In At The Deep End

This is a cloud of stuff swirling around in my head that I’m trying to pin down on paper, so sorry if it comes out wonky.

The thing that prompted me to blog was a thought-provoking article in Salon on What’s Wrong With Science As Religion?. I can reconcile science and a religious faith - not always easily, but for me it’s the best explanation of life. Given that have a foot in the science / reason / logic camp, I get extremely frustrated at the arrogance and bigotry of the New Atheists (see the article), just like I get frustrated at similar arrogance and bigotry in the name of religion.

Here’s an little thought experiment - take a militant rationalist and apply a 5 year old child using standard rhetorical techniques i.e. asking “But why?” repeatedly (I’ve embroidered it slightly to make it more interesting).

There is no need for religion. Science is all you need.
But why do you say that?
Science can explain everything.
But why do you say that?
Because we can explain stars, computers, volcanoes, birds - lots of things.
Yes, but science hasn’t explained everything yet, has it?
No, but it will eventually.
Why do you say that?
We’re confident that it will.
But confidence isn’t the same as proof, is it?
No, but it will get there.
Why do you say that?
Because, err…

There is nothing in science that proves that science is true. A chain of logic reasoning always starts with axioms i.e. things you assume to be true or take on faith. You just have to accept on faith that science is a good way of explaining the world - this is an axiom of science. Militant rationalists seem to ignore the element of faith required in their world view. I’m happy to take science and Christianity on faith, because they seem to make sense.

Another thing that militant rationalists seem to ignore is that the core engine of rationalism - logic - misfires in some circumstances and no amount of going back to basics will fix it. Kurt Gödel showed via his Incompleteness Theorem (which I have no hope of understanding, but take on err… faith) that paradoxes such as “Am I telling the truth when I say I am lying?” aren’t just the result of sloppy thinking but are inevitable in logic.

So, you need to accept it on faith and paradox is unavoidable - sounds a bit like religion? The article speculates what the world would be like if militant rationalism held sway, and suggests that bad things would happen. This new religion would be a new excuse for atrocities and other bad things - the fault seems to be an underlying problem with human nature, rather than whether people believe X rather than Y.

This then led me to wander elsewhere. I flicked through The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook last night and it has a whole chapter on what the author calls fifth columnists. Something like home education, that could be great, can be diverted to be a tool for other things such as making money, religious dogma and anarchy.

Similarly Esperanto. As far as I understand, the idea is to have a single language so that we can all understand each other. If you look at a widespread language such as English, French or German, there are regional dialects and variations. I can’t see how if it were used around the world, there wouldn’t be local dialects and variations in Esperanto too. That is, it would be a victim of its own success.

It’s all messy, and I think that the fact that life is imperfect is a key lesson you learn when growing up.

UPDATED: I’ve thought a bit about this since posting it (maybe I should have thought more before I posted) and wanted to make a few things clearer than they might be. If you have a religious faith and don’t believe science explains important things like creation, that’s fine by me. If you have atheist or agnostic and think that science explains everything then that’s also fine by me. (If you think science and religion both explain things, that’s also fine by me and is my general position.) What I’m ranting about is people of whatever persuasion thinking they are completely right and those of different persuasions are completely wrong, evil, superstitious, weak-minded etc.

I’m sorry if I have got in the way of you believing in whatever you hold dear as that is not my intention. If you think I’m un-Christian to hold the position I do, then I would point to Isaiah 55:9 and 1 Corinthians 12:13. I know that you could use the Bible to justify almost anything; I’m just saying that my position is no exception ;-).

Just to improve the mental health of our vast readership, here’s part 4.

We went back to where we used to live, to see a play put on by the theatre company run by a local home educating mum. I got the bus there from work and as I’d arrived before Katy and the others (who’d come straight from a birthday party of another home educating family) I had time to explore the new John Lewis and attached shopping centre (one of the 3 that sprouted up recently there).

