Adventures

Mesothelioma

My Uncle Derek passed away this past week from cancer caused by asbestos exposure: mesothelioma. I will be traveling to Hampshire to attend his funeral on Thursday.

I know next to nothing about the disease, and it turns out that not much public money (in the grand scheme of things) is devoted to mesothelioma research.

February 27 is Action Mesothelioma Day in the UK, and the Hampshire Asbestos & Support Awareness Group is asking for sponsors for a balloon release that day. There will be events held all over the country, so if you're in the UK, check for one in your area.

If you feel like it's something you want to take part in, please click here for more information on the balloon release.

Other worthy charities helping the fight against mesothelioma are the June Hancock Mesothelioma Research Fund and the British Lung Foundation.

I'll be back with links to US charities as soon as i have some information for you.

Derek left behind his wife Yvonne, sister Beryl, and two children, Allister and Rebecca.
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Edit: If you are in Scotland you can swim with a shark to raise money for the British Lung Foundation. I'm looking at you, Dreyfuss.

Question

A debate has been raging amongst my friends on the connotation of the word supple. Some contend it conjures up ideas of softness, while others say flexibility comes to mind. I'm not going to say which one i think it is, but i will say that i am starting to wonder about an Atlantic split on this. Preliminary findings hint at Britons saying one thing and Americans saying another.

So, what do you think?

Jerry O'Connell vs Tom Cruise

Those of you who haven't seen the Tom Cruise Scientology video can watch it in its nine and a half minute glory after the jump. This post is mainly for showing Jerry O'Connell's parody of it, which is hilarious.

Things i have been meaning to blog about

In this whirlwind that is my life (sarcasm, y'all), i often think about blogging things but then never quite get around to it. So, here's a round-up of stuff that you may or may not find amusing:

• A few weeks ago i saw a woman on the bus. This was no ordinary woman, though; she had male-pattern baldness and a serious comb-over. I wish i had surreptitiously taken a photo, but alas, the opportunity passed.

• The grocery store was crawling with OAPs today, and i don't mean the sprightly ones who don't look a day over 50. These were the ones that lurch constantly from side to side, using their hand baskets as counterweights. Thanks to my quick reflexes, i managed to narrowly avoid getting hit by a slowly moving cart being used as a walker in front of the prepared foods.
• My dissertation supervisor wasn't wearing any shoes when we met last Friday.
• Are Cadbury Creme Eggs smaller than they used to be? Or is it that my hands are bigger?
• Something i love about reading medieval chronicles is you sometimes get descriptions of wars or towns laid waste followed by a terse announcement along the lines of 'Furthermore, Bertold, the king's secretary, on whose advice everything had happened, soon went insane.' That's from The Book of Recent Deeds by Arnulf of Milan. How can you not see the humo(u)r there? Is it just me? Okay, it's probably just me.
• How totally cool is it that i have recently walked home after 4:00pm and it has not been completely pitch dark?

That's all i can think of right now. I would like an answer to the Cadbury question, though...

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Resurrection

So i was able to get the iBook back up and running late Wednesday night (thank goodness). Since then i have been catching up with Dr H.'s transcription and working on dissertation research.

I met with Prof. Andrew Roach, whom you might remember from previous posts, on Friday, and we talked about possible directions for my dissertation. What we agreed on was to focus on three events, most likely the Battle of Civitate, the Patarini movement in Milan, and possibly something to do with Frederick Barbarossa and the Lombard League.

I need to come up with a bibliography by 8 February, so i have spent the past 24 hours researching possible primary sources (texts written contemporaneously with events). If only i could read Latin a little better (and Italian & German at all).

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Dead

as a doornail. That's my computer right now. I have an appointment with the Apple Store Genius Bar tomorrow morning, and hopefully they will get it going.

A new one is only £700 ::choke::

Rejection and Acceptance

Well, the professor i emailed with my dissertation ideas said one of them was no good, but the other might be promising. Then he told me to talk to someone else about it (a subtle heave-ho-stop-emailing-me message, if i ever heard one).

