Thursday 18 September 2008

Jean-Paul vs Albert - Rain stopped play

I know, I know, Sartre vs Camus was supposed to be next but............

I finished 'The boy in the striped pyjamas' today. It's only a couple of hundred pages. It's really hard to decide whether a ten year old should read it. Malcolm Goodson has a great niece about the right age but.........Anyway, I wanted to talk about that today. Not the subject matter, I've already said what I have to say about that. I more wanted to talk about how it's all been constructed, edited, written, plotted. However, I need to think some more about it so I'll stick it in draft and maybe then it might make some sense once I've had a chance to worry it to death.

So I thought today, while I work on that, I'd show you a picture instead of babbling in my usual nonsense way.

Now I've been hassled all winter by a certain individual who can't believe that after 7 months the only thing on my blog that he thinks should be there is a Christmas Card drawing of Fricka and I (with Frodo) last year. All the time, emails, "Oh, c'mon, Dai, please?", "It won't hurt, just one?", "I'll love you forever and have your babies! Please?" You have to admit, it's hard to resist. Though I think the last one I should take with a pinch of salt, it might need a major medical breakthrough first, I think.

So, as all friends must, I have succumbed. I will accede to his request, After all, it's not bad as such things go. I'm just glad we don't have them down here. From what he tells me, they're ten times worse than the bonxies! So here we have.........Falco Peregrinus, the most lethal aerial predator of them all!



I thought I'd leave you with a cut and paste job of an email I received from the 'Wunderkind' after my post about Auschwitz.

"When I was seventeen, I stayed in Germany with an elderly couple who a German teacher used to au pair for. They were quite high up the social ladder but very charming, generous, caring people. I was a working class oik but I had learned manners! Omi (that's German for Grandma), very rich, but not their grandmother, used to come for tea on the lawn three or four times a week. She couldn't pronounce Malcolm so called me Michael because the first time she met me, I was dressed all in white with long, flowing dark brown hair (post Woodstock, you understand) and she said I looked just like an angel. Well one day, she brought a friend. An elderly Jewess with a number tatooed along the underside of her forearm. She had a few bangles but a short sleeved dress. All afternoon I was just gagging to ask. But I didn't. When they'd both gone and we were sitting in the sun drinking iced tea, all that was said was 'Thank you.' For what? 'For saying nothing.'

I never spoke about Stalingrad, either - though the drawings were wonderful!'"

10 comments:

  1. Sometimes you confuse the **** out of me.

    There are pieces of this post I can't understand. The drawing, however, is well done. I will have to examine it further.

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  2. Sorry, maybe Stalingrad? Max got shrapnel in his knee, from a grenade, about 14 days before the encirclement and was airlifted out about 10 days before the Sixth army was cut off completely and they all moved to Siberia. He was a professional artist and somehow had managed to get sketch books back home from the front - from the beginning of 'Barbarossa' in 1941 almost to the end. MG spent hours pouring over them, always in silence. One never spoke about it. So it was a bit like Auschwitz, in a way.

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  3. Okay That helped. But who's Albert and I'm wondering if the rain is metaphorical or real, and why rain would stop you from talking about Jean-Paul. I think you just lost interest? Maybe?

    No problem. I'll have to get a quickie education from Wiki, an admittedly lazy solution, but since I'm a week behind in chemistry and still haven't ordered the Feynman books and now need to tack Sagan on to the pile, I have my work cut out for me. So Sartre has gotten bumped to the bottom of the pile.

    Unless, you can resurrect your former conversation and expound. That would be helpful.

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  4. Albert Camus.

    'Rain stopped play' is very English, it's what you say when a cricket match has to stop because it's raining - you cannot play cricket in the rain, the ball skids on the grass and it's not fair on the batsmen. I keep forgetting Americans only pretend to speak English :-)

    I'll try and sort Jean-Paul and Albert out soon.

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  5. Well, I pretend to speak English and you pretend that you're not depressed (rain is traditionally mentioned in lieu of tears) and that suggests that even pragmatists are somewhat metaphysical.

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  6. Depressed? Moi? Of course I'm depressed. Fricka says that's why she loves me....I'm such a cynic! And when it comes down to it, Penguins need to be cynics to survive.

    And rain is such a constant in English. They live in a rainy country. Call anyone in Manchester!

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  7. Given a choice between Feynman, Sagan and Dawkins, which reading do you think would impact the most for the money?

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  8. Depends on what you want and what you've already read.

    If none then Dawkins' 'The selfish gene' is a good place to start for the 'gene' centric view of biology before he started sticking his head up his own arse after 'The blind watchmaker':-)

    I've already mentioned 'QED. The strange theory of light and matter' by Dick in this blog and it really is the best place to start (let's face it he did get the Nobel Prize for QED!) for an understanding of QM since it deals with the simplest interactions, ie photons and electrons. If you don't get that, nothing else will make any sense. So if at first....

    Sagan? Read Cosmos once but I find him a bit too populist. Not a criticism, just not my taste.

    You might want to add Penrose's 'The emperor's new mind' to the list for the future. Penrose is/was Lucasian Professor of maths, THE job in the UK for mathematicians(Newton held it!)

    The book's long, more heavy on the math, really quite difficult and gets itself in a twist at the end with Penrose's own view on quantum mechanics and its relation to conscienceness but does provide an excellent view of the last 400 years of physics and how you get from a classical theory (Newton) to QM.

    So, for me it's molecular biology (Dawkins) vs quantum electrodynamics (Dick); mb provides more words for your buck but rf perhaps provides a little more insight into the 'nature' of physical reality. You pays your money, you takes your choice!

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  9. No, you didn't mention it on this blog. You mentioned it on the other blog.

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  10. This blog, that blog. After a while they all merge into one seamless tapestry.

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