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Can you explain quantum physics to me?
Why are you vegetarian? Do you like animals?
How can you live without a TV? What do you do with yourself?
Do you ever rest?
What's a druid?
What's alternative technology?
Do you ever wear shoes?
Why is your house so empty? Where's all the furniture?
Are you a hippie?
Are you a witch?
What was it like going through a divorce?
What's your favourite food?
What's your most favourite thing?
What music do you listen to?
What's your favourite book?
Uh, no. I can't, and it doesn't. I can read up on a particular area of quantum physics and learn it well enough to write about it, but I can't explain it off the top of my head. At least, not within the general span of someone's attenti... are you still listening?
As to relationships with religion, I don't know enough about either quantum physics or theology to answer that.
Why are you vegetarian? Do you like animals?
Mostly, I'm vegetarian because I vastly prefer vegetarian food to meat-based food. Take, for example, exhibit A: Chocolate mud cake. If you had to choose between a big piece of mud cake with fudge icing and hot chocolate sauce, and a slice of Spam, which one would you choose?
As an ex-farm girl I have no objection to killing animals for food, I just happen to dislike doing so as part of a mass-production see-no-evil style industry. I dislike the lack of respect involved for other species. I'm also not convinced that our farming of meat animals in Australia is sufficiently environmentally sound to justify high levels of consumption. Arable land is a very limited resource on this continent, and marginal land farming is causing us a lot of problems. But I don't mind the gory bits at all - ask me someday about rabbits and goats. I also dislike the common "eating meat equals wealth and social status" equation, I think this belief is unnecessary as well as economically and environmentally unsound.
How can you live without a TV? What do you do with yourself?
Ah, it's not what you do with yourself, it's what you do with *other people*. When I first left home, we didn't get a TV. No point. As we told people, with both of us in full time study and part time work, we only had enough spare time for TV *or* sex. The choice was obvious.
To be honest, I find TV an annoying distraction. It's designed to suck up your attention, and I have other things to spend my attention on. And way too many things I *want* to do to waste time on someone else's idea of entertainment. Even now that I'm single, I have no spare time for sitting still. I'm too busy to spend time in front of a box.
Heh. Yes. But it's hard to tell, because I rest not by doing nothing, but by doing something different with the same intensity. If I've been working creatively, I'll study, or change from concentrated learning to problem solving, or housework, or go do accounts, or exercise, or catch up on some of my stack of reading. Or go see friends and socialise. There's not enough time in my life for all of it, so I fit it all in anyway. Using different parts of your brain or body makes for a good rest *and* uses the time efficiently.
I do occasionally have downtime. Maybe one day in every six months. And another couple of days if I get sick, which happens maybe once or twice a year.
Hard question. I am, but I'm not particularly typical. We're usually people who care about the land and its inhabitants a great deal, and consider our care both physical and spiritual. You might want to go look at the OBOD website and see if it helps answer your question.
What's alternative technology?
Usually, technology that's looking for alternative solutions. Like renewable energy, or simple ways of getting clean water, or building houses from recycled material. It's often but not always home made. Have a look at the Alternative Technology Association.
Yes, quite a lot, you probably just didn't notice. They're part of the costume like everything else. And Melbourne is very cold most of the year. It is true though that when I can ditch the shoes, I do so. I'd rather be barefoot 24/7. And it definitely helps my balance, virus-resistance and general coordination to be barefoot.
Why is your house so empty? Where's all the furniture?
It's empty because I only buy furniture I need and can carry on my own. Moving four times in two years does this to you. Plus, I'm minimalist - I don't like having a lot of stuff around. I get tired of banging my shins on it all the time. I have thought several times about buying a bed, but I don't have anyone to invite home to share it so it isn't an issue.
I decorate my house with space, colour and light, not with stuff.
*I* don't think so. But I get asked this a lot.
No, I'm a physicist. I spend my time trying to perceive reality in ways most people don't get, it's true, but that's not magic, it's mathematics. There is a difference.
If I had been born a few hundred years ago, when science wasn't widely practiced and women faced more limits to be academics or intellectuals of any sort, I might have been a witch instead. But in this day and age I'm a physicist, and I rather enjoy it.
What was it like going through a divorce?
The unusual thing about my divorce was that Dion and I had always been best friends, and stayed best friends. And when you're going through the emotional trauma of a divorce, the person you turn to to help you through it is your best friend. We were eachother's support for a large part, and helped each other through it. That makes it easier, though no nicer. We parted as friends, and are still friends if no longer best friends. You can't cut someone out of your life after having shared that much history and growth with them - they know you too well, you know them too well, and you owe too much of the person you are to the time you spent with them.
Fresh food. Fresh fruit and vegetables, straight off the tree, off the vine, out of the ground, preferably mostly organic! Fresh yeast-risen bread, still warm from the oven. Fruit pies, still warm from the oven, maybe even too hot to eat. Baked potatoes with sour cream, garlic, herbs and cheese. Cheese made by Watsonia, a local dairy, or by the Margaret River Cheese Company. Yoghurts of all sorts as long as they don't have any artificial sweeteners in them. Sun-ripened strawberries that still have the smell of growth and sunlight on them. Flower petals and herbs from my garden. Cinnamon tea. Honey of lots of different kinds, but especially our local redgum honey. Pasta with interesting sauces. Porridge with as many kinds of grains as we can manage to put in. Halava - a dessert made by stirfrying semolina until it's about to spontaneously combust and then adding sweet boiling milk and standing out of the way of the explosion. (Cooking should be exciting.) Anything we've cooked over a campfire. Fresh carob pods. Cheese toasties. Dion or Dad's homemade bread. Lots of beans and legumes. Acacia flowers and seeds.
What's your most favourite thing?
My above all favourite thing to do is to spend time in close connection and communion with Nature. After that, everything is secondary, no matter how important it may seem.
I've got very eclectic tastes, though with a definite bias towards world fusion, Celtic, metal, pub rock and guitar. I'm not terribly fond of hiphop, rap, gangsta rap, bubblepop, opera, techno, electronika or country and western, and I know 50's and 60's music too well to love it any more, but all of these categories have their exceptions. Some favourite artists include Joe Satriani, Loreena McKennitt, Icehouse, Afro Celt Sound System, Madonna, Nickelback, TISM. I have a large CD collection.
At any one time there are a few songs that resonate with me and where I'm at. In the current phase of my life these include Icehouse - "The Kingdom", Suzanne Vega - "Solitude Standing", Madonna - "Do I Know You From Somewhere", Poi Dog Pondering - "Bury Me Deep", Moira Brennan - "Bright Star", and Petula Clark - "Colour My World". There are others, there have been others.
Top of the list would have to be Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale", with his "Refiner's Fire" nearby. Something about the colour and light in these books, the creation of beauty and mystery through language always strikes me. Other "favourite books" include Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" and his "Black Orchid" graphic novel, the "Blending" and "Blending Enthroned" series by Sharon Green, the Enders Game series by Orson Scott Card, "The Homeward Bounders" by Diana Wynne Jones, the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, and "The Land Behind The World" by Anne Spencer Parry.
Non-fiction-wise I should also include my remote first aid handbook, the wilderness books by Tom Brown Jr., "Growing Locals" by Robert Powell and "The Web of Life" by Fritjof Capra.