Audience of One is the weblog of Matthew Weston, a UK student, Christian, technophile and musician.

The second miscellany

Time for another round of humorous search terms, methinks. Searching for these phrases drew people to this site:

Secondly, some fantastic news from Lewis, a friend of the family just out of uni/teacher training: he’s beaten all other applicants and got a job at my school! Good news for the Christian Union, the ecology, volleyball and (yet to be formed) juggling clubs, and anyone who gets taught by him.

In other news, Apple Computer released OS X Tiger on Friday, and my friends Tom and Eric visited the new Apple retail store in Birmingham (and entered me in a competition as I couldn’t make it). Oh, and yet another climate study has backed global warming.

And finally, a quote from T.S. Eliot I read today:

Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.

Currently listening to Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll – The Killers

Matthew @ 20:12, April 30, 2005 to Miscellaneous | Permalink | Comments (5)

F is for Feeler

Following on from the Extrovert of two weeks ago comes another Myers-Briggs preference, the Feeler. According to my personality profile, Extroverted Feeling is the “dominant function”.

I’m slightly sceptical about how applicable this test is to a lot of people with less extreme tendencies, but I seem to be quite strongly described by this. I feel, and it’s not something I can keep internalised. I am “predisposed to closure in matters related to people”, and I am “concerned with the likes and dislikes of others”. Feelers also go for more subjective things in making decisions, and see things less in terms of black and white.

Enough of the Myers-Briggs, though. While psychology can tell you a lot about yourself, it can also tell you a lot wrong about yourself (especially if you just took an online test and didn’t even get a proper psychologist to test you).

For a long time, I’ve felt things quite extremely. Not in terms of pain – I’m sure my nerves are just as sensitive as everyone else’s – but in terms of emotion. If I’m disappointed, then I’m often inconsolable. If I’m happy, then I’m ecstatic. If I’m depressed, it affects not just my mood but my energy. If I fall in love, I fall in love hard. It’s always been this way, and has just been complicated by teenage hormones and mood swings in recent years.

So what? Lots of people feel things strongly. Well, with me it’s combined with impatience, apathy and maturity. I try not to be arrogant (and fail most of the time) but I’ve always seemed to be at a higher maturity to a lot of the people I’m friends with – not in terms of being more adult than child and more responsible necessarily, but spiritually and mentally. Maybe it is arrogance, but I’ve gone for years with no-one but adults able to talk on my level about spiritual things. Christians whom I know and love make mistake after mistake that I try and warn against but yet they think they know better. It’s possibly because I’m not older and wiser: just wiser. You can see how I often fall into arrogance, if this is what I believe. I believe it because of what I’ve experienced and what I’ve heard from others who I know are far wiser than I am.

Maybe people need to learn things for themselves. As one who feels things strongly, though, I empathise with them when things go wrong, yet my counsel goes nowhere – and that hurts. As one who feels so strongly (and is as strongly extroverted as I am), lack of those on the same level leaves a hole, one which I feel constantly. I’m impatient for it to be filled.

I’m also apathetic about work, or have been up until now. It’s not a good combination. Suddenly I’m faced with the prospect of having to work hard, and far from driving feelings from my mind, it becomes even more of a struggle because the feelings are still there, and they’re combined with the unpleasantness of actually getting down to work for the first time since I helped with the nine- to eleven-year-olds on Sunday mornings.

This weblog is intended (in part) to be a record of my struggles as a Christian. The foremost struggle is when I feel things so strongly, I find it hard to rely on God for all my needs. It’s all very well saying that he can provide them all, but I believe sometimes he chooses not to (in some ways) to make us hunger for him more. As a feeler, this is amplified, and I do hunger for him more; as ever, that doesn’t make the feelings any less painful and hard. Impatiently, I have to wait to see what the future holds.

Matthew @ 11:50, April 30, 2005 to ABC | Permalink | Comments (0)

Acid2 test update

Dave Hyatt of Apple Computer makes Safari the first web browser to pass the Acid2 test I blogged about. Chris Wilson of Microsoft is potentially going to get IE7 to pass it, which is encouraging (see what I wrote about it when it was first announced).

So, good news I guess from the world of web development.

