Public Service Announcement

Hokay.

For the record, I'm going to be doing an English Literature A-Level over the next year. I'm doing it online and will therefore get very little in the way of interaction or tutor time so I will probably, as is my tendency, ramble randomly about it on my journal.

Here's the thing. I haven't done anything even remotely involving English Lit (save reading) for the last seven years. GCSEs? Not enormously comprehensive, let's face it. So I'm going to be getting very excited about drawing intensely obvious conclusions and generally making a fool of myself.

If I'm rambling? I'd love discussion. I'd love to talk about some of the things I'm learning, because I find that sort of thing interesting and exciting. I'm sad like that. If you're not interested or you're above such things due to having a degree in the subject, or any such thing, please just don't read it. Please don't make me feel stupid. I'm very easily discouraged. Does that make sense?

*grins*

Public Service Announcement ends.

(no subject)

I'm currently rambling around Amazon, just about to buy my coursebooks for the first module. Thing is, you need to spend £15 to get free delivery, and they don't come to that. Which'd mean I should really buy something else. To make the most of it, y'know.

I could buy a new keyboard - this one isn't really defective in any way but it looks like it might become so reasonably soon. However, I could easily hold off until my first pay and probably longer. Can likewise hold off on buying more coursebooks until I'm done with the first module, and it'll save me having them lying around and making the place look untidy. These'd both be the sensible options.

Alternatively, I can attack my wishlist and go for one of the cheaper options to make the price up. I've been craving a history of the East India Company for Quite Some Time, plus there's a book by poet Jeffrey Skinner which's been reviewed really well and looks Pretty Damned Interesting.

*grins*

Or I could go for The Emperor's New Groove, or Happy Together, or some Wilco or something. Something entirely gratuitous.

Help?



[Poll #798547]

(no subject)

Ponderings (unrelated to A-level) prompted vaguely by de Saussure.

Something that's always interested me is the theory of language acquisition - whether language is something that's innate. I had a bit of trouble with this theory initially, and it's been a hell of a long time since I've read any Chomsky or Pinker or the like, but essentially there's the argument that language acquisition is something that's inborn; that features in common across languages, such as coherent grammatical structure and so forth, make for a pretty persuasive argument that it is in our nature not only to use language to communicate but to use a specific kind of language to communicate.

What interests me most about it is that it set me wondering whether there's a school of thought in Theology which covers the same sort of ground.

I did an essay for my Religious Studies A-level coursework which covered the topic 'why is there religion', and let me tell you I cursed that essay title with my every breath. I used to draw little doodles of wheels under the title and me, pushing, and a helpful nearby cliff. But a lot of the reading I did for that topic and a lot of the reading I've done since has shown certain similarities between religions, religions that really shouldn't have had much contact or any major effect on each other. So this could pretty much indicate a couple of things; that there is in fact something Up There, Down Here, or Somewhere Around The Place that's affecting the way we think and attempting to garner belief, or that we are in some way genetically programmed towards beliefs and the structuring of them. That spirituality is, along with a predisposition towards language, innate.

Anyway, yes. I'm going to go read some more de Saussure, now. I just thought that was interesting. :)

(no subject)

Meme, while I ponder answers to the top five lists meme I did the other day.


Comment with a word, any word at all, and I will upload you a song that has something to do with it. Can be a canon, if you want, can be a character or a ship, whatever. I defy you to come up with something I can't respond to. :D

(Warning in advance: my logic, she is strange and twisty.)