Monsters from the Deep

On Saturday I attended an event run by the Centre for Inquiry called Monsters from the Deep!

Two scientists with an extra-curricular interest in cryptozoology gave talks about sea monsters and the likelihood that they exist.  Given that they defined sea monsters as anything over 2 metres in length, they more or less agreed that there probably are unidentified ‘monsters’ out there for us still to find!

However, an important theme of the talks was the idea that people don’t always see what they think they see – the gap between someone’s report of an encounter with a potential sea monster and what they actually perceived at the time can be influenced by all sorts of things.

Dr Darren Naish gave a fascinating talk on the ‘prehistoric survivor paradigm’ – a theory whereby creatures that have otherwise been assumed to be extinct have survived in some lake or part of the ocean somewhere.  This seems to be a fairly popular (and lucrative) theory amongst cryptzoologists.  However, Dr Naish was convincing in his arguments against it and one can’t help concluding that he is correct when he says that the more mundane explanations for reported sighting are much more likely to be true.

Particularly intriguing, however, was the case of the Cadborosaurus – a kind of camel-faced sea serpent, the story of which comes complete with a photograph of an alleged carcass.  The actual carcass went missing at some point…

It was certainly an interesting, if perculiar way to spend a Saturday afternoon…and the hunt for proper scientific evidence of such creatures continues…

“We’re looking for the Ogopogo

Funny little Ogopopo

His mother was an earwig, his Daddy was a snail

We’re going to put a little but of salt upon his tail!”

19th October 2009

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

Here is another respect in which we are lucky. The universe is older than 100 million centuries. Within a comparable time the sun will swell to a red giant and engulf the earth. Every century of hundreds of millions has been in its time, or will be when its time comes, ‘the present century.’ The present moves from the past to the future, like a tiny spotlight, inching its way along a gigantic ruler of time. Everything behind the spotlight is in darkness, the darkness of the dead past. Everything ahead of the spotlight is in the darkness of the unknown future. The odds of your century’s being the one in the spotlight are the same as the odds that a penny, tossed down at random, will land on a particular ant crawling somewhere along the road from New York to San Francisco. You are lucky to be alive and so am I.”

From Unweaving the Rainbow  by Richard Dawkins.

For my mum.

This has pretty much been in my head for the last month.  I love it, and I reckon everybody has their own ‘Phil Daoust’

Flight of the Conchords meets West Side Story

Genius:

General Update

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, so time for a general update.

I’ve not had any alcohol for over two weeks now.  It’s an experiment to see if it changes how I feel mentally, emotionally and/or physically.  So far it’s been interesting, and I’ve enjoyed the sense of being in control that it gives me. 

I’ve entered a half-marathon in September, and it’s got me out of bed and running a bit more regularly already.  I find that if I start the day with a run, I am so much more positive throughout the day and I tend to achieve a lot more.  I’m doing whatever it takes to stay happy and positive at the moment.  Exercise definitely helps.

The softball season has begun – one loss and one epic win.  A couple of very enjoyable tournaments.  Tonight sees behind the plate for the first time this season as an umpire!

I’m becoming strangely addicted to the indoor climbing malarky.  If I don’t go for a few days I start to get itchy over it.  I think it’s because I’ve made a few breakthroughs lately (flashed by first 5B, for those in the know) and I can feel myself becoming stronger.  I don’t want to lose what I’ve achieved and there is still so much more to achieve!

I’m half way through War and Peace.  Really enjoying it, although my mind wanders slightly during some of the war scenes.  It’s a lot more accessible than I thought it would be – a bit like an epic Russian soap -opera.

I made a recent trip to the National Theatre to see Dido Queen of Carthage.  Loved it.  Amazing production and a storyline which really got me thinking.  No man is worth setting yourself on fire for!  Alls Well That Ends Well, a trip to see the Tiger Lillies and a comedy charity night (Orangaid) lined up in the next few weeks.

That’s about it for now.  If you made it this far… hope all is well your side of the blogosphere!

Time for (yet another) fresh start…

It’s a beautiful sunny day out there today, and it feels like the perfect time for a fresh start.

Change is always stressful, but as some wise, yet it seems anonymous person, once said, ‘If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies’, and who would want to live in a world without butterflies?

So things have changed again for me.   After a bad night’s sleep last night, I’m being gentle with myself today.  However, from tomorrow things change.   The best way to feel good about yourself has to be to keep yourself physically fit and healthy and do things you enjoy.  So I am running in the morning (no excuses!)  and working hard during the day getting my article ready to send off to an academic journal.  I need to keep telling myself how proud of myself I will feel if I get published.

Then, in the early evening I have booked myself a place at a yoga class with my old teacher – Julian Daizan Skinner.  He truly is remarkable both as a teacher and a person.  If he can’t get me back on the road to happiness, then nobody can.

I am going to put into perspective the distractions that fuel my depression, low self-esteem and self-doubt (facebook, obsessive email checking, stupid online games and so on) and reap the benefits of using my time effectively.  I will live my own life, focus on what I want for the future and value my own achievements.  All this I promise to myself, and by writing it down here make that promise public.

You know what…?

