been dazed and confused for so long it's not true

2011-09-12T20:26:00.002+01:00

Music can be a peculiar thing. It can attach itself to emotions and memories in a way like nothing I can think of. I dug out one of my old cds yesterday. It's not anything particularly amazing, in fact I doubt many other people have it, but that doesn't really matter much. I bought it nearly two years ago in the Borders closing down sale. Now everytime I put it on I'm pulled back to another place. Suddenly I'm living in Kelvinhaugh Street again, it's about fifteen below (at the time we thought that this was unusually cold for December!) and I've a slightly loud and excitable Slovenian in the room next to me. I'm not all that interested in database design but I have got this really cool particle physics project to work on. For another five tracks this will be very close to being my world.

2011-05-25T12:40:00.001+01:00

Twas time for a change.

The Cremation of Sam McGee -- Robert Service

2011-01-06T23:02:00.006Z

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ‘taint being dead—it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows—O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;

It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”

And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;

Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;

Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;

The flames just soared and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;

Then I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;

And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.

It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;

And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;

But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;

I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.

I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked;” . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;

And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door.

It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm—

Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

With Eyes Wide Open

2010-11-18T22:30:00.002Z

Taking a small step from routine can have a strangely profound effect on how we see the world. Take away the familiar and it seems that the mind just doesn't know what it is meant to take in and what it is meant to reject anymore. To compensate it begins to observe everything. All the tiny details that ordinarily would be disregarded from experience as being of no importance to the tasks at hand. Suddenly we are able to see the world around us with far greater clarity and are amazed by what we have been missing. A change of location is one of the greater causes of this effect.

It is with this in mind that I think back to last weekend. Being the first time I'd returned to Scotland since moving south at the end of the summer, there were many such subtle discoveries to be made. For instance, it transpires that I actually do like bagpipes. I'd always treated them as somewhat of a nuisance, a bit like dogs barking in the street late at night. And yet, there is nothing that can quite compare to their sound drifting through the cold November air as you step off the train in Edinburgh. More interesting is the fact that one of the most popular coffee shops in Glasgow closed down several weeks ago and yet several of my Glasgow friends heard about this first from me. This is perhaps a particularly strong example of the previously mentioned effect.

Of more profound interest -- to me anyway -- is just being able to see the world as it is. This is one of the great benefits of being in a large city. When so many people are living in the same place you can observe pretty much every aspect of society with relatively little effort. This isn't really possible in a small country town like Boroughbridge. Here everyone is fairly similar -- affluent, middle class, reasonably educated, and conservative. The thing that really stood out to me is just what a mess we've managed to get ourselves into. It's impossible to walk down Byres Road without passing at least a few beggars. By early evening there will be at least a few folk who've had far too much to drink. More generally, I reckon I heard more sirens in those two days than in the previous two months. Everywhere there is suffering of some sort, and yet this is a reasonably affluent city in a very wealthy nation.

Whilst I was there someone jumped off Kelvinbridge. That's the fourth time I've seen that happen. The first time it shocked me quite a bit but, to be honest, it doesn't even surprise me that much anymore. That's the really scary thing. All this has been going on around me and I've mostly not noticed. It's like I've been living my life wearing blinkers, only noticing what won't get in the way of my own comfortable existence. Who wants to see injustice when seeing it might compel us to do something about it?

For much of today I've been thinking about the words, 'whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me'. The thing is, if I can look a beggar in the eyes and not care, or see an old woman struggling to move some boxes and not feel like helping, can I really claim to follow Jesus at all?

Extract from 'The Great Towns' by Friedrich Engels

2010-11-18T22:11:00.001Z

A town, such as London, where a man may wander for hours together without reaching the beginning of the end, without meeting the slightest hint which could lead to the inference that there is open country within reach, is a strange thing. This colossal centralisation, this heaping together of two and a half millions of human beings at one point, has multiplied the power of this two and a half millions a hundredfold; has raised London to the commercial capital of the world, created the giant docks and assembled the thousand vessels that continually cover the Thames. I know nothing more imposing than the view which the Thames offers during the ascent from the sea to London Bridge. The masses of buildings, the wharves on both sides, especially from Woolwich upwards, the countless ships along both shores, crowding ever closer and closer together, until, at last, only a narrow passage remains in the middle of the river, a passage through which hundreds of steamers shoot by one another; all this is so vast, so impressive, that a man cannot collect himself, but is lost in the marvel of England’s greatness before he sets foot upon English soil.

But the sacrifices which all this has cost become apparent later. After roaming the streets of the capital a day or two, making headway with difficulty through the human turmoil and the endless lines of vehicles, after visiting the slums of the metropolis, one realises for the first time that these Londoners have been forced to sacrifice the best qualities of their human nature, to bring to pass all the marvels of civilisation which crowd their city; that a hundred powers which slumbered within them have remained p. 24inactive, have been suppressed in order that a few might be developed more fully and multiply through union with those of others. The very turmoil of the streets has something repulsive, something against which human nature rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all classes and ranks crowding past each other, are they not all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest in being happy? And have they not, in the end, to seek happiness in the same way, by the same means? And still they crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is the tacit one, that each keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to delay the opposing streams of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellant and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together, within a limited space. And, however much one may be aware that this isolation of the individual, this narrow self-seeking is the fundamental principle of our society everywhere, it is nowhere so shamelessly barefaced, so self-conscious as just here in the crowding of the great city. The dissolution of mankind into monads, of which each one has a separate principle, the world of atoms, is here carried out to its utmost extreme.

Final Year Frustrations

2010-03-15T14:03:00.002Z

So, after five months of project work, I can no longer avoid the inevitability of having to write an actual report, trying to explain what it is I've been doing for the last while and why I deserve to be given forty credits for this. (To be honest I can't really imagine why anyone would wish to give me anything for my work but I don't think that's really what they want to hear.) Somehow five years of studying physics just hasn't properly prepared me for writing large pieces of coherent prose. The thing is, I've been come far too lazy and complacent with this. I haven't written an essay since I took french lit back in first year. I want to write everything in beautiful equations, not these clumsy ill-defined words that come in no exact order and can never fully convey what I want to say. Language can be so powerful in communicating high ideas and concepts, and yet so completely inadequate when place in the hands of a novice.

What weather like yesterday's always makes me think of

2009-11-23T16:59:00.001Z

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.


-- Ted Hughes

Wow!!!

2009-10-27T14:40:00.000Z

What I want to try in Glasgow!

