Checking back over my twitter feed I see that the parentii were watching “Last of the Summer Wine” last week. I suspect it is on this week as well so they will not be ringing me until 8p.m. so this may well be written before they ring despite my late start.
Last Monday I heard that I did indeed get the concession, so I only have to pay half fees this year again. Yes! The day actually filled pretty quickly, partly as it was my only day in work this week and partly because my brain clicked into write mode with the Butyrate project and I wrote up most of what I needed to do. Also that evening my mind also sorted out what slides I needed to have for the conference. So a good day. I did not shop as I was away the rest of the week so the evening was free to think on the paper.
Leaving at 11:00 a.m. is civilised as it gives you plenty of time to pack. Unfortunately Kirkgate Station Wakefield is not civilised. The standard method of finding what platform your train leaves from is to ask the guard on the next train to come in. Seriously for those who have the choice of changing trains at Kirkgate or Westgate in Wakefield go to Westgate. Kirkgate was not the best of stations in 1977 and it has gone down hill from there. Fortunately the only smartly dressed people at kirkgate station were heading for Mirfield.
At the conference I was put into the retreat house. This was a good idea as the retreat house keeps silence from about 9pm to 9am as it is part of the abbey. It also meant more walking, and a continual job of educating the organisers that those in the retreat house needed extra time to get places. Turning up late was common place.
The conference itself was the sort confusing. The people were predominantly from the churches with set liturgies. This of course meant that the main interest in liturgy was critical and historical. I of course came from the sociological perspective but probably more importantly from a free liturgical tradition. That means that what I am used to is talk of what makes for good liturgy over a far wider range of topics. I think the thing that high lighted this for me, was a talk by an Anglican on the Anabaptist daily prayer book where he mentioned that they had poets, musicians and Biblical Scholars right in from the start as well as liturgists and my response was “Of course you do!” I have written two entries on my musings blog. However I have a third concern and that is the taking of Reformed thinkers out of context. A statement by a Congregationalist that for some people the main concern in worship is faithfulness to tradition and for others it is relevance, is not a statement about whether people have a written liturgy or not. You need go no further that Scotland to find excellent counter examples. The Wee Frees are totally about tradition but have no set liturgy, while Iona Community is strong on relevance and is producing liturgy all the time. Actually it gave me a weird sense that I as a lay Reformed person was about twenty years ahead of the conference. The things they were talking about were often part of the assumed structure within the URC. It was not helped by the fact that the one comment on my paper showed that I also outpaced one of the leading members in divinity, and I did not have time there to take her through all the problems I could see with her perspective. She was making logical leaps that were not possible to make from my paper. The assumption the Jesus learnt basically does not necessarily imply an adoptionist Christology. My own stance is that Jesus knew as a human according to his human nature and knew as God according to his Godly nature. (if someone recognises that quote and can tell me where from I would be grateful) Therefore as a human he learnt, because learning can not be easily separated from human development. I suspect that the God-nature was present but as an extreme form of what some introverts experience, where they seem to pick up what is going on for others around them very easily.
The net effect for me of these things was that my brain went into ethnographer mode and that takes me into a state where I overload fairly easily. By the time I came to talk to the conference I had a second paper that was a direct response to the conference germinating. I am still not sure what to do about it. However that made me highly nervous as there seemed to be so much ground that needed covering before my paper could even be read. In the end I just gave it. I tried telling the story but it did not work my brain was too full of the facts of what really happened that these undermined the telling. Anyway the paper is distributed and I will need to re-write to try and interact with the audience. This means taking things back a couple of stages and arguing that everybody does work around worship not just those who right the text. To understand a liturgy therefore you need not only look at what is written but what happens and what people understand to have happened.
Friday I was exhausted, but I also know that a couple of books had come to work, and that I needed to shop. I had ordered the books to arrive before I went to Mirfield so that I could take time out from the conference theme. One was the Non-designers design Book by Robin Williams which is very readable and I think worth reading. I got it as I was doing layout of the next collection of work for my writers group. Anyway I got into work and there were not two parcels waiting for me but four. One I left in work as it is almost certainly a book I ordered for work through Abebooks and got from Bristol Oxfam! Well it was a fairly obscure Statistical Text.
The actual text for the collection arrived Friday evening. I forget how addictive layout is and it was after midnight before I got to bed. I had just sussed how to get the stuff from Word to Publisher effectively. Although I Office 2007 was a major redesign for Word and Excel, Publisher is still very definitely Office 2003 style, which made it interesting to use. Some fairly obvious shortcuts were simply not implemented and it did not handle overflow well. Neil the teacher for the group had claimed that layout would take a long time. I am pretty sure it does if you approach it the way many people do, which is to take the different texts with all the formatting and try and create a uniform version. I did the opposite. I got rid of 90% of the formatting that was already there, then put in a fresh lot. There are still some fiddles but these are minor compared with working the other way.
