A field guide to first years

By Prof. Johannes VanderGraaff PhD. OBE. (Jaffial studies at EMSU)

The first year student (Discipulus annus primus) also colloquially known in many regions as a ‘Jaffy’, is a unique part of the fauna of tertiary institutions the world over. Superficially they bear a considerable resemblance to the common tertiary student (Discipulus reguliarum) although a trained observer is generally able distinguish between the two without much difficulty due to the presence of tell-tale features such as:

-First years, upon first release into a tertiary institution, commence their student life with a very limited sense of direction, and as such are frequently sighted wandering around campi without apparent purpose and with bewildered looks spread across their faces.

Qualmless Nitpickery or How To Be A Reasonable Grammar Nazi

I like to think myself as an open-minded descriptivist when it comes to language, that is I think that there’s no such thing as right and wrong language, and that grammarians should only describe how language works, and not dictate what you can and can’t say (as a prescriptivist would). However, I have lurking just beneath the surface an inner Grammar Nazi armed with knowledge of the ‘rules’ of English, honed through a couple of years studying English Language in VCE, and it’s aching to get out and correct people at the slightest absent or superfluous apostrophe. This is my attempt to defend myself and argue that it is okay to correct people on occasion, even if I know that what they’ve said or written is not ‘wrong’ per se. These are my guidelines for when it’s ok to correct people’s English:

My overarching criterion is: Don’t be a dick.

The Youth of Today

(written for publication in the prestigious journal that is the EMS newsletter)

I’m sitting in the student union computing centre, waiting slightly anxiously as 5.30 comes nearer. I’ve never done anything of the sort before, but fortunately I do have some idea of what to expect, I have after all watched people conduct interviews in the past. My task is simple really, to go along to Tuesday stage band, locate a couple of first-year victims, and to get a whole first-year perspective on the entity we know and love as the Engineering Music Society. It is a bit odd really, searching for this supposedly foreign ‘first-year perspective’ when I am of course a first-year myself, but I don’t doubt that it will be an illuminating experience nonetheless. Now, back to working out what I’m going to ask. This could be the start of the career in journalism that I never realised I wanted to have. I still don’t think want one, but just in case, I don’t want to screw this up.

Atheism

And while we're on the topic of religion, I thought here might as well be a little outline of my beliefs or lack thereof. So here goes...

First of all I don't think there is any good scientific evidence either way for some sort of supernatural creator, and me being stuck here with a rational scientific mind, this means there's no evidence that's acceptable to me. This leads me to one result, what Graham Oppy calls a Fallibilist Atheist. That is, I don't believe there a god, but I am happy to accept that I might be wrong.

You might protest "But hang on, you just said there's no evidence at all, how are you suddenly taking a side" I see it like this: we are not debating between the existence of God A and God B, where yes indeed, the lack of evidence would require a fence-sitting position in the middle. What we are discussing is the existence of God vs absence of God. This is an incredibly important distinction, and to me, there is a very strong case that where there is no positive evidence for the existence of something, it is only logical to come down of the side of believing it doesn’t exist.
I don't have to disprove that there's a monster under my bed, but it is very reasonable to assume that it doesn't exist without having to conduct an exhaustive search of every nook and cranny, and missing sock, and old newspaper that might lie under this bed of mine.

It would otherwise get very exhausting if I had to rigorously disprove the existence of every possible conceivable entity before I could safely dismiss it as not existing. Surely in the lack of positive evidence for something that everyone can see how reasonable it is to assume it doesn't exist.

To me that's all atheism needs to be, yes you can take it further, but I don't think it's reasonable to take it any further. I believe there is no god, but I am not certain in any way about this.

St Mary of the Cross

Basically, In the context of Catholics going crazy over her, and others such as Catherine Deveny going crazy against this whole process, this sums up my position: If they want to have their sainthood party, why should I care? The Catholic Church can do some pretty horrible things in my opinion, but this canonisation isn’t one of them. I’ll stick to having a go at them for their horrific child abuse, condom use policy that leads to the infection with HIV/AIDS of sickeningly high numbers of people in Africa, and blatant intolerance and stigmatisation of any other sexual behaviour outside of heterosexual procreative missionary intercourse within marriage, and in particular their brutish discrimination againt homosexual activity. For all means, criticise the Catholics for what they deserve to be criticised over, but to me this St Mary business isn’t worth kicking up any sort of fuss over.

