Foreign Perspectives

Family history is something of an on and off hobby for me as it can sometimes be several years before more information becomes available.

In between times, it’s often worthwhile looking again at the information already to hand as there are often hidden gems amongst it. For example, the original family bible from William Stewart who was born way back on June 28th 1835 though it probably dates from September 6th 1858 when he married Eliza Dalrymple. He kept that up to date throughout his life as did his children although there are gaps both in later and earlier generations.

Those gaps can largely be filled in though. One very simple thing was realising that there was a very consistent habit of naming the first born boy and girl after the father and mother. Thus, when the “first” born wasn’t that meant that there was either a stillborn child or, more likely (because stillborn children didn’t get named), a child who died quite young. That such children existed has been confirmed in all cases where I’ve had later information about the family so, for example, the 1911 census confirmed several of these children in various branches of the family.

Other bits of information can sometimes need more thought. It was puzzling as to why David J Tannihill of Market Square Lisburn paid for the grave of my great grandfather Andrew. However, later on I found that when he died he was living in 155 Mayo Street, Belfast so if his family had bought the grave they’d have had to pay the non-resident rate for the grave. Who David Tannihill was remains, for the moment, a mystery as indeed does the reason why he wasn’t buried in Belfast instead.

I’ve suspected for a while that some of the location information I have for various people isn’t quite right as we tried to get some birth and marriage certificates where they were recorded as living at the time but found that the information just wasn’t there. So, the plan was to get the certificates from known locations and work backwards from there. That was a problem though as I didn’t know for sure where my grandfather was born. Or, rather, I didn’t realise that I really did know. That information came from his older sister Mary who died when she was 2 in Killymackel, Derriaghy (near Lisburn) of bronchitis. Thus I know that the family lived there in 1896 but in Mayo Street by 1906.

Interestingly, Derriaghy is where my Dad continued to go to the Masonic Lodge so presumably they would have some information about everyone from him back to my great grandfather and perhaps even the generation before that. Also, some years back I went round the nearby Presbyterian churchyard which seemed to have a number of Stewarts buried although at the time I hadn’t linked that with my lot (another visit is called for to recheck that information).

Finally, there’s my latest flash of inspiration. Whilst I’ve known for a while that my grandfather was in the first world war and that there should therefore be a service record for him, what didn’t occur to me is that there would be a corresponding service record from his time in the police so that’s something else to look into.

One of the biggest problems with planning out a science degree with the Open University at the moment is that they’re in the process of completely revamping the entire science degree programme which in turn means that expiry dates for courses have been changing and start dates for new courses are being juggled too.

At the simplest level they’re basically cancelling all but one of the science summer schools with the final year for the level 2 schools being 2011 and 2012 for the level 3 schools. That’s caused a whole bunch of upheaval in degree schedules for many people who want a named science degree (BSc physical sciences, BSc life sciences, etc.). Since for those named degrees you generally need one L2 and two L3 summer schools there’s going to be something of a fire-sale atmosphere around the October booking time this year and next.

Next, there’s the problem that in a number of degree programmes there’s a fair number of courses expiring in 2011 and 2012. Normally, these courses would be replaced with an updated version but that’s not happening this time around. Thus the excellent S320 Infectious Disease course has one final run in 2011 and the landmark S204 biology course also finishes in 2011. For infectious diseases, it’s the end of the road with no replacement in prospect but even the main biology course isn’t getting fully replaced and instead there’s only going to be a shorter course covering part of the ground.

Oddly there’s been a lot of development around some areas, notably biology which has acquired four 15 point biology cum medical courses (which, if the cardiology course is anything to go by, are excellent).

However, with all the upheaval recently, hardly a month has gone by without me having to rejig my plans for the next couple of years.

As it stands, I suspect not and ironically the problem is because it tries to frame what’s essentially a belief system in terms that could be put across as science.