Today went to Herringthorpe. It was a double baptism, the last as part of the main morning service. Pauline took the baptisms and then returned to the manse as Alex, her husband, had only come out of hospital on Friday after major surgery and was still far from well. So she wanted to be there to make sure he was alright. Roy Roddison took the rest of the service, and I was doing the reading. I got a couple of compliments on how I did it, which I expected. That is not vanity, I don’t feel that I read exceptionally well, just that I know if I prepare a passage, I will read it so that it is audible and with expression. I know about sound systems, I have been reading in church since I was ten, I have had numerous trainings and I actually focus on communicating what is going on in the passage while reading it rather than “me reading”. I am not sure why this stands out but it does because I regularly get the feed back that it does.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
An Adminny sort of week
Last Sunday while recovering from the migraine, I had a sudden yen to make bread. I think the desire was to do the kneading rather than actually for the smell. As I am aware I occasionally get this sort of yet of desire to make bread I tend to have a couple of ready mixed ingredients in. I am beginning to think that the reason my loaves never rise as much as I desire is that with hand kneading I tend to keep the dough just too dry. Anyway I enjoyed the loaf that I made and I still have a couple of packets more to use when I want to, although I must admit the fact that they are Tescos Wholemeal rather than something more interesting does mean I am less likely to get the yen. A few years back when I had either more energy or time I used to make a fresh loaf each Sunday, and then it was worth having the dry ingredients but these days I rarely have that sort of opportunity.
Monday it was into work as usual, on the morning saw Margo with the brighter of her two student who knows what he is doing. It is just so completely different dealing with a student who is basically competent to one who is struggling. I outline roughly what he needed to do, he does it and then produces a good summary for us to review. The other student despite far more intensive support and an easier project is still struggling. I am not sure this happens but I normally know whether a person is struggling or really capable by the end of a first session. Some totally capable people are full of self doubts and just need to see me so I can say “yes you are doing fine”.
Also this last week I found the formula for Fiellers method for calculating the confidence interval of a proportion when the terms are individually normally distributed and the coefficient of variance of the denominator tends to infinity (basically an infinitesimal probability that it could be X). The data is not normally distributed but most of the studies assumed it was. I also hope I have a book with the formulae for the moment expansion method. The conclusion I am coming to is that Fieller’s method is actually better.
Wednesday I took as holiday, going to see Fleur about something that was bothering me. One of the interesting things is the assumption that because I get involved I am losing my critical distance. The fact is that although I am willing to work and chat and spend time there, I do always see this as a placement church. They have no pastoral responsibility for me, I will not vote during church meeting and I will never have myself included as a member. I am not without pastoral care, I made darn sure of that, according to what the need is I will either go to my counsellor, my minister, my elder, Fleur who is a long term confidant or my support group. It is not the placement churches role to help me sort myself out. Actually one of my reasons for having a counsellor is somewhere that I can unpack what I am feeling about the church and what I think the church is feeling about me. Sometimes I have to work harder at unpacking what other people are thinking because my past experience gets projected into the present. Fleur seemed to be in good sorts and sent me back with a German magazine for my father and was getting ready to do simultaneous translation for a group talking about spirituality of refugees and immigration in Europe I think.
Thursday I was in work but my concentration was shot, I eventually came home at 4:30 pm because I could not cope with pretending to stare at the computer screen for much longer and went to bed and slept for a couple of hours. During that time it tippled with rain. So often the inability to concentrate seems to happen in the build up to a rain storm!
Friday was a day I did a lot of admin for PhD including signing up for next year. It said that if I was eligible for 50% off I would get a tick box but no tick box appeared. As I have received it in previous years I decided to query this, especially as the description had not changed. I suspect that it quite possible that they had forgotten that my course is technically hefce covered. There is just almost nobody from the funding councils doing it. At least that is what I am hoping. Hopefully I will find out Monday.
Saturday I was out of sorts again, although I managed to buy some clothes for next week as I decided I wanted to be comfortable and fairly smart at the conferences and the clothes I had were either comfortable or smart. If I am happy with these for next week I will try buying a couple more silky stripped shirts and try wearing that during warmer weather into the office in an attempt to smarten up slightly. Work is always a problem as I have to be able to adapt pretty quickly to different situations. I need to satisfy both comfort and smartness, plus I carry a lot in my pockets. I am fortunately not a regular attender at meetings. Winter is mainly sorted with a turtle neck and trousers although I know I should wear something smarter than sweatshirts but they are warm and comfy (actually I have toning fleeces that I wear a lot). Summer however with wanting long sleeve tops, I find that most of the t-shirts have really deep neck lines which I am not really comfortable with in work. Hence my trying out of blouses. I just hope these don’t need ironing and tumble drying them will do.