The Apple store was weird - just a huge Apple logo on the outside (no words) and that lots of tables with all the products on - again no writing or big displays. The place was packed with foreign language students doing free web-surfing on the computers, and I got about 30 seconds to try to get to grips with the photo thing on an iPhone but it defeated me. Ridiculously good looking, but not worth the money (unless I could also turn it into a light sabre). A colleague has got an application for his 3G iPhone that can listen to a piece of music e.g. played over the PA in a pub and then tell you what it is (so that you could buy it, I suppose). Neat.

Anyway, there was a posse of five or so home educating families in all. Merlin was played by the man who led drama sessions with some of them (including J and K) and it was very good. My only gripe were the 2 occasions where they aimed at pleasing any 11 year olds in the audience by setting up a swear word and then avoiding it at the last minute - gratuitous and not funny unless you’re 11. The children all enjoyed it, even though they were hungry because the chinese food I’d bought beforehand was too hot / too slimy to eat.

I’m getting there eventually, although Katy will have to write part 2 or it will be very short.

What seems like ages ago, but is only just over a week ago, we went off to the Festival of History for the 3rd time. It was sort of in lieu of a Muddle Puddle camp, which wasn’t happening this year (and will be in abeyance until someone organises it), but we did the mini one day version rather than the 3 days that other people did.

The weather couldn’t make up its mind between sunny and raining. J was a bit mopish because of his arm, but liked having the other J around. They could quite happily have stayed all day with Heuristics playing their old games. He also could have happily taken part in all the BZents things, but great though they are I’ve seen them soooo many times now that I could tell all their jokes for them. L enjoyed having J’s sister E to play with (making sandcastles at the Victorian sea-side for instance).

K I think had most fun. He had a go and a half at the junior pike drill under Master Will who was my head of station at Kentwell last year and so knows K well. They had third-sized pikes with wooden blades, and did about 4 of the commands, ending up with attacking some parents who had made the mistake of sitting down in front of them. He also had a go at the WW2 assault course, run by an amazingly patient sergeant major who still knew how to control the rowdy ones. (At one point they had to scramble under a net that was pinned down at the sides. He let them get almost to the end, and then stood on the end of the net and stopped them getting out while they had a little chat.) K had to wait ages in the queue, but enjoyed it when he got his turn.

We were dog-sitting a lovely labrador, so took her along as English Heritage let you. This added an extra burden to the day, so I’d be in two minds about repeating it. She enjoyed herself, but maybe not as much as e.g. we’d gone to the sea. Nic showed her amazing new putting-up-with-dogs skills by getting within biting distance (I don’t believe those rumours Nic ). We watched some Morris dancers, and had some expert opinion from Gina and Dave. For instance, I said I really liked the way that the dancers weren’t roped off in a special area but were in among the visitors and she said that as Morris was street dancing, EH would have found it hard to get a Morris group to perform like that.

I wish I’d listened to Katy earlier and agreed to do more wandering around rather than just going to place X at time Y to see big thing Z. Most of the big things involved war in some way, and many of them we’ve seen before. The things, or more importantly, people you met just wandering around were much more likely to be ordinary life things and very interesting. I got to chat to a group of men making a medieval thatched loo - wooden frame made by some carpenters, roof by the thatcher, floor tiles by a potter. An arrow maker had a very impressive collection of arrow heads and liked to share his knowledge and enthusiasm with you. There was a blacksmith making a reed holder - a candlestick that had an extra bit to hold a reed dipped in oil for burning, so you could save candles for special occasions.

I dimly remember quite a few grumpy moments that my brain’s trying to draw a veil over, but it was nice overall and we bumped into some other home edders that we hadn’t seen for two years which was excellent. Photos on Flickr as ever.

On Saturday I took the boys to the astronomy club thing again like last month. They were celebrating the 50th birthday of NASA, and did the usual circus of interesting-looking things, watching a bit of a sci-fi film, then making a model. This time the model was the Martian rovers, and we conquered the complicated nets to produce decent results - see Flickr. While you’re about it, there are some photos of an excellent thing that covered most of the ceiling.