Matthew @ 17:23, April 28, 2005 to Geek | Permalink | Comments (0)

Atheism, ideologies and the evangelical

Yesterday the famous atheist biologist Richard Dawkins wrote an article in the Independent, and I agreed with practically everything he said. Always a nice surprise, seeing as usually when I read stuff by him it’s in the vein of “Christians are deluded by a religion that has evolved to attract the weak-minded extra-specially strongly” (a biological and theological argument that I won’t go into here, and neither will Dawkins – his view is that to argue with Christians is to give them the publicity they crave for and don’t deserve). I may believe in theistic evolution (and would hold issues with every one of the opposition’s list of oppositions) but that doesn’t mean I agree wholeheartedly with Dawkins normally. (Must read The Selfish Gene at some point actually.)

So, what’s Dawkins been saying? Well, he argues that Tony Blair is using the “bogeyman” of Michael Howard to scare people into voting Labour. He also argues that Blair has used scare tactics throughout his premiership, including using the “45 minute” WMD threat – and now covers up the tactic by claiming he believed it at the time. Given the lack of evidence (no amount of weaselling will convince me that there was anything like enough), it seems a bit crazy, but there you go.

So, Blair claims that not voting Labour will let Michael Howard into government. Dawkins considers this unlikely, and considers the best the Conversatives can hope for to be a hung parliament (which would be better for the Lib Dems than the Tories anyway).

So what would a hung parliament bring about? Well, the Lib Dems could hold the balance of power in Parliament. In simple terms, neither Labour nor the Conversatives would have enough votes to pass their policies on their own: they’d need the Lib Dems’ help. In other words, their policies would have to cater more to the Lib Dems’ views to get put into action.

A result of this could be the voting system of proportional representation becoming law. At the moment, votes only really count in marginal seats. In so many seats it’s so obvious that a particular party will win there’s not much hope in voting for anyone else. With proportional representation, no vote would be wasted. Dawkins considers this essential to the continuing effectiveness of democracy in this country, and I agree – more about this another time.

I perhaps shouldn’t be surprised at agreeing with such a vehement atheist – after all, there are very few Christians in the Lib Dems (to my knowledge) yet I agree with them. The article reinforced my belief that Christianity isn’t tied to a particular political ideology – if it were, it wouldn’t be the one supported by a great critic of the very nature of belief in God, and yet I feel the Lib Dems have the best idea out of the main three parties of implementing a fair and just society.

Matthew @ 10:40, April 24, 2005 to Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Don't worry, be happy

I promise, shortly after the election I will revert to old habits about mentioning politics. For now though, there’s just too much about in the air to not pass comment occasionally (or frequently). Take the Jeremy Paxman interview with Michael Howard, for example. It’s not often I’ll sit down to listen to a Conservative talk for long (generally the Conservatives I know are raving right-wingers who’d stop taxation if they were in power because “Daddy’ll pay for me to have a nice life, and it’s his money not the government’s anyway”), but last night was an exception and I was almost taken in for a second. Michael Howard, it seemed, was being sensible.

You all know my general opinion of Michael Howard (check out the last paragraph of my entry Google Maps if you don’t), so I was quite surprised to find myself thinking him rational and honest. He admitted to mistakes in the past, and pointed out that “unlike Labour, we’ve learned from our mistakes”. He mentioned his policy on the role of the private sector in the health service (they plan to pay half the fee for an operation out of the NHS budget if people can afford the rest, in order to take off the strain on the NHS). The way he explained it, it seemed rational.

Then he spoilt it all by making me realise the flaw in the idea. He mentioned that the Conservatives plan to do it for private education as well. And I suddenly saw that the policy was creating a two-tier health service and preventing those poor people from getting the care they need as quickly as the rich. It would come close to providing care for the rich before those who are poor, rather than those who need the care the most first. Surely a better idea is to train more doctors and build more hospitals? Labour aren’t much better; they came into power promising less regulation, and then created a huge NHS beaurocracy even worse than before. This beaurocracy forces doctors to treat the less ill first just to meet targets.

With my eyes opened, I suddenly saw that, unlike Howard emphasises, it was a matter of ideology, and the Conservatives still wanted those rich enough to pay for things better off. Some of the policies seemed reasonable, until you compared them with other parties’ policies and thought about how they would affect those worst off financially. Then I remembered Thatcherism, and John Major’s government. Then I saw the grin on Howard’s face – a smirk, as if saying “you fools! I can’t believe you’re accepting this!” You can almost imagine him saying in a falsely nice voice (just as a Tory MP’s son is reported to be saying whenever seeing Howard on TV) “I’m not going to hurt you, children”. Well, not if your parents earn enough anyway.