So to today, and a normal day really. Got to Herringthorpe, congregation was missing mostly the families there being only about two there. There were two older lads but I had no idea where their parents were. The Sunday school was therefor sized at 6. Three of whom were cousins. Normally there are over twenty children that go out although even they are worrying over the Sunday School as they had not got any younger children coming through. I suspect it will need something stronger than a recruitment drive. Actually one of the interesting things about Herringthorpe is that the congregation is prepared to talk of things as a marketing campaign.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Busy week in work, followed by an interview and migraine
The week has been busy at least work wise. For those who think that Universities have holidays can I assure you, you are incorrect. They have teaching time which is called Term and research time which is called vacations. When you are research support therefore your busy periods are distinctly different from what people imagine, largely coinciding with the holidays. The result is that I am just keeping my head about water at present. This last week I have been involved in five separate projects. Four from human nutrition and one from Education. The human nutrition ones are fairly varied. The take up of vitamin B12 in older people. Actually fairly interesting, as the take-up seems to be related to lifestyle rather than eating food groups related to B12. So you get some counter-intuitive findings, where a scale that scores highly on meat intake actually suggests poorer B12 intake (the scale also weights quite heavily for drinking alcohol and is related to smoking).
Then there is couple of sports ones relating mental ability to food allowing for exercise. Unfortunately fitness seems to be confounded with distance so the further people ran the faster their overall pace. It looks an interesting study, but I think they will have to do a follow up study probably getting people in to do a fitness check prior to doing the race. Maybe the researchers in human nutrition need to join with some from physiology and see if they can find funding to work with participants in a specific set of events. The nice thing I can see is that participating in this study might be its own reward for the participants as they would get training advice and they would take even beginners.
Then there is the study on Butyrate. This is by far the most time consuming as I am having to spend quite a bit of time “developing” a meta-analysis for it. It is not straightforward as there are only about a dozen studies and most of those are inadequately reported. They also are not reported in standard units which adds its own complexities. I also suspect that the things measured are not normally distributed as there seems to be some sort of relationship between mean and the variation in the results. So it is going to require quite careful work.
The one for education was totally different. It was a researcher who had been so busy teaching that they had lost contact with their project and so needed to sit down and think through it again. The thing was that when I had caught onto what she wanted it was very simple to give her a way to do it easily with her project. What she wanted to do was to group like things together; basically put them in the same folder so she could think about them with some other notes on the side. Sounds easy the sort of thing you can do with scissors and paper except some of her things were sound recordings or tape recordings.
Well that kept me busy Monday to Thursday and then on Friday I had an interview in Rotherham for Herringthorpe URC. This one was with a local councillor, unfortunately he was ill but one of the people who works with him was there to talk to me and really gave me a lot of contacts. There is almost far more going on than people thing and I find that quite often those in council positions are some of the few who have an overveiw. I am still in two minds whether I should follow up by actually talking to another councilor for the ward the church is actually in or if I should leave it at that.
Unfortunately by the time I had got back from that I had gone into the migraine, cycle. This one was so long in turning up I thought I might have got over them for a long while. It held off pretty well for going to the Dicksons but mucked up yesterday quite royally. Tescos delivery and migraine don’t mix especially when person suffering gets the delivery time wrong. I “coped” by eating largely dry toast and drinking weak black tea. I went to bed after they delivered and got up early evening, thinking I was better. However by evening after taking five attempts to print something on the back of another sheet of paper, I eventually gave up. My brain was clearly not functioning right so I decided to take today as another migraine day.
So today rather than have a full day at Herringthorpe I have spent it inside, quite a bit in bed and finally got up and could face drinking coffee so am beginning to feel more normal although as the children running around down stairs still makes me fragile I suspect I am not ready for facing the world quite yet. So am not going to the songs of Praise at Herringthorpe.
Then there is couple of sports ones relating mental ability to food allowing for exercise. Unfortunately fitness seems to be confounded with distance so the further people ran the faster their overall pace. It looks an interesting study, but I think they will have to do a follow up study probably getting people in to do a fitness check prior to doing the race. Maybe the researchers in human nutrition need to join with some from physiology and see if they can find funding to work with participants in a specific set of events. The nice thing I can see is that participating in this study might be its own reward for the participants as they would get training advice and they would take even beginners.
