Light in the Pantheon and other tales

I’m starting to feel better after the chemotherapy. I have another couple of weeks before I get the all clear. I’m not up to cycling properly yet, but I should be by next week.

Other news. I’m having a look at the ScientificBlogging site. Being part of a network without having a compulsion to make a minimum number of blog posts might suit me. There’s a couple of posts about the Pantheon which I’ve put up in the Zeitheist column. If I’d seen Judith Weingarten’s blog post on the Pantheon beforehand I probably wouldn’t have bothered. I think she’s more or less right. I’m not planning to blog there regularly yet as I still have a few other things to do.

One is I need to finish corrections to my thesis. I passed the viva voce* the day after getting back some cancer results and the day before my grandmother’s funeral. The biggest problem in terms of time is that I need to add a lot more illustrations. Once it’s complete I’ll see about making it accessible. It will be possible to get an electronic version free via email from the British Library’s EThOS system, but that could take years. One idea I’m kicking around is publishing a POD copy, with a PDF version available free via Scribd. That way anyone who wants to read my thesis can be supplied with it, though I’d suggest they try therapy first. To avoid having to trawl through my thesis for the good bits I’ll also be slicing it up into re-written papers. There’s a paper on simple statistics which I’m working on. This will have all the raw data from my thesis so you can do your own thing if you want.

The next paper which I want to finish this summer is an expanded calendar paper. People are sending me emails saying “Have you thought about X or Y?” That’s great and so far I haven’t. But if someone does mention an idea I have had and am working on already, they’ll be a bit miffed if they see it in print under my name. The obvious festival to look at is the connection between the Thesmophoria and Spica. However, there’s a bit more to it than that. Once I show why I think the connection is sound I’ll have given away a really obvious way of looking for other festivals. So that has all to be done pronto simply so I can start talking to people again because I know there are some people have very good ideas of their own.

Because of that blogging will be something I do in spare time when I have a few minutes rather than something I want to take seriously.

*viva voce lit. live voice. It’s traditional for UK PhD degrees to be awarded only after an oral examination where the thesis is discussed in detail. Usually the result is that a thesis is passed subject to corrections. Occasionally a thesis will be passed as is, and sometimes there’s a fail. Obvious fails tend not to get as far as being submitted.