2009-10-14T11:22:00.000+01:00

2009-09-28T14:39:00.002+01:00

So yesterday, whilst sat in church, my mind started to wander a little. Normally when this happens it means pointlessly thinking over everything to come in the week ahead, or wondering where my lunch is going to be coming from, or sometimes even thinking up grand plans to save the world with one simple twelve month gap year program. On this occasion however, whilst I was drifting somewhat from the sermon, it was still related. See, the sermon was about Lot and his fleeing from Sodom. Basically, Lot has gotten himself into a real mess here. Not only has he found himself living in a pretty evil place but it seems to have messed him up pretty badly too. It seems that the usual way of treating a passage like this is to focus on all the mistakes Lot makes and use him as an example of what not to do. Whist it's incredibly important to learn from the mistakes of others, I kind of feel that's only giving half the story.

See, Lot did mess up pretty bad - he offered to let the men of Sodom rape both his daughters for starters! - yet God never turned his back on him. In fact God's angels physically drag him out of harms way and later rescue him and his family from the destruction of Sodom. The apostle Peter even goes on to call Lot righteous. That's a curious response if you only see Lot as a sinner who's made mistake after mistake.

Looking through the bible as a whole, a pattern seems to emerge. Time after time, people screw up and sin big time, but God is always able to forgive them and restore them. Abraham went on to be the 'father of many nations' despite turning his back on God numerous times; David was described as being a man after God's own heart even after being a murder and adulterer; Peter repeatedly denies even knowing Jesus but is made the head of the church just weeks later. It seems it is important to remember that although we are fallen beings and mess up lots, God can in an instant pick us up and put us back on track again if only we let Him. No matter how great our sin is, the forgiveness and patience of the creator of the universe is always greater. That's pretty amazing!

An exercise in triviality

2009-05-01T11:22:00.002+01:00

In case anyone still thought that physicists play an important role in society, here's an example of the sort of exam question I'll be trying to answer in a couple hours time:

If the law were changed so that traffic in Great Britain travelled on the right-hand side of the road instead of the left, would the length of the day increase, decrease or be unaltered? Explain the reasoning behind your answer.

{10}

The Narnia Code

2009-04-17T12:01:00.001+01:00

Just something that was on BBC One last night and is really worth watching if you're at all interested in C.S. Lewis.

Uncertainty...

2009-03-27T17:18:00.002Z

Uncertainty is a strange thing. It's one of those things that just seem to, well, define life - at least in my experience anyway. So you'd think I'd be pretty used to it by now. Yet for some reason it just overwhelms me every time. Right now the two big things are those that more or less characterise the student experience at this time of year, well apart from exams - finding a place to live and something to do with my summer that earns me some money. It doesn't matter that I've been here before. This is my fifth year of university and it's always roughly worked out. It doesn't even seem to matter that we have a God who promises to take care of us and for whom any problems I can see must surely be no match. But it should.

King Knut

2009-01-20T14:06:00.004Z

There is an old English story about a Norse king called Knut. One day he told his entire court to follow him down the beach where he ordered the tide to halt. Obviously the sea didn't obey but that was the point. Knut was concerned that his subjects held him in such high regard that they had forgotten he was just a man.

The reason for bringing this up is that Barack Obama's inauguration is today. Judging by the story told in the British media at least, it would appear that this is the most significant event to happen anywhere for decades. The BBC alone has four TV channels and three radio stations covering the event live! Whilst he is a great politician with a lot of good ideas, one would be led to believe that within the next four years he will solve all the world's major problems and leave us living in some sort of harmony that has evaded us thus far. Perhaps it is time for Obama to do something similar to old King Knut.

The story of Knut ends with him telling his people:
'Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.'

My question of the week

2008-12-11T11:55:00.002Z

The last couple of weeks, whilst sat on library level 10, my mind has been wandering somewhat. Maybe it's a sign that physics really isn't as fascinating as my younger self believed it to be. Maybe it's just the effects of the over enthusiastic heating system getting to me. Whatever its cause, it has given rise to many difficult and not easily solvable question, thus providing even more distraction. My most recent and unsolved conundrum is this:

Does the human mind have an inexhaustible capacity for learning things or is there a point at which for ever new thing learnt something is forgotten?

As a student who's currently devoting a large portion of his life to learning all there is to know about physics, this is a concern. For instance, supposing time is not a constraint, is it possible to know everything or should I be prioritising things? If I do somehow manage to understand general relativity, will I simultaneously forget everything I know about french grammar? If anyone knows the answer to this I would love to hear it.

A post for the sake of a post

2008-12-09T11:46:00.004Z

A friend was asking me a while back why I don't blog more. To be honest I'm not really sure. I really enjoy writing but it usually has to be inspired by something and that hasn't been happening so much lately. I think it depends some on how far in to term I am. There's usually a very productive spot around three to six weeks in. Then I hit a prolonged writers block. Or else I have ideas for posts but no time to write them. This has happened several times recently. When I do finally get time I've usually forgotten most of what I was planning to write. So anyway, because this is obviously not one of those 'inspired' times, I figured I'd just throw down a few recent discoveries...

sometimes there is very little difference between first class and standard. Heading home first class all the way to York for just £24! National Express is actually amazing :)
23 is really little different to 22 despite what everyone tells you
watching Scottish sport means having to be happy with the little things, such as the fact that they scored a try at all
shopping in December is not a good idea. Downtown Glasgow is so busy right now.
getting something newer isn't always progress. The library just got hundreds of new computers which seem to spend most of their time randomly crashing.

Rememberance Day

2008-11-11T09:57:00.001Z

'The past is never dead. It's not even past' -- William Faulkner

Lost for direction

2008-10-25T15:52:00.002+01:00

I guess my priorities can typically be quite varied and easily distracted. I frequently change my mind about what I want to achieve in life and often in this confusion make no actual progress in any direction. Seems like there's a constant bombardment of different ideas. Perhaps my priority right now should be studying to get a good degree, and then a well paying job. Maybe I should be thinking more about reviving my consistently low bank balance right now. And how should I be spending my free time? Then there's what kind of a 'career' I should go for. Something well paying, or something I enjoy. Maybe I should forgo the whole job idea completely and become a missionary. And how much should I prioritise people anyway? The natural urge is to keep everyone at arms length to somehow 'protect' myself. But how can that be a good idea when there's so much suffering in this world. Five minutes wandering around the centre of Glasgow will typically reveal tens of beggars, maybe some sick person awaiting an ambulance, and thousands and thousands of strangers all with their own unique problems.
Maybe this sounds a bit strange but that's the kind of stuff I struggle with. Just how can I balance all these priorities? Well that's where this suddenly started to make sense last week. I don't think it really matters what we're doing as long as our sole priorities are to love God and love the people of this world. That's definitely not going to be easy, in fact Jesus warned it could cost us everything, but it certainly is simple. And how awesome would the world be if we actually all tried to do that. I think there would be a lot less suffering if we were able to truly love each other for starters. I'm going to try to make that my priority from now on anyway.