The biggest problem with it in scientific terms is that it starts from the premise that everything that exists now was created out of nothing about 6000 years ago. This causes the direct conflict with science in that there are proofs that show that life existed on earth for many millions of years and that the universe has been around for billions of years. The scientific theories that show those ages are inter-linked and many of the underlying principles behind them are used to make 21st century life work too: just about every piece of technology in your house (including the house construction itself) relies on at least some of those scientific principles.

However, supposing that instead of a creator (or rather Creator), there were a race of beings with a civilisation billions of years old. Could such a bunch of people simply create an earth with all the pseudo-history in the form of things like fossils that appeared to be millions of years old? I suspect that the answer would be a clear “yes”. Asking whether or not they would bother to do that is no more relevant than it would be for bacteria to attempt to understand our own reasons for doing things.

Science basically ignores that possibility and attempts to explain things as they are (or appear to be) and goes on to use that knowledge to improve things. Creationism assumes that there’s no point in attempting to understand it and would leave us in the dark ages.

One of the basic tenets of the new politic of Northern Ireland that the various institutions were set up to encourage was the removal of religious bigotry and now we find that the Minister for Culture and Leisure has weighed in with the most extreme version of it that I’ve seen in a long time.

What he took upon himself was to write a letter suggesting (which, from the government minister in charge means essentially ordering) the Ulster Museum to incorporate creationism into its various displays. Not as a religious belief mind you, but as scientific fact (hence his referring to it as creationism rather than Christian belief).

Now, I don’t see that representing the influence of Christian (and Viking and Pagan) beliefs on the social development of Ulster as a problem. After all, there are significant Pagan burial grounds all over the place and we’re almost knee deep in Christian churches so obviously there’s been significant influence on the social development of the country over many centuries. In fact, those influences are shown at various points in the museum; the Christian ones aren’t so obvious as they’re so deeply ingrained in the culture.

What is wrong is to show the pseudo-science (false science to be truthful) that is creationism. This puts forward the notion that everything was created about 6000 years ago which is something of a problem as some of the exhibits in the museum are somewhat older than that. Millions of years older in many cases and billions of years older in some cases. Even the Egyptian exhibit would cause some issues.

The basic problem with his entire belief system is that it starts from the premise that evolution is only a theory. The problem is that there’s whole raft of science behind it which would need to be very wrong for it not to be right. For example, if the carbon dating used to date the fossils (millions of years old) is fundamentally wrong then it means that a number of fundamental physical theories are also wrong which would be a bit of a problem as some of them are required to control the operation of things like nuclear power stations. Similarly, it would mean that some fundamental principles behind biology are wrong and that’s a problem as some of those things that support evolution in biology are also used to create new vaccines. Creationism also has to deal with the “small” problem that for the first time man has created a life form that never existed before; that creation relies on using a number of those theories which support evolution.

But what about the other religions? If one is to be (incorrectly) represented then shouldn’t others be given equal treatment too? Nelson McCausland shouldn’t be permitted to try and impose his own fundamentalist Christian beliefs and should be considering his resignation speech this evening.

Those certainly seem to be good things on the whole, but what seemed very clear as the Queen’s speech ran on was that, by and large, it was a case of cancelling out just about every major piece of legislation that Labour has put through over the last 13 years or so.

Out goes the all-time black hole of expense which would have been ID cards and in comes the related limits on the DNA database and restrictions on CCTV. It’s nice to see that the big brother state is being rolled back in very concrete ways; hopefully they’ll rail back on some of the other less than libertarian ideas of the security services too.

Freedom of choice comes back to schooling with academies and to local authorities with more powers being devolved to them. Devolution in another form becomes safer through blocks on more powers being taken by Europe. Rolling back the state continues through reductions in the number of quangos and giving health professionals more say in the basic decision making.

Welfare reform is promised which is interesting as it’s something that the Conservatives have historically been scared of doing.

Pensions get some attention by regaining the link to earnings (good) and raising the state retirement age (not so good). Very good is the final acceptance that the government had a lot to do with the fall of Equitable Life and therefore should be paying compensation: this will take ages I’m sure and will definitely be complex as many of those due compensation have died.

A rather short speech which introduces a veritable mountain of legislation.