Currently listening to Always – Note for a Child

Matthew @ 17:52, April 23, 2005 to Politics | Permalink | Comments (7)

The Final Countdown

With just over nine weeks to go before my final exam (and about five before the first one) I have decided that I should probably get down to some work (considering it’s been rather lacking over the past few months). But do not fret, dearest reader: only a fool works solidly without some break to his toil (Sylvanian proverb). I shall not let this hour of hard work eat into the time spent yada yada yah. Basically, I’ve just discovered that I need to pull the stops out to get the grades I need, but am certain I can still write here so entries will continue. So no worries, then. (Revenge of the Sith looks much better than Attack of the Clones, incidently. Not long to wait!)

Matthew @ 09:00, April 22, 2005 to Diary | Permalink | Comments (5)

Google Maps

I had a fantastic idea for a blog entry which got lost somewhere while on my way to write this. I could make a really bad joke about “why don’t you go find it? It’s probably near Sheffield” as a sly way of announcing Google’s launch of its UK maps service, but that poor attempt at humour would decrease my street credibility faster than I could say “I love S Club”. In other words, I had what I at first thought might be an amusing way to introduce this topic, realised it wasn’t amusing at all, then deconstructed it in a semi-self-deprecating way for laughs. And then mentioned what I was doing in order to excuse what was probably still a poor attempt at humour and still not amusing at all. And before I go on for ever, here’s the end of the internet.

Update: And now I’m not even sure this entry makes sense. Serves me right for watching Jeremy Paxman interview Tony Blair – the Rottweiler vs. the Weasel – it’s messed with my brain…

Update the second: It’s because he weasels his way out of things, okay?

Update the third: Man, I appear to be talking less sense than Michael Howard today. Normal service will resume once I’ve got some sleep.

Matthew @ 20:31, April 20, 2005 to Miscellaneous | Permalink | Comments (3)

The Green Issue

Today the Independent had a special edition: “The Green Issue”. The front cover carried the headline “The most important issue that we face”.

I’m not a single-issue voter as those who know me will realise. However, as the headline says, I believe the environment to be the most important issue we face politically/as a country/as a planet. What else could have an effect on the whole world in our national policies? Not immigration or top-up fees, that’s for sure.

The interesting thing about this headline is who it’s quoting. Last year when questioned about the environment, this is what Tony Blair said – yet it barely appears in the Labour manifesto. So much for an important issue – Labour don’t think it’s worth including. Any mentions of green issues appear to have been stuck onto their manifesto afterwards, and bear no resemblance to the rhetoric of senior Labour figures – even Blair, to whom the environment is “the most important issue”.

So do the Conservatives present a good opposition to this? Surely if Labour are ignoring it, the Conservatives should pick up on it and fight for the green vote? Well, no. In fact, they’ve pledged to make cuts to the Environment Agency, the political body in charge of protecting the environment in this country. In their manifesto, the environment is mentioned in a subsection of a subsection of a chapter. They also pledge to end “Labour’s war on the motorist” and don’t mention decreasing carbon dioxide levels at all.

On the other hand, the Lib Dems, living up to their slogan of “The Real Opposition”, have a “green thread” running right the way through their manifesto. They mention the word “environment” more than the Greens!

It seems to me that the Lib Dems and the Greens are the only parties taking the environment seriously. If they made an alliance (and didn’t run against each other, as the Lib Dems lose out wherever the Greens make gains) they’d make a fantastic opposition. (They’d make a fantastic Government as well, but I’m not expecting that quite yet. Hey, I’m not even expecting them to become the Opposition yet either…)

As I say, I’m not a single issue voter, and would vote for Labour or the Conservatives given their environmental stances if their other policies pushed me to. The thing is, they don’t. The Lib Dems are a centre-left green liberal party, and I’m a centre-left green liberal (though a conservative evangelical Christian – it’s fun being liberal and conservative) so they’ll be getting my vote. If you’ve got a vote, consider the Lib Dems – and consider some of these facts.

