It has been quite some time since I have had the oppourtunity to spend any time updating or even looking at this blog. The eason being is that I have been hard aat work studying for 
both Part one and more recently Part Two of the Human Givens diploma Couse. I wa successful in completing both at 
the end of February 20o8. Now afte a perod of "recovery" I feel able to resume some of my old activities again, this blog 
being one of them.

Below is a picture of Gilwell park near Chingford where I spent a couple of weks finishing off Part Two of the course. 

Picture 022

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A number of recent studies suggest television and video games are having a detrimental effect on the health and learning of children

More information at:

I read the above with some intereast as yesterday I was standing waiting for a bus when I glanced across the road and saw the advertising posters for two films which were about to be released.

Both were showing men brandishing a gun with captions which glorified the act of violence they were about to perpetrate.

At a time when the shooting of innocents by teenagers has been a regular feature in the news it is little wonder that such individuals find the act of taking life to be a normal part of everyday life when confronted by such images on our streets every day.

The act of violence is being normalized by it being portrayed in the same fashion as the latest "must have" electronic gadget to hit the market.

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078

Val has identified this bird which I failed to find in my bird book as a

Cygnus melanocoryphus or Black Necked Swan(obviously really!) Thanks again Val, you are always good at identifying unusual types of plant or bird for me.

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I have just returned from spending a couple of days in London for more psychotherapy training by Mindfields College in the Human Givens approach. As well as being excellent and useful training it is so nice to be able to spend some time in Regent's on a warm sunny, Spring evening.

It also amazes me to see how much wildlife there is to see on the lake. From bar-headed geese to several nesting herons, and a strange looking swan (or at least I think it was a swan) with a balck neck. Its really hard to believe that such a tranquil spot exists just a short distance away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

The other thing which made a big diference was the sun, when I was there in January and March it was cold and grey, in April it was warm, blue skies, flowerins on the shrubs. Perfect.

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Water has been found for the first time in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system.

The discovery increases the chances of life being found among the stars.

The planet, nicknamed Osiris by astronomers, orbits so close to its parent star that its surface reaches a scorching 1,100C.

It has already given scientists a number of surprises. Osiris, which is 150 light years from Earth and has the official title HD 209458b, was the first extra-solar world known to have an atmosphere, mainly composed of hydrogen. But its atmosphere was found to be boiling away into space.

More

I tend not to post news items on this blog, keeping those for my other blog at: http://lamentations.blogspirit.com/

but this item really caught my imagination. I have always taken a keen interest in space and in the more speculative realm of science fiction. I remeber as a 10 year old rushing home from school so I could seen the lastest pictures on the first moon landing.

It was incredible to look up at the moon at night during that time and think that there were two men up there.

We have come alomg way since then, we have found water on Mars, and sent our small robot explorers scuttling over the surface of the red planet, sending us back some truely amazing pictures from the surface. I wonder if a man or woman will ever walk upon the surface of that planet in my lifetime? I hope so. I will be glued to my TV constantly.

Now we seem to be able to extend our knowledge in ever widening circles to plaets which lie outside our solar system, and produce data on their atmospheric composition, climate and even be able to detect the presence of water.

The more I learn about the universe around us the more I wonder at it's magnificence and mystery.

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He looked at his own soul

with a Telescope. What seemed

all irregular, he saw to be beautiful

Constellations: and he added

To the Consciousness hidden

worlds within worlds.

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Pinhole Kit

I have finally received the pinhole camera kit ordered a couple of weeks ago from retrophotographic. The camera is surprisingly small, and I managed to assemble it in a short period of time. Next weekend I will test it out hopefully, Bank Holiday weather permitting.

On the subject of photography, I decided to have a look around my local camera dealers that I have not visited for a while. They always used to stock a fairly good range of secondhand SLR film cameras as well as the odd medium format Bronica, something I have wanted since I was a teenager. I was on the look out for an old Canon AE1 which I am told is a suitable manual camera for shooting with infra-red film, something I have been wanting to try for a while now.

I was surprised to find when I walked in that the shop now stocked nothing but digital cameras, from the very cheap to the very, very expensive, and an impressive range of scanners, printers and expensive image manipulation software to go with them. I have nothing against digital but I am nostalgic for my teenage days spent in the College darkroom, under a red light, pouring chemiclas into dishes and watching the end product emerge. Somehow sitting at the computer manipulating images with a few clicks for the mouse don't have that authentic feeling of being "real photography". I must be growing old, well I am 48 next Tuesday!

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This week has been quite hectic, most of it involving educational activities. On Monday it was off to the UEA for my psychosocial interventions course, then off to London on Tuesday and Wednesday for more training by Mindfields College in their "Human Givens" approach to psychotherapy. Then preparing a powerpoint presentation for the following week. A am a good example of "life long learning", I am approaching 48 and spending more time studying than I did when I was 16. Actually maybe there is a lesson here, if I had studied more when I was 16 I wouldn't still be doing it 32 years later!

eloi eloi lama sabachthani

I see that Val on her blog Escape has been hanging around the local graveyards taking lots of photographs, Val's pictures are much more cheerful than mine though, lots of blue sky and green grass, nothing like my dour effort on the left. I have lots more of these and eventually will upload them here, most are on my other blog already.

On the subject of photography I have finally got around to ordering a nice low tech pinhole camera, I have been talking about getting one for months but never quite found the time to do it. The only thing is it comes in kit form so when it arrives I will have to build it myself. Should take me a few months to get around to that!

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This weekend I went in search of some plants to reveitalize my small garden for the summer , while looking for something completely different I came across this Monkey Puzzle tree and could not resist buying it.

Monkey Puzzle 1

I look forward to watching this grow over the next few years.

The next day I went for a walk at Fairhaven and came across this "King Oak" which is estimated to be 950 years old, imagne the history that this tree has seen and has lived through!

950one

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Its odd that in the couple of weeks that I have been back from the Buddhist House I have been on a massive reading binge, racing through both fiction and none fiction in one or two days, in addition I seem to be writing reams of irrelevant stuff as well. All that experiential group-work must have awoken the creative streak in me.

The downside to all this is that I have neglected what I am really supposed to be doing, but never-mind. The other flip-side is that I have probably added my scribblings  to enough paper to account for a couple of small trees as well as continually having to recharge the digtal camera repeatedly.                                    

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