Heather's Journal

Irregular verbs

2008-04-08T20:29:37Z

Why isn't the simply past of "pick" "pack"?

I picked it up/I pack it up...the latter sounds good but it's not standard English!

build4eternity @ 2007-04-24T13:50:00

2007-04-24T20:50:58Z

People don't like being tired, but I've found that it's when I'm tired that I see myself most clearly.

build4eternity @ 2007-04-20T08:37:00

2007-04-20T03:31:31Z

This is my favourite way to work: I am in my room, twillight drifting through the window and mingling with the soft lamplight and the glow of my yellow walls. The hall is quite, but in the TV room I hear occassional chatter. I am by myself, but not alone.

A bit past Pasca, but couldn't resist...

2007-04-17T05:44:22Z

CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN!

"O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen."

- The Paschal Sermon of Saint John Chrysostom (quoted on www.oca.org)

More evolution stuff...

2007-03-23T18:55:06Z

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a evolution.berkeley.edu>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

<a href="http://www.iconsofevolution.com/>Icons of Evolution</a><br /><a href=" http:="" evolution.berkeley.edu="">Teaching evolution</a><br /><a href="http://www.ncseweb.org/icons/iconsconclusion.html">Refuting "Icons of Evolution"</a><br /><a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/">Refuting creationist attacks on evolution</a>, see also their <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/">FAQS</a>

Isolation

2007-03-20T20:00:59Z

I've felt incredibly isolated lately. I think the root, which by its nature is at first glance unseen, may lie in the fact that my friend Lesley-Anne moved away. When friends go away, I rarely consciously miss them; instead, I enter a sort of subliminal depression: I get tired, reclusive, have trouble concentrating and eventually find myself in a state of isolation, from which I then gradually emerge until the next perturbation. At the same time, I know much of my current malaise began before Lesley-Anne left; perhaps it was the anticipation of her leaving tied up in it, but I think there is more.

I can't decide how much I want to say about the more obvious features of this isolation. I am feeling much happier now...I had a good talk and prayer with Richard last night (and with Nicole as well as him the night before), and a good talk with Sandy and April this morning. I also ran into Laura, who I know from an undergraduate genetics class last year who'd like to get together just to study and do neat plant stuff...I'd really like that. A Romanian friend once told me a saying they have that God will give you something, but he won't put it in your basket. God is offering me many avenues out of this isolation. I need to make sure I take them.

Both my statistics classes have discussed search algorithms for finding solutions to equations where it's not possible to do so directly, perhaps because it isn't possible to integrate a certain function. If the search procedure works well, great, but sometimes it gets hung-up and obsesses over a point that's almost the best solution but not quite, because the search procedure just doesn't manage to step far enough to get into the territory where a better solution is to be found. Sometimes if the terrain over which it searches is too weird for the specific way the search algorithm works, the search never converges on a solution at all. All of this is just to say, those of you who pray, pray for me: I feel like a search algorithm that won't converge or that is stuck on an almost-solution that isn't really.

Most people think I am hard working. I have lousy work habits these days. I think it's partly because I crave people but my work is incredibly isolating. But still, I have lousy work habits. Something needs to change.

A book to read

2007-03-10T07:39:34Z

I'd like to read Disposable People.

I wonder...in the past I've written about issues of women's rights and social justice. I withdrew from this last summer because my efforts were coming from (and fueling) my sense of anger more than anything. I sensed the need to develop instead a life of prayer. Sometimes now I want to get back into things; I am not sure it is time yet though. I think that a person needs a deep sense of humility and a deep peace in God to take part in such work without destroying their own soul, and I'm not sure I've developed that yet.

More on Evolution

2007-03-10T05:01:28Z

I think I've come to accept evolution as a mechanism inherent to the created world. At least, my inclination leans very heavily in that direction. Some of the important questions on my mind are
1) what is real theism?
2) what does it mean for the human to be both made in the image of God and fallen, and for creation to be itself fallen with and because of the human fall, if the created world evolves as science describes?
3) why does the world still seem uglier and less joyful to me when I look at it through an evolutionary lens?

