Well well well July 9, 2008

I had a really long nap today. It was wonderful. I love having naps.

I’ve been in a bit of a grump today. My moods sometimes reflect the weather and as the weather is very poor today, so is my mood.

I’ve been watching Time Team. I think it’s awesome. It’s made me really want to dig a large hole in my garden and see if there’s anything there. Not that there will be. I want to know what my garden and house were like before either were put there. I know there was a brook at the bottom of my garden many many years ago, but I want to know if people lived here. I don’t quite know how to find out. I will do though. I think I’d make a good detective. I think I might join the Historical society next year. I shall e-mail and find out what it is they do.

I read something that really annoyed me today. Someone wrote in on Teletext saying that everyone should ignore Psychology ‘cos it’s just full of people pretending they have all the answers and is pretending to be a Science when it’s an Art. I fully disagree with all points. I can’t be bothered to rant too much but Psychology has made some real improvements in peoples’ lives, so it shouldn’t be ignored. Some Psychologists may pretend they have all the answers but I certainly don’t. And the many others don’t. I know I’m only just training to be one, but I don’t think I will everclaim to have all the answers, I quite like that I don’t, it makes it more interesting. And I do think it is a Science. Just because it doesn’t have definitive answers and a lot of it can’t be proved doesn’t mean it’s not a Science. All of Science is based on theory and the theories change all the time, most of what is taught in Science isn’t actually fact. So if you go on that basis, then Science should be called an Art as well. But it isn’t. So there.

I also read people talking about bringing back capital punishment and that if young people and adolescents kill, they should also be hanged. That’s such a knee jerk reaction. Yes, why don’t we just kill everyone who does wrong instead of getting to the root cause of the problem, because it’s really working for America doing it that way. America has the death penalty. Their murder rates are still huge. We need to find out why younger people are getting into killing people and try and sort it out there. Capital punishment is only treating the symptoms, it’s not getting to the root causes. I agree that they should be punished if they kill, obviously, but we need to find out why they have and try and get them back into society and give them a chance at a better life. Just my opinion.

No Narnia mention? Shock horror. July 1, 2008

I went to the FPs yesterday. It was rather lovely, we had to attend Thomas’s sports day. However I got sunburnt.

His sports day last year just consisted of each child individually running up and down a track or throwing a bean bag in a hoop. There was no competition. It was the dullest thing ever, although there was a lovely lady who had brought some sweets to share. She wasn’t there this year. I was most disappointed. But luckily they had re-introduced some competition. Thomas won the first race we saw. He then had to do an obstacle course, which was the biggest load of rubbish ever. The children had to hit a hockey ball round some cones, then run to a shirt and put it on, then put a bean bag on their head and walk to a hoop (if they dropped it they had to start again) and drop it in.They were then required to put on a hat and run to the end. Thomas came second because he dropped his hat. Although the girl that won was cheating a lot, so in my eyes he was the winner.

Parents and relatives were offered the chance to do this obstacle course. The FP, Lurch and myself flatly refused this offer. The ones who did it looked like fools. The teachers then did it. They looked like fools too.

Whilst waiting for the end of the school day we got on to the subject of space and stars somehow. The FP and I don’t believe men walked on the moon. I was glad to know that she also didn’t believe this, until she asked “What makes stars shine? Is Pluto a star?” and then “Is there an undiscovered continent on Earth?”

The FP and I are both conspiracists about a lot of things. However, this recent spate of “alien” sightings in the papers really makes me laugh. People are convinced that this balls of light going into formations are aliens. I’m convinced they’re not. I’ll tell you for why. I believe them to be the military doing secret operations and defensive maneuvers. Why? Well, seeing as Russia have been sending over their planes quite frequently to see how the RAF do, one would hope they were developing new strategies. Also, if there were any unidentified flying objects over any city or anywhere in the UK, the RAF would be dispatched, to have a look and ward them off. That’s the whole point. They weren’t. Because it was the RAF. When they were contacted they told people, for security reasons they couldn’t tell them what was going on. I.E. They were doing some training missions or whatever it is they do and can’t tell the general public.