I think these issues are rather important, and I hope that the parties make more mention of them in the coming weeks. As of now though, it’s only the Lib Dems and the Greens who are really considering it.

Matthew @ 16:39, April 18, 2005 to Politics, Science/Nature | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was only dreaming

Disclaimer: The following entry is based on real memories, but probably not real events. Any resemblance of characters in this entry to real or fictional people is purely deliberate; any resemblance of characters’ actions to real actions is probably as a result of a deluded mind (on your part).

The story begins with an important mission. I was assigned it for some unknown reason – perhaps my seniors considered me the best man for the job. It was an intense and difficult mission; one that would require me to work harder than I had ever done before. I was to infiltrate the Death Star.

The Death Star

Using only a hand-drawn map I had to find my way through the myriad corridors of this gigantic space station to destroy it. Difficult, but not impossible. However, I was up against Darth Vader.

Darth Vader

Now, Darth Vader is one evil dude. Just look at that mouth. (Okay, it’s a ventilator on a helmet. Still evil-looking.) He’s also clever and cunning. To infiltrate the Death Star would mean getting past Vader. I have to admit at this stage that the prospect of coming up against him wasn’t the most comforting of thoughts as I began the mission.

It was only a few minutes after entering the Death Star that my mission failed. There was Vader himself – he’d caught me already. I hadn’t even had enough time to report in. I was scared. I’d heard tales of some of the things Vader had done to his enemies. So what came next was slightly unexpected.

An equation

He sat me down at a desk, rather like in an exam, and gave me some algebra questions to complete.

It must be something to do with the Force – mind-reading, something like that. I can’t think how else Vader would have found out about this hideous punishment otherwise. It was just the thing to make me crack. I was ready to confess anything – anything!

Then the revelation came.

Darth Vader was someone I knew. He wasn’t some supervillain from the other side of the galaxy. He was none other than the vicar of my church, Andrew Wingfield Digby.

Darth Vader and Andrew Wingfield Digby

I was astounded. It’s not often you discover that a Dark Lord of the Sith is actually an Anglican minister. (It happens more often than some Anglicans would like, but that’s a story for another day.) It was even more astounding however – Vader/Andrew had actually lured me to the Death Star himself! He needed my help!

With not much choice, I agreed, and we set off in Andrew’s car (for some reason, I sat on the roof) for my old playgroup, where a war was taking place. By this time, Andrew had removed all the Vader gear, and I was left to wonder whether he really was the Sith Lord he’d appeared to be earlier. My wonderings were cut short almost straight away – we’d arrived at the battle. Handing me a sub-machine gun, Andrew drove away, and I entered the building.

Me, shocked

It was absolute chaos. I have no memories of what it was like when I was there as a toddler, but it must have been nothing compared to this. Chairs had been broken and stacked into defensive piles. Gunshots rang through the air, and I was grabbed almost straight away by my friend Jake, wearing camouflaged clothes and a beret. “Matthew, get upstairs! It’s not safe down here!” We ran upstairs while someone gave us covering fire.

The next hour or so was a tense battle between us and those on the floor below. I threw myself into the fighting (and got pulled out time and time again by those with more sense than I had) and we appeared to be beating back the enemy. Victory was nearly ours! But I felt so sleepy…

Zzzz...

Thus ended my part in the battle. I woke up.

Currently listening to The Imperial March – John Williams

Matthew @ 12:29, April 17, 2005 to Diary | Permalink | Comments (1)

E is for Extrovert

Some people, when they’re tired or worn out, just need to collapse away from people. They need to recharge. They may enjoy large meetings or going out with friends, but they might find it a bit tiring. Some people might be content to sit back and listen while others do the talking. Some people might be much more reserved until you really get to know them.

I am not any of those people. I am an extrovert.

To me extroversion is natural, and it’s taken me most of my eighteen years to understand how it’s possible not to be extroverted. People are so interesting! Talking is so much fun! Making friends is easy! It took a long time to sink in that for some people, while they may enjoy talking that didn’t mean they always wanted to be talking; that whereas other people agreed that people were interesting, that didn’t mean they were going to expend the energy needed to talk to them when they had their own friends right next to them; that some people liked having small groups of close friends, and striking up new intimacies around the place was their idea of a nightmare of stress and completely stupid.