I think alot of the answer to the third qusetion lies in the answer to the first; evolution usually comes to us tied to a philosophy that is at most deistic, often blatantly materialist and atheistic, so that it's hard to imagine at first how a true theist might conceive evolution. I think anwering these questions is more about asking and keeping my ears and eyes open to receive whatever God will send my way about it, as well as quietly mulling over it in my mind; hurriedly trying to think through everything isn't how I want to go about this because I don't think it would actually work.

As Augustine often says, This oh God is how I have come to think; you alone can show me the truth.

-------------------

I had the most beautiful dinner tonight: tomato sauce with mushrooms and home-cooked beans (including that most beautiful of beans, the pigeon pea), garlic and butter and chopped parsley and cilantro with rice. It was beautiful. I had two bowls of it and was delighted.

Rachel read the first bit of the Silmarillion to me over the phone. I almost couldn't talk after hearing it. I want to read it again.

Various Observations

2007-02-26T21:22:40Z

1. I just talked to a classmate who asked about my reading break; at first I said it was unproductive but I realized that is not so. For my reading break I decided to experiment with having a READing break...I had some interesting books on genetics and statistics I wanted to read and so I read them, preferably in interesting places. I also listened to the better part of The Language of God by Francis Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project.

I think it would be neat to take a Reading Week once per term to do more or less what I did this last week. (Just to give credit where credit is due, I got the idea for reading this way mostly from observing Rachel! Yay for Rachel!)

2. I keep eating such huge breakfasts that I don't feel hungry at lunch. This annoys me because I like having set schedule of meals and so on. Then I say, Oh Heather! Don't be silly...just eat when you're hungry and be glad you eat at all!

Me again!

2007-02-24T20:41:02Z

Always living in the future,
a sucker for a dream
...get back to the present, Heather, back to the present!

Evolution

2007-02-22T07:17:16Z

I'm on reading week right now; my plans to read have not succeeded as wildly as I'd hoped, but I have covered some interesting territory, some on purpose some not. The not-on-purpose was that I meant to read The Fourth Day, a book on theistic evolution, but haven't gotten around to that at all. But in the kitchen I've been listening to The Language of God, by the head of the human genome project--who is a Christian. He is decidedly both a theist (not a deist) and also accepts the theory of evolution, and discusses in part of the audiobook his reasons for holding both these perspectives simultaneously.

I have much I could say about this, but sleep is needed and so I'll only note down a few names I'd like to read up on:

Theodosius Dobzhansky (who wrote Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution)

Aruther Peacocke

A google search also turned up some potentially interesting quotes in this blog (use edit --> find to search for evolution...it's somewhere in there!)

I had a good talked with my housemate S. who leans much toward the six-day-creation side of things; she recommended a book called Icons of Evolution, by Jonathan Wells.

There is much I could say about this, but I must sleep.

Anywhere but here

2007-02-17T07:06:50Z

Change changes nothing. The only thing in life is to just stick with it.

Crocus Day!

2007-02-16T08:42:20Z

Today for the first time I noticed the crocuses.

I went back to campus to finish a stats assignment; I've never been in the computer lab at midnight before. I ran into a classmate, T. and he and I got to know each other a bit. It was great.

As I stood at the bus stop near the Village I saw the nightlife of UBC: mostly teenagers, children of the night in baseball caps and baggy pants, too young, too small to be out at night. I wanted to protect them, but they don't want to be protected.

Happy Multiplication day!

2007-02-15T05:44:46Z

Guess what? Today is 14/2/07...if you multiply the year by the month you get the day! Happy Multiplication Day! The next one will be March 21 (21/3/07) and then April 28 (28/4/07). After that you'll have to wait for 8/1/08, 16/2/08, 24/3/08, 9/1/09, 18/2/09, 27/3/09, 10/1/10...the last multiplication day in our lifetime will likely be 31/1/31, though I suppose you could start celebrating other multiplication days, like day times month...there will be none like that in 2007, but in 2008 we could celebrate 2/4/08. So there are many more to come! Horray!

