Yup, indeed we do at Queens. The C.S. Lewis reading room. I don’t use it as often as I should, but I find Lewis to be an inspiration on many levels and I think it’s pretty cool he has a room in the library. The door is a replica of the one from the Disney Narnia set, and inside there is a table with a Narnian map, There are quotations throughout the room from various Lewis books. Life is good in Belfast!

From Narnia is not that far away at eirejames.com - just some random musings and mullings.

One of the more exciting things at the moment for me has been getting connected with a local church: Christ Church. I have been adopted by one of the families, attend a fantastic home group, and learn every Sunday from their sermon series. One of many cool ‘God things’ has been being able to connect with a home group that is actively interested in learning about human trafficking, and has been bringing in speakers once a month on the subject. I was hoping, praying, to connect with something like that while I was here, and just stumbled into this. Isn’t God great? I also have been incredibly blessed by the members of the church through various forms of hospitality (especially rides, or ‘lifts’ as they say around here), and one family in the church has been exceedingly kind and gone out of their way to make me feel welcome not only at Christ Church but in Northern Ireland.

Even outside church and away from familiar faces, people around here are generally very help, friendly, and hospitable. Having the foreign accent certainly helps, I’m sure, but the culture does do well at hospitality. It has made me realize how poorly I have been at ‘welcoming the stranger’, so to speak, at various times in my life. As an outsider here, I am grateful to everyone who has gone out of their way to help me, welcome me, and befriend me. Of course living here, in a ‘western’ English-speaking country, isn’t radically different from the states, not as much as say India or Brazil might be. Still, knowing where to find things (places, products, and so on), understanding the lingo, and just generally getting around is surprisingly challenging at times, or at least was at first. And that’s where so many people were helpful in making that learning process easier and making the ‘different’ become normal. I hope, if I’ve learned nothing else from my time here, I hope I’ve learned just what an impact we can have on those who are ‘outsiders’ to our community. I don’t want to delve into politics too much, but I do wonder, with the current ‘immigration’ debates in the States, if we haven’t missed out on welcoming those outsiders, even though they may not be in right standing with our immigration laws. I felt this way before coming here, but living as an outsider to a culture has made it more personal and made me more acutely aware of what that experience is like. I can hardly identify with every person who has immigrated, legal or illegal, but I do know what it feels like to feel like an outsider and it is hard sometimes. A kind word, a helping hand, and even just a smile can do wonders. Feel free to disagree with my conclusion, but I personally have a much different perspective on the issue now as a result. Oh, have I mentioned that I too have illegally crossed borders? I have. But that is another story for another time. For now, warm greetings from the emerald isle. I hope all my family, friends, and readers in the States are well.

I feel like I should end with an Irish proverb or poem, but sadly none come to mind, probably because I don’t really know any. Hmm, maybe I should change that?

From An overdue update at eirejames.com - just some random musings and mullings.

(Click to see more from each city )

{ dublin }

From Christmas photographs from Ireland at eirejames.com - just some random musings and mullings.

At 1 hour and 8 minutes, it is a bit long, but well worth your time, in my opinion.

Justice as a Theological Necessity from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

A few highlights (in case you need any more reason to watch it):