Then there is the study on Butyrate. This is by far the most time consuming as I am having to spend quite a bit of time “developing” a meta-analysis for it. It is not straightforward as there are only about a dozen studies and most of those are inadequately reported. They also are not reported in standard units which adds its own complexities. I also suspect that the things measured are not normally distributed as there seems to be some sort of relationship between mean and the variation in the results. So it is going to require quite careful work.
The one for education was totally different. It was a researcher who had been so busy teaching that they had lost contact with their project and so needed to sit down and think through it again. The thing was that when I had caught onto what she wanted it was very simple to give her a way to do it easily with her project. What she wanted to do was to group like things together; basically put them in the same folder so she could think about them with some other notes on the side. Sounds easy the sort of thing you can do with scissors and paper except some of her things were sound recordings or tape recordings.
Well that kept me busy Monday to Thursday and then on Friday I had an interview in Rotherham for Herringthorpe URC. This one was with a local councillor, unfortunately he was ill but one of the people who works with him was there to talk to me and really gave me a lot of contacts. There is almost far more going on than people thing and I find that quite often those in council positions are some of the few who have an overveiw. I am still in two minds whether I should follow up by actually talking to another councilor for the ward the church is actually in or if I should leave it at that.
Unfortunately by the time I had got back from that I had gone into the migraine, cycle. This one was so long in turning up I thought I might have got over them for a long while. It held off pretty well for going to the Dicksons but mucked up yesterday quite royally. Tescos delivery and migraine don’t mix especially when person suffering gets the delivery time wrong. I “coped” by eating largely dry toast and drinking weak black tea. I went to bed after they delivered and got up early evening, thinking I was better. However by evening after taking five attempts to print something on the back of another sheet of paper, I eventually gave up. My brain was clearly not functioning right so I decided to take today as another migraine day.
So today rather than have a full day at Herringthorpe I have spent it inside, quite a bit in bed and finally got up and could face drinking coffee so am beginning to feel more normal although as the children running around down stairs still makes me fragile I suspect I am not ready for facing the world quite yet. So am not going to the songs of Praise at Herringthorpe.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Visit of Niece and Nephew before an interview
Right lets see what has gone on in the last eight days.
Well work-wise things were a bit easier last week. Mainly because one researcher was on holiday. That gave me time to think. Things also got out of sync as my boss fairly late on Friday the previous week chose to move a meeting from Tuesday to Friday. That meant that as Monday and Tuesday were already spoken for with other meetings I had to have my day off on Thursday. Just as well because with doing that I was able to sort someone out so they are now able to do their analysis for themselves.
However to counteract that I had a lot of other sort of activity.
On Wednesday Cathy brought Sam and Hannah over. My father claims they are arch-conservative ritualists with visiting me. The routine has to be the same. Cathy suggested that this time they might come by car, but that was not on, they had to come by train. I suspect part of it is because they get activity packs to keep them occupied on the way home if they come by train and they are not sure whether they will get them if they come by car, but Dad had taken my letter to imply the normal Chinese Buffet was shut. It was not, the alternative one was. As they came over at 10:30 we did however manage to persuade them to allow Cath and I to have a coffee before going for a swim. Also Cathy and I got more swimming done this time as Hannah is now happy to swim and does not want to cling as much. Cathy points out that it is all very well saying she must not go two feet away from Hannah while Hannah is in the pool, but Hannah quite happily goes two feet away from her. Sam was beating me at swimming. This is no surprise, Sam is probably now a better swimmer than I ever was as I never made the transition from School swimming lesson to club even though for a while I went to a school with a very high standard of swimming lessons. Then onto the Chinese, with Hannah not really remembering the way, so asking about five times whether we were nearly there yet (the restaurant is all of 500 yards away) and when we got to Jessops which is next door saying in disgust “I know my way mummy”. The kids enjoy the buffet no end and the thing is that they both happily eat there. I think part of it is that we let them go and choose their own food. Their eyes are slightly bigger than somewhere else but not by much. Then it was shopping time but the sun had gone in and Hannah was cold. She ended up borrowing my coat (I think partly because she liked the fact that I joked we could get three Hannah’s in there). Actually I am not sure she was that wise to do it, as the sleeves looked lthe right length to make it a temporary straight jacket for her. Sam decided to correct my pronunciation of Primark. I tend to say it as Prim-ark while he prefers Pri-mark with an ‘i’ as in Prime. When we finally got up here they played for a short while in the local playground before a light shower came on. Then it was drink and chat at the flat before heading for the train. Sam carried the bag with the presents in all the way down and they both were given £1 to spend at the coffee shop on the platform.
Thursday I took easily after that although I decided that I needed to start sorting out interviews. I am not sure that I got very far but I did put one recording down to CD and started checking equipment. I also went to try and collect a prescription from Boots to find that they had only ordered the ibuprofen. This was fortunately not a disaster and they hopefully will have the correct prescription by tomorrow but I will be worried if not.