(Oh yes, and Happy Valentine's Day too!)

Quote of the Day

2007-02-04T05:13:34Z

"Often the blessed Abba Zosimas would say, 'We human beings do not know how to be loved and how to be honoured.' "

~ from In the Heart of the Desert: the Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers by John Chryssavgis

The secret dreams of a would-be geneticist

2007-02-03T04:18:11Z

To one day...
- be a dance/aerobics instructor
- to teach a sex education course at church
- to lead plant ID walks on a very regular basis
- to study at Regent College
- to use my bus pass to take random busses and sit in random coffee shops people watching and to all the while keep a journal of what I see and what I think, in realtime
- to actually go and read poetry in a coffee shop (the Blenz in uptown New Westminster is so nice for that)...a good selection of Gwendolyn Brooks would be perfect, though I'd love to read some other poets too
- read the CS Lewis space trilogy, Man Alive and other books Rachel has recommended to me
- write a letter to a really good newspaper and have it published; to do so on a regular basis (though I expect the publishing would be less frequent than the writing)
- to hold an informal ESL class in my home
- to be a funky granny (biological or otherwise)
- to grow a significant portion of my own vegetables in an urban lot
- to learn to crochet something other than a square
- to buy that George Washington Carver poster I've always looked at online and put it up in my office
- to decorate my room someday (I've lived here a year and haven't done it yet!)
- to decorate my office
- to do a survey of the plants growing in the alleyways and gutters and write up and inventory and use some kind of diversity index to describe what I find numerically
- to design and run a civic education course for homeschool students--we'd learn about everything from where your food comes from to how the postal system works to what goes on in parliament to where your sewage goes after you flush the toilet...we'd go on field trips to all sort of places (parliament, the garbage dump, a vegetable packing house or greenhouse...) and learn about everything from the physics behind the electromagnet used to move scrap metal and the old car lot to the biological consequences of runoff from garbage dumps to the economic theory behind exchange rates
- to eat dinner...now

[I just had a really great talk with Rachel and played with candles. I'm happy.]

build4eternity @ 2007-01-24T15:17:00

2007-01-24T23:18:11Z

I just had my first REAL committee meeting, and it went GREAT!

Gott sei Dank. Or as Bach would say, Gloria Dei.

More about small mercies

2007-01-20T02:11:23Z

I think the reason why it's tempting to call what I discussed the other day "small mercies" is that as soon as they come you practically forget how keenly you felt the lack. Both yesterday and today without even having to try too hard I met some other students who are working on similar things to me, whether in molecular evolution or statistics. Nothing hardcore has materialised yet, but it's so nice to have a beginning after realising how alone I've been in my work over this last year. Thank God for small mercies, which may not be so small after all.

Nice genes...

2007-01-18T20:21:49Z

I had fun today. I was reading over my notes for Gene 502 and since there is no text for the course, I started looking up words I didn't know on wikipedia, and googling for articles on research that used the technique or principle we were talking about. It was a grand exploration!

So, the genetics lesson of the day: a conditional mutant is a aberation from the normal ("wild-type") form, function, etc that is only see when the organism is raised under certain conditions. For example, the mutant might produce a pigment where there formerly was none, but only at low temperatures. (I have heard of a breed of cats with leg/ear pigmentation that behaves this way...I am guessing this breed aquired this sort of mutation somewhere along the way). Conditional mutations are useful in genetics because many mutations are not as benign as pigment--many can be lethal. But it the mutation is conditional, then you can raise the organism under "permission conditions" (meaning that the mutation is not expressed) and then then expose the organisms with this mutation to the conditions for expression, but at varying stages of their development from embryo to adult, and see if the mutation is lethal at all stages or not, and see what it does when it's not lethal. Our assignment was to think of situations under which this system for studying development does not work, what the exceptions to the rule are. I'm still thinking about that part though.

Return?

