York...

Bex and I haven't had a night away from Joni since...well, since Joni! We broke our Joni-old vow and left her with Mike and Kath, Becky's Mum and Dad, in Scarborough. Then we hot-footed (hot-tyred to be precise) it off to York, upped tent, and were forced to look at each other again, with no little (yes, Joni-high) barriers in the way.

It's funny how you lose sight of things so close to you, and for us this break was exactly what we needed, you might say it was a Red Bull for our relationship. I have to say here that Bex is so much the person that I would like to be in so many ways. I was proud to have her on my arm as we walked around York, and happy that we weren't going to be saying goodbye, or even "see you later", at the end of the day. I know I don't tell her nearly enough that "..." (you know) but that's because I'm scared of being happy?...I don't know why really. If we can aim to eat 5 pieces of fruit a day surely we can tell our wives we love them at least as much?

So the highlights of this little break: laying on the grass in the park besides York Minster under a blazing sun; having an amazing Indian meal at the Balti Ghor restaurant in Copmanthorpe (and we had Balti too: I could live on this stuff!); and best of all waking up next to each other in the tent, in surround-sound provided by invisible birds, horses, and cows, as we were warmed by an invisible sun. I'll also add that one of Becky's highlights was this: seeing me, desperate for, you know, relief, jumping out of the car and running to a (seemingly hidden) spot behind a fence - only to be "interrupted" mid-way by a girl riding along a path beside the fence (unseen to me!), a girl whose eyes - set in a face no more than three feet away from mine - I wasn't glad to meet, whose back I was glad to see...Becky (as she rubbed the tears of laughter from her face) said she was smiling as she cycled off...

The Journey...

We were at Mums for dinner on Sunday, and after eating lots of roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and blackberry crumble we sat our heavy bellies down and looked through some old photo's - a lot of which I hadn't seen. It's weird looking at photo's of yourself as a baby isn't it? But especially now I've got a little girl - and another baby on the way - it makes you feel old. Your sort of half-way there, on the journey. I wonder how Mum feels looking at us kids with kids.

It was sad, that's the main feeling I get, looking at photo's of Dad (and Dad with us), who died when I was 9. He was (he probably thought) half-way on the journey, a lovely young family around him - including my three year old brother Philip - when leukemia struck him down.

In December I'll be as old as my Dad was when he died, 32. There's something not right about being older than your Dad, as I will be, or even to be nearly as old as him, which I am now. I don't feel the "Dad" that he was to me at that age, I still feel like a little boy! If death was ready for me within the year, I'm would certainly not be ready for it. I feel like I'm just getting going, just getting into my stride, just half-way for crying out loud...I wonder whether everyone feels like that at death, or even some time before if you know you're dying, as did Dad. I wish I could remember more about him, or about those last days, but I don't remember anything. La vita è bella, but the tragedy within it makes it much less so - these terrible things we have to carry around with us, like splinters in our minds, make it hard to enjoy the beauty of life without a supreme effort of will put forward to suppress our own thoughts - in other words, we strive to be mindless, to be animals, to enjoy the gifts that only we as conscious humans can truly appreciate.

Here's some of those photo's - you'll find two dates within them if you look closely. One is 21/12/(1973), the other is 14/3/1983...

The Running Man...

I ran over six miles today - which meant running for an hour! So I'm a bit chuffed with myself, and I'm on target for the distance - in fact I'm halfway there - demanded by the Great North Run in October. At just over an hour though (1:01:11) it looks like I wont run it within the two hour mark, but that was never my goal. Maybe next year. The jog was followed by two hours rotivating at the allotment so the only word to describe me rhymes with nackered (clue: there's a silent k in the other word).

I received an interesting, actually quite shocking letter, in the post yesterday (I've put a copy of it up below) from the Student Loans Company. The total amount I owe them is over £10,000! The thing is, I have two years to go - I think we'll be over the £15,000 mark in debt before the course is over, so given I don't have to start paying it back until I earn £15,000 a year - will they take my first years wages from me? ;-)

I can't recommend the Carl Sagan documentary "Cosmos" enough if you haven't seen it; even the music is heavenly: so much so that I've ripped (extracted - the theme used by Cosmos begins about thirteen minutes into part one of the Vangelis suite from which it was taken) and uploaded it here.

Bedtime...