I open up to people easily. If they’re of a nice, caring disposition (so as you can immediately see I’m talking about girls here) then I’ll tell them almost anything if they’re willing to listen. This blog in past incarnations was incredibly candid. I can’t mull over stuff inside: I need someone to talk to about it. I’ll explode otherwise (and have done).

Oftentimes (is that actually a word?) I’ll come home late, exhausted and really low. I’ll probably have been with a group of friends having a fantastic time, then as soon as I have to leave and walk home alone I’m down. Often when I come in late I’ll have something on my mind that I need to talk about to someone, and there’s no-one. I’ll stay up even later (even though I’m shattered) just so I can write it all down. There’s always a frustration within me when I can’t talk, and when I can’t let it out it builds up.

Other times I’m with someone and I have loads of things to say, yet they’re too tired to cope. For me, I thrive off conversation. If I come from school tired to the Youth Office and there are people there, I gain energy just by being with them. If there’s another strongly extroverted person there we’ll spark off each other and keep going for hours. (I’ll then walk home afterwards feeling incredibly depressed because we couldn’t continue the conversation longer.)

It’s amazing how completely differently people are wired.

Matthew @ 12:01, April 16, 2005 to ABC | Permalink | Comments (3)

How remiss of me

It appears that, though highly politically charged and often debating issues with friends, I have been remiss in my posts about the upcoming British general election. I therefore ask each and every one of you to try out the “Who Should You Vote For?” test, be you British or not, and leave a comment with your results. My scores were, in order:

I’m rather concerned that UKIP are higher than Labour and the Conservatives, but the negative value is nonetheless expected.

Matthew @ 16:31, April 15, 2005 to Politics | Permalink | Comments (28)

The first miscellany

When you have some unrelated, short things to mention on your blog, what do you do?

In the spirit of the Googlewhack, I answer the question “Is there anything good on TV this evening?”. The answer you are looking for is no.

I’m flattered to find that someone found this site searching for the phrase “thinking man’s disco”, but am somewhat amused by other recent search terms:

And finally, following Julie’s comments about being saved by our theology, I bring news that the Rapture has taken place.

Currently listening to Universally Speaking – The Red Hot Chili Peppers

Matthew @ 19:21, April 13, 2005 to Miscellaneous | Permalink | Comments (3)

Make Poverty History

I wouldn’t be a good example of a socially conscious teenager if I didn’t use this site to draw your attention to the Make Poverty History campaign. Yes, it’s gained quite a lot of press (in the UK at least) but it’s one of those things which people absorb and don’t respond to. I went for weeks like that, before realising that the whole point of the campaign was to raise awareness and to raise money. I bought my white band a couple of days later.

One of the things that shocked me most about the tsunami disaster was that people gave rather a lot of money. That sounds like I’m being unfair. In reality, the British public (as the example I’m most familiar with) were incredibly generous. The shock came from the far smaller amount of money donated to the Make Poverty History campaign, which was fighting the man-made disaster of poverty instead of the natural disaster of the earthquake and tsunami. Of course, the fact that it was human-made as opposed to natural doesn’t mean that it deserves more money – not at all. Poverty is an ongoing problem caused by people not doing anything about it; the tsunami disaster was a one-off that just exaberated this first one (poverty) in a lot of ways.

Imagine what you’d do if an earthquake and tsunami hit the Indian Ocean again, causing far more devastation than before. Imagine the suffering caused. You’re coming close to the suffering caused by poverty, starvation, preventable illness, civil war and religious persecution that’s going on in Africa every day.

(Incidently, money isn’t enough. See the Make Poverty History website for more ways of helping.)

Matthew @ 15:23, April 12, 2005 to Miscellaneous | Permalink | Comments (0)

Teaching kids to hack

Training a new breed of hacker is the kind of article which if I had a side blog I would post in it. As I don’t have a side blog, it falls to me to say in a full-blown entry that this is the kind of thing I wish we could learn at school (and perhaps I will still learn at university). It seems to me that this would be far more useful than yet another lesson spent in GCSE IT classes letting people design pointless Publisher brochures which almost exclusively contain far too many different fonts, swathes of inappropriate and clashing colours and generally waste ink and teacher marking time. At least on my GNVQ IT course we got to do useful things…

Matthew @ 19:18, April 11, 2005 to Geek | Permalink | Comments (7)

Wind

Is it just me, or does the wind change direction depending in which direction you’re cycling? The way home from the orthodontist involves travelling west for half of the way and north for most of the rest, with a few zigzags as well. Every single time I changed direction, I was cycling along fine for twenty seconds or so and then BOOM the wind’s straight in my face again. It’s going up Headington Hill that’s supposed to be the challenge, not coming down it!