2008-10-15T17:09:00.004+01:00

So Glasgow's now one of the top 10 cities in the world! Who'd have thought that would be possible?

If I had $1 000 000

2008-10-11T19:11:00.000+01:00

The reversible christmas tree from John Lewis

2008-10-06T13:22:00.000+01:00

2008-09-18T15:08:00.002+01:00

Well the new term has arrived and has brought with it its usual overwhelming influx of new students. We're finally coming to the end of Freshers' Week which for anyone not knowledgeable of the British university calender means a week of mayhem where every club and society tries to outdo the others with events and sign up the most members. This year I've been involved with the international students' welcome program running parallel to this. Whilst this has been an amazing chance to meet all sorts of crazy people, the sheer scale of it creates an unfortunate problem. I've already started having people stop me in the street and engage in a conversation that reveals a startling knowledge of me. On the vast majority of such occasions I've had little or no idea of who any of these people have been. Therefore, if you are one of the many people unfortunate enough to have only just met me, I'd like to apologise for the somewhat confused expression and the tactful avoidance of saying anything that could reveal that I actually have no idea who you are. I really am sorry!

2008-09-16T21:05:00.002+01:00

It seems that the whole science v. Christianity debate has kicked off again. I've never really understood why they always seem to be in conflict. Do they really have to be mutually exclusive? I've always understood science to describe our universe (how can a system that explains one law simply by invoking another law ever explain the existence of those laws?) whist Christianity's teaching provides the answer to the question of why. I don't know if anyone actually reads these ramblings, but if you do happen to stumble across this page, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

an open-ended letter to the cynical powers of our world

2008-09-16T19:48:00.003+01:00

In 1989 the historian Francis Fukuyama speculated that the end of the cold war may in fact represent the end of history. Unfortunately, the 'history' to which he referred has never really ended and has been almost as constant as humanity's existence. Ever since our second generation, we've turned against one another and war has been an almost constant theme. Nearly everyone will say that they hope for a world of peace yet we come up with more and more inventive ways to argue that our war is just. We seem to believe that after we achieve our 'victory', we can live in peace. Yet this story has been playing out for millennia and we've still to reach the end. Our recent history is full of examples where the opposite has happened; where violence has only begotten more violence. An example would be where we spent years arming Iraq to fight a proxy war for us against Iran. When this immediate victory was reached however, the Saddam simply kept going with his big new military leading to two gulf wars. Every army that goes to war believes that only its victory will bring peace and this seems to be part of the problem. Al-Qaeda attacks the west believing this will lead to us withdrawing from the middle-east and a new peace will come to the region. The west then does the opposite and invades two Islamic countries believing that this is what will create a peace. We've created a perpetual motion machine of sorts and our leaders appear to be convinced by the idea that violence can stop violence. This week Sarah Palin said in an interview that 'I hate war and I want to see war ended. We end war when we see victory,' yet this 'victory' will never come about by that route. The really unfortunate thing is that she hit upon the real solution in the very same answer when she said 'let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side'. Whilst I doubt she fully grasped the weight of this statement, it seems to provide the kind of upside down, counter-intuitive solution the world is desperately in need of. Since she professes to be christian, we can assume the God she speaks of is the God of the bible, in which case it seems to be fairly clear from Jesus' teaching what God's side is. It was Him who taught us to love our enemies (not the easiest thing to do whilst bombing them from 30,000 feet) and declared 'blessed are the peacemakers'. He managed to reduce the entire problem to the truth that 'he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword'. Bizarrely we try to teach kids this very message in order to end gang violence in our cities, whilst at the same time our nation is carrying out violence on a massive scale. How can we understand the truth on one level but dismiss it entirely on a different level? Everyone says that they want war to end one day, but no body's prepared to make today that day.

Not every cloud has a silver lining

2008-05-07T21:49:00.004+01:00

Last August I watched (and grumbled) as the TV show Extreme Home Makeover built a house in less than a week for a family from Camden. Although at a cost of around $5 million it seemed like a ridiculous use of resources, even I had to admit that it was pretty amazing for a poor inner city family to be given a free house. Nearly a year later it turns out that there are some fairly major hidden difficulties attached to this. Apparently it never occurred to anyone at ABC that a family who can't afford the bills for a small rundown townhouse can't possibly afford to pay for the higher bills and taxes of a much bigger house.

Rob Bell clearly explaining what I've been struggling to explain and even understand (you need to watch both videos)

2008-04-21T21:24:00.004+01:00

2008-04-17T15:10:00.003+01:00

I wonder what it is about human nature that makes us always want what we can't have. I just spent a moment or two getting all frustrated with a friend because she wouldn't let me read something she was writing until it was finished. Pretty dumb of me, especially considering I only had to wait ten minutes! Anyway, got me thinking a little about Adam, Eve and the tree of knowledge. However you interpret this story, you've got to admit that they wanted that fruit pretty badly. Yet as soon as they got it they realised that it really wasn't what they wanted after all, and they and the rest of us have considered it a bad move ever since. If they'd only listened to what God had made painfully obvious to them, they'd have gotten so much more through eternal life and a perfect relationship with Him. This parallels so closely my own life. Most of the time I set my sights on something that is wrong for me and that if I'm truly honest I might not actually want at all. Yet God has a different plan for me that meets all my needs as well as those of others. I've spent much of the last two years thinking about this and while I think I can say I know what it is about (connaitre), I am still far from being able to understand it and live it out (savoir).

Happiness is a choice (but jazz helps!)