Friday I was back in work and I was supposed to find time to print out some of the forms for Chesterfield, which I failed to find time for as I was that busy, but I managed over the weekend to get another form ready for sending. I need to listen to the recording before I send the form so they take a while to actually create. I also went shopping and bought four glasses, two batteries and a battery tester. I also thought I had got myself ready for the interview the next day.
Sunday I went to Herringthorpe in the morning and when I got there I got worried as their appeared to be a Song of Praise in the afternoon and as I was interviewing someone after church that made time very short indeed. Fortunately it was a mis-print on the service sheets. One of the elders was leading worship as Alex (the ministers husband) had major surgery for bowel cancer on Friday and was still in extra care unit in the hospital. So anyone with prayers to spare I am sure that they would be appreciated by Pauline and Alex. I then went onto conduct the interview only to find despite my care the night before to prepare a folder with everything in it, to make sure I had fresh batteries in the equipment only to leave the folders at home and to find the microphones were not recording. I had a spare microphone that relies on being on a hard surface and that worked well, while I found an old copy of the questions and an example form. I think the fact that Karen who I was interviewing spilt the coffee helped to relax me and actually I was pleased with the interview. I think one of the reasons it was shorter is that I talked less, which means I am getting better at conducting them.
Today has been a busy one at work. However my monthly meeting with my boss was cancelled because she was off sick. Ironic when you consider it was a rare month when I had had no sick leave. However that time was quickly booked with another meeting to get a student started on his analysis. Actually the nice thing about this business is that I think it signals that a long time colleague whose marriage broke up leaving her caring for two young children one of whom is diabetic, is finding her research feet again. I suspect at least two papers will result from this activity.
This Friday I have another interview to conduct this time for Herringthorpe, with a local councillor and I need to sort that out, plus hopefully listening to a couple of interviews including the one done yesterday. I don’t want to get any further behind.
Well work-wise things were a bit easier last week. Mainly because one researcher was on holiday. That gave me time to think. Things also got out of sync as my boss fairly late on Friday the previous week chose to move a meeting from Tuesday to Friday. That meant that as Monday and Tuesday were already spoken for with other meetings I had to have my day off on Thursday. Just as well because with doing that I was able to sort someone out so they are now able to do their analysis for themselves.
However to counteract that I had a lot of other sort of activity.
On Wednesday Cathy brought Sam and Hannah over. My father claims they are arch-conservative ritualists with visiting me. The routine has to be the same. Cathy suggested that this time they might come by car, but that was not on, they had to come by train. I suspect part of it is because they get activity packs to keep them occupied on the way home if they come by train and they are not sure whether they will get them if they come by car, but Dad had taken my letter to imply the normal Chinese Buffet was shut. It was not, the alternative one was. As they came over at 10:30 we did however manage to persuade them to allow Cath and I to have a coffee before going for a swim. Also Cathy and I got more swimming done this time as Hannah is now happy to swim and does not want to cling as much. Cathy points out that it is all very well saying she must not go two feet away from Hannah while Hannah is in the pool, but Hannah quite happily goes two feet away from her. Sam was beating me at swimming. This is no surprise, Sam is probably now a better swimmer than I ever was as I never made the transition from School swimming lesson to club even though for a while I went to a school with a very high standard of swimming lessons. Then onto the Chinese, with Hannah not really remembering the way, so asking about five times whether we were nearly there yet (the restaurant is all of 500 yards away) and when we got to Jessops which is next door saying in disgust “I know my way mummy”. The kids enjoy the buffet no end and the thing is that they both happily eat there. I think part of it is that we let them go and choose their own food. Their eyes are slightly bigger than somewhere else but not by much. Then it was shopping time but the sun had gone in and Hannah was cold. She ended up borrowing my coat (I think partly because she liked the fact that I joked we could get three Hannah’s in there). Actually I am not sure she was that wise to do it, as the sleeves looked lthe right length to make it a temporary straight jacket for her. Sam decided to correct my pronunciation of Primark. I tend to say it as Prim-ark while he prefers Pri-mark with an ‘i’ as in Prime. When we finally got up here they played for a short while in the local playground before a light shower came on. Then it was drink and chat at the flat before heading for the train. Sam carried the bag with the presents in all the way down and they both were given £1 to spend at the coffee shop on the platform.
Thursday I took easily after that although I decided that I needed to start sorting out interviews. I am not sure that I got very far but I did put one recording down to CD and started checking equipment. I also went to try and collect a prescription from Boots to find that they had only ordered the ibuprofen. This was fortunately not a disaster and they hopefully will have the correct prescription by tomorrow but I will be worried if not.
