Tongue in cheek TV

I've just managed to watch Peter Kay's recent 'Britain's Got the Pop Factor...' - it was brilliantly funny, satirically poking fun at all the norms of reality TV talent shows, but surprisingly addictive. I felt, by the end of the programme, as though I had watched an entire series, and I found myself nervous waiting to hear who had won! Is it wrong to know that the entire show was tongue in cheek, but still find it hugely entertaining for all the reasons that such talent shows are usually entertaining? Ah well, at least it distracts from the train wreck that is my current level of motivation for work...

Fundamentalist atheism

How, in all conscience (although, I imagine he would claim that such a thing is an entirely religious construct), can Professor Dawkins claim to represent the 'objective', 'rational' point of view?! I have just read the following article on the BBC website:

"Buses with the slogan "There's probably no God" could soon be running on the streets of London.

The atheist posters are the idea of the British Humanist Association (BHA) and have been supported by prominent atheist Professor Richard Dawkins.

The complete slogan reads: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Professor Dawkins said: "Religion is accustomed to getting a free ride - automatic tax breaks, unearned respect and the right not to be offended, the right to brainwash children.

"Even on the buses, nobody thinks twice when they see a religious slogan plastered across the side.

"This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion.""

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7681914.stm)

It is terribly frustrating to be told that thinking is anathema to religion after nearly eight years of academic enquiry into the nature and beliefs of religious thoughts and thinkers. It is also terribly short-sighted. As far as I was aware, science requires imagination: in order to move forward in scientific development, one has to have the ability to ask 'what if' all the time (not so different from story-tellers, historians, philosophers, theologians...). To claim that the current scientific understanding of the universe/humanity is the final say seems to me to be somewhat arrogant. I could be wrong, of course. Professor Dawkins may, in fact, have a hotline to all the unknown facts of existence. He may, indeed, be the closest thing us poor simple folk have to accessing 'divinity'. He certainly seems to think so... (How funny would it be if God actually did exist? Do you think he might develop a sense of humility? Having said that, humility, of course, has no evolutionary function, therefore it cannot in all honesty be understood to exist. Not even the possiblity of it. Scientific fact. Not closed-minded fundamentalist belief. Obviously.)

I do not claim to have the answers - but isn't that the beauty of it all? How utterly boring to know that you know everything.

Weekend at home

Mum's birthday this weekend, so off home we went. In the past month, we've all four moved out, so Mum and Dad are on their own. I'm not sure they've noticed yet, but I imagine it will hit soon enough. I saw Sister 1's new house: it's beautiful - well-situated, spacious and very, very cheap. I'm jealous! Talking to her partner, I found a connection with the stories of various slightly strange authors. I've recommended Russell Hoban to him, so we'll see how he manages with that.

I'm house-sitting next weekend, as my parents go off on a half-term trip. I'm really looking forward to the space. Hopefully it will focus the mind, so that I can *finally* finish the chapter I'm working on. I think if I don't submit something to my supervisor (who I haven't seen for about 12 months) soon, I may find it difficult to complete. I'm aware that I now have less than 12 months to go (especially in terms of funding), and I'm feeling the pressure. I've found it very difficult to commit to this project; there are periods of intense frustration and dispiritedness, barely balanced by the short bursts of motivation and excitement. Funnily enough, the hardest thing at the moment is just to write. I can stare at the computer screen for hours and barely write a few hundred words. Given that I'm working in the humanities, I really should be able to manage more than this!

Obviously one of the biggest distractions is the Internet!! Unfortunately, it's also becoming one of the most important tools I have. I'd much rather be writing for fun. I keep reading stories and wishing I were writing creatively. I do try to see the PhD as creative writing of a certain genre, but it feels so much more methodical (and so much less relevant...). I've just received a box set of Roald Dahl novels. I'd been reading the short stories and had a sudden hankering after some of the first stories I remember. I was especially pleased to read "Matilda" again after so many years. It's as good as I remember! I look forward to working my way through the rest.

Connections

As I continue to hit my head against the brick wall that is my PhD thesis, I find I am seeing connections everywhere. My research is on theology and literature; more specifically, it concerns the act of reading from both a literary and a theological point of view. I'm drawing primarily from the literary criticism of Mikhail Bakhtin (which leads down paths towards Kant, Dostoevsky, Buber, Proust....), but I'm also very interested in engaging with various novelists, including Russell Hoban, Neil Gaiman and Andrew Crumey. I'm currently trying to deal with Einstein, Heisenberg and Schrödinger, as well as Goethe, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Schumann, H. P. Lovecraft and Umberto Eco. Not that this is just a random string of names (although it may appear to be so); these are the names that seem to cross-reference each other as I read through various novels and academic books.

I've just finished reading Andrew Crumey's Sputnik Caledonia, hot on the heels of his Mobius Dick. They are both excellent novels, making complex scientific concepts accessible to the likes of me! Obviously, approaching a novel that deals with quantum physics/general relativity doesn't necessarily sound like it's going to be an exciting read, but I was hooked by both: the plots are finely tuned and the characters incredibly engaging - points I only noticed on finishing both books, as I was entirely sucked into their world for the duration.

I'm particularly interested in the nature of time and space in the act of reading (is it a different order of time/space that we experience when reading? As far as it is any activity, it obviously takes place in this space and time, but our experience of a good novel/poem/story can somehow feel timeless in the sense of being outside time...) and I stumbled across this blog written by Mr. (I should say Dr.) Crumey: http://www.panmacmillan.com/Picador/ManageBlog.aspx?BlogID=d853b604-23d4-48ae-beb0-a7c018d8a6b5&BlogPage=Permalink. In it he compares our experience of time in the universe to the experience of reading, although drawing slightly different conclusions to some of the ones I had been coming to. I shall have to sit down and have another think about it (especially as he has a doctorate in theoretical physics, and knows rather more about it than I do).

My copy of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book arrived today. I'm keeping it as a treat - if I manage to do x amount of work, I can read a chapter! I'm definitely looking forward to reading it. I've enjoyed many of his other works, especially the short stories (why do short stories always get overlooked? Virginia Woolf's are some of the most moving pieces of literature I've ever read, yet hardly anyone knows about them). I realise The Graveyard Book is billed as a children's book - I think the publishers actually call it 'a story for children of all ages' - but my secret confession is that I love children's stories. They always seem to contain so much more possiblity than adults' novels. Adults' novels, whilst beautifully written and poignantly pitched, very often restrict themselves to observation or comment. Children's novels dream in a way that adult novels often do not, and it is this that made me fall in love with reading many years ago. So, I'll keep reading the adult novels, and enjoying them, but you'll never stop me reading the children's stories too! (On which note, I've just ordered a set of Roald Dahl novels...)