Yarr! – The Weblog of Bob Heffernan

And now the In the News, where I provide links to news items with some (very) brief commentary. I intended to post this last week but I have found that there were very few news articles I found that warranted discussion. It’s not that current news is unimportant, just that most of it has become very predictable. Events in Iraq proceed much as they have over the last period – horrible but fairly predictable. Ditto for other foreign affairs, local affairs, etc.

Eventually things in the blog will settle down and I’ll have a specific post for each working day (with one working day off, maybe). However, I still must buy a battery for my little camera in order to do Vignettes posts, and I need to collect news articles etc., so it may take a week or two for things to settle.

Anyway, the news:

• Here is a strange and unusual story about a quantum computer that has produced an answer to a question without actually running! Oh, those crazy, crazy quantum laws!
• Here is a article via Reuters entitled Venezuela demands US hand over Cuban “terrorist”. I have a few thoughts on this. Firstly, it seems to me that those quotes around the word ‘terrorist’ would not be there if it were the US accusing somebody of being a terrorist, and not Venezuela. Bias in the media? Furthermore, the reason given for not wishing to extradite said terrorist (who is charged with 73 counts of first degree murder, no less) is that he “could face torture in [...] Venezuela”. This seems more than a little hypocritical given events of the recent past.
• Maybe this is not ‘news’, as such, but Charles Bernsein has a wonderful article about the evils of ‘Poetry Month’ (April).

Hopefully more of the news will jump out to me over the next week.

It’s time for That’s Not Me! – the post in which I provide links to various things I have found interesting over the past week. Initially I was going to link only to other blogs, but I think I’ll relax this constraint a bit, so any (non-news related) links go.

• In a very interesting article Alvin Plantinga discusses ID theory and the nature of science and what constitutes ‘scientific’ activity. I am currently reading Plantinga’s God and Other Minds and it is a very good read indeed.
• I recently stumbled upon a link to the Abraham Kuyper Center of Public Theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary where, among other things, one might find the full texts to Kuyper’s The Work of the Holy Spirit and his Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology.
• I also stumbled upon Geoffrey Chaucer’s blog. Hah!

Here is my first post in the Thoughts series, as promised. These are to be posts comprising brief paragraphs on two or three things I have been thinking about recently. No real detail required. I can always write a longer post on a topic in the future if I so desire.

Mathematics as an empirical science. I have the following quote on my wall in my office at the University:

“The computer has in turn changed the very nature of mathematical experience, suggesting for the first time that mathematics, like physics, may yet become an empirical discipline, a place where things are discovered because they are seen.” (T.W. Korner)

This is something that I am increasingly convinced of. Perhaps the word ‘empirical’ is too loaded a concept to really make sense here but it is increasingly clear that, at the very least, mathematics is being increasingly driven by an empirical approach. While mathematics proofs still reside in the land of rigorous logic (and this is a good thing), the computer has made it possible for experimentation to provide the impetus for mathematical ideas. Furthermore, the idea of a ‘computer proof’ is challenging the very nature of what constitutes proof and ideas of computer reasoning are raising questions as to what extent mathematician and computer may work in tandem to push the science forward. I have been running the ramifications of this through my brain for some time now. I feel we are coming to an exciting and new time for mathematics.

Christianity and art. On my poetry blog I sometimes ponder exactly what form a contemporary Christian poetics might take. What attitude should a Christian have toward art? What attitude should he have toward ideas of ‘meaning’ and ‘communication’ in art? Take sound poetry, for example. Sound poetry is a form of poetry that foregrounds the idea of sound and rhythm in poetry and backgrounds (sometimes entirely omits) ideas of language and meaning. Often sound poems are composed entirely of what one might call ‘nonsense words’. One can argue that certain sounds will evoke certain emotions, ideas, etc. but it is still true to say that meaning and direct communication are not the primary aims of such poetry. Could a Christian write a sound poem and consider it to be a ‘Christian poem’? In what sense would it deserve such a designation? If the poet composed it specifically as worship, perhaps? Is the exploration by a Christian artist of art and possibility in art in and of itself a Christian practice? Is the practice of creativity a form of worship?

In the interest of having somewhere to store links for my “In the News” and “That’s not me!” posts, I have created a del.icio.us account for myself. As I understand it, the appeal of del.icio.us is the social aspect – if another person has bookmarked the same page as you you can see that they say about it and even look at their other bookmarks to find common interests, etc. This is interesting, but the main strength as far as I can see is the simple fact that using del.icio.us you can store your bookmarks online and, as such, access them anywhere. Another benefit is the ability to organise things using tags.

Hopefully it will turn out to be a useful tool.

Also – I can’t seem to the links that should be on the right hand side of the page to show up. Silly blog templates…

Update: the links are working again. I had managed to toggle their visibilities to off by accident. Silly me…

I have been unable to think of any new types of post to add to my list, so I’ll stick with four. If I manage to post four times a week I’ll be doing good, I think.

Here they are:

1. Vignette. A post about something in my life, inspired by a picture taken on my little toy camera.
2. Thoughts. Some brief thoughts I have had recently, chosen at random as my mood dictates.
3. In the News. Some headlines that have caught my attention recently, with a small bit of commentary.
4. That’s not me!. Links to interesting posts in other blogs I read.

We’ll see how it goes. It occurs to me that it almost seems as if I am forcing myself to regularly update the blog, almost against my own will. I do enjoy keeping a blog and I am happy when I post to it, so I am really just trying to encourage myself to do so.

I should tip my hat in the direction of Steven, some of whose ideas I am stealing and more of whose ideas I will steal in the future.

OK. So, yet again I’ve not posted to here in an age.

This is the point where I try to come up with new ideas to force myself to post more often. My last attempt was the deal with that cheap toy camera and the posts based on pictures taken with it (cf. the last few posts). I enjoyed this, but it is difficult to take decent photographs with the thing – I would take 20 snaps in a day hoping to get one or two that I could use and end up with nothing. I would do the same the next day, and so on. Eventually the batteries ran out.

A trend I have noticed on other blogs is to alternate between a various types of post each day. So on a Friday, say, you always put a list of interesting links that you’ve come across during the week, on a Tuesday you have a longer article, etc. The idea is to make sure that you have some sort of content most days of the week.

I think I would like to give this sort of thing a try. I’m sure I will eventually hit upon a method that enables me to keep a regularly updated blog. I must now figure out the various post-types I could pick and choose from.

Some types of posts are:

• My picture driven post, a la the previous effort.
• “Thoughts I have had recently” – a small paragraph about each of a few things I’ve been thinking about recently.
• “In the news” – my reactions to a few news items.
• “Other blogs” – links to interesting posts from other blogs.

I will add to this list over the next few days and then, next week, try and start things off.

Oh, I still post to my poetry blog sometimes.