Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-12-05 - 9:12 a.m.

I started the day with a much needed haircut � No 2 clippers .Laurence phoned with some instructions on how to get to his house. It turns out he knows some of the people from Defence Logistics Organisation that we met last Friday. I had a discussion with Barry Oxtoby about my rather unsatisfactory professional status and also about his Masters thesis on leadership. I also mailed some firms about the new standard TS16949.

Paul mailed me details of a course run by his old friend Cambridge, Pete Russell, which involves swimming with dolphins and thinking about inter-species communication.

I drove Peter Chatterton into Birmingham and managed to get lost � eventually we met up with Frances and Prof Neil Barlow and went off to lunch in Brindley Square. Peter chose a really interesting white Burgundy. Frances was very impressive on all the twists and turns in getting the new supply chain scheme off the ground. He also talked a bit about how the Automotive College (not to be confused with the Automotive Academy) had secured another year�s funding.

On the way back through the Arts Centre I picked up some Ives Orchestral music on a CD for �7.50. I thought it sounded amazingly contemporary. Gilbert mailed to say that the CD of Shortstories had arrived and how his first impressions were very poitive. This pleased me a lot � I had given Peter a copy of the CD to start offering it on the website.

Then I drove to Guildford � traffic quite heavy. Eike was already in St Mary�s to help me to set up which was just what I needed � we set up a circle of seats under the tower. Sister Paula arrived and mentioned how a priest she new in South Africa had just been knifed to death � what a strange world.h

I liked the way One Point Two went to open proceedings � at one stage I thought maybe the material I had written wasn�t going to last a respectable time � but I slowed rate of delivery � which was the right thing to do given the density of it. As far as I could tell people seemed quite happy with it. I talked to Alwyn Marriage afterwards and it struck me how she and Laurence have quite a lot in common professionally � they are both freelance philosophers who connect their expertise to practical situations. Annie gave me the music of a song that has to be done 15 December

Then I dropped in on the family home � James and Vita were watching Faking it. I took Jake out for a trot round and then jumped in the car to drive back to Lean-town with the needle slightly over in the red on various dimensions. Anyway I got back to the flat about midnight having seen a shooting star as I drove up the A404. Late Junction played half of Aether � a new post minimalist work that is getting some very positive coverage, also a track off the new Brad Meldau CD.

I forgot to mention a programme I caught at lunchtime on Radio 4 yesterday � it was about the song from West Side Story that starts �There s a place for us�. Apparently Bernstein had written the tune long before the show and had tried to get it into a number of his earlier musicals. Sondheim went on about how hard it was to set � because it wasn�t written as a song � and how the final version � despite its success is technically marred � especially the second syllable of the first line � bad to have such a long �eeeerrrrrrrrrrrr. But because of the universality of the sentiments expressed and their utopian character the song has been an enormous success way beyond the confines of West Side Story which didn�t exactly fall on its face anyway.

I ripped Plundafonix onto the portable and burned a trial disc. Having those tracks on the same hard disc as all the other tools and tricks will be a great temptation. I want to see if this can become my standard production process.

Anyway here�s some festive Pascal

Infinity � nothing. Our soul is cast into our body where it finds number, time, dimension; it reasons about these things and calls them natural or necessary and many can believe nothing else.

Unity added to infinity does not increase at all, any more than a foot added to an infinite measurement: the finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite and becomes pure nothingness. So it is with our mind before God.

We know the infinite exists without knowing its nature just as we know that it is untrue that numbers are finite. We know there is an infinite number but we don�t know what it is. It is untrue that it is even and untrue that it is odd because adding a unit does not change its nature.

Therefore we may know that God exists without knowing what he is.

If there is a God he is infinitely beyond our comprehension since being indivisible and without limits he bears no relation to us � who are certainly limited and may be inherently divided against ourselves.

Christians cannot be condemned for being unable to give rational grounds for our beliefs � Paul declared it to be a folly � the foolishness of God. Were we able to explain it we would have broken with Paul�s understanding of God. It is by being without proof that we show we are not without sense.

If the world existed to teach man about God his divinity would shine out on everyhand in a way that could not be gainsaid . But it only exists through Christ and for Christ � to teach men about their loss and redemption and so everything in it blazes with these two poles. What can be seen on earth indicates neither the total presence or the total absence of divinity � but the presence of a hidden God.

We should not see nothing at all - nor must we see enough to think we possess God but we must see enough to know that we have lost Him. To know that one has lost something one must see it and not see it � such is the state of our nature. The true religion must teach greatness and wretchedness, inspire self-esteeem and self-contempt, love and hate.

Well maybe not quite so festive��.. Its A Thin Line

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