I’m reading an excellent history book at the moment: The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England. It is quite an unusual take on the history book genre in that it aims to explain what life was like for all the social strata of people living in the fourteenth century and how we, as modern people, would respond to life during that period. It covers everything from food to recreational activities, from the structure of towns to the effects of the great plague. It provides a lot of detail on aspects of life that most history books just would not contain. An example of this is the section on medieval humour, and I shall reproduce a medieval joke here:

Two merchants are having a chat and one of them says, “I’ve been married four times now, and each time my wife has hung herself from the oak tree in my garden.”

The second merchant replies, “Can I have a cutting from this noble tree?”

So you can tell medieval humour was not terribly sophisticated. The book is filled with fascinating details like this, and reading it gives a real sense of how the people and life was so different back then. Another example is the staggering misogyny in medieval England, no modern English woman would allow themselves to be treated as the distinctly inferior people that women were in the fourteenth century.

If you enjoy history and want a compelling and engaging book to read I can highly recommend this.

There is a news story on the BBC News website about books that people have tried to get banned from libraries in the US. Of course, it is more than a little dodgy to dictate to people what they can and cannot read, but I was still vaguely amused that the book that received most requests to be banned was a true story about gay penguins in New York’s Central Park Zoo. You’ve got to be pretty petty and small-minded if you want to ban that. Philip Pullman’s excellent ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy also received lots of requests to be banned; this does make me worry when top children’s literature is viewed so negatively by religious nut-jobs simply because it points out they are talking tripe.

Last night I read the Toybag Guide to Age Play. It is a quick read, but covers quite a lot. If you are new to age play, or want to explain it to someone, you could do worse than buy this.

Last night I started reading Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories by Italo Calvino, it is completely hilarious. It is a collection of short stories. Some are only a couple of pages long, but they all capture the genius of Italo Calvino's writing. It is a good book to dip into when you are, say, on the train or in the bath.

It is not the best book I have read by Calvino, which is Invisible Cities. This is a completely brilliant book that is full of humour and invention. Again the structure of the book means you can dip in and read a few short sections when the mood is with you.

If I am recommending books of short stories I would be doing my esteemed reader a disservice if I failed to suggest Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges. This is one of the most intelligent and funny books it has been my pleasure to read. Everyone I have lent it to has gone off and purchased it when I have demanded my copy back.

When I last saw my psychotherapist he suggested I spend the time between our meetings thinking about judgement and forgiveness; there is a lot of judgement in my life and not much forgiveness. My method of thinking about these topics has been to read moral philosophy and see how it applies to me and my life. I can recommend two good, general books on the subject: Ethics (Fundamentals of Philosophy) by Piers Benn and Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics by Simon Blackburn.

Much to my surprise I have found these books remarkably uplifting. They describe a number of competing theories of what constitutes being good, and according to all of the compelling theories it appears very much like a I am a good person. Reading these books has really enlightened me, I don't feel quite so bad about myself. Judgement that I was tasked to think about has turned out to be a lot more positive about myself than I would normally think.

What about forgiveness? I have done some things that I feel terrible about and have never been able to let go of the guilt. Again, reading has come to the rescue. Game Theory suggests that for co-operation to evolve in selfish populations forgiveness, in terms of minimally punishing behaviour which damages individuals in the population and rewarding positive interactions, is necessary and is a stable strategy in evolutionary terms. It takes a logical leap to apply this to the things I've done, but I can see that it does; I have been punished enough and it is time to have a more positive view of myself.

I have to admit to feeling a bit weird about all of this. I've been judging myself negatively and not forgiving myself for my wrongs for a decade. Now some self-analysis has led to the feeling that I am not bad and not worthy of punishment; feeling good about myself is in my grasp. Wow, man.

I am sure my positive outlook has also been enhanced by my medication. Clozapine has worked wonders with my paranoid delusions and has had a great anti-depressant effect. Sleeping more is also a help.

I clearly have some kind of book fetish. I've been buying piles recently, I've been buying a lot of books as well. This is what arrived yesterday morning which I have only just had the chance to unpack.

As you can tell, biology and cooking seem to be the current themes of choice, nicely crossing over in the molecular gastronomy book.

Of course, I get a pile of new cookery books when I am violently ill. I went to the GP today and spent almost two hours sitting in the waiting room, with waves of unbearable nausea flowing over me and the beast getting ever closer to consuming me, before they could be bothered to tell me I could not be seen that day. Hopefully they will see me later this afternoon and I can get some powerful anti-emetic action sorted out.

Look at the time *sigh* nearly 0420...

My insomnia is persisting, this has been quite a bout. It hasn't helped that for the past two days I have been throwing up everything that I have eaten and most things I have drunk. I am hoping the cause of this is simply that I am not sleeping, and once I get back to being able to kip the nausea will go.

So how have I been filling the endless nights? It is hard doing much, as I am so tired my concentration span has gone out of the window. However, I have managed to do a bit of reading. I have taken a short break from my voracious consumption of philosophy books and have undertaken to refresh my knowledge from a decade ago; I am reading about computer modelling of biological systems.