Like any other child her age, Joni hates bedtime, so she drags the whole "going to bed" process out as long as possible. One thing she does is make you kiss all her dollies and teddies before she'll go to bed (she brings you them all to kiss), and if you look at the photo below, you'll see that this isn't a quick affair! Joni really does sleep in her bed with at least nine or ten of her cuddly friends every night, I wonder how she manages to fit in at all, and we always dread her getting a new teddy/doll, because she'll want it in bed with her too! She's my baby though, she's so good. We told her today that Mummy had another baby in her belly, and Joni pointed at Becky's mouth and said "in there?" - I wonder if she thought Becky had eaten a baby, well, how else could it get in her belly?! ;-) Here she is all tucked in, pointing for me to go away (embarrassed of me taking a photo of her I think...)

The Seventh Seal...

I was pleased just now to find online the script to one of my favourite films (Bergman's finest) "The Seventh Seal", and I've extracted one of the most memorable (in my opinion of course) scenes from the film below. It's quite a well known aspect of the film (and often parodied) that Bergman portrays Death as a cloaked in black, chess playing figure, and in this scene, the knight (the other main character) enters a confession booth within a church, and makes his confession (unknown to him) to Death himself:


The KNIGHT is kneeling before a small altar. It is dark and quiet around him. The air is cool and musty. Pictures of saints look down on him with stony eyes. Christ's face is turned upwards, His mouth open as if in a cry of anguish. On the ceiling beam there is a representation of a hideous devil spying on a miserable human being. The KNIGHT hears a sound from the confession booth and approaches it. The face of DEATH appears behind the grille for an instant, but the KNIGHT doesn't see him.

KNIGHT

I want to talk to you as openly as I can, but my heart is empty.

DEATH doesn't answer.

KNIGHT

The emptiness is a mirror turned towards my own face. I see myself in it, and I am filled with fear and disgust.

DEATH doesn't answer.

KNIGHT

Through my indifference to my fellow men, I have isolated myself from their company. Now I live in a world of phantoms. I am imprisoned in my dreams and fantasies.

DEATH

And yet you don't want to die.

KNIGHT

Yes, I do.

DEATH

What are you waiting for?

KNIGHT

I want knowledge.

DEATH

You want guarantees?

KNIGHT

Call it whatever you like. Is it so cruelly inconceivable to grasp God with the senses? Why should He hide himself in a mist of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles?

DEATH doesn't answer.

KNIGHT

How can we have faith in those who believe when we can't have faith in ourselves? What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able to? And what is to become of those who neither want to nor are capable of believing?

The KNIGHT stops and waits for a reply, but no one speaks or answers him.

There is complete silence.

KNIGHT

Why can't I kill God within me? Why does He live on in this painful and humiliating way even though I curse Him and want to tear Him out of my heart? Why, in spite of everything, is He a baffling reality that I can't shake off? Do you hear me?

DEATH

Yes, I hear you.

KNIGHT

I want knowledge, not faith, not suppositions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand towards me, reveal Himself and speak to me.

DEATH

But He remains silent.

KNIGHT

I call out to Him in the dark but no one seems to be there.

DEATH

Perhaps no one is there.

KNIGHT

Then life is an outrageous horror. No one can live in the face of death, knowing that all is nothingness.

DEATH

Most people never reflect about either death or the futility of life.

KNIGHT

But one day they will have to stand at that last moment of life and look towards the darkness.

DEATH

When that day comes ...

KNIGHT

In our fear, we make an image, and that image we call God.

Pregnant!

Yes, Becky is pregnant! We got a positive from a pregnancy test (£1 from the pound-shop!) at the exact time of that post on Sunday (below) and got that confirmed by the Doctor today. Wow. That's what I meant on March 23rd when I said "There's something else I could say about today...but I'm not going to. Yet". Bex stopped pill popping on that day, you know what I mean...so I'm going to try and put a photo up here of "Becky's belly" maybe every week. Watch it grow!

Probability...

I watched the last episode of the PBS series "Evolution" with Bex on Monday, and discussed it at some length with Brian yesterday. Not having seen the preceding six episodes I can't comment on the series as a whole but the final episode, "What about God?" was thoroughly enjoyable; it presents in a very fair and balanced manner the views of both "camps": the Christians who deny evolution, and the scientists who embrace it. Well, that's not quite right, because there are scientists who are Christians (or vice-versa, however you want to see it!) - some are interviewed in the episode - who find no conflict between the two, or perhaps deny that the two (science and religion) even have a bearing on each other; as Brian pointed out this is very much the view held by such prominent scientists as Stephen J Gould, who in his NOMA (Non-Overlapping magisteria) hypothesis states:

"The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value."