Note to self: wear gloves cycling even if it looks sunny.

Grr. It’s not much fun cycling in freezing conditions to go to make eating difficult for the next few days. What’s even worse is discovering that, due to the way the treatment is progressing (I have braces, if you hadn’t gathered), it’s going to be nine weeks of difficult eating instead of three days – and then freezing on the way home. Fantastic.

Matthew @ 16:26, April 8, 2005 to Diary | Permalink | Comments (0)

At sixteen...

Sixteen is the age at which you can, as a law-abiding citizen, do many things that you won’t, as a God’s-law-abiding Christian, do. In other words, my brother has just turned sixteen and won’t be having sex or getting drunk frequently (with a meal, of course). Aged eighteen, I have of course also not been doing these things for two years. I’m sure I’ll write an entry at some point why it’s not out of a fun-killing sense of duty that we don’t do these things (but rather a fun-loving appreciation of God’s wisdom and genius), but for now, I’ll just wish David a happy birthday!

Matthew @ 16:44, April 7, 2005 to Miscellaneous | Permalink | Comments (7)

The Pope

As possibly everyone in the Western world knows, Pope John Paul II died recently. I could write about the logic behind a secular society dedicating so many hours of TV and so many pages of newspaper to him in such a positive light, but I won’t. I could write about how the theology behind the institute of Pope is fundamentally flawed (and interestingly discussion of this is forbidden for members of the Roman Catholic church), but I won’t. The thing that prompted me to write this entry was an article in the Independent on Monday entitled “In the Roman sun, the cult of John Paul II is born”. More specifically, two quotes from within that article.

…the back of a visiting card … (left) at a makeshift shrine … says “Saint John Paul II, intercede for the health of your son”.

I’ll look at this quote first. Three things strike me. Firstly, he has already been referred to as a saint. Perhaps not surprising, and not even dodgy theologically at first glance. Go a bit further though and you realise that this is, of course, the special title “Saint” that has emerged from Roman Catholic tradition, and is nothing like the original meaning of the word. Instead of the New Testament meaning of “Christian believer”, it implies something special – canonisation. This is linked to the second thing I noticed, that the writer asks the dead Pope to “intercede”. The Catholic doctrine is that dead people can be canonised by the Pope, which enables them to intercede for Catholics in heaven. I don’t know where to start with the theological fallacies here, but I’m trying to stear clear of too much theological criticism and stick to the Pope. The Bible teaches of intercession by those other than Jesus – they were called priests, the Jews had them and they were superceded by the New Covenant that came along with Jesus. Jesus became the high priest who interceded for humanity in their relationship with the Father. Saying anyone else can do so is blasphemous. (Still, that is the official Catholic doctrine.)

So, the writer has assumed canonification for the dead Pope, and as a result asks him to intercede for him. We’re giving a little too much power to the Pope here, aren’t we? That’s effectively saying he’s as good as Jesus….

The third thing I noticed is the use of the word “son”. Again, this is standard Catholic doctrine, but it reinforces the point – if the writer is the Pope’s “son” then the Pope must be his “father”. With the obvious exception of a biological father, the Bible tells us not to call anyone father (Matthew 23:9) in the context of not elevating yourself higher than others. Seems familiar in this context. It reinforces the previous points. It’s almost like they’re replacing God with the Pope.

And on that note, here’s the second quote:

“Papa” – Italian for Pope – reads one message, “you have suffered much for our sins. We pray to you, we wish you to rest in peace”. It’s as if faith in Jesus and God, in these secular times, is a challenge too far – while faith in that amazing old man … comes easy.