2008-04-15T10:55:00.002+01:00

A short-term memory for sporting politics

2008-04-08T17:14:00.004+01:00

Seem like the Olympic torch relay has been in the news a lot lately. Along with all the protests have been numerous defences with people describing it as a symbol of peace and bringing people together. Apparently nobody actually remembers why it was introduced to the Olympics in the first place. Evidently there was no Olympic flame in the modern Olympics until the 1936 Berlin games when the Nazis introduced as a propaganda tool. It fit perfectly into the myth of the Ancient Greeks being the first Aryan empire with Germany of coarse being their natural successors. The massive crowds turning out along the route of the relay through south-eastern Europe were even used to 'demonstrate' local support for the expansionist policies of the Nazis. This was a symbol of division and racial superiority. Bizarre that it's become a symbol of peace.

The result of two and a half months work - the Galaxy

2008-03-26T13:28:00.002Z

This is the end result of my third year astronomy lab. The idea was to use a small radio telescope to scan the sky for radio emission from hydrogen - by far the most abundant element in the Galaxy. When these scan were completed they could all be slotted together - not an easy process - to form a map of the Galaxy. The big hole is where the Earth got in the way, blocking out the entire southern hemisphere, not our own failings!

Who says there's no intelligent design?!

2008-02-25T15:15:00.003Z

2008-02-04T12:08:00.000Z

I was just thinking about this and wondering why it is that we seem to find this so difficult. As a whole, humanity seems to be very good at pointing out eachother's failings, however when it comes to our successes, we rarely mention them. Whilst it is important that we know when we get things wrong, if knowone ever tells us when we get things right then we're naturally going to focus on our failings and become demoralised. Someone once told me that they felt threatened by me and so wanted to knock me down when they could. I wonder if we all have this inside of us, that we're too affraid of others to do anything that would build them up.

Britain's Atlantis

2008-01-23T23:17:00.000Z

Just found this whilst wasting time on the Internet. Crazy what sort of things could have been but never were and places that once were but are now almost completely forgotten.

oh no!

2008-01-16T11:39:00.001Z

'Facebook has been asked to remove the Scrabulous game from its website by the makers of Scrabble.' - story

Help I'm falling in love with astronomy!

2008-01-14T13:33:00.000Z

Jupiter-Io montage

A close up of Io - you can see Prometheus erupting on the left!

Aurora on Io

2008-01-08T21:08:00.000Z

I feel I need to clarify a few things about my last post, not because there was anything wrong in it but because various people have questioned how The Golden Compass could have made it all the way to my number 2 slot. Basically, I seem to have seen none of the movies that everyone else has. 2007 was not the best year for cinema going. With this in mind I've produced the following...

1- The Bourne Ultimatum
2- The Golden Compass
3- The Science of Sleep (a very close third)
4- The Departed (if only because I'd already seen it twice in 2006 and the french subtitles were obscuring half the screen)
5-Shoot 'em up
6- Atonement
7- Spiderman 3 (a huge disappointment)

2007-12-11T16:22:00.000Z

Today was the day that was going to fix everything. Ever have one of those? I have lots! I had it all planned out perfectly, even down to precisely what notes I would be making and how much of my stellar structures and evolution coarse I'd be able to revise. It started out relatively well. I managed to get to the library reasonably early and spent my first hour hard at work studying. Then I got restless. And I don't mean the kind of restless that means 'I'm hungry, it's time for lunch'. I've spent most of the last four hours bouncing between my desk on level 11 and the computers on level 3 in a distinctly yo yo fashion. Seriously, they could change my day into a tutorial problem on simple harmonic motion for one of Dave's first year physics classes. (Simple harmonic motion by the way, being neither simple nor in harmony with the general happiness of any physicist!) Well guess there's always tomorrow to hope for...

In other ME related news, saw what's probably the second greatest movie of the year last night. (It would have been first but who can really compete with Jason Bourne's global trail of destruction?) The Golden Compass is all about this parallel world where peoples' souls live outside of them as small animal like creatures called 'daemons' and everything has a strange Georg en/Victorian/1920s look to it. Without giving away everything, it basically follows the story of a girl called Lyra Belacqua as she travels across the Arctic whilst being pursued by the world controlling Magisterium. Maybe this is why I'm feeling so restless stuck in the library today. Anyone want to come to Bolvangar?

An attempt to educate the masses

2007-12-07T13:49:00.000Z

Layla - Eric Clapton (seems a lot of folk genuinly don't know who this guy is :( )

2007-11-20T10:23:00.000Z

The idea of the separation of church and state appeared in the news again this week. In an admittedly fairly minor story, a school took the word 'Lord' out of grace after the complaints of an atheist parent. OK, so this story barely made it onto the BBC Scotland news page but it does represent a much larger argument over the role of religion in society. The phrase 'separation of church and state' is frequently used to demand that God stay out of politics and education. Here in the UK it is almost impossible for a christian politician to be open about their faith. When Tony Blair was once asked about is own beliefs, his press secretary quickly jumped in with the response 'We don't do God'. Yet I wonder if maybe we've understood this separation to be the wrong way around. What if it was always intended to protect the church from the state?

While the concept of separation has been around for centuries, the actual phrase 'separation of church and state' is credited to Thomas Jefferson, principle drafter of the US Constitution, who is quoted as saying:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

You don't have to look far to find the problems of government becoming too involved in religion. Throughout much of the world it is illegal to preach the gospel and converts can be punished severely. Even here in the UK we have an established church, whether it be Anglican in England or Presbyterian in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which operates as a branch of government. How is it right for bishops to be appointed by a potentially non-Christian Prime Minister? To many it has become even more blurred, with being British almost equating being Christian. How often do we hear the phrase 'a Christian country'? Around 70% of the population call themselves Christians and yet only 40% actually believe in any God. Too often also, we define Christianity as a western thing. We reduce God to being a tribal deity and go to war with others in his name. How many of our churches have flags in them?! That isn't just an issue in the US, the vast majority of rural English churches will be flying a flag of St. George outside. We can't pray for God's kingdom to come and at the same time serve another earthly kingdom. That's called treason. We are called to be in this world but not of it.

To bring this back to my original argument, I don't believe it is possible to take God out of politics. A christian should ask for God's guidence in whatever area he works. But I do believe it is important to keep worldly powers out of religion.

One of life's mysteries

2007-10-29T19:23:00.001Z

Why is this the most viewed picture on my flickr account? It's had 53 views compared to just 29 for the runner up. Is there something I'm missing?

2007-10-17T11:00:00.000+01:00

One of those great questions that continuously arises for me is how I've lived in the UK for sixteen years and yet everyone around me seems to be so unaware of this. In the last two days I've had a professor ask me what part of California I'm from and a doctor's receptionist enquire as to if I'd ever lived in the UK before! I wish I could say there was something unusual about that but it happens all the time.

