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Good Morning!
Mar. 1st, 2019 08:46 am
Mar. 1st, 2019
Thank God Ir's Friday!
Mar. 1st, 2019 01:46 pmI guess it was too much to hope for about the weather but yesterday was wild rainy and windy. Today it is mild and dull. Doesn't matter much to me as I have been relaxing around the flat, listening to music and doing some reading. I have completed all four reports from the visits yesterday.
I really do not feel that hungry either but if I do I can rustle up a nice cheese on toast. Also, delicious comfort food.
From my visits, I purchased two T-shirts, some books, three CDs and a Dr Who jigsaw puzzle contained in a metal tin showing the Daleks on it. I might put that on eBay as well as some of the CDs.
For now, I will get back to the reading.
Tomorrow, I will heading Ashford town bound.
I really do not feel that hungry either but if I do I can rustle up a nice cheese on toast. Also, delicious comfort food.
From my visits, I purchased two T-shirts, some books, three CDs and a Dr Who jigsaw puzzle contained in a metal tin showing the Daleks on it. I might put that on eBay as well as some of the CDs.
For now, I will get back to the reading.
Tomorrow, I will heading Ashford town bound.
The Monsterous Friday Five
Mar. 1st, 2019 08:42 pm
1. Did you like dinosaurs as a kid?
2. If you did, did you have a favourite?
3. If you didn't like them, what was your favourite animal as a child?
4. Do you like '50's monster movies?
5. Shades of Jurassic Park, do you think we should bring dinosaurs back if we could?
Book 19 - Stephen Jay Gould "Rock Of Ages"
Mar. 1st, 2019 11:43 pmStephen Jay Gould "Rock Of Ages" (Vintage)
Stephen Jay Gould’s central theme in Rocks of Ages is that – far from being in eternal, irreconcilable conflict – science and religion are non-overlapping realms of human endeavour that proceed from different premises, ask different questions, and use different methods to seek answers. Not only are the two realms (he calls them “non-overlapping magisteria”), not in conflict, they cannot be in conflict. Episodes like the trial of Galileo in 1632 and the Scopes Trial of 1925 – routinely cited as major battles religion’s in eternal “war” with science – have their real roots, Gould argues, in the cultural anxieties of specific places and times. So, for that matter, does the idea of the “war” itself.
Gould has a track record of writing well - sometimes brilliantly – both about broad, abstract concepts and about small, telling details. He writes well -- though not brilliantly – about both here. His explanation of the “separate spheres” argument is clear and careful, and his analysis of the Galileo and Scopes affairs vivid and compelling. Neither will surprise professional historians or philosophers, both neither is meant to. Both, however, will come as revelations to much of the general public that is his intended audience.
Both book and author, however, get into trouble in the broad middle ground between abstract philosophical arguments and concrete historical details. Gould offers up his two-spheres model as a solution to the real-world conflict over science and religion in late-twentieth-century America. If only both sides would see the truth of it, he argues, the conflict would evaporate, and “intelligent design” advocates like Michael Behe would be free to lie down (metaphorically, anyway) with militant atheists like Richard Dawkins.
Alas, it’s not that easy, particularly in large swaths of the American South and Midwest. Gould – culturally Jewish and religiously agnostic; New Yorker by birth and Bostonian by choice; grad student at Columbia and professor at Harvard – fatally underestimate the commitment of culturally conservative evangelical Protestants to the idea that science and religion do overlap, pronouncing on the same questions of fact. For the substantial number of Americans who see Biblical texts as literally true which I find (I must admit) an anathema to my scientific outlook, the core ideas of a half-dozen scientific disciplines – which flatly contradict them – must then be false. The encounter between science and religion thus becomes, for such believers, precisely the zero-sum game that Gould wishes it were not. Rocks of Ages, eloquent though it often is, stands little chance of reversing that position alas.
Stephen Jay Gould’s central theme in Rocks of Ages is that – far from being in eternal, irreconcilable conflict – science and religion are non-overlapping realms of human endeavour that proceed from different premises, ask different questions, and use different methods to seek answers. Not only are the two realms (he calls them “non-overlapping magisteria”), not in conflict, they cannot be in conflict. Episodes like the trial of Galileo in 1632 and the Scopes Trial of 1925 – routinely cited as major battles religion’s in eternal “war” with science – have their real roots, Gould argues, in the cultural anxieties of specific places and times. So, for that matter, does the idea of the “war” itself.