So i did talk to someone else, and he thought the idea looked good. Thank God. I have a meeting with him on Friday afternoon to discuss it.

What's the idea, you ask? It's the use of violence by the medieval papacy and the effect of such on the papacy itself. Here's a preliminary mock-up of part of the proposal:

This dissertation will aim to examine the topic of violence in regard to the eleventh- and twelfth- century papacy. This involves looking at the various cases in which the papacy used or approved of violence in the name of God, for instance: the permission to use armed force to execute the mandates of the Peace and Truce of God in the first half of the eleventh century; Pope Leo IX’s expedition against the Normans in southern Italy in 1053; Pope Nicholas II’s and Pope Alexander II’s support of the Patarini, a violent lay movement, in Milan during the 1060s; Pope Gregory VII's plans for a military campaign in the East during the 1080s; and finally the eleventh- and twelfth-century crusades. By analyzing contemporary criticism, papal letters, and various chronicles, I hope to determine whether each instance had a positive or negative effect on the papacy's situation in the eyes of critics, the popes themselves, and kings.

Nobody steal it, now.

Uninspired

I haven't written anything for a few days, mostly because i have been floundering around, struggling with possible dissertation topics.

My latest email to a professor suggested studying the effects of the Church-State relationship on medieval nation building. But which nation(s)?

Ugh. I totally should not have come to grad school. This was a bad idea, but now i have to deal with it.

If only i could submit CSS tweaks for a dissertation instead...

Hello!

I guess you found the place, huh? Things probably look a little familiar yet different around here.

I'm still working out the CSS, and i have a bunch of stuff to do behind the scenes with moving image files from Wordpress to here. Other than that, though, i think i'm up to speed.

Drop me a note if you see something egregiously wrong; i ran the site through BrowserShots, and it mostly looked okay (not perfect). If you don't already have my email address, there's one listed toward the bottom of the sidebar.

More junk

I'll stop after this one. At least for a little while.

You're Austria!
The hills are alive with the sound of music! You seem to greet everyone with this invariably sunny disposition, but especially the total obsession with music. For as long as you can remember, you've tried to attune yourself to the deepest rhythms of the world, to make noise sound like something beautiful. While you've tried to bully the people around you from time to time, you've long since seen the error of your ways. Even if that means you're not as significant as you used to be, you still have your music. Your favorite type of sausage is Vienna.
Take the Country Quiz II at the Blue Pyramid

I’m sorry

I just can't resist passing this one along.

moar funny pictures

Fun

I went out with Debbie, Scott, and Lance last night and finally took some pictures with people in them ;-) We met up at The Goat, one of the many local pubs, and went on to Lance's place after the pub closed.

If you're on my Flickr friends & family list, you can see them here. If you're not on my list, then you are stuck with this shot of Debbie:

This is not really surprising

Since i'm living the life of a 25-year old right now.

You Act Like You Are 25 Years Old

You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel like an adult, and you're optimistic about life. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. You're still figuring out your place in the world and how you want your life to shape up. The world is full of possibilities, and you can't wait to explore many of them.

What Age Do You Act?

Insomnia?

Does it count as insomnia if you still get enough sleep? My sleep schedule has been really off because of the holidays, so i got up early yesterday in order to reset it.

I was tired all day, but i resisted taking a nap. When i finally went to bed at 11:00pm, i couldn't sleep. I ended up staying up until about 3:00am. I was exhausted (and upset that i hadn't been able to sleep).

My alarm went off at 8:00am today, and it was going off for two whole minutes before i woke up enough to turn it off. I promptly went back to sleep and slept until about 2:00pm.

Damn it. Maybe i'll just blame it on the darkness.

Tetris

I really like the sound in this video:

Michael Moore’s Pick

Want Michael Moore's take on who should be elected President of the USA this year? Having been able to avoid the vast majority of election coverage, i was surprised to see what he had to say about John Edwards. Interesting.

Who Do We Vote For This Time Around? A Letter from Michael Moore

Life at 55°50′N

Happy New Year!

Here's how dark it is in Glasgow at 8:00am (granted it's overcast, too)

Taken with my phone, 'cause my camera battery is dead