(Ironically this picture's from a Daily Mail article about immigration. Kind of sad really!)

Why are so many parts of the world affraid of their own people?

2007-09-27T12:41:00.000+01:00

Burmese troops arriving in Rangoon today (taken from The Times)

Thoughts on returning to normality

2007-09-26T16:22:00.000+01:00

How do you hold on to a way of thinking when the conditions that gave birth to that thinking are long gone? This is something that I've struggled with in the month and a half since I left Camden. It's really amazing how much the things around us, including everything from the people and events right down to even the very neighbourhood, can influence who we are. If anyone was ever bored enough to follow me around with a camera for a day, they'd probably find that I go through enough small personality changes to qualify as a borderline case of multiple personality disorder. This is further influenced by the various prejudices and 'experiences' we build up over time. These can serve a very important purpose in terms of protecting us from potential danger. For instance, I know that a dark back alley is possibly not the best way home at eleven thirty at night. But it is such a fine line between using prejudices in a beneficial way and being over reliant on them to the exclusion of other very reasonable possibilities. It is so easy to immediately dismiss anyone resembling a Ned or ignore a homeless person since they're obviously horrible drug addicts who are way beyond any hope. However, spending two months in the US meant I had none of that accumulated baggage and instead had to rely much more on actual reason. This is what I think people mean when they say that travel opens your mind. It's so much easier to engage with people and see them as human when you aren't able to categorize them. So I learnt that poverty is rarely a self inflicted condition and that often people resort to crime because they genuinely have little other choice (as is the case with so many people selling drugs just to pay the bills). Turns out teenagers aren't all young hooligans who beat up old grannies like the Daily Mail tries to tell us either. It also caused me to question much deeper things like nationalism. Why do we spend so much time focusing on tiny differences, both real and perceived, when we have so much in common? For some reason we have this in built desire to exclude others and write off anyone we see as being different. And why is it that I have such a negative reaction to the sight of a US military helicopter but a British fighter plane flying over my house is 'pretty cool'. Do they both not exist for the sole purpose of killing others - an idea that I despise, or at least want to despise. So the question remains, how do I remain consistent with my beliefs and attitudes instead of falling back to the small minded and prejudiced person I'd prefer to leave behind?

2007-09-17T12:45:00.000+01:00

I learnt this week why you should always look over proofs before getting something printed. I now possess fifty t-shirts all printed with the web address gugu.co.uk instead of the intended gucu.co.uk. Fortunately, whilst being a totally unrelated website, it could have been a lot worse. Oops!

2007-09-02T16:41:00.000+01:00

A strange kind of liberation.

An attempt to be more positive

2007-08-06T22:48:00.001+01:00

OK so I guess my posts haven't been too positive lately have they? I feel like there's a huge swingometer with negative on one side and positive on the other and right now I'm way over on the negative side. So in attempt to move back to the centre I'm going to try and write about some of the good things happening aroung here...
For the last few years I guess UrbanPromise have been struggling a lot for money. As an example, they had to seriously cut back around 2000 from nine camps to just six and their Streetleader program was more than halved. Then this February a show called 20/20 aired on ABC in which they followed three kids for a year and tried to portray Camden life. OK so for anyone who knows Camden it can be really easy to get wound up by the negative bias of the show but it has had a big impact. Easily a third of the interns here came after seeing it and there are more work groups and doners than there have been for years. But wait, that's not all...
As a result of 20/20, one of the kids' families was nominated to feature on Home Makeover. So for the last week Urban's main site has been taken over by hundreds of volunteers and camera crews all working to turn an empty lot into a new house for them. Alright so it was a real pain having all these people getting in the way (not to mention the dozens of cops running security), and it's really easy to wonder how much else could have been done with their $5 million budget, but at the same time it was really amazing to see the place so totally transformed in just a week. As a nice little bonus, they totally refurbished one of Urban's buildings as a side project - all caught on camera of coarse.

2007-07-23T02:38:00.000+01:00

I'm honestly not really so sure how this is going to come out. Basically right now I'm finding it really hard to see any hope of this world ever turning round. Ya there are a lot of really amazing people doing some incredible things but it just doesn't seem like enough. Everywhere there seems to be so much that's not how it was intended to be. Just taking Camden, this is a place where 12 year old kids are getting shot up with AK-47s and every night we drive home past people going through the trash for food. Yet five miles away are wealthy people with big houses and swimming pools who are totally oblivious to it all. Albert, my camps director, will tell you all about how when he was growing up other schools would forfeit basketball games just so they wouldn't have to come to Camden. When i was in Philly yesterday I must have seen over fifty homeless folk. Hundreds of people were just walking past and ignoring then. Honestly I've spent most of my life doing exactly the same thing but yesterday, for some reason I stopped to talk to some of them. OK so they probably just spend any money I give them on drink but am I really going to be any better than that? I spend so much on useless junk.
Last Saturday was a bit of a weird experience. We went to New York City for the first of two times this week. At one point when we were heading down to Battery Park we passed by ground zero. Turns out I actually can't look at that without seeing all the crap that's we've done as a result. Around 2000 people died on that one day and yet in an effort to fix things we kill at least that many every single month in Iraq.
Then i walk into church this evening and, as is the way with this country, the first thing I see is the US flag at the front. When did God become American?! At some point the church has lost its way and seems to be one of the strongest advocates for war in this world.
All I keep seeing is Jesus looking down on Jerusalem and out of great despair saying something along the lines of 'if only you knew what would make you happy'. We're absolutely no different from how we were then. Seems like we need a Messiah as much now as we ever have.

The things we miss when we're not paying attention

2007-07-19T20:05:00.000+01:00

This is what went down in New York City last night. For anyone who didn't hear, a gas pipe in Grand Central Station exploded at around six o'clock. We we're about four blocks north of all this when it happened but didn't know anything about it until a few hours later when we started getting panicked phone calls from folk back in Camden. It's crazy what can be happening right next to you when you're not paying attention!

My City Of Ruins (says it better than I can)

2007-07-14T13:04:00.000+01:00

Theres a blood red circle
On the cold dark ground
And the rain is falling down
The church doors blown open
I can hear the organs song
But the congregations gone

My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Now the sweet veils of mercy
Drift through the evening trees
Young men on the corner
Like scattered leaves
The boarded up windows
The hustlers and thieves
While my brothers down on his knees

My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Come on rise up!
Come on rise up!
Now theres tears on the pillow
Darling where we slept
And you took my heart when you left
Without your sweet kiss
My soul is lost, my friend
Now tell me how do I begin again?

