Oh Those Wacky Puritans

From Decennium Luctuosum, by Cotton Mather (yes, that Cotton Mather).  Published 1699, Boston, New-England.  (Subtitled "An History of Remarkable Occurrences, In the Long War, Which New-England hath had with the Indian Salvages, From the Year, 1688.  To the Year, 1698. Faithfully Compoſed and Improved."^*).  Article VII, Relation IV, page 57:

"Reader, A Modern Traveller aſſures us, that at the Villa Ludoviſia, not far from Rome, there is to be ſeen the Body of a Petrified Man ; and that he himſelf ſaw, by a piece of the mans Leg, Broken for Satisfaction, both the Bone, and the Stone Cruſted over it.  All that I will ſay, is, That if thou canſt Read theſe paſſages without Relenting Bowels, thou thy ſelf art as really Petrified, as the man at Villa Ludoviſia.

You'd think they could have been nice enough to stick the warning about soiling your pants at the start of the chapter, rather than the end.

* Yes, it really does say "salvages".

Summer's Almost Gone & the Winter's Tuning Up

I suppose that I should post an update: my defence last Friday went fairly well.  There were several difficult questions asked (some of which Jo later commented that she didn't think were entirely relevant or appropriate) but, although I wasn't as on as I would have liked to have been, the committee still approved my thesis with some minor revisions.  (Largely changing a few sentence structures, and adding a bit more data.)

I finished those last night, and got all the forms signed today.  I now need to submit them to someone, although the graduate secretary is on vacation until the 29^th.  After which I need to scrounge up enough money to pay for the binding costs of the various non-library copies of my thesis, and then I can no longer put "Student" in the occupation section of surveys.

It feels strange to have Sept. coming and not having a new school year starting for the first time in roughly 20 years.

(Panic Time)

I defend Friday.  (Yes, yes, I know: it's about damn time.)  From what I can tell, someone has it out for me already.  Although he's not listed, I know that Dr. Du will be sitting on the committee for some reason, and he always asks the strangest, most tangential questions.  Add to that the fact that, had I not gone looking for it today, I would never have found room H303.

It's not that I didn't know where the room was, it's just that all possible routes to it save one out-of-the-way one have been blocked off by construction inside the building.  I found it anyway, so at least I don't have to be worried about arriving late on Friday because I couldn't find the room I was supposed to be in.

I meet with Jo tomorrow for one final run-through of my presentation.  I already know that there are a few changes to my dissertation that have been requested by the internal readers.  Ignoring all that though, I'm getting dangerously close to no longer being a student, at which point I just become one of the unemployed.  Crap.  I need to work on that.

 Continue reading (Panic Time)

Chlamydia! Herpes! Syphilis! Gonorrhea! Collect Them All!

Taken during a walk along Regent St.:

There was also a bald eagle circling near the bottom of the St. Thomas campus, but I couldn't get a good picture of it.  CBC has been making noise lately about how they've "returned" to downtown Fredericton, which amuses me to no end.  I've been seeing them near the campuses for a while (> year) now, and I know Shan used to see them when she went kayaking.  Given that downtown is between campus and the river, it only stands to reason that they'd be spotted there as well.

Yes, I know what it's supposed to say.

Step One?

I've cut back on the amount of money I've been spending on books lately.  I can't recall what was the last book I bought at Chapters was, and there haven't been any $100+ shopping sprees there in years.  Yet my shelves keep filling and filling.  The list of books I own creeps upwards faster than the list of books I've read, and I don't think I can re-arrange my CDs again so that it gives me anymore shelf space.

It's not just the list of books I own that keeps getting bigger and bigger.  I can't recall when was the last time that the list of books I'm actively searching for (as opposed to "those authors whom I always look for works by") actually went down in size.  At the moment, it is undoubtedly the single largest record on my Palm.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: Hello.  My name is Andrew, and I have a book collecting problem.