My walk was the walk of a human child, but my heart was a tree.

Easter

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 11:52:00 GMT

"We should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind. This is our greatest festival. Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity... This is our greatest day. We should put the flags out." -- Tom Wright

Time

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:37:02 GMT

This email about the BBC interview says: "Morning or early afternoon is best for us as we would have to travel back in time for it to be on our 6.30pm programme."

I have just realised it means: "We would have to travel back... in time for it to be on our 6.30pm programme" and not, as I've been thinking for hours, "We would have to travel back in time... for it to be on our 6.30pm programme."

The funny thing is that I wasn't awfully surprised by the misreading. I mean, Doctor Who works there and all.

Perl skeleton XML parser

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:13:06 GMT

This is the Perl skeleton XML parser I always keep handy. It might be useful for you, too.

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:55:52 GMT

"I should also mention that there's a memory-saving hack. AVALOT.EXE is just a bootloader, which sets up a block of memory, points an interrupt vector at it, and then loads the actual executable, AVALOT9. AVALOT9 is then capable of storing temporary state information in the block, and also setting a function code which tells AVALOT.EXE what to do when AVALOT9 quits: either loading COMMAND.COM so that shelling out gives you a reasonable amount of memory, or loading a cut scene (and then loading AVALOT9 again afterwards), or quitting."

-- me, in email, discussing the design of Avalot with someone from ScummVM

Daughter am I in my mother's house, but mistress in my own.

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:51:04 GMT

Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about Canada, which includes the lines

A Nation spoke to a Nation, A Throne sent word to a Throne:
"Daughter am I in my mother's house, but mistress in my own."

In the book I'm currently reading, Chesterton repurposes the lines above to talk about the Thomist idea of local autonomy under God: how God doesn't want followers who are automatons, but rather wants followers who are mature and able to make their own decisions. I never thought of this idea with respect to the Commonwealth before, and it's a fascinating metaphor.

prejudice, etc

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:28:32 GMT

There are many accounts on Twitter pretending to be famous people from the past. One of these, @MaryHChrist, who plays the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, joined in with today's ridiculous tag, "signs your son might be gay", and in so doing drew much criticism.

I'm wondering why. Do people believe that being gay is such a terrible thing that to suggest Jesus might have been celibate and gay, rather than celibate and straight, shocks them? Or are they shocked by the idea that Jesus might ever have experienced sexual desire at all?

And with more immediate reference, have they forgotten the stiry of the sheep and the goats? Where you see someone hated for their skin colour, their gender, their lack of money... wherever there is oppression, look at the people on the receiving end, and there you see Jesus. Prejudice against gay people is no different.

Counter

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:48:32 GMT

A: "These days, I don't know why underwear doesn't come with some sort of electronic device built into the waistband. It would display the number of days it'd been worn without being washed. It would take all the guesswork out of getting dressed."

B: "Yeah, I'll just go down to the trademark office and register the name 'Skank-O-Pants', shall I?"

The Lady in her many-legged wisdom

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:55:51 GMT

This is from something I said to Mary Ann Dimand:

It always amuses me that humans think Leviathan is there for us to fear and fight, but the psalmist says Leviathan is there in order to play. We're so often in the habit of thinking that the whole business is all about us. One day I shall retell several Bible stories as they are told among the spiders, to make that point:

"The Lady in her many-legged wisdom looked upon the earth and saw that it lacked houses and railings on which to build webs, and so on the last day as an afterthought she made humans to build them, for she loves us; but the humans became cruel and made shoes to hit us with, until the Lady knew they would have to be redeemed. For the Lady, like us, is perfect, but humans need silk spun for them before they may approach heaven. The Lady caused herself to be born among them, in her humility becoming not only human but even male, and this is how it happened..."

Roller-coaster

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 08:57:39 GMT

Kid 1, on the train this morning: "I'm going to Thorpe Park. And I'm going to ride on a roller-coaster."

Kid 2: "What I always do is, I get hold of some screws and nuts and put them in my pocket before I go. Then when the ride's just starting, when we're strapped in and we can't get out, I hold them out in my hand to the person next to me and say, 'I found these under your seat. Do you think they're important?'"

Why I don't support the Premier Radio petition

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:51:46 GMT

Premier Radio has been putting a petition around. It's asking for a law to be made requiring ISPs to block pornographic websites if the person logged in is under 18. Here I am explaining why I don't support this petition and won't be signing it. This is not intended to disparage anyone who has signed it; it is only to explain why I shall not be doing so.

Firstly, it is incoherent. The concept of "logged on" applies to a computer, not to a network. Various operating systems implement this in various ways, and some have no such concept. The ISP has no way of knowing this information.