• Justice is not a ‘single’ thing; it is a ‘paradigm-level reality’
• Justice is not simply about the legal system
• Justice exists whether or not we are looking for it; it is a part of the ‘fabric’ of life
• We are always either acting justly or unjustly, whether or not we realize it
• The golden rule says we have an obligation to do while the ‘silver rule’ says we only have an obligation not to do: our society follows the ‘silver rule’
• We can’t know God accurately, if we do not understand paradigm-level realities like love, truth, justice
• We know God through his Character, Creation, Revelation
• When we don’t think justice is a universal, we tend to pick and choose the categories
• Social justice is simply a subcategory of justice, as it relates to the social aspect of life (in contrast with other categories, such as ethics, business law, etc)
• Social justice means justice in the social arena. Which means that we treat everyone as being created in the image of God in our social settings; including issues of race, gender, wages, and so on. Injustice is when we would use our power to abuse the powerless
• Dismissing social justice as ‘liberal’ or unimportant is theologically lazy; it is perfectly fine to disagree with the political plans proposed to enact social justice, but social justice itself is not political ¹
• We need to look at justice with fresh eyes
• Speaking of fresh eyes, a fascinating take on the David and Bathsheba story. I’ll let you discover that one.
• Also speaking of fresh eyes, he points out that Solomon didn’t ask for wisdom but for an understanding of justice
• And equally new, what was the sin of Sodom? They did not aid the poor and the needy. Their licentiousness was just a symptom of an underlying problem
• When we are so focused on self we commit an injustice against the fabric of justice
• Righteousness is synonymous with justice
• Justice is not a cause or a hobby, because it exists everywhere; we engage in it

Good thoughts, I’d say.

From Sermon: Justice as a Theological Necessity at eirejames.com - just some random musings and mullings.

I knew Ireland would be cloudy and rainy a lot. That has been no surprise.

I knew there wouldn’t be many daylight hours in the winter. No surprise here.

What I didn’t expect was the actual sun angle.To be honest, I don’t know that I’ve ever given sun angle much thought. I knew it wasn’t directly overhead at noon in the wintertime, but who cared really? Well, anyway I did expect it to be dark a lot here in the winter. Our latitude here is, after all, 54 degrees north. One expects less daylight. Plus, I’ve experiences summer daylight hours and, well when the sun rises at 4 am and sets at 11 pm, or thereabouts, you realize it can’t be like that in the winter. However, not only do daylight hours decrease, but so does the sun angle. Yes, this makes sense, but I still wasn’t prepared for it.

High Noon, not so high

See, in December, on the shortest day of the year, the sun is only 12 degrees off the horizon at high noon. That is barely above the trees! Thus the sun (when it isn’t cloudy) just barely arcs above the horizon. There are late afternoon-like shadows all day. Combine that with the already meager 7 hours and 15 minutes of daylight, and even the daytime can feel pretty dark. I’ve decided this alone explains the Irish pub culture–they must fight the depression somehow!

Now, lest you feel too sorry for me, things are on the mend. I was worried that, after sunny Arizona, Ireland would feel pretty dark and dim to me. But even by the 16 of January, when I returned, the sun had shot up to 14.5 degrees at noon (every degree counts at this point), and there were 7 hours and 53 minutes of daylight. It may not sound like much, but I could sure tell a difference. It wasn’t the 9+ hours in Arizona (which honestly felt like summer to me), but good enough.

Today the sun is now over 20 degrees at high noon (I’m going to be confused where to find it now), and there are 9 hours and 10 minutes of daylight. The sun sets after 5 pm, and I cannot tell you how exciting that is to me. We are adding over 4 minutes of daylight each day that passes, so it is becoming quite noticeable now (we’ll have over 10 hours of daylight by the end of the month, and a high noon of nearly 30 degrees).

Anyway, that’s been my main challenge of life in Ireland. Really rough, I know. But it has been really interesting to get a taste of the short daylight of the northern latitudes. I don’t think I’d fair well too much further north.

You can check out a great little almanac here.

From Daylight in Northern Ireland at eirejames.com - just some random musings and mullings.

So here are the problems, first of all:

• I depend far too much on Google as a content provider. If I want to know something, I Google it. If I want to find something, I Google it. If I want to learn about something, I Google it. Now, Google is great, but as the video and my post observe, Google does filter content in the name of ‘personalization’ (even if you aren’t logged on to Google, it will base search results based on where you are¹, what other people are searching for and finding, what sites have the most links, and so on). This means that you might not find everything you may want to look at with Google.
• I depend far too much on social media for my information and news. I regularly follow links that my friends share on Facebook and Twitter. This is especially a problem with Facebook, since Facebook ‘personalizes’ your news feed. I thus miss out on a number of posts and links from my friends, who Facebook has decided I don’t want to see.
• I am sometimes frustrated with the content Google does deliver me. Not really a fault of Google’s, but the internet is filled with poorly written and poorly researched content. It is hard to find sites with good content sometimes. I’m also surprised how many ‘articles’ I run into that sound shockingly similar to whatever I just read. Plagiarism abounds.

