Archive for July, 2015

I really enjoy international women’s football because it punishes countries with high gender inequality more than anything the UN could ever do.

The Ivory Coast’s 10-0 drubbing at the hands of Germany is a classic example.

It is interesting though that whenever I asked anyone whether they had “seen the world cup?” the response was usually “oh the women’s football?”. In fairness, most of them had seen it. And why not? England did brilliantly! We should really look at this as our best opportunity to win a trophy.

We were (as an Englishman, and a supporter, I’m part of the team of course) unlucky to have lost to Japan and could easily have been in the final. That showed with our first ever victory over Germany – 21st time lucky!

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An email went round work last week announcing that we were going to be having a minute’s silence for the victims of the Tunisian beach attack. As it happens everyone forgot when the time came but it brought up an interesting point.

I didn’t really know about it.

People were shocked, but it just had not entered my radar. I hadn’t seen the news and while there were probably some references to it, perhaps in conversation or on Facebook, I had just filtered them out.

I have gone through periods of my life where I thought it was really important to read the news. I would diligently check BBC News every day to find out what was going on in the world.

I have also gone through periods, such as now, where I just do not read the news. Why? Because it is generally full of unfortunate things happening to people. In fact, it is almost exclusively full of that.

It is extremely sad that those people died in Tunisia. In some ways it is an odd story to focus on. 50,000 people died of a preventable cause yesterday. That is 30 just during the minute’s silence. That isn’t in the news.

Similarly a story such as this might put people off from travelling to Tunisia. However, statistically the most likely way for me to die if I was to go there for a holiday, would be as it always is – in a car crash travelling to or from the airport.

It feels an odd thing to admit to being not just ignorant of something, but wilfully ignorant of it. However, my life does not seem to be much affected by my screening out of the non-stop string of mongering and negative news reporting that the media engages in, so it is hard to see how I am not better off without it.

Not only does the audiobook of Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind feature Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola reading their work, but it also includes a foreword by Richard Dawkins, also read by the man himself. I was hard before it had even finished downloading.

The book itself is about a study by Dennett and LaScola on ministers who have stopped believing. Most of them are trapped in this difficult situation – their family, friends, and livelihoods are tied up in church ministry, so admitting their non-belief is typically not an option.

Yet it is apparently widespread. Many of the people they interviewed share a common desire to help people, but think that the stories contained within their holy texts are nonsense.

In June I was able to attend my second meeting of the newly formed Asselby Advanced Speakers. We even had time for a group photo. Thanks to Gillian and Michael for hosting every month – I got through a lot of their biscuits!

From Paul Hollywood’s Bread. This is a really nice flatbread recipe because the breads come out incredibly 3D. I like this. Regular flatbreads are nice but as you know, they only exist in two dimensions. These things are fat.

Of course I could just bake a bloomer. However, these are designed to be big and round. It is the surprisingly bonus of a light airy well-risen bread that makes these so tasty.

I did not have most of the ingredients he recommended for the topping so I combined thyme and caraway with olive oil. They did not stick well at all; they just fall off as soon as you pick the bread up sideways. However, they are tasty.

The Assembly Line is our new name for the in-house Sunday Assembly Leeds band. Our June event was on the theme of technology so we had some very vaguely related technology songs.

The Beatles – Drive My Car

This went pretty well, until the end, where I lost it. Listen out for Rich shredding the lead guitar.

Oasis – She’s Electric

Notable for my short guitar solo after the first chorus. It didn’t feel great at the time but on listening back it actually sounds pretty good.

R.E.M. – Man on the Moon

This also features a short guitar solo for myself. I also spent my Christmas vouchers on an analogue delay pedal which I used throughout the song, regardless of whether it was justifiable or not.

Sometimes I can make it quite a way into a novel before I can work out what it is actually about. Very occasionally, I get the whole way through. This is one of those times.

For the first chapter, I wouldn’t even work out who the characters work. I thought they might be anthropomorphised animals. It eventually turned out they were children. That is about all I got until I read through the Wikipedia article.

It reminds me a lot of Ulysses and indeed does use the stream of consciousness narrative employed by Joyce. However, unlike Joyce, who paints a beautiful and linguistically-inspiring picture which his rambles, William Faulkner failed to capture my imagination, leaving only the barely-intelligible plot.

From a literary perspective, it is certainly interesting. However, it ranks 6th on Modern Library’s list of 100 best novels. Is that justified on a list that puts The Grapes of Wrath at 10th and Nineteen Eighty-Four at 14th? No.

The Happiness Trap is a self-help book based on ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy).

It starts with a simple but profound message. Humans are not happy to be default. They are not designed to be happy. Happiness is not required to continue the species along. So if you’re not happy with your life, that might just make you completely normal.

It puts aside things like cognitive therapy, point out that we have a lot less control over our thoughts and feelings than we would like to think. Instead it focuses on accepting negative thoughts and feelings (indeed, it claims all feelings are just feelings, rather than good and bad ones).

The techniques it teaches including connecting with the world around you and accessing the observing self. Which is a fancy way of saying mindfulness, being in the moment rather than over-thinking life.

It gives you exercises to do, and tells you off if you do not do them! I stopped reading the book for maybe two months because it said I could not continue until I had done one the exercises and I did not want to go back and do it. When I did, it turned out it was really easy. As are almost all of the exercises – they are designed for busy people. This is kind of stupid really, how can I be too busy to look after my health? But I also suspect many of us all into this trap.

The end of the book is a little more strange. It has a section about how ACT is not a religion. I know that. But stating it puts up a red flag against the book’s version of ACT (Scientology isn’t a cult remember…).

Then it talks about connecting with your values, the things you think are genuinely important in life and pursuing those. This is a good thing to do, but not something I expected in a book about managing my feelings and anxieties.

Travels with Charley is a non-fiction book by John Steinbeck about his travels across America. Indeed it is titled “In search of America”.

He is not a man who messes around. When he decided to go travelling he wrote to the truck company and design him a special truck. They did. When his boat was in danger he jumped into the stormy water and swam out to it. It was a time when men were real men, women were real women, and everyone suffered because of gender inequality.

He does not go alone however. He takes his dog, Charley, who is as much a part of the story as Steinbeck himself. He begins by driving across the northern states (Steinbeck, not Charley, who does none of the driving) and then comes down the west coast and back across.

It is an interesting story. Steinbeck writes about his experiences in the colourful and descriptive way you would expect.

It is not, however, a description of Americana. Probably because, as Steinbeck points out, summing it up would be impossible. However, it is more a collection of anecdotes in sequence than a description of the areas he passes through.

It also all gets a bit horrible near the end when he visits the southern states and runs into a lot of racists. He quickly falls out with them. Thankfully he is then on the road again heading back to New York.