There’s that and also the fact yesterday I saw two military helicopters flying over my house, one was a helicopter gunship and the other was just a…general military one.

I am a sceptic. Who believes in Jesus and God. Oh yes.

Caution: Rant. May 14, 2008

Getting to sleep last night = impossible. I was perfectly comfortable and very tired but I just lay there, hour after hour. The more tired I felt, the more stupid my solutions to my insomnia were. One in particular, I decided that maybe I wasn’t wearing the right pyjamas and I’d be more comfortable in some others. Cue pyjama change in the dark. After a while of lying in bed in my new pyjamas, I decided they weren’t working for me and so changed back. I also discovered I had a hangnail on my little finger. I tried pulling it out making it quite sore so I decided to put some germoline on it. However I wasn’t quite sure where I left it. Cue late night mission to find germoline. After about 20 minutes of looking…in the dark with only my phone for light (I felt it inappropriate to turn on the light thinking it would make me feel more awake) I found it. Satisfied that the pain of my hangnail had gone, I lay there, just musing about things. In particular about a programme I had seen earlier about the tallest women in the world. As I am more tuned into the metric system, I found myself trying to work out how big 7ft 9inches actually was. First working out how much an inch was, then trying to make it into 12. I also had numerous debates with myself, eventually drifting off to sleep only to be awoken early in the morning by the front door slamming. Cue annoyance.

I am revising today. About the brain. It’s quite interesting but I’m often finding myself staring at my notes in a comatose like state. I spoke to Abbie yesterday and she is very worried about the impending exam. I am not at this current moment, I save my stress for the night before it would seem.

I read today, on Teletext, that some man from the Vatican says that aliens can exist and we shouldn’t rule out thinking that they’re out there and this doesn’t conflict with believing in God. I’m not sure what to think about that really. Is it being very narrow minded to rule out the existence of aliens? Is believing in them contradicting believing in God? I’ve no idea. I have to say though that the Vatican itself irritates me anyway, with their golden city and richness and praying to Jesus’ mum and everything else. I think they have a bit of a weird take on the Bible, I know they believe that Jesus is the saviour and everything, but all the extra….hmmm.

WARNING: RANTAGE

I have to rant.  When I was reading some of my Derren Brown book today, there was an advert in the back for a book entitled “Letter to a Christian Nation: A challenge to Faith” by Richard Dawkins. I want to know why people who don’t believe in God etc, try so damn hard to get others to stop believing and seem intent on trying to disprove that God exists. It’s like they really can’t hack that people believe in something, something that makes them happy. Even if they don’t believe in it themselves, they should just let it be. I know many atheists will argue that a lot of Christians don’t leave them alone and try and convert them, but atheists do the same to me and other Christians, always trying to disprove it. Like even nowadays, evolution is taught as straight fact, when it’s not been proved and the creation point of view is taught merely as philosophical in RE classes that no one likes. So before atheists try and tell Christians to leave them alone, I think they should leave me and my beliefs alone.

And, it annoys me, that the one faith that tries to be disproved more than any of the other faiths is Christianity. Just leave it alone!

And also, I was watching Flyleaf videos on youtube, and browsing the comments. They are a Christian band. This influences their songs. Yet the non-believers seem really offended by this and constantly argue that the meaning of the song is something quite different or abstract but is DEFINITELY not influenced by Jesus or anything like that. Some person even wrote about how a song, (which I interpret to be about God being all around, like a worship type song, mainly because the words are obviously to God and she mentions angels etc etc), was to do with Pagans and Gods. Why would a Christian write a song that sings about how good it is to have a Pagan God all around them?

End of rant.

ALSO: My William Moseley signed photo came today. It did, it did, it did. It’s hand signed! Happy much????? Rather!

Now I’m going to go finish off revising, oh joy.