My goal, then, is to find ways and tools to use the internet better than I am now. Some of my tips are tools I have been using for a while, and some are new ideas I’ve found. Anyway, without further delay, here are my 5 tips on how to fight this trend towards isolating personalization and use the internet better:

1. RSS Feeds: use them. Nearly every blog, newspaper or website that continually updates it’s content provides what is known as an RSS feed. There are a number of ways to utilize them, but my favorite is Google Reader combined with Feedly. RSS readers, like Google Reader, work much like an email application in that you can see recent, unread posts from whatever sites you add. Feedly builds on Google Reader by reformatting the frankly rather dull default (no offense Google!) into a ‘magazine-like start page’. It really does look nice. Thanks to lakesidegirl for recommending Feedly to me. While of course limited to the content you subscribe to, Feedly & Google Reader are a great way to stay on top of things and is how I generally try to keep up with the news, not to mention my friend’s blogs. You can see Google Reader here, and Feedly here. Add my site to your favorite RSS reader! Here’s the link to the feed, also available on the right column via the RSS button.
2. View your Facebook news feed in ‘most recent’ rather than ‘top stories’ mode. Up at the top right is a wee (read: little) button that allows you to change this. The problem with ‘top stories’ is that it is Facebook’s algorithm deciding what you do and don’t want to see. While convenient, it means that you are not seeing every post, no matter how deep you dig. Sorting by ‘most recent’ does just that: shows you the most recent posts. Now you’ll only miss out on whatever older posts you don’t get too. It obviously isn’t a perfect solution, but it does give you a different view of what is happening with your friends.
3. Twitter. I have been on twitter for some time, and growing more and more fond of it. You can ‘follow’ newspapers, politicians, companies…just about anyone really. Many Tweeters, myself included, will post links to content they publish as well as stuff they find on the internet. Twitter’s website isn’t a bad way to navigate the feed, but Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are two popular tools that enable you to really harness Twitter’s content and power.
4. Use StumbleUpon to find content on the web. If you haven’t used StumbleUpon before, you should. Essentially, SU allows you to ‘stumble’ through the internet, and shows you different sites based upon you interests (like photography or politics). You can Stumble through all your interests, or just a particular category. If you like what you see, you give the page a thumbs up, and if you don’t like it you give it a thumbs down. This tells StumbleUpon what you like and don’t like, and also determines what others will find. Using SU  isn’t foolproof, obviously. StumbleUpon delivers sites that others have liked, thus it will not point you to content that no one else has found. Still, with millions users ‘stumbling’ content, it isn’t as though the pool is all that small. The other drawback is that it too is feeding you content based on your own interests. It won’t show you everything. Still, it is fun if nothing else, and might be a good way to find content you wouldn’t otherwise. Start at StumbleUpon’s website: www.stumbleupon.com.
5. Remember what you’ve found. I use Evernote for this purpose, it has a great Chrome & Firefox extension that allows you to ‘clip’ webpages. I basically use like a file cabinet, saving articles I read that are useful. You could, of course, use the bookmarking feature of your preferred browser, but I tend to forget about that and I also find my sloppy use of them to be too chaotic to be useful. There are a number of ‘social bookmarking’ sites that might be worth checking out. I ‘stumbled’ one the other day (see? #4 is working!!) called Pearltrees. Haven’t used it much, but it looks like it could be interesting. Check it out at pearltrees.com. You can also check out Evernote here.
6. Don’t’ stress (and yes I cheated to add a sixth point). It’s only the internet. Seriously though, it isn’t bad for content to be filtered out. The vast amount of information that is available via the internet is fantastic. But it also means there will be some natural filtering one way or the other. My purpose has been to show some ways to find content you and I may not be finding otherwise, and to be better, more informed users of the internet.

