Posts by ChrisW
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OK guys, too easy. If anyone's interested in getting back on topic, I'd like some help on how to respond to a curious invitation/ advertisement from the National Party in my local paper this evening -
"LIFTING EDUCATION STANDARDS
Come and talk to Hon Anne Tolley, your local MP, about how National Standards will help your child."
When and where: 6-7pm tomorrow, at the "Community Hall" of a local church.I have a dilemma or two - I no longer have school-age children, and even if I did, I'm unsure whether I could talk to her for a whole hour on the subject as defined. Of course it would be uncharitable of me to suggest she fails to meet basic literacy standards, by confusing "talk to" with "talk with", "ask questions of", or (heaven forfend) hear her talk to me for an hour.
So, should I go? And if so, what should I say? Let's assume it's really the traditional and I might get to make a two-sentence comment and ask one question - any suggestions?
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Dear God. Apart from the fact it was still happening, presumably until WWII people referred to it as the Great War, yes?
Everyone except the psychics and the cynics, of course.
I was very fortunate a few years ago to acquire a large book "The First World War- a photographic history" notably published in 1934. Edited/selected by Laurence Stallings with the briefest of captions, cumulatively making an exceptionally strong message of warning about the possibility of a second. No need for psychic powers by then, and he not at all cynical - he doing his worthy best as a pragmatic idealist I'd say, not with head in sand but silently shouting out Warning! Take any chance to get your own copy.
And agreed on "Song of the Dodo" recommendation while I'm at it.
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Sorry, second link still doesn't work directly. From Touchstone at RNZ there is a link to BBC Heart and Soul which has the CBC Christian Creationism item a few down the list.
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Very good, enjoyed that thanks Sam.
Steve, Ben, anyone else still following this thread, the case of the NW Nelson dinosaur foot-prints (audio and photos) with Kim Hill this morning is a good example illustrating the difficulties of defining "the scientific method". The dinosaur foot-prints hypothesis is currently the best explanation for these curious sedimetary structures, further evidence bearing on the subject would be welcome, conceivably there will be viable alternatives, doubtless alternative hypotheses have been considered already by experienced observers and rejected on good grounds, so far.
This is clearly science in action, but not by the same methodological rules that apply to say particle physics. So, the quest for a full, necessary and sufficient definition of *the* scientific method is futile.
Harking back also to an earlier aspect of this thread - on RNZN Touchstone last Sunday was a very interesting but (to me at least) disturbing CBC programme(edit - revised link at BBC - "Christian Creationism 17/10/2009) following creationists teaching their 13-year-old students how to by-pass any engagement with evolutionary science by parroting a pastiche of "the scientific method", in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
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In other words, there are ethical reasons not to borrow other people's words, but also artistic ones. (I could write at length about the other examples, but might save that for a follow-up blog post.)
The inference I take from here and your Listener review, Jolisa, is that there are major short-comings in his expressing what might have seemed credibly authentic perspectives of the protagonists of the time and places - an inconsistency or incoherence - that seriously detracts from a "hisorical" novel.
Since he's taken to rewriting his earlier novels in the light of his later socio-political consciousness and writing skills (Whanau II e.g.), there seems already to be a path forward - he should be re-working this one with the application of those mature writing skills and a good editor. Preferably after the publisher has pulped the first version as a guiltily mistaken release of an early draft.
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The backs of his ears were a very interesting shade of fuschia.
Emma - you may have been deceived by the conventional pronunciation on the spelling of fuchsia. This was a couple of days ago and I wouldn't normally bother, but I know you care about these things and have expressed some of your own pendantry on occasions. And Fuchsia flowers make such lovely pendants, or necklaces even.
Fuchsia the genus of plants was named after one Herr Dr. Prof. Fuchs. The name pops up again with the leader of the British expedition crossing Antarctica in 1957/58 who was a fine English gentleman splendidly named Sir Vivian Fuchs, aka Bunny Fuchs, pronounced Foooks instead of any more obvious German or Anglo-Saxon ways. I doubt that Sir Ed and the NZ crew supposedly helping them could keep a straight face when saying his name, in whatever form. And this probably gave them the idea of pissing him off by heading for the South Pole on their Fergie tractors and arriving there first.
Now, if my plan has worked, you should henceforth spell Fuchsia or fuchsia correctly every time, and maybe smile just a little as you do so.
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Yes, cult means worship/religion in Italian so by parentage I think probably in French as well. It's a word used in several official denominations - a priest is a minister of the cult, for instance.
I think you can quite safely put it down to the translation being done by a non native speaker of English.Aha! Now I see how it must have been a Scotsman of French-Italian parentage that founded the oc-cult.
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I'm pleased to see such strong and well-informed recommendations singling out Richard Evans' Third Reich trilogy, as I splashed out and bought it a couple of months ago as a very handsome boxed set of heirloom quality books, and it would be a shame if it was no good.
So now I'm reading The Coming of the Third Reich, and finding much to appreciate. But I see also some truth in parts of the Washington Post review on the Amazon site that Simon linked to a few posts above – that it “often skimps precisely on the themes it recognizes as crucial” is certainly true of the German Revolution of November 1918 (or is it 1918-19?). Evans emphasises its importance (in many references back to it) in what came later, and claims to be writing narrative history, but oddly makes no attempt to provide a basic overview of what happened. Which, since it was a multi-faceted shambles, would have been very helpful. And since the ambiguity to the Germans themselves of the ‘November Revolution’ and how WWI ended was exploited in the polemics of so many parties including the Nazis in the ongoing foment, again, this is an area that needed more attention in what might have been a definitive account of the coming of the Third Reich.
I reckon Richard Evans and his editors noticed and agreed quietly, and that’s why volumes 2 and 3 are each at least 50% longer.
OTOH the WaPo reviewer’s “Most troublesome is the contradiction between the author's central contention that the rise of Nazism was not inevitable and his simultaneous assertion that the republic was doomed from the start” is a classic failure of the binary brain – as if there was only two possible outcomes, a thriving Weimar Republic or its overthrow by Nazism.
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please reflect.
I will if you refrain from the patronising BS
Yeh well, sorry ScottY about the tone, and it may have blinded you to what I wrote, but I was only struggling to be succinct. I'm asking you to reflect not on the point you have repeated (it was clear enough the first time, and not particularly controversial as you say) but on the unnecessary sporting analogy, which is what I commented on. Unnecessary because the point was obvious without it. And rather than clarifying your point, you undermined it by trivialising the deaths and suffering of millions of people.
In response to a respectful non-patronising challenge on this sporting analogy from Joe, you reinforced it. So not just welcoming the representatives of apartheid-era South Africa, but paying to watch a teamful of known torturers would be fine as long as they played well.
But this doesn’t make you a evil bastard, just an insensitive one. A tiny sample of society illustrating the danger and fear that Simon and Joe are discussing.
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Joe - I've no doubt you meant "Horrible as the Pinochet
regime was ...", sorry not spotted inside 15 mins.ScottY - Joe was trying to indicate how insensitive your sporting analogy was, but you dug in deeper. So, decent chap that he is, he generalised to the vulnerability of all of us in any society in any age to falling into such traps - please reflect.
This link to the "devastating piece" was put on PA somewhere in August, and provides a little more context including a translation of the Ukrainian script at the end. Truly stunning to me too, it may not have been seen as much as it deserves.