Interesting. Then why does Genesis begin with an account of the creation? I suppose you could argue that a chapter (or two) could hardly be classed as a full creation account, certainly not when you consider that whole books have been written about the first few seconds of creation (or the big bang). But there is an interesting point here: does the fact that the Bible gives so little space over to such discussion (and even when it does "touch" on science, it doesn't tell us anything that the contemporary writers couldn't figure out for themselves - for instance, it doesn't give us an explanation of what stars are, or where the Earth is, or whether there's other life in the universe - all things that could have been put there if God is the author and intended us to have all we need in a religious and scientific way from a book) mean that man is meant (or at least permitted) to search these things out for himself? The stupendous power of our brains, and the natural curiosity we all feel about such things, certainly seems to give weight to this idea.

Yes, some say "the Bible is all we need" - that certainly seemed to be the sentiments of some of those interviewed - but is it? Look around you - what beneficial aspects of your life can you attribute to the Bible? Which to science - the "foolish" wisdom of man? Science and its child Technology certainly seem to have their place, and those who reject outright sciences claims in one area should perhaps cease to avail themselves of their glasses, or their medication, or their cars - all products of mans "foolish" wisdom which also attempts to explain, in the apparent absence of any other full explanation, how we got here. If this is "out of bounds", then what else is? And who says it's out of bounds anyway - the Bible doesn't explicitly - unless you use that blanket condemnation of Pauls quoted above.

I must admit that I'm loath to accept the claims of evolution, which seem to take God out of the picture - there's a barrier in my heart, in my mind, that stops me "going there". Yet it is a beautiful explanation, though incomplete, as any scientist would admit (I hope). I think Darwin hit the nail on the head (the "missing nail?" ;-) when he said in his final edition of "Origin of the Species", as quoted in the episode,

"There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

So does God use evolution? I admit that the view above is the furthest I would go towards believing this: I think God must have breathed "life" into the first living thing, at least, in fact I believe he must have done a lot more. And yet many do not even grant this. They use an argument something like (in my own words - I imagine I am arguing their case here) -

"This is one universe of perhaps an infinite number of universes. This universe, and perhaps all the others, may have come into existence from nothing, expanded and contracted back to nothing, an infinite number of times over an infinite amount of time. So anything that could happen, no matter how slim the chances, will happen - has happened. If you pick up a handful of sand from the beach, you hold there the amount of stars visible to your naked eye, about 10,000 grains/stars. The total amount of stars in our universe alone, in this incarnation alone, is greater than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches in all the Earth. Most, if not all, of these stars will have planets around them - think about that. That life has arisen by chance on any of them may be as improbable as you picking out all the grains of sand on all the beaches on the world in a particular order - an order unknown to you - blindfolded; still space and time are big enough to accommodate this, because look: life, very improbably, has arisen, at least in one universe at one time - on this very planet - and evolved to intelligence".

This "argument from probability" in all probability (!) poses more questions than anything else, but it's an interesting view, isn't it?

Expectation...

My wife Rebecca is expecting our second child! See Wednesdays post above.

Reflections...

If death is a state equal to the state before birth, then we might as well never have been born. Looked at from a sufficient distance of time and space, we have never been born, we do not exist, or at least we approach non-existence so closely that we are for all intents and purposes one and the same with it. If we do not exist, then the events that happen to us are as unreal as the memories of them, and as the memories of events will pass away with us, the events never happened: life is the attempt to deny death, and life is death; this living contradiction is solved for each and every one of us when we die, nobody denies death forever, which is the same as saying that you are dead right now.

And yet, we bring more life into the world, and for all its horror - is it better to taste what you cannot have, than not to have it? For us to have tasted life, and not really had it (because no-one has life in himself, only his wick is lit by another, and soon burns low) - is this better than to not have tasted it? At least one has life, the one who started the first candle burning on this world, the one who gives us at least a taste of what we cannot have, who cares nothing for us if he gives us no more...

Sagan's Lot...

Saw this great statement of (dis)belief - well, it is isn't it? - yesterday, and though I can't say I agree with all of it, that's not because there are parts I can pick out and say "that's wrong or unreasonable because..." - I think it's more a case of I don't want to stand firmly on that white line that marks the middle of the road, with sheep on the left and goats on the right - I joke of course - but you get the picture: I don't want to commit to being non-committal, I have a foot on that white line, but the other is planted on, or at least pointed to, the side of belief. Would that be right or left? ;-) I liked this point from that article "Words to live by: I believe in goodness for goodness' sake, not because you're getting some reward in the afterlife. If you're being good for an award, then what sort of person are you anyway?" also "That's one of the things that really bugs me about religion. If you don't know the answer, just say, 'I don't know.' Don't make up stories and make people believe them, and then work backwards in everything in life from the dumb little story you made up, you know? We don't know. Be a good person just because it's the right thing to do. How 'bout that?"

