I was lucky to have been sent a ticket to attend a talk by Lord (Melvyn) Bragg - novelist and well known broadcaster on cultural matters, over several decades; the event took place in the Nave of Westminster Abbey and one could reflect on (or absorb) one's surroundings if all else failed. Behind Bragg was a reredos (Victorian?) with a memorial to Isaac Newton amongst others.
Unfortunately, for a famous and highly feted talker, Bragg left me behind on much of what he had to say. He was near a mike, and I was even nearer a small loudspeaker AND wore my hearing aids. Volume was not the difficulty; diction was.
Bragg was so enthusiastic about his topic that he talked fast; and not just fast at an even speed - interspersing fast and slow as his whim required - but not the whim of the listener. On three occasions he took a swig of water - bending down (out of mike range) talking into a large tumbler - before resuming refreshed. Important observations missed - and attention transferred to irrelevancies.
I have asked speakers at courses I run (including student questioners) many times to try and help - all to no avail.
That is perhaps because most people I ask are still lucky enough to hear well.
but wait -
thanks to the blessings of walkmen and ipods, a wide age band will arrive sooner at the situation I am now describing. I wont be there to savour their feelings - but I can imagine them.
Now - what did Bragg SAY - since I did hear about 40% of what he said?
He spent a good time on the antecedents of KJB - particularly the great figure of William Tyndale. Tyndale produced the right words - many or most of which are monosyllables - which Bragg said contributed to the rhythm,, comprehensibility and impact of Tyndale's English. Presently, England was blessed with Shakespeare - who thrived in the rhetorical culture so enriched by Tyndale. Soon after, when Elizabeth died the Scottish King James VIth became King in London and set up the great project of creating a definitive translation of the Bible into English.
Bragg is a man of the book (perhaps more so than of the microphone) and spoke of the literary qualities of the KJB. There were statistics - so many phrases introduced into the language - but though he is a fellow of the Royal Society (a scientific institution) - he did not approach the text and its influences in a scientific manner. By this I suggest that he could ask certain questions and look for evidence with which to answer them; some such questions are 'positive' ones - does KJB DO X,Y,Z; others are negative ones - does KJB NOT achieve a,b,c, or some other translation achieve it better?
For example - were there translations into other European vernaculars and if so, did they weave together with their countries' histories in ways which were more, equally or less potent than did the KJB in English (for the Anglophone world)?
When the KJB was followed by a Revised version in 1880 did that renew the mission of those who worked with the KJB - or did that mission miss the strength of the now challenged edition? Lord Bragg spoke a good deal about the long campaigns to eradicate slavery and argued (I think, persuasively) that the KJB gave particular strength to the campaigners (and, to the slaves some of whom came across the text)? But would this impact have been greater with a different translation from King James's committee? Or with one of those to come, subsequently?
There is no way to answer that directly - but there may have been certain passages which impeded the great thrust of moral rectitude that came to the fore in Anglophone society - how may KJB have influenced attitudes towards minorities - such as witches, homosexuals, Jews? Lord Bragg did not (I think) have much if anything to say about any 'downside' to the KJB.
This was, after all, an occasion to celebrate its strengths - but one final assertion of Bragg's remains to be worked out: he pointed out that James' son Charles, like his father, believed in what was called the Divine Right of Kings - a doctrine that authority passed directly into the earthly sovereign (at coronation) from the Divinity; Lord Bragg seemed to indicate that this view was reinforced by a reading of texts in KJB. A powerful text, however, is found in First Chronicles Chapter 29 v 11 onwards in which the young King David explicitly disavows a human refraction of Divine authority - the spectacular difference from the behaviour of Pharaohs and Ceasars (and in a small version, of early Stuart Kings) is surely not supported, but repudiated in a KJB text (which is, incidentally, more resonant and moving than are later translations). Not that it can be diluted either, in later texts - but KJB was probably not a thoroughgoing support for quasi-divine regal behaviour.
