Notebook
For a while I didn't know what to call this; maybe I'm still not sure. It's not a diary. It's not a blog. It's not a column. Words, ideas, images worth keeping. Stories that might not have happened, but are true nonetheless. In any case, here's some stuff I like. Perhaps you'll like it, too.
Archive
Thursday, 28 June 2007
"Brown and Root was soon to become part of a consortium which built airfields, bases and hospitals in South Vietnam, and again, it was widely believed that [President] Johnson was facilitating this. Just as a matter of interest: in August 1966, a certain young Republican senator from Illinois was outspokenly critical of this cronyism. ‘Why such a huge contract has not been, and is not now being, adequately audited is beyond me. The potential for waste and profiteering is substantial.’ In 1967, the General Accounting Office (GAO) identified massive financial improprieties, and disappearances of huge amounts of its war materiel. American GIs in Vietnam nicknamed the company Burn and Loot. By the dawn of the 21st century it had become part of the Halliburton Group, and Donald Rumsfeld from Illinois was no longer so critical of its construction projects in theatres of war. But that’s another story."
From The Man Who Ran the Moon: James Webb, JFK and the Secret History of Project Apollo by Piers Bizony
From The Man Who Ran the Moon: James Webb, JFK and the Secret History of Project Apollo by Piers Bizony
posted at 14:04
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Wednesday, 20 June 2007
I've just returned from the First Move Festival at Jodrell Bank, where astronomer Tim O'Brien showed us this remarkable image, taken by the Cassini spacecraft. Find out more on Astronomy Picture of the Day...
posted at 16:56
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Wednesday, 13 June 2007
On Broadway. Thankfully not in need of a job (see Patti Smith, below), but still, it's tempting.
posted at 15:40
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Wednesday, 6 June 2007
What is belief? Edmund Gosse's Father and Son was first published one hundred years ago. Here's a taste...
All these matters drew my thoughts to the subject of idolatry, which was severely censured at the missionary meeting. I cross-examined my Father very closely as to the nature of this sin and pinned him down to the categorical statement that idolatry consisted in praying to any one or anything but God himself. Wood and stone, in the words of the hymn, were peculiarly liable to be bowed down to by the heathen in their blindness. I pressed my Father further on this subject, and he assured me that God would be very angry, and would signify His anger, if anyone, in a Christian country, bowed down to wood and stone. I cannot recall why I was so pertinacious on this subject, but I remember that my Father became a little restive under my cross-examination. I determined, however, to test the matter for myself, and one morning, when both my parents were safely out of the house, I prepared for the great act of heresy. I was in the morning-room on the ground-floor, where, with much labour, I hoisted a small chair on to the table close to the window. My heart was now beating as if it would leap out of my side, but I pursued my experiment. I knelt down on the carpet in front of the table and looking up I said my daily prayer in a loud voice, only substituting the address ‘O Chair!’ for the habitual one.
Having carried this act of idolatry safely through, I waited to see what would happen. I t was a fine day, and I gazed up at the slip of white sky above the houses opposite, and expected something to appear in it. God would certainly exhibit his anger in some terrible form, and would chastise my impious and wilful action. I was very much alarmed, but still more excited; I breathed the high, sharp air of defiance. But nothing happened; there was not a cloud in the sky, not an unusual sound in the street. Presently I was quite sure that nothing would happen. I had committed idolatry, flagrantly and deliberately, and God did not care.
The result of this ridiculous act was not to make me question the existence and power of God; those were forces which I did not dream of ignoring. But what it did was to lessen still further my confidence in my Father’s knowledge of the Divine mind. My father had said, positively, that if I worshipped a thing made of wood, God would manifest his anger. I had then worshipped a chair, made (or partly made) of wood, and God had made no sign whatever. My Father, therefore, was not really acquainted with the Divine practice in cases of idolatry. And with that, dismissing the subject, I dived again into the unplumbed depths of the Penny Cyclopaedia.
All these matters drew my thoughts to the subject of idolatry, which was severely censured at the missionary meeting. I cross-examined my Father very closely as to the nature of this sin and pinned him down to the categorical statement that idolatry consisted in praying to any one or anything but God himself. Wood and stone, in the words of the hymn, were peculiarly liable to be bowed down to by the heathen in their blindness. I pressed my Father further on this subject, and he assured me that God would be very angry, and would signify His anger, if anyone, in a Christian country, bowed down to wood and stone. I cannot recall why I was so pertinacious on this subject, but I remember that my Father became a little restive under my cross-examination. I determined, however, to test the matter for myself, and one morning, when both my parents were safely out of the house, I prepared for the great act of heresy. I was in the morning-room on the ground-floor, where, with much labour, I hoisted a small chair on to the table close to the window. My heart was now beating as if it would leap out of my side, but I pursued my experiment. I knelt down on the carpet in front of the table and looking up I said my daily prayer in a loud voice, only substituting the address ‘O Chair!’ for the habitual one.
Having carried this act of idolatry safely through, I waited to see what would happen. I t was a fine day, and I gazed up at the slip of white sky above the houses opposite, and expected something to appear in it. God would certainly exhibit his anger in some terrible form, and would chastise my impious and wilful action. I was very much alarmed, but still more excited; I breathed the high, sharp air of defiance. But nothing happened; there was not a cloud in the sky, not an unusual sound in the street. Presently I was quite sure that nothing would happen. I had committed idolatry, flagrantly and deliberately, and God did not care.
The result of this ridiculous act was not to make me question the existence and power of God; those were forces which I did not dream of ignoring. But what it did was to lessen still further my confidence in my Father’s knowledge of the Divine mind. My father had said, positively, that if I worshipped a thing made of wood, God would manifest his anger. I had then worshipped a chair, made (or partly made) of wood, and God had made no sign whatever. My Father, therefore, was not really acquainted with the Divine practice in cases of idolatry. And with that, dismissing the subject, I dived again into the unplumbed depths of the Penny Cyclopaedia.
posted at 15:41
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