Gould has a track record of writing well - sometimes brilliantly – both about broad, abstract concepts and about small, telling details. He writes well -- though not brilliantly – about both here. His explanation of the “separate spheres” argument is clear and careful, and his analysis of the Galileo and Scopes affairs vivid and compelling. Neither will surprise professional historians or philosophers, both neither is meant to. Both, however, will come as revelations to much of the general public that is his intended audience.
Both book and author, however, get into trouble in the broad middle ground between abstract philosophical arguments and concrete historical details. Gould offers up his two-spheres model as a solution to the real-world conflict over science and religion in late-twentieth-century America. If only both sides would see the truth of it, he argues, the conflict would evaporate, and “intelligent design” advocates like Michael Behe would be free to lie down (metaphorically, anyway) with militant atheists like Richard Dawkins.
Alas, it’s not that easy, particularly in large swaths of the American South and Midwest. Gould – culturally Jewish and religiously agnostic; New Yorker by birth and Bostonian by choice; grad student at Columbia and professor at Harvard – fatally underestimate the commitment of culturally conservative evangelical Protestants to the idea that science and religion do overlap, pronouncing on the same questions of fact. For the substantial number of Americans who see Biblical texts as literally true which I find (I must admit) an anathema to my scientific outlook, the core ideas of a half-dozen scientific disciplines – which flatly contradict them – must then be false. The encounter between science and religion thus becomes, for such believers, precisely the zero-sum game that Gould wishes it were not. Rocks of Ages, eloquent though it often is, stands little chance of reversing that position alas.
Andrew Wilson "Mad Girl's Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted" (Simon & Schuster)
I found this biography of Sylvia Plath interesting, but a bit of a slog to get through if I'm honest. I had it in my reading pile for months and dipping into it occasionally, I haven't read The Bell Jar (although I might, after I recover from the real account of her life), and only knew the barest facts about Plath to start with - poetry, Ted Hughes, suicide - in that rough order.
Plath's 'life before Ted' comes across like the pretentious attention-seeking of a spoiled debutante. Sylvia was neither, of course, and she was a very talented, original poet, but her collection of boyfriends and obsession with psychoanalysis wore very thin very quickly. I could sort of empathise with her perfectionist streak, and love her bitchy 'recycling' of real-life acquaintances and events in her short stories, only I don't wonder that the rogue's gallery of lovers and friends interviewed by Andrew Wilson were either scared of Sylvia or just downright didn't like her. I would lay the blame for Plath's warped imagination with 1950s America, however, not her devoted mother Aurelia or the death of her father. Being brought up in a neo-Victorian straitjacket, where girls went to college only to grab a better grade of husband, would send any intelligent woman over the edge, I should think!
Although this book made it hard for me to really like the character of Sylvia Plath, it was a very interesting read about a complex woman, and I certainly learned a lot about her life, her struggles, and the factors that shaped her writing. I would highly recommend this book to readers who are interested in Plath’s life and want to learn more about the iconic writer.
I found this biography of Sylvia Plath interesting, but a bit of a slog to get through if I'm honest. I had it in my reading pile for months and dipping into it occasionally, I haven't read The Bell Jar (although I might, after I recover from the real account of her life), and only knew the barest facts about Plath to start with - poetry, Ted Hughes, suicide - in that rough order.
Plath's 'life before Ted' comes across like the pretentious attention-seeking of a spoiled debutante. Sylvia was neither, of course, and she was a very talented, original poet, but her collection of boyfriends and obsession with psychoanalysis wore very thin very quickly. I could sort of empathise with her perfectionist streak, and love her bitchy 'recycling' of real-life acquaintances and events in her short stories, only I don't wonder that the rogue's gallery of lovers and friends interviewed by Andrew Wilson were either scared of Sylvia or just downright didn't like her. I would lay the blame for Plath's warped imagination with 1950s America, however, not her devoted mother Aurelia or the death of her father. Being brought up in a neo-Victorian straitjacket, where girls went to college only to grab a better grade of husband, would send any intelligent woman over the edge, I should think!
Although this book made it hard for me to really like the character of Sylvia Plath, it was a very interesting read about a complex woman, and I certainly learned a lot about her life, her struggles, and the factors that shaped her writing. I would highly recommend this book to readers who are interested in Plath’s life and want to learn more about the iconic writer.
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