Ultimately, I think the main thing is simply to realize how much information is out there that. Even the best efforts probably won’t find you everything, and that is not entirely bad. The purpose of this post is just to explore some ways that we can better utilize the internet, without depending on one source of content.

There are tons of great tools and tricks out there. What do you use to scour the internet? I’d love to hear from you!

From 5 Ways to better utilize the Internet at eirejames.com - just some random musings and mullings.

Irish history is a fascinating mix of differing views on culture and politics, and it should be much fun to study. For those of you who are unfamiliar with current political boundaries in Ireland, I’d definitely recommend this video summary by CPGray:

(if you want just the explanation of Ireland, skip to about 1:40 and play through 2:20 — I think the whole video is good, however)

I’ll be assessed² by three papers, though one hardly counts at only 10% of my total marks. That leaves 90% of my marks contingent on two 4,000-5,000 word essays. Oh yay. Best line  from this part of the handbook: ‘It is your responsibility to organize your workload so that your two essays may be completed on time.’ There’s a shock. Anyway, the two essays must be on one of the topics covered in the class, but I can choose that, which is nice. The third essay is really just a short essay over a presentation we must attend, again of our choosing, and relating to the class.

The class topics will be:

• 9 Feb: ‘More Irish than the Irish themselves’? The debate on culture and identity in early modern Ireland
• 15 Feb: Anglo-Irish cultural identities in the 18th Century
• 23 Feb: The culture and politics of O’Connellism ³
• 1 Mar: Popular culture / language change
• 8 Mar: Young Ireland and the politics of culture
• 15 Mar: Cultural nationalism and revolution
• 22 Mar: Diaspora and identity
• 29 Mar: Religion and identity, 1800-1914
• 26 Apr: Protestant politics and Ulster unionism, 1800-1914 ⁴
• 3 May: Politics, women and identity in Ireland, c. 1922-1972
• 10 May: The politics of commemoration in modern Ireland

Should be fun, no? Well, I’m excited anyway. Stay tuned for updates along the way!

Read more from History at Queens:

• History at Queens: Culture, Politics, and Identity course
• The Second Semester: History at Queens
• Research methods -- Irish Historical Studies rules
• Quantitative History and Statistics -- Research Methods 31.10.11
• Research Methods -- visiting the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)

From History at Queens: Culture, Politics, and Identity course at eirejames.com - just some random musings and mullings.

First off, I now have a dissertation supervisor. I was assigned one, I’m assuming based in part on my research interests in the Troubles. Bragging moment, or perhaps moment of fear: he is the chair of the history department at Queens. Yes, I am mildly intimidated. But I met him for the first time Monday (actually, he led the discussion on Archives last semester–I met him for the first time in regards to my dissertation on Monday), and am excited to work with him. He definitely knows a lot, but seems like he’ll be supportive of my work too. He said he liked the general idea I had, and thought there would be plenty to write on (always a good sign!). I have to turn in a rough proposal outline next week, so I am currently skimming books and planing archive visits for the next few days. So much I want to do! Ah, I love academics.

Tuesday marked the first meeting of the ‘Historical Documents’ course. What, you may rightly ask, is historical documents all about? Well, aside from the obvious, the class is targeted at practical research skills. In fact, the ‘class’ is not so much a ‘class’ but a very, very large project. We’ll only meet regularly for about the next month, after which time we’ll be turned loose to produce fantastic original research aids. There are three options for projects in the class:

