other people to read the thesis for you; you need perspectives other than your supervisor’s 12) Read other people’s theses 13) Don’t do it. If you must, choose a subject where you can bore people to death talking about it, and pin them to a chair for hours with your bubbling enthusiasm. 14) Do plenty of exercise and eat your five a day of fruit and veg. 15) Have a Plan B for when it all goes wrong. | | Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 | | 3:39 pm |
And after a productive day, and one which ended with me feeling happy, I slept badly last night and have a migraine. | | Friday, January 4th, 2008 | | 4:53 pm |
I fail at being healthy. Slept through alarm this morning. Emailed in sick (can't phone as can't hear a damn thing). Slept all morning and a further 1.5hrs this afternoon. (Quite glad I didn't tough it into work as was clearly dead). I have now spent money on new clothes with Christmas money from La Redoute, and have just got new boots through post (old ones have dead lining). | | Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 | | 12:13 am |
Happy New Year! (Well, I did it last year, so it might almost be a tradition now.) |
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