2007-01-16T19:38:11Z

Perhaps I will return to Livejournal. I don't know. I got ticked off about my sudden realization that everything I wrote could be read by ANYONE (although some cool people have stopped by, such as juicyfruiter.blogspot.com). We'll see. I guess I could post "friends only"...anyhow, I have to finish a statistics assignment and write a report for my committee...

build4eternity @ 2006-09-18T11:08:00

2006-09-18T18:09:27Z

Deutsche Welle--Programmen auf Englisch. Sehr toll!

Nigella

2006-09-08T00:04:28Z

I found pods of a plant I worked with as a florist, Nigella sp. (Ranunculaceae). I think it was probably Nigella sativa. Take a look at pictures of Nigella, along with some information about its use and its name in 49 languages. If you click the bos "view the names of this plant in 49 languages" you get one list, and if you scroll to the bottom there is another, showing another set of names for the plant, and their relation to the word for "black" in the relevant language...the seeds of this plant are the most beautiful matt charcoal black I've ever seen, not dark brown but true black. Quite an interesting page actually, everything from a short treatise of etymologies of "black" to the history, current use and cooking of the regions where Nigella is commonly used.

The time has come for me to expound the Ethic of Non-Ownership

2006-08-10T19:39:27Z

The time has come, the walrus said
to think of many things
of shoes and ships and sealing wax
and whether pigs have wings

The Ethic of Non-Ownership is a way of relating to material possessions. It is grounded in the reality that we are free from the need to own or possess in order to live or to enjoy life (it is particularly appropriate, I think, to say: In Christ we are free from the need or compulsion to own and possess).

The Ethic of Non-Ownership does not condemn all ownership as evil, although one who follows it does purge their possessions to a reasonable minimum. It is rather a celebration of one's freedom from the driving compulsion to acquire and possess. The one who follows this ethic seeks to share their own possessions and to borrow from others (including libraries) so as to overall reduce the need for each person to acquire their own copy of any given item (toothbrushes are one of several obvious exceptions).

The Ethic of Non-Ownership is not a form of asceticism. The one who follows this Ethic deliberately enjoys life to the full by fully enjoying the few possessions they do retain, and--more importantly--by enjoying without owning (or feeling the need to own) the objects they use--one can dance just as wildly to a CD from the library as to a CD in one's own collection. The one who follows this ethic also indulges heavily in means of enjoyment that do not require the use of something that can't be shared or reused (I almost said "reusen")

The Ethic of Non-Ownership is not a protest against consumer culture, although it does end up being very subversive to it. It is not a protest because it does not spring from a commitment to oppose an idea. It comes from a deep celebration, as I said, of one's freedom from the compulsion to own and acquire and possess.

Neither is the Ethic of Non-Ownership a way to avoid spending money, though it usually results in that. As I said, it does not come from a desire to oppose any given habit or way of life directly, but rather arises from a celebration of one's true freedom.

One outcome of the Ethic of Non-Ownership is that one is reminded to invest memories in people more so than in nostalgic objects. My parent's basement is full of nostalgic objects I have acquired over the years for fear of loosing the memories, forgetting who I was and therefore forgetting who I am. But I am free from the need to own, and my memories are mine with or without the objects.

I will not argue that the Ethic of Non-Ownership is the only Biblically-informed human relationship to material objects. There is a time for everything, including a time to acquire objects which would allow one to be of greater service to others (you can't lend a book you don't own, for example). But then again, the Ethic of Non-Ownership is not simply Non-Ownership is the sense of not legally owning objects, but rather rejecting possessiveness as a means of relating to objects, such that it becomes easy to take good care of one's possessions and yet share them freely and without anxiety about getting them back and without anxiety over any loss or damage of them that may come to them. I will say, however, that the Ethic of Non-Ownership sprang from a number of Biblical ideas, for example John the Baptist's teaching "if any of you has two coats, give to the one who has none"...it follows that if you are to give away your excess, how can you acquire more that a reasonable minimum amount of clothing, among other things?

build4eternity @ 2006-08-09T14:53:00

2006-08-09T21:53:57Z

I like hugs.

Equality...

2006-08-09T18:11:00Z

Dads get postpartum depression too