A quote from "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats

"With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim"

Keats wishing to transcend the physical, mortal world and "fade away". 
I love the repetition of the plosive 'b' sounds in "beaded bubbles"; it reminds me vaguely of Seamus Heaney's poetry (particularly 'Death of a Naturalist' and 'Blackberry Picking',) although of course creating a rather different effect here of prettiness and playfulness. 
The word "winking" too is playful, suggesting the wine is tempting and inviting the drinker. 
However it's the last two lines which are the most powerful, with the view of death as a calm, peaceful escape from the mortal world. The word "fade" especially expresses this view of death as painless and almost desirable. 

A quote from "The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter

"His wedding gift, clasped around my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat."

From 'The Bloody Chamber' by Angela Carter.

Carter's description of the necklace is very powerful, conveying many of the central themes of 'The Bloody Chamber'.

She describes the necklace later as "bright as arterial blood", and a "bloody bandage of rubies". 

I suggest you read the short story to get a sense of the necklace in context, as the husband's gift to the girl as well as a representation of the husband's lavish (but dangerous and visceral) world. It works so powerfully to convey a sense of horror mingled with luxury and excess. I think the last four words in particular with the huge contrast between the words "extraordinarily precious" and the very visceral image of the "slit throat" emphasise this.

Carter also uses the necklace to convey the girl's potentiality for corruption. Initially, it seems to throw into sharper relief her innocence and youth but later it symbolises both the husband's world and her potential for becoming part of that world. 

Anyways, I am studying Bloody Chamber for my English Literature coursework at the moment and I think this just shows Carter's incredible ability to create symbols with about a thousand meanings. 

On the 'sublime', or 19th century concepts of pain and pleasure

(Since I no longer have much time to collect and collate stuff into blog posts, this is a sort of fragmentary post.)

"Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made to suffer, are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures...which the liveliest imagination...could enjoy."

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757

Let's talk about this idea briefly. This is the idea that the concept of pain is stronger than the concept of pleasure and has a stronger effect on our emotions and imagination. Here we assume the author discusses emotional pain and not physical pain, although he talks about 'danger' quite freely in the same context. Pain may be much more familiar to us because we get hurt all the time; it is a physical response linked very closely to an emotional feeling of 'torment'. So when we describe strong emotions of pain or heartbreak, we say 'it hurts' as in, the emotional pain is so strong it feels physical. Happiness is, like pain, intangible. We experience physical pleasure but happiness is very much an emotional response rather than a physical one.
I need to do more research into this 19th century viewpoint about emotion and torment. Reacting instinctively to it, though, I'd say as a person brought up in the 21st century I'm inclined to disagree with it. We can feel happiness just as acutely as pain, and sometimes it feels like happiness is the more strong because a rush of true happiness is rarer than a stab of pain.

The article(note the date; this is an 18th century perception of the Romantic idea of the 'sublime)  also mentions that fear is most acute when the thing is obscure:

To make any thing very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary.

 This is perhaps true when we think about how we are more frightened in the dark; night seems to be a darker and more mysterious, perhaps even more frightening time. If you're thinking this is ridiculous in our modern age, consider how much scarier it is travelling home alone in the dark than in the daytime. This certainly also applies when we consider famous and very effective 20th century black-and-white horror movies where the villian appears only as a shadow over the wall or going up the stairs. We never see the monster and therefore are more afraid for it, perhaps because our own imagination creates something much more frightening than anything that could be onscreen(it is true that we know best what we're scared of, so maybe this is why the fear of the unseen works so well; we fill in the space with our worst fears, and when the thing becomes known or visible or tangible we are no longer so afraid).

The article is very interesting; there's also views on the concept of death which I want to discuss at a later date.

On the meaning of control in Stalinist Russia

Here is an essay I wrote a year ago on the nature of control and power in Stalinist Russia. I booked at George Orwell's famous novel 1984 as a basis for establishing the meaning of control in the political climate.

The essay is a few thousand words long, so I will probably shorten it in the near future to provide a more concise, blog-friendly version of my argument. I also haven't looked at it in a year, so please be forgiving; as a 16 year old this was my first lengthy essay and the first essay whereby I conducted independent research and wrote the whole thing on my own. Since I wrote it in the space of a week and a half my research wasn't extensive, so some of the opinions are simplified.

The meaning and level of control in Stalinist Russia

To look into control in Stalinist Russia, the meaning of total and complete control must first be established. The political novel 1984 by George Orwell depicts a society in which controlling the ideas and thoughts of the people is more important than a physical repression of the opposition. Following this theory, if the thoughts of an entire population are controlled completely, then absolute control exists. If we take this as the definition of ultimate authority then it cannot exist, even in a repressive regime such as that of Stalin. However 1984 very effectively portrays a realistic society in which the people accept everything without doubt or question. 1984 suggests that it is more important for the ideas of a regime to be maintained than a single individual’s power. Therefore the question the political novel raises is about the possibility of complete control over a population, not in the hands of an individual but an ideology, as Party member O’Brien reveals whilst torturing Winston:

A quote from 'Hamlet' by Shakespeare

"this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o-erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours...what is this quintessence of dust?"