This is a subject that I used to find utterly fascinating and I was, for a period of time, very good at it. Of course, the attrition of paranoid schizophrenia and generally being out of the biological modelling-loop means I probably will not get as much out of these books as once I might. I am sure, once I reach the heavy maths bits, I'll be floundering. This is not a bad thing, though, I like to be challenged by what I read. If I am learning something new, or even re-learning it a second time, then all is well.

It does vex me a tad that once upon a time I had a plan to write a definitive book on computer modelling of diseases, and now I am reading such books written by other people. I cannot begrudge them their success, especially if the books are good, but the reminder that my original career plans now lie in tatters with no hope of them being repaired does hurt more than a tad. It would have been a good career, I was good at being an academic.

The author of the utterly brilliant Flashman books has died at the age of 82. He will be sorely missed, not least because we still don't know what Flashman got up to in the American Civil War. Flashman books are very funny and easy to read, I recommend you all go out and buy one today.

I just had a bath and whilst in it read one of the best books I've read in a while:

It is only 64 pages long, short enough to read in the bath and succinctly answers many points raised in religious debate: such as do religions have an inherent right to be respected (no), and isn't atheism a religion itself (no). The final chapter on the kindness of humans and humanism in particular is most uplifting. It is concise, well-argued and very well written. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The best part was that I slept seven hours. This is really pretty good.

However, the religious loony who has been bursting into my room and incoherently going on about flying devils came into my room at around eleven last night whilst I was asleep. She helped herself to my books. I didn't realise this until she returned at midnight to throw them at me screaminng that I was evil and the devil. I suppose she didn't approve of 'Against all gods' and 'The atheist manifesto' (excellent book, by the way, very funny).

After I complained about her yet again I was told that I was now allowed to lock my door. A solution, I suppose, but keeping the god-bothering headcase from stealing, harassing people and waking them up might have been a better solution. When she roams the ward at night shouting incoherent prayers one might have thought the staff would do something as we need our sleep. But no, they'd rather drink coffee and gossip in the nurses office.

I was really distressed to have my stuff taken and my personal space invaded, let alone being woken up when sleep has been such a challenge for me.

I see the senior psychiatrist today and I am going to try and bust out of the loony bin. I hope the next blog entry comes from home (at least then I can spell check it).

My psychotherapist suggested I read a book called Accepting Voices; I largely hated it.

The book is based around the idea that the orthodox psychiatric view of hearing voices does not help people deal with them; they say it inhibits rather than stimulates personal growth. This is all very well and good, but some of the ideas they wish to replace the standard view with are quite laughable.

The book is filled with personal accounts from people who hear voices. A large number of these people seem to think they have magic powers to read peoples minds, tell the future and other such drivel. The accounts are filled with mumbo jumbo-level explanations about the voices they hear, with people talking about how they have holes in their auras and how spirits follow them around. As a rationalist, this kind of crap really gets on my tits.

The accounts people give about their magic powers are all riddled with inconsistencies, one sentence says the voices always tell the truth (and tell the future to some people) yet a few sentences later they say the voices lie and try to mis-direct them. Of course, drivelly tales of magic powers are usually inconsistent, but this doesn't seem to have been pointed out to the people writing the personal accounts.

It may be that believing these bogus tales has helped some people deal with their voices, but should the psychotherapeutic community really be encouraging people to accept further delusions in the form of obviously false stories as to why they hear voices? Of course not. Thinking that one has magic powers is hardly likely to help on integrate with or be taken seriously by society. These people already have delusions in the form of voices, loading themselves up with further delusions about the cause of the voices is not going to make them seem any saner.

Some may argue that these horse shit stories about their voices are what they believe, so that makes it alright. Clearly this is rubbish; unfettered belief is not a valid model for explaining things. If I believe that all Scottish people are only one metre tall (I don't, by the way) this has no bearing on how tall Scottish people really are and I should be corrected. Personal growth is not about thinking you are right no matter what bogus things you think. If you want to believe things that are at odds with how modern society works you are more likely to be side-lined and not taken seriously.

The book has some more classical explanations for voices, and suggests non-laughable ways of coming to terms with them, but I feel its uncritical view of less realistic explanations really damages the book.

Now and again I have railed against sloppy thinking as this is something I despise. Consequently, as I read through my new book, Bad Thoughts by Jamie Whyte, it is little surprise that I often chortle quite loudly at his witty, angry attack on people who cannot be bothered to think or construct a decent argument. A quote:

How scrumptious to be faithful! But utterly irrelevant to whether or not the opinion in question is true. Whatever the finer feelings associated with faith, no matter how elevated those who indulge it, from the point of view of truth and evidence, faith is exactly the same as prejudice. Declaring an opinion to be a matter of faith provides it with no new evidential support, gives no new reason to think it is true. It merely acknowledges that you have none.

It is a hilarious book, but perhaps I was destined to enjoy as I am on record as saying, "When it comes to wine there is an objective reality out there and I know what it is", whilst the author of the book has had a paper published in a philosophical journal entitled, "Relativism is absolutely false." Well said that man!