Secondly, the term "pornography" is notoriously difficult to define. Facebook have recently used it to prevent mothers posting pictures of themselves breastfeeding their own children. School boards in the United States who wished to promote abstinence-only education have used it to stop their students reading about safe sex. How is the term to be defined, and who will be making the decision, and how will they be accountable? Not too long ago, a Pennsylvania official who had the ability to block websites based on their content abused his power to prevent anyone in the state reading a political website which was critical of him.

Finally, the petition is couched in such terms that to dissent from it is almost to be seen to approve of child abuse. This is not a reasonable way to put forward an idea, and I wish to have nothing to do with it.

Edit: I've been pointed to http://www.crimperman.org/2012/02/29/why-internet-blocking-will-not-protect-our-children/ which is another opinion concurring with this one.

Admin dreams

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:16:20 GMT

I woke up twice in the night, each time from an exhausting admin dream. Do other people get admin dreams? I have nightmares where nothing particularly bad happens, but I'm run ragged trying to keep up with the demands of dozens of unhappy clients. At one point I remember being asked to look after a lighthouse while the lighthouse keepers were on holiday, and then needing my phone and losing it. Each time I woke up exhausted.

C.S. Lewis did not say "You don't have a soul. You are a soul; you have a body."

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:25:38 GMT

...because I'm sick of people saying he said it.

And we were singing...

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:27:25 GMT

And we were singing...
Bye-bye Mr Raspberry Pi,
Seems your suitors want computers that are short in supply.
I guess they'll wait till another comes by,
then I reckon they will all reapply.

Rosehips

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 07:53:31 GMT

This morning, while waiting for a train, I was sitting on a bench in memory of someone or other. Just beside it, also in this person's memory, was a rose-bush that nobody cared for.

Let me tell you a bit about roses here. You and I, who plant the roses, believe that the purpose of the rose is to grow flowers. But the rose has other ideas. To the rose, a flower is only the means to the end of producing a rosehip, which is its seed; the irony, lost on the rose, is that all cultivated roses are infertile anyway. The rosehips don't fall for a season or so, and there won't be any new flowers there until they do. So one part of caring for a rose is to cut away the hips, or the "dead heads" as people sometimes call them. This rose had scores of hips, and clearly wasn't being looked after.

So I got my hands a bit bloody this morning, but there will be roses again in the summer. I couldn't help but be reminded of Jesus's claim to be the true vine, "...and my father is the gardener; every branch in me that bears no fruit he will remove, but every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be more fruitful." For me and for the rose, feeling the edge of the pruning knife means I'm doing something right.

Cholera

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:07:54 GMT

The scene: A work break room. MARNANEL is getting a cup of coffee from the machine, and CLEANING PERSON is squirting disinfectant into the sink.

MARNANEL: Thank you.

CLEANING PERSON: ...For what?

MARNANEL: For cleaning the sink.

CLEANING PERSON: Cleaning the sink? (She wrinkles her nose in confusion.) You're saying "thank you" for me doing this?

MARNANEL: Yeah, so we don't all die of cholera. Because I don't LIKE dying of cholera.

CLEANING PERSON: ...Cholera?

MARNANEL: And other waterborne diseases! People died of them ALL THE TIME before we started disinfecting sinks and so on. So I'm glad you're cleaning the sink, because it's a horrible way to die.

CLEANING PERSON: It is?

MARNANEL: Yeah! Bloody diarrhoea! Vomiting! And then you die painfully.

CLEANING PERSON: *stares*

MARNANEL: *decides this would be a good place to end the conversation*

"The Aristocrat" - G K Chesterton

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:38:17 GMT

Like much of Chesterton's (and Belloc's) work, this starts in a fluffy manner but becomes very serious at the end. The inimitable Sydney Smith apparently characterised some people's view of heaven as "eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets". Chesterton points out that this will become its own kind of hell.

One point of explanation is necessary: "the blues", depression, was originally "the blue devils" (see OED). So "and that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird" means approximately "what was once happiness becomes depression".

The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;
But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't brag himself.

O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What'sitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that's played behind its door,
Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more,
Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't keep his word.

Sitting at the bottom of the swimming pool

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:04:41 GMT

When I was a child, I read this somewhere in a magazine: I forget where, or I'd send the writer my thanks. It's one of those offhand things which become part of my mental furniture for the rest of my life.

The writer said that when she was a little girl, she used to go with her friends to the swimming pool. And her friends would end up splashing around and making a lot of noise, which is fun for a while. When she got tired of it, though, she would take a great lungful of air and make herself sink to the bottom of the pool, and there she would sit happily beneath it all in the calm, looking up at the sunlight and the chaos above her, beneath it but not part of it.