My citys in ruins
My citys in ruins

Now with these hands
I pray lord
With these hands
For the strength lord
With these hands
For the faith lord
With these hands
I pray lord
With these hands
For the strength lord
With these hands
For the faith lord
With these hands
Come on rise up!
Come on rise up!
Rise up

--Bruce Springsteen

2007-07-11T01:34:00.000+01:00

Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay.
Money, its a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think Ill buy me a football team.

One of the things I've really notice since I came here is just how possessive people get over money and yet just how necessary it is to the functioning of our society. This is most pronounced when it comes to taxes (yawn... I'll try not to make this too boring). In the state of New Jersey most public services (roads, parks, police, education etc.) are funded by local property taxes. This works amazingly well for wealthy cities but screws Camden. Here 90% of the population rent and so pay no tax at all, and of the rest, they are all so poor that they can hardly contribute at all. This has the effect of trapping people as schools are chronically under funded. It also creates a serious drugs problem, as for many, drug dealing is the only way to pay the bills (almost every block seems to have a drug set). In an effort to raise funds, the city must effectively prostitute itself to anyone willing to invest. This has created two state prisons on prime real estate and a huge sewage plant that causes major health problems. (Urban Promise used to house interns in South Camden but that had to stop because to many were getting sick from the bad air emitted by the sewage plant. The EPA now publishes brochures on it as an example of what never to do.) This all seems insane when Camden County is one of the wealthiest in the US (contrasting with the city itself which is one of the poorest).
It really hit me just how unwilling to share people this week. Pennsylvania had a budget crisis which led to all 'unnecessary' service, including pools, being closed. That's a big problem when you want to take thirty kids swimming! They've reopened now but for three days people were calling pools all over trying to get us in. We actually have country clubs with huge pools that will invite staff for dinner but won't take the kids for a couple hours of swimming! As Tony Campolo said to us on Sunday, most Christians are only willing to be Christian up to a point - and that point is never the cross.
End of rant.

My first foreign post

2007-07-05T00:15:00.000+01:00

OK so guess I've not blogged anything for a while. Heading over to Phillie for the fourth of July fireworks in a minute so going to have to keep this brief. Therefore I feel it would only be appropriate to break the last couple weeks down into bullet points:

Eventually arrived after two trains, a mega bus, one transatlantic bus and I stay in Gatwick in Camden NJ
Spent most of last week eating amazing food courtesy of one of our work groups
Taken many a wrong turn sometimes leading us to other states - oops!
Moved into an amazing downtown row house with ELEVEN other people
Learnt kickball and softball
Started camp this week. We have around 25 kids so far but should pick up a bit next week. These kids are amazing but some of them have some pretty rough stories. A lot have parents in jail for drug dealing and stuff and most have actually never seen the ocean even though it's just an hour away. Crazy!
Went to Ocean City on Sunday and got sun burnt so bad on the beach :( My backs all covered in blisters now. Yuck!
Just generally been amazed at all the amazing stuff God's doing through the folk here. Talk to anyone from outside Camden and the general consensus is that the city should be bulldozed. It's a place that everyone else seems to have given up on and abandoned but there's a few really awesome church groups really giving it everything they have and seriously changing lives. One of the most amazing people I've met is my camp's director Albert. He started coming to camp when he was six and was one of the few Camden kids to graduate. A lot of his friends got all messed up with drugs or are in jail for murder and stuff proving that these guys really do change lives. Now he's back with Urban Promise and working full time here. Doesn't get any cooler than that!

2007-06-25T22:40:00.000+01:00

One of the most interesting things about travel (as in the actual process of going somewhere, not the destination) I find, is how little things you may never have otherwise noticed suddenly take on great importance. Take airports for instance. At Easter I spent an uncomfortable night in terminal one of Paris Charles de Gaulle. For anyone who doesn't know the airport, arriving at an empty train station at eleven at night can be a trying experience. It took at least twenty minutes of enquiring in broken french before I somehow found myself on a hotel courtesy bus that agreed to take me to the terminal. That wasn't all though. On arrival at the terminal, I found the place pretty much closed down, not to open again till six the next morning. In addition, the whole building has the form of a giant donut. Whilst I'm sure this is fine for the standard three hour visit, after twelve hours it begins to take on the many qualities of a bad dream. Imagine being able to walk in circles for hours without ever seeing any signs of escape! Just as a finishing touch, they even design their seats specifically to stop people sleeping on them.
Gatwick on the other hand seems to be an entirely different kind of airport. When I arrived an hour ago I found the place reasonably inhabited by this planet's inhabitants and containing a good supply of consumer outlets - some of which are open 24 hours! The layout, whilst simple enough to find one's way around, is also random enough to be interesting without creating any circular nightmares. I've even found a nice couch to sleep on courtesy of Costa. This promises to be a rather enjoyable evening! Bon nuit!

Of summer plans

2007-06-25T11:06:00.000+01:00

Good morning. Just finished packing and all ready to head off to the States. I'm heading off to Camden, New Jersey for seven weeks to work with an organisation called UrbanPromise. Basically this is one of the poorest cities in the US and has all the associated crime problems to go with it. I'll be helping with summer camps for kids around 10-12 years old. If you're into praying, it'd be great if you could just pray that it all goes well. I'm feeling a bit apprehensive right now and unsure of what I'm getting myself into. I'm spending the night in Gatwick Airport so hoping I'm not too tired when I arrive. Last time I tried a night in an airport I just about managed two hours sleep. Also, please pray for UrbanPromise and that they can really make a difference in this city.

And you thought you were having a bad day!

2007-06-24T01:47:00.000+01:00

There's always someone worse off.

Just wondering

2007-05-19T10:52:00.000+01:00

Do different people have varying amounts of knowledge or does everyone have the same amount but of varying usefulness?

Also, if gavitational mass can be defined by the equation

F=GmM/(r^2)

where it is effectively a gravitational charge, is it possible to have a negative mass just like you can have a neqative electric charge?

Finally, will there ever be a time when the world has created all it can and has no new ideas? How do we know we've not already reached this point?

Introduction to Blogging 101

2007-05-17T14:03:00.000+01:00

Important lesson for anyone out there thinking of blogging - NEVER mess with your HTML unless you're absolutely sure you know what you're doing. On foolish click left me spending the last half hour trying to reconstruct me blog. Oops!