Perceptive, isn’t it? Not what you’d expect from one of the most anti-Christian newspapers. Two points. According to this writer, the Pope has “suffered much for our sins”. Well, no he hasn’t. That was Jesus – or does his crucifixion mean nothing to you? This writer is also praying to the Pope. It’s back to the concept of intercession again, but in the context it’s even more startling – can the writer really be so theologically confused as to think the Pope is Jesus? It appears that way. The only other explanation would be to assign the Pope to the same level as Jesus, though not as a replacement.

The death of the Pope has brought rather a lot of serious theological issues to the fore. Granted, not every Catholic would agree with either of the two quotes above. By definition though, every Catholic should accept papal authority – and what the Catholic Church teaches comes with that papal authority. In other words, to be a Catholic you should believe that dead people, once canonised, can intercede with God for us; that we can pray to dead people so canonised; that the Pope is infallible; that contraception is immoral; that purgatory exists; that we can earn our salvation via deeds; that Mary was perfect and many other things. (So I said I wasn’t going to go into Catholic theology. Well, I changed my mind.) Okay, so some of the wrong theology has come to the foreground through writers such as these. Even if the majority of Catholics disagree with the writers I have quoted, they aren’t let off the hook as there’s still reams of bad theology left. I will probably go into some of it another time, but I’ll end now with this. The Independent article was entitled “the cult of John Paul II is born”. Most Catholics would say that they are Christians. With the theology and the reactions to the Pope already mentioned and the Catholic beliefs about the priesthood, how can we say that the Roman Catholic church was not a cult before this pope?

Matthew @ 12:40, April 6, 2005 to Discussions | Permalink | Comments (5)

Not a traditional Sunday afternoon

It started off with my brother and I deciding to fit our ancient Windows 95 hard drive in our new computer, just for fun. About two hours later (and all sorts of problems starting up the computer even after putting everything back to normal) we’d given up due to the fact that merely inserting the old hard drive had mucked up our system (and due to it being a hardware problem, I was clueless).

Then the computer started switching itself off. No warning – one second it was fine, the next it’s singing sine waves at about 100Hz and the screen is black.

For the near future, then, our computer is broken. Apologies if entries/email replies take longer than usual…

Matthew @ 15:57, April 3, 2005 to Geek | Permalink | Comments (12)

D is for Distractable

As an example of how true this is, I began writing this entry ten minutes ago and have only just started writing. I decided on a whim to talk to someone on MSN Messenger. One of the reasons Audience of One wasn’t released back in 2004 is because I used to get bored coding and go browse Wikipedia or a forum. The main reason I found the time to install Linux is because I got distracted from revising. I’ve been meaning to write an email all day but I keep on getting distracted. Even this entry is a distraction. In fact, even that email is a distraction. I should really be doing some schoolwork.

Schoolwork is so time-consuming. I say that, in reality I don’t let it consume time and complain that it’s so time-consuming because I always feel like I should be doing it rather than what I’m doing at the moment. I was writing a music essay the other week and started talking to Nick about George Bush. I wrote the essay in ten minutes and still got nine out of twenty. Imagine what would happen if I’d spent twenty minutes on it, the time it’s expected to take in an exam.

Ah, yes, exams. I’m supposed to be revising for them, aren’t I? That’s the annoying thing about A levels. Further down the school I could get away without revising. In fact, the only French test I got less than 100% on aged 12 was the one I revised for. I got lower grades in the subjects I revised the most for at GCSE. At A level though, I actually have to revise, and it’s really frustrating because I’ve never learnt how. Even at AS I didn’t have to revise that much. I revised about two hours for music – about as much as I’d done for the GCSE. True, the exam is only a third of the course, but that still isn’t much revision.

That’s one of the reasons I love the music A level – there’s quite a lot of coursework but it’s not too much of a challenge getting it done. I’ve had two compositions to do this year, which have only been a problem because I can’t work on them at home. Then there’s performance which has been easy, as jazz improvisation can get quite good marks. It’ll be less the case at university though – there’ll be a lot more essays to do then, and much longer exams. That’s the one thing I’m not looking forward to about university – that and the endemic drinking culture. What is it about alcohol that is so appealing?

In conclusion… what was I talking about again?

Matthew @ 13:39, April 2, 2005 to ABC | Permalink | Comments (3)

Announcing Google Gulp!

Well, I for one think this new product from Google is fantastic. But don’t take my word for it. See for yourself.

Matthew @ 09:22, April 1, 2005 to News | Permalink | Comments (0)