And one day she learned that she could do the same thing anywhere. No swimming pool was necessary.

A week of picking on trans people

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:40:34 GMT

It's hardly unusual for trans people to be picked on by the rest of society, but this week has been egregious.

Firstly, there was the news story of the five-year-old child who was born male but wants to be a girl. Several national newspapers saw fit to publish not only this child's name but also the name of her school, some of them on the front page.

Secondly, the bookmaker Paddy Power ran a campaign which invited people at a racing meet to judge whether women were transgendered or cisgendered (the bookmaker asked people to "spot the stallions from the mares").

Thirdly, after a transsexual man reportedly recently gave birth in the UK, the Sun set up a hotline for its readers to tell its reporters where he lives. Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton, is to be commended for tabling an early day motion in the Commons condemning this behaviour.

And fourthly, the charity Plan UK decided to make a bus shelter advert that was visible only to female observers. This worked by using facial analysis software, and was apparently 90% accurate. It seems that nobody thought of the dangers inherent in having a machine declare a person's observed gender to the rest of the bus queue. (If the machine had a 10% false positive rate, can you imagine what a gift it would be to a bully waiting for the school bus?) Sarah Brown gave this device the wonderful name "Out-o-tron". Plan UK are not apologising and have permanently lost my support.

Apaches

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:51:29 GMT

I can honestly say that being made to watch this film in school was one of the most horrifying half-hours of my life. Did any of the rest of you have to watch it?

The message

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:55:20 GMT

I was looking through the files for an official letter and started giggling. Kit said, "What is it?" I said, "I found a letter from the bank, and there's a message I don't recognise on the back in my handwriting."

The message says:

I'm a little teapot, brave and bold,
Leave the tea until it's cold.
When a fortnight's passed, I'm filled with mould.
Don't pretend you were not told.

Thurman Reads it All

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:36:21 GMT

In the room where I'm sitting are perhaps a thousand books.

I have read many of them, but not most of them.

This should change. Therefore, I am going to try to read through a random unread book every week and to blog about it.

Want to join me in this adventure?

You might well enjoy following my rather embryonic reading blog, Thurman Reads it All.

Dear Mr Johnson

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:21:07 GMT

This morning a song to the tune of "Lili Marlene" floated into my head:

Dear Mr Johnson, you want to have a loan?
We took your information on the telephone;
make sure your passport's duly filed
and promise us your first-born child;
an easy monthly payment
till twenty ninety-three.

I suspect something can be made of this.

an interesting thought

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:48:28 GMT

the thing about squirrels
that nobody sees
is how their affection
for climbing up trees
is just like a spider's,
and so (I suppose)
they're really arachnids
with not enough toes.

"The Giveaway"

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:32:58 GMT

Since it's St Bridget's day, here's "The Giveaway" by Phyllis Mcginley:

Saint Bridget was a problem child.
Although a lass demure and mild,
And one who strove to please her dad,
Saint Bridget drove the family mad.
For here the fault in Bridget lay:
She would give everything away.

To any soul whose luck was out
She'd give her bowl of stirabout;
She'd give her shawl, divide her purse
With one or all. And what was worse,
When she ran out of things to give
She'd borrow from a relative.

Her father's gold, her grandsire's dinner,
She'd hand to cold and hungry sinner;
Give wine, give meat, no matter whose;
Take from her feet the very shoes,
And when her shoes had gone to others,
Fetch forth her sister's and her mother's.

She could not quit. She had to share;
Gave bit by bit the silverware,
The barnyard geese, the parlor rug,
Her little niece's christening mug,
Even her bed to those in want,
And then the mattress of her aunt.

An easy touch for poor and lowly,
She gave so much and grew so holy
That when she died of years and fame,
The countryside put on her name,
And still the Isles of Erin fidget
With generous girls named Bride or Bridget.

Well, one must love her. Nonetheless,
In thinking of her Givingness,
There's no denial she must have been
A sort of trial unto her kin.
The moral, too, seems rather quaint.
WHO had the patience of a saint,
From evidence presented here?
Saint Bridget? Or her near and dear?

Puppy dreams

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:14:56 GMT

My puppy always starts to growl as soon as he's asleep:
"I've caught a hundred waterfowl and killed a thousand sheep;
I felled and ate a buffalo, then swam across the sea,
And when I found where squirrels go, I chased them up the tree."
And though his dreams are not the truth, who'll wake him up? Not I!
I've firmly held it since my youth that sleeping dogs should lie.