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Doing A-Levels

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You can read more of my story in: My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind St. George's School Harpenden Doing a-levels I enjoyed maths and couldn't stand English lessons so I started doing further maths as well which clashed with English. I did half further maths and half English, but I'd missed eigen vectors at the start of the course. It turns out that without eigen vectors you can't really understand any of further maths. I enjoyed sitting in the lessons, and was happy to miss English, but I got an E in further maths. The teacher was called Mr Foley and I suspect he was an alcoholic. We were a smart bunch doing further maths, but I remember lesson after lesson he would teach us something which would seem to make sense and then ask us to solve a problem based on what he'd just taught us. We'd all sit there blank faced, absent a clue. He completely failed to teach us. And then he'd go to the pub. However, last year I had a job working for a dodg

A Road Trip to Niagara

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You can read more of my story in: My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind My journey into poly and ethical non-monogamy was long and tortuous. The pursuit of a freedom I'd fallen in love with as a troubled adolescent but had no words for and no worthy examples to look to. The first polyamarous person I met was in Boston, a friend of Garth who I knew from the Python community and now worked with. Taylor was working on his PhD in neuropsychology and we tripped together. One huge mushroom with a colourful cap, blended into orange juice. My first trip since my psychedelic psychosis of about fifteen years previously. I saw aliens and talked to Stephen Hawking. The next time I saw Taylor was a couple of years later. I'd come to America to celebrate the birthday of a friend's wife. Garth, his wife and I and a work colleague, trekked by car from North Carolina to another friend's ranch just outside Nashville. He was a tech just-about-millionaire and this ranch was t

The Jesus Army and the Independent Inquiry into Childhood Sexual Abuse

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 IICSA Inquiry - Child Protection in Religious Organisations and Settings  The Truth Project for Victims of Religious Abuse The exclusively male authority of the Jesus Army, delegated from the cruel and unusual senior pastor Noel Stanton, was full of darkness and deceit and nothing of God. It was a personality cult with Noel as an absolute ruler who delighted in crushing people.  Those in the cult who took on a sacred duty to care, and swore a covenant to it, have to answer for the shameful way they treated so many. The leaders who were in charge; it happened on their watch, they let it happen and made it happen. Oath breakers and traitors. To betray love is its own reward. There is a price to be paid in the heart. Deuteronomy 1:35  None of this evil generation will see the good land I promised your ancestors. The JA called itself the "Joshua generation", the J Generation. They didn't read the story right. Only two from that generation believed God and entered the promise

Christian Guilt and a Christian Perspective on Abortion

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  A little piece on Christian guilt. What "It is finished" means, the dying words of the Christ on the cross. Or so it is written.  I was thinking on Christian guilt and shame, and how the religion that proclaims an end to sin leaves people feeling so bad. Here's what I think "It is finished!"  means in practise. How you can live in the reality of it. You'll spot original sin and repentance in here too if you know how to look. Of course you don't need to believe in the cross for this to work. What you think you believe is irrelevant. The point is to do it, to live free from guilt. All your actions, all your behaviour and what others might call sin, is completely explained by your genetics and environment and personal history. The accident of your birth and the circumstances in which you found yourself, through no fault of your own. All your choices were governed by internal forces you barely understand yourself and that can only possibly be judged unfair

Tales from the Past: My Ecstasy Honeymoon, Billy Whizz and Simon from the Cult

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You can read more of my story in: My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind I remember coming home to my parents high as a kite on e. They had no clue and thought I was drunk at worst. They never sussed it. The dilated pupils are the dead give away, but they didn't know that. Nobody ever had mandy back in the day. It was all e, but they were good. One you were high, half for the smaller girls. Two and you were fucked. Three and you might die. It was the summer of 1992 and Ebeneezer Goode by The Shamen had just been released and I knew all the words. A great philosopher once wrote Naughty, naughty, very naughty Ha ha ha ha ha There's a guy in the place who's got a bittersweet face And he goes by the name of Ebeneezer Goode His friends call him 'Ezeer and he is the main geezer And he'll vibe up the place like no other man could He's refined, sublime, he makes you feel fine Though very much maligned and misunderstood But if you know 'Ezeer he's

Mindfulness of Breathing:A Meditation on the Breath

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Mindfulness of Breathing:A Meditation on The Breath We all like the illusion that we're in control of our own minds. To have to admit otherwise would seem a great failure. The truth however is quite different from what we might tell ourselves. Pause for a moment and observe your mind. How long is it before the internal dialogue starts up, and your mind starts chattering ? It's easy to not realise that this is the way we spend most of our time. This mental chatter is a state of distractedness. The mind drifts along on the winds of it's whims. It makes it hard to concentrate on one thing for any length of time. It also masks what really goes on in the depths of our mind and soul. Meditation is a practice that can reveal the extent of the problem, and offers a solution. Mind Your Mind Do you recognize the feeling of being totally absorbed in something ? You're so wrapped up in it that you are barely aware of your surroundings, and time seems to stand still. You can look up

Some Personal History with Python

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You can read more of my story in: My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind IronPython in Action was published on the 7th April 2009 and we sold a little over 7000 copies.  Royalties for last quarter amounted to $25. It took me two years to write thirteen chapters and a couple of appendices, and took Christian Muirhead about the same to write two chapters and an appendix. Jonathan Hartley did the diagrams and illustrations and the worst part was compiling the index. It took so long because IronPython was still in alpha (!) when we started and it changed several times (including a Silverlight version being released) whilst writing! After leaving Resolver Systems in 2010 I spent a year contracting on Line of Business apps that ran in Silverlight (Django on the server): Python code running in the browser on the client side. It was glorious. We even had functional tests on unittest built in to the app. Work on mock accelerated massively once IronPython in Action was complete. Mag

The Evil Priestess and the Temple to Isis in Battersea

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You can read more of my story in: My Autohagiography: Fragments of a Once Broken Mind To some the name Isis is a terror. To me she is divine beauty wrapped in an Egyptian robe This is the true story of the time I rescued the slave husband of a celebrity high priestess of a temple to the Goddess Isis in Battersea. After the first Ayahuasca retreat I joined the secret Facebook group for "the tribe". Making occasional posts was a third rate ex-celebrity. One of the names she went by was Mary. She also calls herself Mother Gaia, which I consider a blasphemy, and she doesn't believe in global warming. She would regularly post in the group and I would mock and berate her. I warned people she was as spiritual as a twig, that she was deceived and would deceive people for personal gain and so on. Before the second retreat I let the tribe know that I was coming. On the retreat was a slender Romanian gentleman, his first time at the retreat but not his first psychedelic adventur