On Saturday we all walked down to the local police station for their open day (See Police open doors to the public – Western Leader). It’s one of those places, like hospitals, that you don’t normally get to look around unless you’re preoccupied with some crisis or other, so we thought we’d go an look around the cells etc. The fire and ambulance services were there as well, and you could climb in the ambulances, fire engines, and police cars; dust for fingerprints in the SOCO (CSI) lab; watch the hazardous situations robot do its thing (my favourite); watch the search and rescue people abseiling with a rescuee in a sled; and, if you were my kids, get licked by police puppies. Plus there were various static displays.

I was surprised at how many people were there, and it looked like a successful PR exercise for the local constabulary.

One of the activities (for kids) was the speed gun running test. From a standing start, sprint up the driveway (steepish hill?) for about 15-20m and they’d clock how fast you’d go. My four kids, being ultra-competitive, did it lots of times seeking to be the fastest. When we were leaving they (and Kim) pressured me into doing it, all of them firm in the belief that I would be slower and they could mock me. Alas, they were incorrect, and my speed just pipped my eleven and nine year old sons.

(Insert glorious victory dance here, and bragging rights for the next few days)

I’m sure I’ll be faster than them for at least a couple more weeks During the soccer season though (with multiple practices a week, plus games) I imagine I will finish an inglorious last in such events.

Today is, if you pay attention to children’s television (particularly on the US-oriented but locally adapted Sky channels) and retail outlets, Halloween. And I have to admit that I’m not a big fan, and it annoys me a many levels. The biggest thing that gets to me isn’t the ‘spiritual’ content that many people I know object to, but rather that the entire concept feels like an imposition from an alien culture. Halloween wasn’t celebrated much when I was a child (if at all), and I can’t ever remember my parents talking about it being common for them. So there’s no tradition of it being celebrated in my community or family, and so the inescapable barrage of messages to celebrate it, spend money on it and make it part of the community’s life grinds on me. It feels like another attempt to impose culture from the US (and lesser extent UK) into this one. Ah, colonialism, my old friend.

The ‘trick or treat’ thing also becomes bizarre too. Firstly, it’s still light outside being daylight saving. Secondly, with no tradition of doing this there are a stream of disappointed children walking up the road wondering why no-one has any treats for them. And lastly, I know the more elderly folks around here don’t like it because, again, there’s no tradition of Halloween so having costumed teenagers banging on your door demanding treats is pretty scary.

Thinking about the whole thing though has made me stop and think about those people who see Christmas and Easter as a cultural imposition. That the message of Christmas, whether religious or commercial, is the thin edge of the wedge, and who want nothing to do with it. In light of my experiences of the minor imposition of Halloween I have more empathy for how they feel, and hope that allows me to separate out what’s really important in those festivals from the stuff that isn’t. And also, what cultural impositions do I ignore or affirm because they resonate with values and traditions that I’m biased towards, and don’t see the damage or annoyance they might do to others?

Also, Steve Hollinghurst has some interesting thoughts on the role of Christendom in Halloween over at On Earth as in Heaven: Removing Christendom from Halloween, and Andii also comments on those thought,s and adds some other ones about how we deal with death at Nouslife: Removing Christendom from Halloween.

Update:

See also:

• Fernando’s Desk: All Hallow’s Eve.
• Missing a Trick? « Alan Mann

The squads for the 2008 Super 14 (which kicks off 15 Feb) have been announced, and I’m pleased to see that Hawkes Bay’s form in the Air NZ Cup has been rewarded with a number of players making the step up to Super 14. I’d assumed that the Hurricanes would pick up some because the Hawkes Bay union is part of the franchise, but I was surprised to see that Hayden Triggs from Manawatu didn’t make it in (though he was picked up by the Highlanders who really need some forwards this year with people leaving.)

The Hurricanes squad looks a little more dominated by Wellington players than I think the past few squads were (less Taranaki players, and some who’ve moved from Taranaki to Wellington in the past few years), and there are no draft players in there for the first time I can remember. I’m always optimistic about the ‘Canes and I like the look of the squad, though they need to improve on last seasons performance that promised much and delivered less.

Squad details at AllBlacks.com : 2008 Rebel Sport Super 14 squads announced and Rugby: 2008 Super 14 squads announced – 31 Oct 2007 – NZ Herald: New Zealand and International Sport News coverage.

Looks like Warner Bros. might actually be getting a Green Lantern movie off the ground at some point in the near future. See E! News – Warners Rings Up Green Lantern.

You always want to see your favourite superhero on the big screen, but you know that to appeal to more than just the fanboys and fangirls they’ll have to be some liberties taken with the characterisation and mythos. (Tries to forget paying money to see Judge Dredd). Still, Batman Begins and the first Spider-Man movie captured the spirit of the characters, which leads to some hope that given a good script they might pull it off. The question will remain though as to whether they can capture the big space opera landscape that is GL, where team work is critical amongst GLs, or whether they make it a more Earth-based story. Personally, I’d like to see a galactic western-style take on the GL characters.