Titles shouldn’t be this hard to think of… April 29, 2008

The FP told me of a very interesting programme to watch last night….Am I Normal? (On BBC2) It was very interesting, looking at the line between religious devotion and psychiatric disorder. As a Christian who will one day be training to be a Clinical Psychologist (I think anyways) I find that my faith sometimes contradicts what I learn about in Psychology. This does worry me somewhat, for example if I ever get a client claiming to have had a religious experience…I’m not sure I could just pass it off as them being mentally ill. The programme didn’t really clear this problem up for me. The line is extremely fine it would seem, between religious devotion and some mental illness. It confuses me a bit. It came up with valid points about hearing voices, points I definitely don’t have the answer to. But a very important thing it came up with was the context of religious experiences, it is true that people are comfortable with Christians (and other believers of different faiths) talking to God and generally experiencing God within a church or place of worship, but when it gets outside of these settings, people don’t see it as normal. If I was walking down the street talking to God, people would assume me to be mentally ill, however, if I do it in a church, it is seen as normal. One of the most fascinating things in the programme was the bit with the man talking in tongues. Some see talking in tongues as complete gibberish. So they did a PET scan to show what part of his brain he was using when talking in tongues. They found it wasn’t the usual language based places and that he certainly wasn’t making up what he was saying and lying about it as these areas of the brain weren’t used. Very interesting indeed. I’d definitely recommend watching it.

Also, I was reading today this interesting interview with Devin Brown (He writes about C.S Lewis) and his insights into Prince Caspian, about the spiritual links in it. Worth a read in my opinion.

Other than that…nothing really to say. Bad nights sleep again….it was really noisy outside…I remember at one point hearing what I think now was possibly a milk float..but thinking it was a train, until I remembered I don’t live by train tracks. My day’s been OK, fairly productive with work. Just about to learn behavioural genetics. Hurrah.

 

Tom-tastic April 28, 2008

Today’s been good. Thomas was round, he was off school ‘cos he was ill. He was watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when he said to me, very matter-of-factly “I feel sick” and proceeded to go upstairs. Less than a minute later I heard him retching. Going upstairs with a glass of water, like the caring Aunt I am I checked to see if he was alright. He didn’t seem at all phased by being sick. I was. I kept my distance as I patted him on the back.

When he was back downstairs, I gave him a bowl, just in case. We watched Narnia. He asked many questions…somewhat spoiling the Narnia experience. Every few minutes either a comment or a question was asked. Numerous of them. “Would have been well scary to wake up to bombs dropping.” “Yeah it would.” was my reply. “My friend called it Na-nia hahaha.”; “Is that Gregory?” (upon seeing the professor), “He counts very loudly“, “What are those?” (When the moth balls fall out of the wardrobe), upon hearing the White Witch say “So much for love“…”What does she mean by that?”, upon seeing Centaurs “Man, they’re weird“, upon seeing Aslan “This is what Baz would do….*roars*“. These were only a few of the comments/questions. I didn’t mind answering, but it made the film so much less dramatic. But I do like having him here.

I signed up for my Add+Vantage module today….I am doing work experience in a Psychological setting, it said 50 hours on one thing…now it says 100. Never mind. I have a few lectures for it…Monday 4-6. Poor time. I also looked at the assessments we have next year…one of them is a 10 minute presentation, for the double module. *DIES*

I read a terrible story in the news today, about a woman who had been kept captive by her father in a cellar for 24 years. He fathered her 7 children. It’s just awful. Story here:    It’s like an even more horrific messed up version of Flowers in the Attic.

I didn’t think I’d blog today….I’m such a blog whore….and a comment whore on Elaine’s blog. Never mind. I had an awful dream last night, it was very sad. I’m going to go back to learning about Neurons now, yippee.

Quoteage: White Witch: You know, Aslan, I’m a little disappointed in you. Did you honestly think you could save the human traitor? You are giving me your life and saving no one. So much for love. Tonight, the Deep Magic will be appeased, but tomorrow, we will take Narnia forever! In that knowledge, despair… and die!