Prof. Andy Fabian retired from the department that hosts the club, and they wanted to show all the people he’d worked with, a bit like the Erdős number, the Bacon number or even the Erdős-Bacon number. All the 781 people he’d worked with had their name on a piece of paper hanging from the ceiling, with a strand of wool linking them back to Andy Fabian in the middle. The colour reflected the kind of subject, and working on different kinds of thing with him meant you got a different coloured strand for each area. It was fabulous, and the photos don’t really do it justice.

When we got back, the children chilled out and watched Robots on DVD while we caught up with jobs / sleeping.

Yesterday we headed off to London again, an hour later than planned because the heat is making the children tired and have trouble getting off to sleep and we didn’t have the heart to wake them early. The main reason to go was the Summer Sling Show. I managed to pack most things apart from Story of the World, which was what we’d planned to do on the train again. Katy fished out a pot of bubble mixture which everyone (including much of the rest of the carriage) enjoyed, so the journey wasn’t too hard. Fortunately for us the industrial action on the railway appeared to have had no effect.

We avoided the tube this time as everything was in walking distance. We all headed off to the sling show, had lunch, Katy stayed with A and I took the other 3 to the British Museum, unfortunately leaving all the cameras with Katy. It was really hot, full and we all quickly wilted. We did the first half of a children’s backpack thing on Ancient Greece which was great in theory but not for hot and tired children - to give them their due, they were well-behaved, just wrung out. Along the way round we saw the Rosetta Stone, a fabulous 3 foot gilt galleon that was actually a clock to announce the serving of dinner - it would move around the table, twirl the top of its masts, play a tune on a mini pipe organ and fire its cannons. Oh, and lots of ancient Egyptian burial things.

Then we staggered off to meet Katy at Coram’s Fields, where the children were revived by playing in a huge sandpit and I was revived by a cup of tea. There was a Bangladeshi festival going on, so much nice music and dancing on a stage, and chatting in person with online friends of Katy’s who had also been to the sling show earlier. Train, home, bath, bed!

Otherwise known as Sulphur Hexafluoride. It’s amazing stuff, a colourless gas that’s denser than air i.e. like helium but the opposite. My colleague Rick pointed me to the first video below, and the magic of YouTube presented me with the other one.

With it you can

• Appear to defy gravity
• Get Darth Vader to give the traffic report on a radio programme.

Kentwell was fab - and blogged so well by Michelle that I shan’t really bother except to say that we saw Rebecca, J and R and that was lovely Oh, and the car petered out on the A11 sliproad, which was less lovely, but it started again after a few minutes, so could have been worse.

On Saturday the Rainedrops departed, much to the distress of our lot - we must get organised and meet up over the summer There were about 5 things we could have done that day, but I don’t think we did any of them in the end; none of us deal well with too much choice