Sometimes, with all the hurt and pain and suffering , with all the illness, untimely deaths and cruelty on the front of our newspapers, with all the petty annoyances and disappointments of day to day life, it is easy to forget just what a beautiful world this really is.

It’s amazing what a sunny day can do…

A sunny Sunday in March

So today has turned out to be beautiful day.  The sun is shining, and despite being stuck in London (yet again), I decided to make the most of it.  I started my day with a nice long run along the river.  There were lots of people out and about – rowing, cycling, walking dogs and playing in the park.  Next I decided that instead of piling on a crowded bus to the supermarket, I would take the 40 minute walk along the river.  The ducks are starting to look very smart in their mating pulmage, and the reflection of the blossoming trees iun the still water made me wish I’d taken my camera with me.

My day took a slight, although probably predictable dip whilst in the supermarket.  I’m not claiming that I do anything remarkable, but I do try to do the little things that perhaps might make a difference.  I always take my canvas bags with me to the supermarket, I make every effort to recycle and to choose my products responsibly.  So it is a little disheartening to realise how many people out there just don’t make any effort at all.  I’m greated on arrival in the carpark by a family of 6 ripping the wrappers off of ice-creams and just leaving a trail of litter and wrappings behind them.  This wasn’t just a couple of naughty kids.  This was a mother and father who have obviously shown their kids that this is acceptable.  I’m also disheartened by the number of people loading up with plastic bags and battery hen eggs.  Perhaps I’m missing something – but if you can afford to spend £2 on deli sun-dried tomatos, then you could probably splash out on some ethically sound eggs.

Anyway, now I’m back home and enjoying my wonderful discovery - Spotify. So, I’m making myself bubble and squeak, tackling the Everyman crossword and listening to all those songs that you love, but forget that you love…

Del Amitri – Always the Last to Know, Deacon Blue – Dignity (and others), OMD – Pandora’s Box,  Carole King (various)…and those are only the ones that I’m admitting to!

Living in a LaTeX World

So I recently discovered the wonderful world of LaTeX.   For the uninitiatied, this is a type setting,  document preparation system that allows you to produce documents whilst giving you much more control than you have in programme such as Word.

It’s like I’ve joined a little gang or clique.  We know about something that everybody else is missing out on, poor souls.  I’ve never wanted to be in the Mac-users gang – far too pretentious – but LaTeX people are my sort of people.

I guess a lot of people would be scared off by the way a document looks whilst in preparation – you have to put in your own commands and make sure the syntax and punctuation is all correct.  One bracket out of place and the whole thing can fall apart, but what can beat the feeling of finding that missing bracket and seeing it all fall into place? [Does this last statement make me very very sad?]

This approach appeals to me hugely.  I like to know how something is working and be able to tweak it to be the way I want it.  It’s far more satisfying than spending an afternoon trying to persuade Word that I really do want more than one numbered list in my document and trying to ignore that smug little paperclip help thingy.  All of this probably says much more about me than I realise…

The editing programme that I’ve been using kindly points out any errors that you may have made and  sometimes it does this without much subtly.  Yesterday it informed me that if I didn’t correct my error the examples in my linguistics paper were, ‘likely to be screwed up!’

Perhaps it appeals to those parts of me that I secretly know exist, but that perhaps I don’t always like to acknowledge to the world: geekiness, a love of problem solving and a need for control.  There is something about knowing that if something isn’t working the way you want it to,  it’s because you haven’t put the correct instructions in somewhere.  It’s predictable, logical and with a bit of effort it can be mastered.  If only the rest of life were so simple…

The waiting game

I’ve spent a fair proportion of the last 48 hours in waiting rooms.  Yesterday, this was to give blood and today for a very different reason.  My mother has been diagnosed with cancer and today we went to see her consultant to find out the results of her various scans and tests, and hear what treatment is lined up for her.

In both cases there was a distinct atmosphere amongst the people waiting.  We all knew why the others were there, and to a greater or lesser extent shared part of the experience with them.  In the donor session you are all undergoing the same procedure for more or less the same reasons,  and there is an element of shared identity in the room.  We are, after all, all blood donors!  The gentleman who had been on the bed next to mine, rummaged through the box of  ‘blood group’ keyrings as he enjoyed his post-donation coffee.  I noticed that we didn’t share the same blood group, but despite that, and all the other more obvious differences between us, we had one thing in common.

I found the waiting room today a strangely positive place (although with nearly 2 hours of it, I could have done with a little less…)  There I was with all these women, all at various stages of undergoing the same or at least similar experiences.  Some were obvious regulars.  Two appeared to have become friends from just this waiting room experience.

I now realise that a cancer diagnosis in yourself or a loved one can make you feel quite lonely.  Everyone does their best, but nobody is experiencing it in quite the same way as you are.  However, here were six women who were going through something very similar.  What struck me most about them was how alive they were.  Some were chatting away, reading recipes from the magazines, discussing their families and so on.  Some were just quietly sitting, alone or with partners.  All of them, were very much alive, and living with cancer.

For my mother, the news was worth waiting for – probably the most positive we could hope for considering the circumstances, and she’ll start chemotherapy in the next few weeks.  I imagine there’ll be many more waiting room opportunities to look forward to over the next few months!