... Sniggering at Greens.
Bryan is a being a little too modest in this post when he says that it's just his lay person's opinion and as suich as worthless as every other lay person's. Having read Understanding the Present I can assure all who read this that Bryan has a much better grasp of science than most of us and is extraordinarily good at explaining it. He also has a much better grasp of science's epistemological implications than most scientists have.
That said, I don't get one point: "Whether it is cyclical is irrelevant ..." If it is cyclical, it is, well, part of the cycle and has happened before and will presumably happen again. Is there any evidence for such a catastrophic cyclical occurence? Catastrophes have occurred in the past - asteroid collisions and the like - but they're not part of a cycle.
Moreover, it seems to me that the solution to whatever problem there may be is going to come by way of technology not eco-asceticism. I am amazed atv how the same people who preach at us that Nature is so much greater than humankind can turn right around and preach at us that only humankind can save oh-so-fragile Nature.
The Curtain is Falling
ReplyDeletePOEM OF THE WEEK becomes a victim of the internet.
The TLS "Author, Author" poem by Gavin Ewart
After twenty-seven years, the curtain is falling on the TLS's legendary "Author, Author" quiz, in which readers are invited to identify the sources of the three quotations which follow. Competition No 1,351, in next week's paper, will be the last; and those who have written to the paper recently to complain that with the advent of the Internet they can solve the puzzle in sixty or seventy seconds, will have their sacrificial offering.
Aside from its merits as a quiz, however, the best examples of "Author Author" have offered a particular reading experience like that of a tripartite poem. The effect is well caught in a bluish little poem of January 1988 by the late Gavin Ewart. All answers to Ewart's quiz will be wrong.
The TLS "Author Author" poem
Readers are are invited to identify the sources of the three quotations which follow, etc etc
1 He gave a yell of screaming as he fell
And made his way to that untrammelled pinklit Hell!
2 The snowdrop heads were bowed and falling,
The crocuses were golden-loose,
The Easter Vision was appalling,
The sap was Spring's unbidden juice,
As in the Church each came to each,
While random waves beat on the beach.
3 When she went
down on him
O! what a fall
it sure was
hardly what i
expected
GAVIN EWART (1988)
ORWELL 1946"On Politics and the English Language."
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