5 Things

Thanks Dekker!

5 things I plan to do before I die
5 things I can do
5 things I cannot do
5 things that attract me to other people
5 things I say most often
5 celebrity crushes
5 people I want to do this

(This is second time around. Last time, the computer ate my post, and I went to all the effort with links and everything. As you can imagine, I can't be bothered this time. If you don't know who a celebrity is, please look them up on IMBD.)

5 things I plan to do before I die (I don't really "plan" to do anything. So read "would like" instead)
1. Have a literary work published.
2. Get married.
3. Understand Wittgenstein.
4. Have offspring.
5. Hug a bear. (this will garauntee the dying part)

5 things I can do
1. Draw.
2. Find things in minutes that others (eg flatemates, brothers) spend hours looking for.
3. Cook.
4. Dance.
5. Bend my knees backwards and twist my elbows around (double jointed).

5 things I cannot do
1. Sing.
2. Spell.
3. Read fast.
4. A chin-up.
5. A hand stand.

5 things that attract me to other people
1. Wit and sense of humour.
2. Easy going honesty.
3. Wisdom.
4. Genuine humility.
5. Big bright eyes.

5 things I say most often
1. "...like..." (a bad habit)
2. "You should..." (another bad habit)
3. "I don't know."
4. "Ummm." (possibly a bad habit)
5. Any Napoleon Dynamite quote. (by no means a bad habit)

5 celebrity crushes
1. Colin Farrell
2. Adam Brody
3. Antonio Banderas
4. Colin Firth
5. Jeff Probst

5 people I want to do this
1. Amy
2. Emi
3. Angus
4. Seth
5. Hugo

Of pain and proofs, noise and nooky.

The sound proofing in this block of flats is non existent. I thought I was impervious to this kind of thing, but I found myself blushing at the sound of next door's "night noises". It's a bit of a noisy place here anyway, though (no, not in that way!). We live on Mile Lane, but I dub it "Garbage Collection Lane", because at any hour you can hear the "erhn erhn erhn"..."kaardoonk" of the Garbage trucks. Despite this, I often step outside to discover all the garbage bins overflowing. Tracey thinks the Garbage trucks just drive up and down the lane for the sole purpose of annoying her at night.

People predicted that Tracey and I wouldn't work as flatmates. How wrong they were. There's never a dull moment, and life seems richer when you're around people who bring issues and thoughts out into the open, and then maybe make a joke about it. For example, the other day I fell up the stairs.
Tracey asked, "Are you okay?"
"Yempf" I reply.
"But is your ego okay?"

Classic.

The other day I had a filling. It hurt when they were putting it in. Yesterday I had another filling and this time I asked them to give me more anesthetic/numbing stuff. The dentist overcompensated so when I came home Amy and Tracey laughed at me because I looked like a celebrity collegen job gone wrong. My upper lip is still a bit swollen, so I'll just be bit sexier for a bit. ;)

Yesterday, in the Christian Philosophy reading group, I got to say, in the hearing of the Spongian, that if the body of Christ was found I would no longer believe in God. He didn't respond, but I'd love to know what he was thinking. I made that remark in the context of a question Jason asked. Is it possible for science to disproove the existence of God? I think that this is a very good question when not taken lightly. There is a sense in which the question presupposes a catagory error; that is, that God is of the metaphysical kind accesible to science. However, God is not physical, and cannot be described by science in the way that bugs can, or that my frontal lobe can be so described. (I have probably made quite a few assumptions about the nature of science, my viewers can contest them, if they so wish)

However, the proofs for the existence of God are not all metaphysical in nature. I think that in the arenas of Chance/Determinism and Evolution/Astrophysics, God cannot be disproved, in principle. In principle, though, could science disprove Christianity by showing that body X belongs to Jesus Christ (a terrifying thought)? Could science show who X is, beyond a doubt? We might say that science is certain, to an extent, but appeal to Humian scepticism, that is, the probelm of induction. This appeal would allow us to reject scientific claims because they are necessarily founded on induction, and induction is irrational in the end. Thus, we could just deny that X is not Christ's body because science doesn't know what it's talking about.

However, if we were to be sceptical like that about science, in order to be consistent, we have to be sceptical about pretty much all the features of the external world. So we'd have to deny the Bible as well as physical objects. Even though you might have kept Christianity unchallenged, you have to deny it anyway.

So, the solution is to suppose a kind of realism about the external world and science. But the question remains, could science, in principle, disprove God in this way? What do my readers think?

Webcam Whore (not)

The Uni library has a webcam. So, upon your request, I'm going to make some appearences. Maybe you'd like me do a little dance for the camera or to wear a wizard costume. I'll see what I can do.