1. Calendar. No, not the wall variety with cute puppy photos, or the popular doomsday Mayan calendar, this document is perhaps described as an annotated summary of a body of texts. Or to be more direct, a list of a collection of primary sources (such as newspapers or leters), which includes a transcription (perhaps the full text, or poignient quotations) and annotations (brief biographies, information on places, etc). It could be compared to a critical edition of a text, though a whole collection of material rather than a single text.
   Supposedly about 80% of students choose this route. Oh did I mention length? All projects have a 5,000 word introduction, the Calendar itself must be around 10,000 words. Final product therefore will be about 15,000 words, or approximately 50 pages, give or take.
2. Finding Aids. Essentially a list of primary sources on a given subject. It aims at directing the reader to everything that might be relievant to a given subject. Fun subjects like ‘Northern Ireland & Canada: A Guide to Northern Ireland Sources for the Study of Canadian History, c.1705-1992.’ (lest you think I’m poking fun at some poor student’s topic, not only will I have to pick an equally narrow field whatever project I choose, but this was actually a book published by PRONI). Just in case you think this is somehow easier than a calendar, it’s not. It requires lots, and lots, and lots of comprehensive research. Remember I said everything? Yup.
   About 18-19% of students go this route. Goal is about 8,000 words, so mercifully a bit shorter than a calendar, though of course by the time you add your 5,000 word introduction, that is a small savings.
3. Historical Database. This option, chosen by 1% or so of students, is certainly the most challenging of the three. In fact, no one has submitted one for the past several years. Why so few? Presumably because historians are generally afraid of numbers, and the database is essentially a statistical project and wholly devoted to numbers. Therefore the prospect of manipulating large amounts of them is quite terrifying. Equally terrifying is the prospect of using advanced computer databases and software. If this didn’t scare you, the size might. The website ‘London Lives‘ was given as an example. Check it out. The scope of such a project should scare you.
   Ok, in all seriousness, while difficult, this certainly would be interesting. And if you checked that site out, you’ll notice that a database need not be wholly devoted to numbers. It could also be, as in the case of ‘London Lives’, prosopographical (see what fun we historians have??). Also, it need not be as extensively large as the example.

Most likely, I’ll follow the route of 80% students, and produce a calendar. Maybe a collection of newspaper articles during the start of the Troubles, or something like that. The goal is, with any of these projects, to produce something useful to the wider scholarly audience. Some student projects even get published.
All in all, I’m quite excited, in a way, for the course. While I expect it to be a great deal of work, I think it could be quite rewarding.

Read more from History at Queens:

• History at Queens: Culture, Politics, and Identity course
• The Second Semester: History at Queens
• Research methods -- Irish Historical Studies rules
• Quantitative History and Statistics -- Research Methods 31.10.11
• Research Methods -- visiting the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)

From The Second Semester: History at Queens at eirejames.com - just some random musings and mullings.

What is Justice? from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.

Really, though, isn’t this a beautiful definition of justice?

Justice is a garment, a billion threads, interwoven, interlocked, knit together with strength and integrity. Pull one thread from the fabric and the garment begins to fray. Pull ten million threads and justice unravels into injustice.

The work of justice is to mend the holes injustice inflicts upon the garment. It is a brave, challenging, courageous work and it does not begin with expertise or duty. It begins with love… and love is a thread.

I appreciate how holistic their definition of justice is, yet without becoming lost in something that is too vauge to be meaningful. Justice, they say, is not only about people on the other side of the globe, but ” just as much about how I respond to the lonely guy next door starving for a friendly word.” Justice, ultimately, is about our loving neighbor. Also interesting in this definition is an idea that justice is frail, like a thread that can easily come unraveled.

Like I said at the start, I’m genuinely sad I can’t go to this. So if some reader wants to sponsor my flight, lodging, and conference fees, I won’t turn you down

For those who are a bit closer than I am, the conference is February 24-25 in Portland Oregon. You should go. Really, you should.

From A video definition of Justice: The Justice Conference at eirejames.com - just some random musings and mullings.

Sign the petition at www.ijm.org/content/state-of-the-union. End slavery in our generation.

image from www.ijm.org

From Sign IJM’s letter to President Obama at eirejames.com - just some random musings and mullings.