Monday was CHEF sport, which L decided she would like to try, since J would not be doing it. Unfortunately the traffic was bad, so L and K missed a fair chunk of their session, but enjoyed it anyway, while J played with J who was also off sport, thanks to surgery. We ended up staying rather longer than expected, but decided not to go to the park as well since J was rather tired and the weather didn’t look promising. It’s not the same without Susan and K anyway. We were waiting for a call from a friend to say that lots of Suma stuff had arrived and we should go and pick it up, so didn’t really want to go home and then have to turn around and come back. Gina came to the rescue with an offer of playing at their house, which turned into lunch - just as the other friend phoned and asked if we’d like lunch there, so we could have had two lunches that day Picked up lots of Suma stuff, then talked briefly about dog-sitting and whether we might be able to do it for them as kennels wanted £17.50 a day, plus £25, plus this plus that - and our children have been desperate for a dog since before we moved so we thought this might be a good opportunity to see how it would suit us
Stayed there longer than planned too, so ended up having to squeeze Bob in with the soya milk and huge bags of flour, sugar and oats (sorry if any of your cartons are squished Gina!) as we dashed to the dentist, where we were all congratulated on nice teeth, Bob had a quick clean and A refused to open her mouth at all. Ah well!
Tuesday was swimming, which J could not do, but neither could J (there are too many Js!) so they sat together while the rest of us went in. Yet again there was no teacher *sigh* so I ended up handing A over to someone else in the toddler pool and going in with the children who should have been having a lesson. We started off doing the usual across the pool type stuff, then got out some woggles and used those to practise kicking alone and then in pairs, but fairly soon we all decided it was best for most of them to just have fun with the floats while I helped one or two at a time to do lengths. Fun, but not ideal - although at least they got to stay there for longer, since the improver class was very small and also had no teacher so they just joined in
After swimming we drove to a car park and collected a large dog with a new collar tag (the children watched it being engraved with or phone number), some worming tablets (giving those to a dog is soo much easier than thrusting them down our cats’ throats ), a large bed, lots of blankets and towels and a huge sack of food. We had a quick demo of how to use the halti and then K jumped in the boot with our (temporary) new golden retriever, Joy. As soon as we got home we had to run in, leaving K in the car with Joy, and stuff the cats into their travel basket so that Bob could take them to the vet for poorly-timed boosters. Not ideal for them to meet Joy from inside a plastic box, but otherwise we feared they would hide and we would not be able to find them an hour later when it was time to go Then we took Joy for her first walk in the field at the back of the house, with the children taking it in turns to hold the lead once we’d established that she was not going to pull them over. K even very nobly picked up her poo, when I pointed out that if they wanted to have their own dog they would have to do that. I was impressed!

On Wednesday we were carless, while the garage tried to work out why the car has been cutting out again. Once again, it seems to be the computer sensor bit getting itself in a muddle for no real reason - apparently a common fault with Zafiras - so not a lot they can do about it. They reset the computer error thingie (highly technical, I know) just in case it was still showing the old message from last year when we had the same problem and said to go back when it did it again. So we had the car back in time to go and pick Bob up from his late meeting. We could have made it to the Gymnastics competition too, but J couldn’t have taken part and K wasn’t sure he wanted to, so they both decided they would rather go pond-dipping with the Cubs instead. Since J was only allowed to go with an adult to accompany him, thanks to cast, Akela said K could go too So we picked Bob up, shovelled down a quick tea and they scooted off to the pond while L, A and I pootled.

Thursday was Tots and Nots, where we did lots of fun Aztec related things, including making masks, cooking and eating tortillas and a chocolate tasting Rebecca, J and R came along too and we finished really late, but having had a great time - and still only done about half the things Gina and I had talked about for Aztecs, so with activities ready for next week

I know the tension is unbearable until Busy Days parts 1, 2 and 4 arrive, but what the hey. In the meantime, here are some links that made Katy and me laugh till we cried.

The perils of bugs in your e-commerce site.
Words fail me (you may have seen this one before)
A fireman and his hose
Another one where words fail me
The perils of ordering over the phone

All but one were made by professionals, for money.

We might between get round to writing parts 1, 2 and 4 but this is yesterday’s stuff before I forget.

We went down to London for the Breastfeeding Picnic on Parliament Square, to try to get the law outside Scotland clarified and strengthened in favour of protecting breastfeeding mums.

It was our first train journey from what is now our local station, so we had to find which platform etc. On the way down we tried to catch up a bit with Story of the World. As ever, I learned along with the children as my history is so poor - we did the Crusades, Richard I, Blondel, King John, the Magna Carta, and Robin Hood! Reading about the Magna Carta was very appropriate given that we were heading off to Parliament.

When we got there we had to take our life in our hands as Parliament Square is essentially a large, very busy, roundabout. There are lights and pedestrian crossings on the roads that lead up to the roundabout, but nothing to get you onto the roundabout itself. It’s also where Brian Haw lives - coincidence?