Related links:

• Greenflame · Comic book movies – DC/Marvel
• Greenflame · Random Lantern-related thoughts

And if you have no idea about Green Lantern:

• Green Lantern – Wikipedia
• DC Comics – The Origin of Green Lantern

A few recent Charles Darwin links.

David Wollert, whom you may remember from Greenflame · Emergent systems & the church and Greenflame · Emergent systems & the church (revisited), has produced a documentary about Charles Darwin’s religious life. You can find it at:

• Blank Slate Studios – PARADISE LOST: The Religious Life of Charles Darwin

Looks like an interesting approach to Darwin’s life and thought – one ignored by some religious and secular accounts that both, for various reasons, hold Darwin up as the arch-enemy of religion.

Also, the Auckland museum is currently running an exhibit on Charles Darwin which I want to get to soon, I hope.

• Darwin | Exhibition at Auckland Museum 29 September 2007 – 13 January 2008 – Auckland Museum New Zealand

And finally, James McGrath has been doing a series of posts on Philip Kitcher’s book Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith.

• Exploring Our Matrix: Living With Darwin

Here’s a PDF of collating all the Finishing the PhD material.

tribulationorrapture.pdf

As a Protestant Mac user working part-time at a Catholic theological college where everyone uses Windows PCs I found last Thursday’s technology section on Radio New Zealand National : Nine to Noon (Thu, 25 October) fairly amusing.

You can find the full transcript over at it.gen.nz » The Cult of the Mac, and at the end of it Colin Jackson quotes a chunk of Umberto Eco’s 1994 article The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS in which Eco comments:

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can achieve salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: Far away from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

(Windows is, Eco argues, like the Anglican church, at times appearing Catholic but also in places deep down quite Protestant).

(Part 10 of 10)

To finish the thesis you have to want to finish it, and be prepared to sacrifice time and energy to get there. As a friend once told me, doing a PhD is 90-99% perseverance (and much less brilliance). Once you’re committed to finishing you just have to get on and do it.

PHD Comics: Time to end this

If you just enjoy the process and lifestyle of being a PhD student, and you don’t care about the result or are happy to live in the process forever, then there’s no motivation to finish. Plus, once you’ve done the hard work of getting to this stage of wrapping it all up, it’s really easy to say you know you can do a PhD and then not finish because the rest of it is just plain boring.

PHD Comics: Time-lapse Montage:

Getting to submission (with the thesis finally completed and all the paperwork done) is also just the beginning for the next stage in the PhD process.

My own experience (and that of others I know) is that after submission and the initial euphoria (or exhausted collapse) you can fall into a nice deep blue hole. Particularly if you don’t have anything else (job etc.) to keep you occupied. After months of intense pressure, late nights, sore eyes from the computer screen, and not talking intelligently (or politely) to other people, you are suddenly left with this gap in your life. It can take you (and your family) a little while to recover from that. So bear that in mind.

PHD Comics: No rest for the weary

Also, don’t forget that you may still have an oral exam, defence or viva voce to do a few months down the track with it’s own stresses and strains, plus the outcome of your thesis examination and defence which will probably require some extra work before you can finally hand in the final hard-bound copies to the university. Don’t fall into the trap that some students do, of passing the oral defense and the not finishing the required changes in the specified time. (This can cause significant financial penalties because you might have to pay another year’s worth of fees!!!)

I submitted on the 10 January, had my oral defence 21 May, had confirmation of the oral result 1 June, handed the modified copies in on 22 July, and graduated 27 September. That’s another 8-9 months on top of the four and half years it took to write the PhD thesis. It does feel good to be finally done.

And having done all that, have fun graduating, and remember that all the people who helped you get there in the end need to be thanked and to celebrate too.

So with these essential Top 10 points finishing the PhD is ‘easy peasy’

(Part 9 of 10)

Fairly simple point, but harder, perhaps, to get right.

When someone reads your thesis can they clearly distinguishing you and your arguments in there. It’s all about communicating your own contribution clearly. In the midst of citations, quotations, footnotes and comparing/contrasting ideas it’s important to be heard clearly. Are my views, opinions and arguments clearly differentiated from the wider discussion. Sometime it may feel like you’re shouting at the examiner/reader, or that it’s obvious that this section is your own contribution, but better to be safe than sorry.

In a couple of places one of my examiners thought I’d said something that I definitely hadn’t. I could point that out in the oral exam, but it would have been nicer to have been clearer on those points at first reading.

Also, good to have a consistent style or voice throughout the whole thesis. Because it’s written over a ‘long’ period it’s easy for subtle differences in writing styles to creep in.

Should make the conspiracy theorists happy. Might print a copy out to pin on the wall too.

See Da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ to go online – 26 Oct 2007 – Religion and beliefs news – NZ Herald.