Incidentally, on Mike Stuchbery's blog in response to a suggestion by a commenter that "atheists go to the most desolate parts of Africa, where the Catholic church funds clinics to treat AIDS patients" I suggested that the church might want to change its condom policy if it really wanted to have an impact on HIV-AIDS rates. I received the response:

I’m sorry, but that argument is the biggest cop-out ever. I can’t imagine there are too many Catholic Africans having sex with prostitutes and raping their daughters… and refusing to wear a franger on moral grounds.

I was quite literally stunned to get such a response, this attribution of the whole terrible magnitude of this problem where in some countries HIV rates are greater than 20%, to some men "having sex with prostitutes and raping their daughters". I honestly spent about 10 minutes staring at the screen trying to comprehend this assertion. In the end I decided it was best to post one brief response and just leave it alone. Good Decision?

In Defence of Footballers

In Defence of Footballers

In the media at the moment, it seems there are two prevailing views regarding sexual assault and footballers: either footy players are a horrid bunch of men, who see themself as gods, have no self-control and get themselves into all sorts of trouble; either that or that the footballers aren’t to blame, they’re just blokes having a good time at bars and nightclubs, and if women don’t want to be assaulted, they should avoid such places and or be less provocative.

Now, if I may, I would like to disagree vehemently with both of these positions.

Mathematics

I was going to incorporate into this post a little summary of various (lack of) religious positions, and how I would plot them on a sort of system of Cartesian space to illustrate my problem with various labels that I might consider using. Unfortunately the key to such a post would be in the actual illustration of the points in the space, the problem with this being that it is 1am and I have no experience using computers to produce mathematical diagrams, and I don't want to learn now.

I hope to get such a post up soon, when I have the patience to produce such a diagram.

For the meantime, I will just write a little about a part of myself that I only became truly aware of in the process of thinking about mathematical plotting of religion. The crux of the matter is this: I am simultaneously both fascinated by, and quite bored by mathematics. This apparent contradiction has been of a slight concern to me, but I mostly put it out of my head. I am concerned no longer, because I believe I have worked out how to differentiate what interests me and what puts me to sleep.

Hello everyone (more like anyone?)

Just rediscovered this bloggety thing, after having written my previous post on Leigh Sales' book, I was looking for somewhere to publish it on the web. And here seemed like a fairly natural place to put it.

I hope to put some more stuff up here with some sort of frequency in the future. Until then... find something better to do than reading blogs :-P

I read a book on doubt, and wrote about it, on climate change and atheism

I recently read a very little book by Leigh Sales (co-host of Lateline), it was a very interesting read, and I absolutely recommend you read it. It is entitled On Doubt and surprisingly enough it’s all about doubt. She says many intelligent thoughtful things on what she sees as the lack of doubt on anyone’s behalf in the media, politics and culture of today. Now, although I agree with her on almost all of what she has to say, I’m afraid I’m about to launch into just what’s wrong with her book. I hope you’ll forgive me, but there’s not really much to say when you agree with someone.

Cricket

I am going to compose this post concerning the subject of cricket

I was going to go to cricket training this afternoon, but despite the transition into spring having already occurred, the rain came down, washing out any prospect of a spot of practice with the willow. This is rather unfortunate, because in the free time I have instead, I will do nothing better than waste the time away on the internet.

I love cricket, people say it's boring and takes too long, but that's just what makes it brilliant, it is the ideal way to pass away the hours in a long summer. Just sitting there watching the television is a hypnosis, leaving you sitting there enthralled for hours upon hours. It is a form of meditation.

But, what's more, actually playing cricket is even better, both bowling and batting, the constant battle of leather on willow is enough to keep me happy all summer long.

Batting, ever-alert, watching the ball come hurtling down the pitch at you, there is no greater feeling than depositing the ball back of the bowlers head for 4 (or 6 if you're really lucky) runs.

Bowling on the other hand, is quite the equal in enjoyment, fast bowling in particular is a real pleasure, sending thunderbolts down the other end, and letting the batter try (and hopefully fail) to avoid them. No-one wants to be killed, but leaving a few good bruises on someone's chest is what I call a satisfying day's bowling. And of course, taking a few wickets is nice too.

I love cricket, but in such gloomy conditions as today, unfortunately I'm reduced to writing about it. Let's hope the sun shines on all our cricketing endeavours from now on, and Let's hope the Aussies complete a 7-0 whitewash over the poms.