Scientists can learn from fantasy

Professor Peter Cullen ( Wentworth group) was one to try and get scientists to think laterally and recognise other cultures "THE ARTS" - insisting his students read CP Snow "2 cultures" .
After a career in applied sustainability science, I think we scientists need to go further; we need more than a mere reminder of the title of the book about ongoing threats to sound science and practice.
We need literature that goes to the essence of our own cultures cul de sacs - the world's of worldview: accepted political and religiuos traps of our day
For the modern western reader , try this old clothing on for size!

James Finn Garners ; Politically Correct book of Bedtime stories ---(Try reading it to an audience near you )

Whatever your view - if you don't know the problem, you have no hope of solving it.

Gilbert by Ward

Anyone who knows me knows I love to reread the stuff that Chesterton wrote nearly 100years ago. I am sure i am not alone around the world , although I noted with interest how little of his material has been left in libraries here in Victoria Australia - they think they are running an education revolution - what with contempoary progresive authors and sycophantic sub scientific stuff ??? No wonder thinking people hesitate to send their kids to the ever reactionary and "revolutionary " secular secondary state schools.

Camberwell library has nothing of Gilbert's anymore - too many clever reviewers? - Why would i ever go to that library when so much of it is so currently Politically correct? You won't clearly find something there to put your essay on Bernard Shaw,Dickens or Lord of the rings into the top ten of tough literary review stuff !)

What makes this book written by a friend so special is not pontification, but the truly personal papers it contains of real dialogue between friends . Don't you just wish you could meet, like he did, with H.G wells and Shaw over a beer; have a good laugh at all the nonsense that went on around them --as they did .
You can. Just ask for the book by name Gilbert J Chesterton by Maise Ward and forget all those who over promote progressive ( meaning current wannabes ) authors as if they really have ever had such a robust and wide rangeing intellectual discourse as those three! and if you think they are too old to be relevant - tell me why are scientists reading his stuff!

Why do people want to read the da vinci code ?

Lots seem to want to. Is jesus such a unbelievable person as he is revealed in the gospels , or is his strange challenges and otherworldliness such that some clever revising makes him attractive and acceptable .

It seem the whole thing is a fraud built on a gullible public ---just a common old distraction , read some good reviews on churchofthemasses Febrauary 11th

Reviewers seldom get it right!

Lewis, in talking about reviews of both his and Tolkiens work at University in the 1950s, noted that he couldn't think of one reviewer that got it right when talking about why he, or his collegues, did said or wrote what they did. He reminded his audience about the predicatability of those who look back and know so much more - the historic criticsm movements and the revisionists.The critics even got his lion and someelse's tiger concepts mixed up in their own stories , for example .


The evidence from the snobbishness and reactionary nature of views about great greeks or the role of "fads "like that in Bacon tested any supposed integrity of the revisionsits - whether the subject was Homer or Shakespeare.let alone their lack of respect for dialogue ( hard to refute the issue if the author is dead!)

Lewis pointed out that the big deal at that time was a claim by ignorant reviewersabout Tolkiens work. Much was made of the rings being an allegory of the atom bomb .Stupid reactionaries with their own ideas in mind .unwilling to let us make up our own !

Both english authors and Jackson and others who now give us access to their work deserve high praise - about time. What great stories they have now told and retold

Feeling isolated or burntout ?

Just heard from a friend feeling isolated and burntout by political and social correctness . May i suggest for public reading jesting and good fun "The politically correct book of bedtime stories" by James Finn Garner. It may not send you to sleep, but it will help you get over the next brick wall.

Grumpy old german men

After seeing that great recent film on Luther recently , I picked up a piece of fiction( unusual for me )and read it right through
"Kitty my rib" was what Luther called his wife

But don't be fooled into thinking their romance was all roses. For those struggling with workahaolic, uncommunicative and grumpy old men ? here's a little offering to keep you going

.(Author E Jane Mall Concordia publishers)

Grishams back

Grisham- At any good newagents now -- some new ones

The Firm,  The Client,  the Gingerbread man , the Rainmaker