Friday I was back in work and I was supposed to find time to print out some of the forms for Chesterfield, which I failed to find time for as I was that busy, but I managed over the weekend to get another form ready for sending. I need to listen to the recording before I send the form so they take a while to actually create. I also went shopping and bought four glasses, two batteries and a battery tester. I also thought I had got myself ready for the interview the next day.
Sunday I went to Herringthorpe in the morning and when I got there I got worried as their appeared to be a Song of Praise in the afternoon and as I was interviewing someone after church that made time very short indeed. Fortunately it was a mis-print on the service sheets. One of the elders was leading worship as Alex (the ministers husband) had major surgery for bowel cancer on Friday and was still in extra care unit in the hospital. So anyone with prayers to spare I am sure that they would be appreciated by Pauline and Alex. I then went onto conduct the interview only to find despite my care the night before to prepare a folder with everything in it, to make sure I had fresh batteries in the equipment only to leave the folders at home and to find the microphones were not recording. I had a spare microphone that relies on being on a hard surface and that worked well, while I found an old copy of the questions and an example form. I think the fact that Karen who I was interviewing spilt the coffee helped to relax me and actually I was pleased with the interview. I think one of the reasons it was shorter is that I talked less, which means I am getting better at conducting them.
Today has been a busy one at work. However my monthly meeting with my boss was cancelled because she was off sick. Ironic when you consider it was a rare month when I had had no sick leave. However that time was quickly booked with another meeting to get a student started on his analysis. Actually the nice thing about this business is that I think it signals that a long time colleague whose marriage broke up leaving her caring for two young children one of whom is diabetic, is finding her research feet again. I suspect at least two papers will result from this activity.
This Friday I have another interview to conduct this time for Herringthorpe, with a local councillor and I need to sort that out, plus hopefully listening to a couple of interviews including the one done yesterday. I don’t want to get any further behind.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Broken Computers, Birmingham visit and a Community Party
News this week. Firstly my work computer has been sick all week. This clearly does not mean that my home ones are sick. Indeed I have been using an old computer at work, which I feel happy playing around on as it was mine and I know what it is like. I could borrow another computer but then I feel restricted in what I can do, I cannot set it up to suit myself. The latest stage is that it is due to go back into the workshop, this time I have specified what is wrong with it. I just hope they can fix that otherwise it will have to be a new machine as the machine is not safe on the network in its current form and I cannot make it safe. It also will not do the work I want it to. They are on the third attempt to try and fix it.
Otherwise work wise I have been reading through papers on fibre and its ability to prevent colon cancer (well that is the point of interest from our perspective, however some were more interested in Type II diabetes). This are tough studies to be a participant in, if ever there was an argument for paying people to participate these are the studies. Some of the diets are pretty lousy, one was eating so much fruit and veg that even I was thinking no way! Hardly surprising that it only got a study size of ten people. Some however I could see working. For instance one sent people chocolate muffins to eat with their normal diet! I kid you not. The muffins were made with different amount of fibre in and some had very high amounts indeed. However the real problem was that fecal matter had to be collected during the study. I am reminded of Dr Johnson’s comment on a woman preaching: “Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.
Then on Wednesday I went to Birmingham for a supervision. The journey out went smoothly with me getting to Sheffield Station early enough to get a coffee before I caught the train. The journey on the whole went well. I am deciding Helen Cameron’s book “Resourcing Mission” is not the book I hoped it was. It is not fish, nor fowl nor good red herring as the saying goes. The themes it takes are largely sociological but the analysis of them is a mix of person contextual theology and sociology light. There is not a cohesive theme running from one to the next. She use a typeology typical of organisational studies but rather than spend time showing how the behaviour is manifest in different institutions by examples she just delineates it, using examples only as introductory pieces. I don’t want to know that churches that are gathered organise money in way XYZ, I probably could say that with more clarity than she, I would be interested in how she argues from such churches behaviour to such conclusions. Finally it claims to be contextual theology, but “Lets do Theology” does this better. If she intends the chapters to be briefing tools then she has barely scratched the surface on what is needed and there is no “go further” section at the back. Very different to my response to Hybrid Church in the City although I suspect that it would be better titled “Church in the Hybrid City” by Christopher Baker. There is a serious attempt to engage with sociology, followed by a serious attempt to reflect theologically on these implications. The irony being that normally I find stuff coming from the direction Helen Cameron useful while I steer clear of stuff that comes from where Christopher Baker comes from.