A new speed record!

2007-05-15T19:40:00.001+01:00

I just got a disclosure back today and it's only been one week since I sent it. That's got to be about the fastest the civil service have ever managed to do anything! I'm impressed!

On the absurdity of modern travel

2007-04-28T17:32:00.000+01:00

I've just spent the last day or two looking around for reasonable airfares to New Jersey and have come to the conclusion that most airlines are actually mad. It turns out that to get from London to Philadelphia, it is actually £100 pounds cheaper to fly via Dallas. That's an extra 2800 miles! I think I'm starting to understand why environmentalists show such disdain for air travel. Of coarse I'm going to take it, I can't afford the other option for one. Besides, I've never been to Texas and wouldn't like to miss the chance to spend an extra few hours in the state that gave us Willie Nelson and George W. I'm just not sure yet how to tell my conscience.

On a slightly related note, I've finally gotten most of my photos from Easter sorted. For anyone who doesn't know, I spent two weeks of the Easter break in two amazing countries (France and Morocco).

To Clear Things Up A Bit...

2007-04-24T10:37:00.000+01:00

Over the years, I've encountered much confusion over the origin of my email address. I'm feeling far to lazy to actually try to explain anything right now. However, I will refer the reader to here, and here, and here, and here, and...

p.s. due to a weird temporal anomaly occurring only deep with in the Kelvin building, this post was actually written at 5:38pm on December 8th, 1964. However, blogger still hasn't figured that one out yet. You'll understand I'm sure!

The onward expansion of human rights

2007-04-11T13:59:00.000+01:00

It would seem that there is a growing movement throughout the world to give apes the same basic rights as we give humans. One recent case is that of a British woman, living in Austria, who is attempting to legally adopt a chimpanzee called Hiasl. It is argued by many (such as The Great Ape Project), that as chimpanzees share over 99% of their DNA with humans (as opposed to the meager 70% of the fruit fly) they should be considered persons.

To find out what this actually means, I decided to turn to the most commonly accepted definition of Human Rights - the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

For starters, it would seem that all humans are guaranteed the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This intrigues me somewhat. Do apes have opinions? I can't say I've ever read an editorial by an orangutang. Perhaps the reason for this is that they're currently denied this right and are much more law abiding than the rest of us. If you're an ape reading this, I'd love to hear your view.

Another pillar is 'the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives'. This would seem to mean the right to vote and stand for election. An interesting concept. Given the struggle we humans have in carrying this out properly (Jean-Marie Le Pen's currently polling 13.5 % - that's around 6 million voters!), can a species of completely uneducated monkeys really do any better?

Finally, before I get too carried away with this, we come to the right to employment. This is one that might actually be a good idea. In economic terms, it's probably much cheaper to employ a cheap monkey labour force (assuming they don't want minimum wage) than to carry on hiring over qualified (I use the term loosely) humans. Just imagine, you could have your very own chimpanzee butler, just like in George of the Jungle (remember that movie? Was great when I was ten!).

Happy Commonwealth Day! (bet you didn't know that was today!)

2007-03-12T15:10:00.000Z

Feeling nostalgic

2007-03-01T16:07:00.000Z

I'm not all that sure why (to be honest, am I ever?) but I've been feeling quite nostalgic this week. Maybe it's all the work I've got on at the moment that's making me miss earier times. Anyway, this afternoon I've found myself listening to some of Clive's music I found on the web (check it out, it's pretty good) and looking at old photos from Russia. Yesterday it was Alberta and all great things North American. Who knows what it'll be tomorrow! Anyway, here's a few highlights from my sentimental wanderings of the last few days...

A missed opportunity

2007-02-20T10:04:00.000Z

Well I was going to blog about how amazingly beautiful Scotland (as in everywhere outside of Glasgow) is right now but I see I've been beaten to it by this individual who even included photos (more than you'd have gotten from me). Think I'm going to go sulk now.

Law and Order: Special Letters Unit

2007-02-13T17:31:00.000Z

Check this out!

Home

2007-02-13T10:40:00.000Z

I forgot just how much I love being home. For anyone who doesn't know, I come from this wonderful little town called Boroughbridge (not the most interesting of links I'm afraid). It's an amazing place where you can step outside without immediately being choked by the pollution, or take aimless walks through fields of smelly cows. Then there's the small but yet very significant detail that I can watch England play without wondering if I'll make it outside alive (did I mention we won?! Twice!). And of coarse there's always the amazingness of being able to see all the folks that I've not seen since Christmas. Somehow, I think it also makes me appreciate Glasgow, just that little bit more, when I get back. There's nothing quite like getting back and seeing everyone that you've missed while you've been gone. Almost a double homecoming in one trip. Wow! I like home!

It's all over!

2007-01-20T11:14:00.000Z

Much as I love exam time, I guess it can't last forever. Just had my last exam and don't really know what to do with myself now. How does one do with free time when one has no studying to do? I think maybe I once knew an answer to this but can't really remember.

Why?

2007-01-05T19:42:00.000Z

Thief steals urinal from city pub
Swedish city strives to safeguard straw goat
Boy arrested for playing with Christmas present
Prisoner slips out of Norwegian jail after smearing himself with vegetable oil
Boy gets stuck inside vending machine
New York City cabs dressed up as cattle to promote bull riding event

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T10:13:00.000Z

It finally happened

2006-12-11T18:58:00.000Z

Physics is taking over my life! Right now I'm sat on level five of the library, at seven o'clock, trying to right a paper on hadrons whilst wondering what event somewhere in my past led to my being here (as opposed to at home) and worrying that I won't include enough references (apparently they take plagiarism quite seriously). For those of you who don't know (how could you not?) hadrons are very very small particles that are very very important to the world around us - or so I'm told. To be honest I'm not too sure what can be so exiting about something that is 1000000000000 times smaller than a flea but it's a multi billion dollar industry so what do I know. Anyway, back to my paper. Only another 1500 words to write...

Never enough time

2006-10-30T11:33:00.000Z

Seems like I am always hearing people grumbling about not having enough time. 'If only I had another hour in the day...' is a pretty common thing to hear. Well for one day only (last Sunday to be precise) we actually DO have an sixty minutes. This is the only twenty five hour day of the year. It would seem that this would be a great opportunity for folk to catch up on the various activities that they've been putting off all year because they just don't have enough time.