If my time at Oxford taught me one thing it is that it is always useful to have a bottle of something decent to hand. If the biology course taught me one thing it is that knowledge of initial sources frequently gives one the greatest insight. Consequently, I am quite pleased by my latest book acquisition: the two volumes of that great French thinker Paul Henri Thiery's (aka Baron D'Holbach) work The System of Nature (in translation, obviously). This was the first openly atheist book published in the modern world (in 1770) and it is a treat to read.

Certainly it has the flowery precision of language that many of the tomes of that period posses, and so it is a bit harder for we modern types to read, but when someone clearly took such delight in shaping their thoughts into words it is worth spending a few hours pouring over. Sentences one and two are re-produced here for your delectation:

The source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of nature. The pertinacity with which he clings to blind opinions imbibed in his infancy, which interweave themselves with his existence, the consequent prejudice that warps his mind, that prevents its expansion, that renders him the slave of fiction, appears to doom him to continual error.

So, well done that clever French chap with his cunning thoughts about the value of investigation, thinking and humanity, I'd buy him a drink if he was not dead.

So said Richard Feynman when being harassed by loonies; a theist scumbag had the cheek to try a similar line on me. I was subjected to a huge diatribe using some, if not many, of the moronic debating techniques used by Christians only to end with the suggestion that perhaps I should leave them too their poor, deluded lives and not harass them for being misguided in their harassment of others. I was more than happy to point this person in the direction of an excellent essay written by the author of two of the best English language books in recent decades, Salman Rushdie. The Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children are hilarious, intelligent and really fun; any lover of language and literature should devour them. He also wrote what is quite clearly the best children's book I have experienced, Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

So, without further ado let us mock some theists. We are told that a particular god favours a particular football team over another all thanks to the atypical behaviour of one member of its team and this is somehow newsworthy. Quite bonkers. I am quite prepared to understand that words are important, powerful and occasionally (hopefully) offensive but banning paper bags seems a poor method of stopping minute fractions of offensive words becoming physically covered in filth.

This is the advertising slogan of my old college; I haven't visited there in years...

However, that this idea may have been swimming around in my psyche at some point might have something to do with my love for the now-defunct genre of films the Ealing comedies. Made at Ealing Studios in the middle of the last century these are very gentle comedies of manners. Invariably the plot runs something like this: Basically good pub-landlord/thief/textile-chemist/cinema-doorman/assassin/honest, normal-type-person tries to achieve something with the best possible intentions but ends up in a frightful pickle and gets terribly flustered. The occasionally-good Cohen brothers recently made a passable facsimile of the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers.

Perhaps it will be of no surprise that my favourite of the Ealing comedies is a charming little number called The School for Scoundrels, which is all about making sure other people end up in a frightful pickle and get terribly flustered. This film is based upon the book Potter on Lifemanship, a little book that purports filled with notes on Lifemanship-skills research; skills that allow one to exploit subtle weaknesses in the behaviour or desire to stick to social rules that others display, and so allowing one's self to be one up on them. It is quite amusing, in a more-than-fifty-years-old sort of way. I recently got a first edition, first impression of it for the princely sum of three English pounds from this fine source of second hand books. They are well worth checking out for all sorts of things.

Of the many things that amused me (including passing your opponent in golf balls made from lead) the note by A. le Maitre on Homeric gamesmanship seemed like a fair observation of how and why certain groups of people have thought it reasonable to behave throughout history:
It is true that the Gamesman always sticks to the rules, but rules become unnecessary if the gods are on your side.

Sadly, many people still think this is justification for behaving terribly badly even though there have never been any gods to be on their side.

So says a Basque proverb; sounds fine to me. My thoughts are on the subject of food for it is the birthday of a younger relative today. Much to my dismay she has been hoodwinked into becoming a vegetarian and so the thought of her birthday meal is so depressing I could not bear to ring her up today.

I feel I will be dining rather better as I have an organic, free-range chicken from my local supermarket. No doubt it is charged with positive chi as well, but I did not read the label that carefully, I was merely concerned with getting something that tastes nice rather than any wider principles.

The key to roasting a chicken and the broad pleasure that such a meal can provide are expounded upon admirably by two articulate commentators on food Simon Hopkinson and Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall in two of the most generally useful cookery books a person could wish to own: Roast Chicken and Other Stories and Meat. The second of these books has served me terribly well, I never realised roasting grouse was so easy and could provide so much pleasure.

Clearly, Meat is a book not shy of extolling the virtues of noshing on dead animals. "Good", I find myself thinking. It also has a reasonably coherent philosophy behind the quest for good meat and so why one should not buy disgusting, factory-farmed rubbish from Iceland. In an ideal world it would make good reading for any vegetarian who was open-minded about why they eat what they eat. Sadly, like a lot of cultists, reasoned debate holds no sway with most and they'll just go on eating their depressing food and feeling terribly pleased with themselves, even if they do feel ill a lot of the time.

For a good read about how meat does make us feel wonderful, why it is so good for us and a more general understanding of food in general Harold McGee's latest book is well worth a browse. When catering for a vegetarian, in order to escape from the panic about knowing what to cook I do find Jack Dee's advice to be useful. Serve a large, rare steak because either they'll secretly be glad or they'll be too weak to complain.