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2 Hamlet here talks to Rosencratz and Guildenstern whilst in his 'antic disposition'.
I am studying Hamlet this year, and am ashamed to say I have relatively little to say about this passage except for the fact that whilst re-reading the play tonight whilst writing an essay for it I found it particularly brilliant in describing teenage angst and apathy. 
Next time I quote from Hamlet I would like to give a much more prominent quotation which relates to some of the core ideas of the text.
Here the 'foul and pestilent congregation of vapours' refers back to the key idea of promiscuity between his mother and Claudius, her husband(who is her previous husband's brother and who murdered his brother to become king)
It also deals with the notions of perception; Hamlet here despite acting in his 'antic disposition' seems to be voicing his own views (this speech reminds me particularly of his first soliloquy, and the line "oh, that this too too sallied flesh would melt" which I will need to do a whole separate blog post on)
Obviously another theme is the corruption of the court and the idea of surveillance, being able to see through everything that happens at the court so that there is no possibility of privacy.
The 'quintessence of dust', which is a beautiful phrase, asks questions about the nature of death. In context, it shows how Hamlet goes from the knowledge and capabilities of mankind and life to discussing death. 

The entire section from which this quotation is taken shows the mix of idealism and pessimism that Hamlet battles with; his father is constantly idealised as a god-like figure, however here Hamlet voices the pessimistic ideas linking both with the corrupt court and Claudius. He also voices the pessimistic ideas associated with the end of the Renaissance period contrasted with the optimism of the Early Renaissance(voiced in the line "What piece of work is a man"

I hope to quote a lot more from Hamlet in the future, 

On transplanting cells, not organs

This is fascinating. Here Susan Lim discussed the benefits of using iPS cells, and other stem cells in new forms of transplants.
These are adult cells taken from a patient's body and then turned back into undifferentiated, or pluripotent cells. Pluripotent cells can become any cell type in the body, which is really useful considering that adult stem cells eg. from the bone marrow, can't. Using embryonic stem cells, which is the alternative, is also fraught with ethical and moral dilemmas that go back to the question of whether an embryo is human; ie. when life begins. So this seems like a great way to go: however, consider this article in the Guardian that discusses a recent study where iPS cells were rejected in mice.
This is shocking because the iPS cells in the study came from the mouse itself, so in a way the mice were rejecting their own cells. The cells that came from iPS cells were implanted and then quickly destroyed by the mouse's immune system, whereas stem cells from embryos were not. The study is published in Nature.
This is probably down to abnormal gene expression, which has also been noticed in a variety of other cases. Cells derived from iPS cells have also been known to create tumours and a variety of problems, so they may not actually be the best way forwards.
Consider this article in the Guardian discussing the potential of reprogramming rather than transplanting tissue. Since these cells turn from one type to another, skipping the stem cell phase (ie. they re-differentiate), perhaps the ugly problems in iPS cell studies could be avoided.
This topic is very interesting, and research on stem cells and other forms of transplants and tissue repair are always emerging. The debate over transplanting organs and limbs vs. transplanting cells is also something to consider.

On selling the morning-after pill

There was an short bit in the 'News Bulletin' in today's Telegraph about whether pharmacists should be allowed not to sell the morning-after pill without a prescription.

Right now,pharmacists do not have to sell the pill; they can refuse on religious or moral grounds. For example, staunch Catholics running a pharmacy would be allowed to refuse to sell a morning-after pill as they believe in the sanctity and miraculousness of life. As the old saying goes, God gives life and therefore only he should take it away.
For some, the morning-after pill is a form of abortion. As debatable as this is, perhaps it is fair to give people a choice based on their beliefs.
Under current legislation pharmacists who refuse to sell the pill have to direct the customer to another pharmacy/provider of the pill. Hmm. Some academics have argued against this policy. They say that either the pharmacist should be required to supply the pill or refuse completely, without being required to direct the customer elsewhere.
Why? They argue that in directing the customer somewhere else it's essentially the same deal as giving them the pill in the first placed. A bit like a drug dealer saying, "No, I'm not selling you weed today, I'm opposed to people getting addicted to drugs and spending all their money on drugs instead of food and electricity bills. But Fred down the road's got some, if you want."

The fact that pharmacies are allowed to sell birth control without a prescription in the first place(this has been allowed since 2001) is controversial.
 
But what is exactly is wrong with what we have right now? If the pharmacists are deluding themselves that referral is not the same as supply, then let them be deluded. That way you get the best of both worlds; suppliers can keep to their moral and religious beliefs, and we can still prevent unwanted pregnancies.

It would a different case if the pharmacy was in a small town miles from anywhere, i.e if birth control wasn't available anywhere conveniently nearby. Right? Then, because the girl wouldn't be able to buy the pill, there might be unwanted pregnancies and painful, mentally scarring abortions.
Actually, the girl could just go to her doctor and get a prescription for the pill. The pharmacists can only refuse to sell the pill if the customer has no prescription. Therefore by simply getting a prescription the patient can get the pill from the exact same pharmacy.

Perhaps I haven't researched the subject enough, but it doesn't seem like the current situation is really negatively affecting anyone. If it were the pharmacists complaining about having to refer customers elsewhere, then I would perhaps understand. What's the point of refusing to supply the pill if you're just going to give them another way to get it? But it's not the pharmacists that are complaining. They're fine with the policy, or so it seems so far. Their hands are clean. Well, clean enough.  We shouldn't impinge upon someone's beliefs, regardless of what those beliefs are.

The piece in the Telegraph is based on a paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics.(I've linked the free extract here, as the full article is available only to subscribers).
The paper is discussed in an article in the Huffington Post, if you'd like to find out a little more.
The American Pediatrics Journal has published a free(rather long) article on the same subject. There is also a related paper discussing the relationship between conscience and jobs in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
This case makes for interesting reading, at least. Perhaps the reason I don't agree with these researchers is that I haven't read their full paper(it's only available to subscribers or if you're willing to pay a fee). But I feel that the current situation is a neat, if slightly paradoxical, solution.