Well, wishing to investigate further I've been conducting my own survey of how people spent this free time. I was quite alarmed to discover that it's many possibilities had been lost on most folk who spent it lying unconscious in bed whilst waiting for their alarm to go off. This seems like a wasted opportunity. I for one used my extra time with other like minded individuals discussing the relative merits of leap seconds. Time well spent I believe.

Ever feel like the rest of the world's moved on and left you behind?

2006-10-15T20:53:00.000+01:00

And then one day you find

Ten years have got behing you

No one told you when to run,

You missed the starting gun

-- Pink Floyd

Thought for the day

2006-10-10T20:47:00.000+01:00

Whatever faith may be, and whatever answers it may give, and to whomsoever it gives them, every such answer gives to the finite existence of man an infinite meaning, a meaning not destroyed by sufferings, deprivations, or death.

-- Leo Tolstoy

Photos!

2006-08-31T16:06:00.000+01:00

Finally got some of my Russia photos onto flickr. Should hopefully get my Moscow and St petersburg photos up there at some point too. In the mean time check out Helen's.

The God Spot

2006-08-30T14:52:00.000+01:00

Well according to the old BBC, scientists at the University of Montreal have found that there is no specific area of the brain for communicating with God. It seems that to connect to God requires the whole of the mind! Cool!

one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve

2006-08-26T12:15:00.000+01:00

How is it that certain anoying songs can so easily become stuck in my head, while others that I would really quite like to remember are so easily forgotten?

From Russia with...err...

2006-08-19T23:57:00.000+01:00

Ok so I probably should of posted something like this about three weeks ago when I actually got back but hey I've been busy. Besides, I'm sure my last couple of posts were so exciting that you've needed this time to recover. So anyway, I feel I may be drifting a bit from the true subject of this post which is that...RUSSIA IS AMAZING! It's really awesome seeing God working in far off lands and even better being a part of it. The trip I guess can be summed up as:

Best part: meeting all the fantastic people out there.
Funniest moment: George being rescued a mile from land by some Russian fishermen.
Worst part: camp food. This consisted entirely of porridge, soup and buckwheat.
Best coffee shop moment: discovering the french hot chocolate in St Petersburg. Basically melted chocolate in a mug that had to be 'eaten' with a spoon.
Randomest moment: meeting a tour guide at church who somehow recognised me as being one of the thousands of people to visit the Hermitage the day before.
Worst idea: apart from Helen injuring her ankle, I guess this would be forgetting to register our visas in Moscow. The result was a lot of phone calls and a fairly hefty bribe in St Petes.

Photos should be arriving shortly...

Only three days to go

2006-06-29T11:01:00.000+01:00

As it gets closer and closer, it seems to be getting harder to deny that I am actually going to Russia this Sunday. For some reason I'm still having a little trouble believing it.

Anyway, the main point of this post is to try and get some support from you guys. What I'd really like at this point is for anyone who's up for it to be praying for the entire team (including the Russian guys we're working with). It is only through God's power that we can achieve anything out there and while I still have no idea why prayer works, the fact is that IT DOES WORK! If you're not interested than that's cool, but if you are then here are a few points to help you get started:

general protection for the whole team while we're out there.
that we can communicate effectively. We're supposed to have people to translate for us but I'm still not sure how well this will work.
that we all remain focused on God and don't try to do anything without Him.
more generally, that we do achieve something and that whatever happens, it can all be for His glory.

Been in a frenzy...

2006-06-26T11:43:00.000+01:00

Guess it's about time I blogged again. Been a busy feew weeks full of lots of:

movie watching (particulary of the French variety)
going to Frenzy in Edinburgh
slack roping (and inevitably injuring myself)
job interviews
west end festival fun
going home for a few days
getting ready for Russia (only six more days!)
and just generally hanging out with the beautiful people of glasgow

Let me know if I've missed anything.

Oh and photos are up on flickr

not so unique

2006-06-13T13:35:00.000+01:00

Just found out that I'm not the unique individual I always thought I was. Was reading an article in Maclean's when I noticed that the author is an 'Andrew Potter'. Freaky! Checking google then came up with 12,800,000 results! Maybe it's time I change my name. Any suggestions?

Where'd it go?

2006-06-03T16:58:00.000+01:00

Do you ever get the feeling that while you were sleeping the rest of the world has moved on? I just realised today that the year is actually over! Summer has come and everyone's leaving town (I'm guessing that's what happened, I really can't find anyone). Something big happened this week I'm sure, and I missed it all. Darned food poisoning! Well hopefully, with time I can adjust to this new reality and maybe even learn to love it.

Another year finished!

2006-05-23T17:00:00.000+01:00

Wow! I just completed first year. Ok, so it was my second time around but that's still got to be a bit of an achievement right?

One down, three to go...

2006-05-17T16:14:00.000+01:00

Well that's my french translation exam over and done with. If there was any lesson in it, it would seem to be that past papers are always harder than the real thing. Does that make any sense? I don't know...
Anyway, all I left to do is to pass astronomy, physics and french lit. I can't wait till next week when this will all be over!

Woohoo! Oilers are winning!

2006-05-13T16:29:00.000+01:00

This probably doesn't mean anything to anyone else but wow, the Edmonton Oilers are actually achieving something for once. They're actually tied 2-2 with San Jose going into game 5 of the conference semis! This is the farthest they've been in the playoffs in forteen years! Go Oilers!

Another steep learning curve

2006-05-12T14:06:00.000+01:00

This week's been another steep learning curve in just how awesome God really is. Why is it no matter how many times He comes through for me, I still forget as soon as I'm hit with the next problem? It only dawned on me yesterday afternoon (again) that it really doesn't matter how little money I have or how poorly prepaired I am for my exams. Whatever happens He is in control and will always save the day.

WOW!

Psalm 77

2006-05-05T10:54:00.000+01:00

16 The waters saw you, O God,
the waters saw you and writhed;
the very depths were convulsed.
17 The clouds poured down water,
the skies resounded with thunder;
your arrows flashed back and forth.
18 Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind,
your lightning lit up the world;
the earth trembled and quaked.

Another blogger...

2006-05-04T10:31:00.000+01:00

I'm still not really sure how I found myself with a blog. All I'm really sure of is that it involved some chilli, Asterix and a crazy tuesday evening. The rest is a bit of a blur. There will actually be some proper posts coming but I'm affraid that until exams are over this will have to do.