While the children played parachute games with other protesting children, and Katy joined in the activist breastfeeding with A, I got lunch from a Tesco Express just opposite Parliament. It is certainly the least pleasant Tesco I have ever been in - designed to cater for MPs popping out for a sandwich and no other kinds of customer - one long queue down a single aisle to check-out staff who refuse to let you put your purchases in your own bag because they’re so much in the routine of giving you a fresh bag and they’re huuugely busy. When I fought my way back through the general ant colony Central London crowds I was struck by the comparison. Here was Parliament all iconic and important and grown-up, and all the crowds of adults in business clothes rushing about, and then also children playing on the grass and colouring in pictures, and mums feeding their babies. I felt we were reclaiming that bit of London for whole-ness.

Lord Avebury made an appearance, unfortunately while the organiser was feeding the meter. I didn’t realise who he was until afterwards, but he did look like a Lord: very smartly dressed, kindly elderly but spritely grandfather figure with a sense of quiet authority. Also a random MP showed up who seemed quite keen on proving his credentials by flashing his House of Commons ID card to lots of people.

The children and I looked around the statues - Churchill, Nelson Mandela (who unfortunately looked a bit like a zombie), Lloyd George looking flatulent / windswept, Jan Smuts looking like he was ice skating or ballet dancing and Palmerston - most of whom were just vaguely important names to me until just now when I added links to them ;-).

The police started blocking the road down one side of the square, and then a marching band went by with red coats, busbies and playing their instruments. Behind them was a column of troops, still in desert uniform, just returned from Iraq. They all marched into the Houses of Parliament somewhere.

After the picnic ended we had some time to fill before we could catch a train back, so we hummed and hah’d a bit and decided to go into Westminster Hall (the 1,000 year old, original, bit of the Parliament buildings) with its fabulous hammer beam roof. There was an exhibition about Parliament (more learning for me) and on the way in we nearly bumped into Des Browne, who was meeting important men in suits and uniforms (related to the soldiers who marched in earlier).

When we were chucked out of the exhibition at closing time we were starting to flag, so went to the cafe. It was interesting to see screens up showing what was being debated in the two houses, and who was talking. The cafe was great - stone vaulted ceilings, friendly staff, a nice cup of fairly traded tea for 75p, water jugs, lots of recycling bins and slightly bizarrely a small bottle of tabasco next to the little pots of UHT milk for your tea etc. I’d recommend it more highly if you didn’t have to wait 15 minutes to go through airport style security to get in!

The tube from the Houses of Parliament is surprisingly poor so we strolled along the Thames from Boudica (who J identified from the fact that she was a woman fighting in a chariot with blades on the wheels) to Cleopatra’s Needle, passing the Battle of Britain memorial and the London Eye on the opposite bank. Sorry about even more links than usual, but there’s loads of stuff that I’m discovering only when I set up the links, like the fact that the 32 capsules of the London Eye represent the 32 London boroughs.

We hopped on the tube for a couple of stops to have tea at Food for Thought. As ever the food was fantastic, and no trip to central London is complete for us without strawberry and banana scrunch from there to eat on the train home. We managed to just miss a train, but the one we caught was an express. I read a bit of Pippi Longstocking to K and L (J had already finished it) - another case of me experiencing something for the first time with my children. It’s excellent.

By the time we’d got home it was very late, but it had been a very good day. A tried to add excitement before bedtime by having a small climbing accident in the kitchen, and biting her tongue - loads of blood and little craters made in her tongue. She seemed OK soon afterwards, but she’s going through the extreme toddlerhood phase at the minute which results in lots of bumps and bruises. Photos on Flickr, apart from A’s blood-letting. We managed to forget both cameras, which was in some ways liberating as all we had was the feeble camera on my phone, so we didn’t stress too much over getting brilliant photos, but some turned out OK (as long as you don’t blow them up too big).

The periodic table of videos, from the University of Nottingham. Warning, it’s addictive. I love the low production quality coupled with the love of the subject from the slightly dotty mad professor (CBE) and his lab-coat-wearing assistants.

It’s part of a bigger thing called Test Tube.