I think something the late great Carl Sagan used to say has a bearing on such discussions, at least to those who concur with Maher's views (and to those who may go even further) when he said that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I was reading from one of his books today, and read something that I'd only yesterday been thinking about at some length. Here's what I was thinking:

The train takes me past, every day, the industrial complex which is British Steel (now Corus), and some beautiful marshland also, just besides the "works". I was thinking, what if I was to take a glass and fill it with water from one of the pools in the marsh, or from one of the streams that flow into it, and drink? I would be ill. Surely (I know it's not defined as such by any court or commission) my rights as a human demand that I should be able to - think "out of the box" here - for the marshland is a nature reserve, it belongs to the "people"? Could I sue Corus if I was ill? What if any person in a "developed" country took a glass to their local river and drank therefrom - could they subsequently (for they would probably become ill) sue the corporations that polluted their water - for aren't the rivers OURS? We could proportionately sue the corporations according to what chemicals (in the water) could be linked to them...Will this happen? The thing is, this isn't being idealistic: the only reason we don't have these rights is because of the links between corporations and the economy and the governments: man is short sighted.

Here's what Sagan says in "Billions and Billions" in reference to our polluting of our "closed system" environment:

"Birds...know not to foul the nest...one celled microorganisms know it. It is time for us to know it too...we have become a danger to ourselves...maybe the products of science are too powerful, too dangerous for us. Maybe we're not grown up enough to be given them. Would it be wise to give a handgun as a present to an infant in the crib?...Now one further complication: imagine that when you pull the trigger on the handgun, it takes decades for any harm to be done...the analogy is imperfect, but something like this applies to the global environmental consequences of modern industrial technology".

I realize I wouldn't have a keyboard to type on (etc) if it weren't for that technology, but small price to pay if man suddenly decided to stop damaging the Earth until safer methods of production could be thought of. These damaging effects are only starting to become clear, we need to make a point now, to show on a small scale what the future holds on a large scale in our closed system environment! So, form an orderly queue behind me as, Gandhi-style, I bring my cup to the River Tees...we could start at the source, and have a "seven miles and pints a day" goal: would we get to the sea, or would we gradually be reduced in numbers as we passed the factories that start somewhere out of Stockton-on-Tees, maybe dwindling to zero before the end?

Anyway, this joking around reminds me of another point I wanted to make: you read these reports that say "yes, this waters OK, the mercury level is 0.0004572mcg" or whatever, per whatever, you know, just inside the "safe" limit: who decides these limits? I bet they've got some sort of government/corporation funding. I don't know about you, but ideally, I count a safe limit as being whatever was in it at the source - why isn't that the case? Pollution is pollution, don't talk to me about "safe levels" of it.

Joni-O

"The swallows swooping across blue skies gave a hint of summer promise and the weather played its part on what turned out to be a beautiful Bank Holiday Monday for some parts of the UK..." - isn't that refreshingly different? We had beautiful bank holiday weather! Usually, bank holidays have a knack of turning out dull and wet, of course the Tuesday after a bank holiday, which people will be looking out upon from behind office windows, usually turns out beautiful. So the weather and the weather-man got it right this time!

We had a great day actually, I suspended revision and spent the day on the beach with the whole family - Mum, Dad, Abi and Des and Bev and the kids - and my little crowd too. Joni just loves the beach, like any kid I suppose, she's fearless though and you have to watch her: one minute she'll be shovelling sand into a bucket and the next time you look her little legs have carried her half way to the sea and you're chasing her across the beach...I meant to bring my camera down but I forgot it, however I did snap some in the house before we went down. Here's two, and a funny story: we got a Chocolate milkshake from McDonalds the other day, and Bex was drinking it in the car, and sharing it around, but Joni wanted it from Bex as soon as she took it back, and she let her know so too - "Mummy, mummy! More! Some! Some! Peas!" (please) ... then a pause, then, in an accusing tone, as if Mummy was being a very naughty girl, "MU-mmy!...Smack!...Smack!...ONE.......TWO....." (holding up one then two fingers) - at which point I nearly crashed the car I was laughing so much! This is what we sometimes say to Joni if she's doing something naughty, we threaten to smack her (if she persists in doing whatever she's doing), and give her a count up to three; we don't normally get there but it's so hilarious that Joni was using this back on us!

New PC...

I splashed out on a new PC yesterday, I don't know when it will come but I know it's left a huge hole in our bank account. However, I 've needed one for a long time: the old PC, whilst still performing well, is a tad slower than I'd like, and not future-proof (32 bit chip), or upgradable to any great degree (it's at its limit!). Pete recommended this *Now that. ;-) Mesh have since removed the page 8/2006* and that's what I've gone for (I've added another cd/rw drive too)...