I was in time for my supervision and my supervisor is now happy that what I have written on cafe church is a paper. I am surprised given how popular cafe church is that there is little written about it in the serious books. I now need to do a reading review of what I have read in the last year. I suspect this is two years really and more than just a list of books. I then spent some time on the computer searching for things on older people. One of the interesting papers that came out was that there appeared to be a correlation between people’s involvement in extra curricular activities as a teenager and their involvement in voluntary associations later. This would suggest to me that the government’s policy on teaching citizenship is wrong headed and what we need to be doing is rather than spending class room time on teaching them to be good citizens, rather be encouraging their involvement in extra curricular activity. I suspect particularly activities that they themselves have a role in organising. Its not our teachers who will build the civil society of the future, nor the parents, but the youth leaders. You want to change society for the better become a youth leader and I don’t just mean those with those titles, I mean guiders, scouter, youth team coaches, people who organise youth orchestra and allow youth volunteering in the community. They all add up to being a massive citizenship teaching organisation and all the better at it for giving the children fun while they are doing it..
I also ended up giving another student a quick tutorial on using computers for research. The thing is for a number of books I tend to read them at least partially on line. I ended up reading a paper in a book on Torrance Theology just by searching for it. Alright so the paper was called “Calvin and Cafe Church”. Unfortunately it was not really about cafe church.but all new forms of church (I think that wording is title neutral, what with “emerging” and “liquid” becoming so quickly sort of brand names). It is amazing how someone can not realise how much stuff there is on the computers these days to help a researcher.
Anyway after that we went upstairs to meet up with my supervisor. He decided that as he could get five of his PhD students together for a day he would take us out for a meal in the evening. We were joined by another PhD Student and a research fellow who works with my supervisor. He took us to Deep , a Carribean Restaurant on the Bristol Road just around the corner from New Street Station. They had a buffet and I just ate what I felt like. I may have got some things wrong. I did not eat akee and salt fish because it looked like cold pasta salad which is not a favourite of mine. However I ate goat stew without any problem. The other thing was I think he was expecting some of us to order wine or beer, but none of us did. The reason we didn’t is I suspect largely due to circumstance. Quite a few of us had long journeys home like myself and others were in the final stages of writing their theses for submission. In other words we had reasons for staying sober. I suspect that the others were all driving. Anyway got safely home afterwards but was very tired so headed almost straight to bed.
Saturday there was a party held by I think the Broomhall Centre (formally known as the Broomspring Centre) for local people in Gell Street Park. As with all Broomhall events it was late in getting going. I was there around 1:30 and there was hardly anyone, Sarah at 2:00 pm found much the same (it started at 12:00 noon) but by closing time (4pm when I went back) the place was absolutely heaving with people and people were not dispersing. From the feel of it I suspect it is the indirect successor of the Broomhall Carnival. The big things that brought people out were activities for children. There are some photos I took on Facebook which will be accessible to those who are recorded as my friends on Facebook.
Today I went to Herringthorpe for the morning service. It was the moderator Kevin Watson who was leading the main part of the service while Pauline took the communion. Prayers for Pauline and her husband Alex on Friday please as Alex is having major operations for bowel cancer at the Hallamshire. The service was on the love of God and the need to share that love with those around us. It was well prepared and he clearly used images as well as words so please don’t think with my next comment I am criticising him. He centred his image for the love of God on embrace which is not an image I find easy to handle. Normally I suspect it would be water off a ducks back but not this morning, maybe tiredness due to time of the month, maybe Stuart saying he was coming around the previous evening for a chat and not showing (he came around today instead). Maybe just the business of the last while catching up with me but I was at least at one point seriously considering if I would be better off out of the service. I didn’t and I suspect that I was sorted enough for no-one to notice at the end of worship at least no-one commented on the fact.
Otherwise work wise I have been reading through papers on fibre and its ability to prevent colon cancer (well that is the point of interest from our perspective, however some were more interested in Type II diabetes). This are tough studies to be a participant in, if ever there was an argument for paying people to participate these are the studies. Some of the diets are pretty lousy, one was eating so much fruit and veg that even I was thinking no way! Hardly surprising that it only got a study size of ten people. Some however I could see working. For instance one sent people chocolate muffins to eat with their normal diet! I kid you not. The muffins were made with different amount of fibre in and some had very high amounts indeed. However the real problem was that fecal matter had to be collected during the study. I am reminded of Dr Johnson’s comment on a woman preaching: “Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.