J came back from A and E with a collar and cuff, feeling fine. Apparently the X-ray was quite fun and the machine made a noise like a helicopter, which was “quite reassuring, actually”. We propped him up with pillows and he slept fine, didn’t need painkillers the next morning and was happy to come along to Tots as normal. It was an unexpectedly busy session, although J and J were both taking it easy, and we had a few new families and a few older children come along. Plans are afoot for encouraging the older ones to come along sometimes so that we can have more of an all-age feel and something for our older ones to grow into
We ended up staying for lunch and then chat and didn’t get home until well into the afternoon, arriving back just as Barbara phoned to say their car was not going to be ready and they wouldn’t make it after all Quick racking of brains led to lots of looking up of train times, prices and destinations - we were not going to give up easily! In the end, I think less than four hours elapsed between that phone call and the Rainedrops getting a local train from unmanned station to bigger station, where they could get a railcard (and many thanks to the rail official who sorted that out, sold them a ticket and still gave them time to get to the right platform in the 7 (8?) minutes they had to spare between arrival and departure!) and then catch the train to a station near enough to us to make Bob going out to collect them at 10 o’clock at night a sensible proposition even in a slightly dodgy car (which confirmed my mistrust by cutting out on them just a few hundred yards from home, but fortunately decided to start up again happily enough). They got here at about 11 and the little ones were whisked straight off to bed while the grown-ups stayed up far too late chatting!
J’s fracture clinic appointment on Friday morning looked likely to cause problems and J was keen to just postpone it, as the nurse had said he could do if he was coping well with cuff and collar. He clearly was coping very well, but the degree of swelling worried me a little so we thought it best to get it over with since we had an appointment anyway. Since we had ten people and only 7 car spaces transport was going to be a problem anyway; the plan to use our car for KH and the Rainedrop car for either fracture clinic or extra bodies to KH having been scuppered by it not being mended in time we needed to think again. Bob thought he had hired a small car online, but when we phoned to confirm on Friday morning it turned out that they didn’t have any left to hire, so we had to do a bit more frantic googling and then ringing round and eventually found a company which had a car available but only from 10 or 10:30 (clinic app’t 10:15) Looked again at their website and realised they offered a pick up service, so asked if they would be willing to pick up from the hospital… Not only were they willing to do that, and to do it at an uncertain time (whenever the app’t over) but their rates were about 2/3 everyone else’s, with no extra charge for pick-up Yay!
By now we should have been leaving for KH, but I still had to take Bob and J plus one to the hospital. Bob decided he was willing to brave taking A, as she would be least bothered by missing KH and if she did start to wail then that might encourage people to do things for them faster at the clinic so I dropped off man, boy, babe, sling and car seats and then dashed back home, flung random picnic type food into a bag while Barbara strapped assorted children into the car and we set off, hoping for decent roads and patient friends. We got both
Kentwell was fab (I shan’t go into it now or we’ll miss swimming!) but the news from Bob a bit grim: the consultant (seen after a half hour or so wait) felt that J’s arm needed to be in plaster, which meant another wait for an X-ray, then back to wait for consultant again, then off to plaster room… We had decided that the cut-off point for it being worth coming to join us at KH was probably 1:45, meaning they should be there by about 3 for a couple of hours of looking around before driving back. Bob phoned at 1:35 to say that they were just waiting for the hire car pick-up. At 3:30, starting to worry, I phoned his mobile to see where they were, to get (from J) the unexpected answer “Sudbury.” “Why are you in Sudbury?!” “Er, I don’t know… Daddy, why are we in Sudbury?” Apparently the roads were not so good for them, then they got rather low on petrol, missed a turning somewhere on the way to the petrol station suggested by someone they stopped to ask… Anyway, they got there just in time to get in before last entry at 4 and were able to join us at the alchemists’ copse J looked in good form, considering, with an impressive amount of bandage and a back slab cast, awaiting more plaster on Monday morning. A was very pleased to see me
All in all, a very pleasant day, in lovely company (we managed to combine seeing three different families we don’t really see enough of ) and with a lot less hassle than we feared at times!

Okay, this post has sat here waiting to be finished for too long. I’m going to publish now and do the rest later!