The second miscellany

Posted at 8:12 PM

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

• blasphemous quotes from the Pope (read one of his books, I’m sure there’ll be some…)
• Conversatives UK
• can we sin after we’re saved? (of course, otherwise Christians would be perfect – kind of obvious we’re not, isn’t it?)
• interesting facts about ecstacy (it rots your brain?)
• Rev. Andrew Wingfield Digby (it seems my entry on a recent dream is on Google’s front page for this search…)
• why do Anglicans pray for dead? (erm, they don’t?)

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

F is for Feeler

Posted at 11:50 AM

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.

Acid2 test update

Posted at 5:23 PM

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.

Atheism, ideologies and the evangelical

Posted at 10:40 AM

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.

Don’t worry, be happy

Posted at 5:52 PM

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

The Final Countdown

Posted at 9:00 AM

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!)

Google Maps

Posted at 8:31 PM

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.

The Green Issue

Posted at 4:39 PM

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.

• 50% of waste is recycled in Austia, Germany and the Netherlands, whereas here it’s 18%
• Ten of the hottest years we’ve recorded have occurred in the last fifteen (that’s in the world, not just Britain)
• The average European’s lifespan is reduced by two-thirds of a year due to pollution

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.

I was only dreaming

Posted at 12:29 PM

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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

Currently listening to The Imperial March – John Williams

E is for Extrovert

Posted at 12:01 PM

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.