Then on Wednesday I went to Birmingham for a supervision. The journey out went smoothly with me getting to Sheffield Station early enough to get a coffee before I caught the train. The journey on the whole went well. I am deciding Helen Cameron’s book “Resourcing Mission” is not the book I hoped it was. It is not fish, nor fowl nor good red herring as the saying goes. The themes it takes are largely sociological but the analysis of them is a mix of person contextual theology and sociology light. There is not a cohesive theme running from one to the next. She use a typeology typical of organisational studies but rather than spend time showing how the behaviour is manifest in different institutions by examples she just delineates it, using examples only as introductory pieces. I don’t want to know that churches that are gathered organise money in way XYZ, I probably could say that with more clarity than she, I would be interested in how she argues from such churches behaviour to such conclusions. Finally it claims to be contextual theology, but “Lets do Theology” does this better. If she intends the chapters to be briefing tools then she has barely scratched the surface on what is needed and there is no “go further” section at the back. Very different to my response to Hybrid Church in the City although I suspect that it would be better titled “Church in the Hybrid City” by Christopher Baker. There is a serious attempt to engage with sociology, followed by a serious attempt to reflect theologically on these implications. The irony being that normally I find stuff coming from the direction Helen Cameron useful while I steer clear of stuff that comes from where Christopher Baker comes from.
I was in time for my supervision and my supervisor is now happy that what I have written on cafe church is a paper. I am surprised given how popular cafe church is that there is little written about it in the serious books. I now need to do a reading review of what I have read in the last year. I suspect this is two years really and more than just a list of books. I then spent some time on the computer searching for things on older people. One of the interesting papers that came out was that there appeared to be a correlation between people’s involvement in extra curricular activities as a teenager and their involvement in voluntary associations later. This would suggest to me that the government’s policy on teaching citizenship is wrong headed and what we need to be doing is rather than spending class room time on teaching them to be good citizens, rather be encouraging their involvement in extra curricular activity. I suspect particularly activities that they themselves have a role in organising. Its not our teachers who will build the civil society of the future, nor the parents, but the youth leaders. You want to change society for the better become a youth leader and I don’t just mean those with those titles, I mean guiders, scouter, youth team coaches, people who organise youth orchestra and allow youth volunteering in the community. They all add up to being a massive citizenship teaching organisation and all the better at it for giving the children fun while they are doing it..
I also ended up giving another student a quick tutorial on using computers for research. The thing is for a number of books I tend to read them at least partially on line. I ended up reading a paper in a book on Torrance Theology just by searching for it. Alright so the paper was called “Calvin and Cafe Church”. Unfortunately it was not really about cafe church.but all new forms of church (I think that wording is title neutral, what with “emerging” and “liquid” becoming so quickly sort of brand names). It is amazing how someone can not realise how much stuff there is on the computers these days to help a researcher.
Anyway after that we went upstairs to meet up with my supervisor. He decided that as he could get five of his PhD students together for a day he would take us out for a meal in the evening. We were joined by another PhD Student and a research fellow who works with my supervisor. He took us to Deep , a Carribean Restaurant on the Bristol Road just around the corner from New Street Station. They had a buffet and I just ate what I felt like. I may have got some things wrong. I did not eat akee and salt fish because it looked like cold pasta salad which is not a favourite of mine. However I ate goat stew without any problem. The other thing was I think he was expecting some of us to order wine or beer, but none of us did. The reason we didn’t is I suspect largely due to circumstance. Quite a few of us had long journeys home like myself and others were in the final stages of writing their theses for submission. In other words we had reasons for staying sober. I suspect that the others were all driving. Anyway got safely home afterwards but was very tired so headed almost straight to bed.
Saturday there was a party held by I think the Broomhall Centre (formally known as the Broomspring Centre) for local people in Gell Street Park. As with all Broomhall events it was late in getting going. I was there around 1:30 and there was hardly anyone, Sarah at 2:00 pm found much the same (it started at 12:00 noon) but by closing time (4pm when I went back) the place was absolutely heaving with people and people were not dispersing. From the feel of it I suspect it is the indirect successor of the Broomhall Carnival. The big things that brought people out were activities for children. There are some photos I took on Facebook which will be accessible to those who are recorded as my friends on Facebook.
Today I went to Herringthorpe for the morning service. It was the moderator Kevin Watson who was leading the main part of the service while Pauline took the communion. Prayers for Pauline and her husband Alex on Friday please as Alex is having major operations for bowel cancer at the Hallamshire. The service was on the love of God and the need to share that love with those around us. It was well prepared and he clearly used images as well as words so please don’t think with my next comment I am criticising him. He centred his image for the love of God on embrace which is not an image I find easy to handle. Normally I suspect it would be water off a ducks back but not this morning, maybe tiredness due to time of the month, maybe Stuart saying he was coming around the previous evening for a chat and not showing (he came around today instead). Maybe just the business of the last while catching up with me but I was at least at one point seriously considering if I would be better off out of the service. I didn’t and I suspect that I was sorted enough for no-one to notice at the end of worship at least no-one commented on the fact.
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