One can remember these things when walking down Whitehall, past where Charles I had his head cut off, and past Westminster Hall, fronted with the statue of the regicide Cromwell (who also used the KJB).
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Dengl 41 Decarboning Scotland?
I went (26 Sept 2011) to a meeting at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, addressed by a very clear and skilful speaker - Lord Adair Turner - whose report has just been published, on how to achieve a carbon minimised Scotland.
The study shows a very impressive chart consisting of three graphs, one labelled CO2 going zig zag - over 500,000 YEARS, next one, shows Methane zig zags - exactly parallel over the same time span; and the third one shows temperatures (as best estimated - thereby hangs a tale, surely, in this day of hyperactive neutrons - but I was a good boy and didnt ask a question about that) with zig zags exactly parallel. With due deference to the correlation-is-not-causation (BUT...) proviso, the rest of the talk went on about how to cut CO2 emissions.
In question time I asked - what about methane - might a campaign against that prove equally effective, and if so, how? Might it take the pressures off trying to reduce various accustomed carbon uses that produce CO2? He replied that the methane problem is still, currently, smaller; However, landflll has been reduced by half over the last few years (without explaining what happens to the displaced substances, elsewhere - our London "compostable waste" goes to council silos where no doubt it rots to methane - unanswered questions there ...) and he suggested we (the globe - that's you, and us) are not in disaster mode on that score, yet. But it was the beasties and their digestions that are a particular problem. USA, Argentina, even Scotland, all far away. He didn't think that experiments dosing cattle diets with something, yet, promised much. Best not to raise too much dairy.
In answering someone else's question "what about China" he suggested that on his visits there he had been impressed by their conscientious awareness of the problem and intention to do something about it. However, on his visits to the US he was horrified at the substantial 'denialist' camp (threatening to swamp the AlGoreniks). He said the commercial lobbies had made this headway, and it was harmful.
HOWEVER
He said that the US is still the world's great powerhouse of ideas and invention, emerging from the nexus of business/universities, and he hoped that something miraculous would emerge therefrom.
I think a further question, nobody had time to ask - is: are not the Chinese officials just more successful dissemblers? - the US more open and candid?
The Noble Lord closed with the famous "Layard graph" showing how when a certain GNP level has been reached, per country, there is not much if any gain in well-being. Therefore, as we (UK) have reached that point, it wont hurt us to cut back on (carbon costly) growth mania.
The flipside of that, which I put to him in chat at the reception afterwards, was to focus on those clusters of countries as yet UNDER the magical layard cusp - might they not prefer to pump themselves up any which way, likely to be quite carbon-careless.. .?.. he admitted - yes.
Finally, I also asked him why the cinderella in the evening's story had been nuclear - virtually unmentioned - and what about Thorium? He was good enough to say straight away that he didnt know about thorium.
Well now ...
Fore someone chairing a project of this sort, and saying he had 'read all the papers' (about some other technical question) - is this slightly worrying?
A tall man at his right elbow began to explain ....but too late to affect the published report ...
... woven through all this are questions of "how do you persuade the public" and "with WHAT story do you set out to persuade the public?"
also, interesting questions emerged, of how one gets the 'administrative machine' to think and act with its focus on the future rather than the past; sadly no time to discuss those matters.
time for me to go home and I left on my carbon clean bicycle....
The study shows a very impressive chart consisting of three graphs, one labelled CO2 going zig zag - over 500,000 YEARS, next one, shows Methane zig zags - exactly parallel over the same time span; and the third one shows temperatures (as best estimated - thereby hangs a tale, surely, in this day of hyperactive neutrons - but I was a good boy and didnt ask a question about that) with zig zags exactly parallel. With due deference to the correlation-is-not-causation (BUT...) proviso, the rest of the talk went on about how to cut CO2 emissions.
In question time I asked - what about methane - might a campaign against that prove equally effective, and if so, how? Might it take the pressures off trying to reduce various accustomed carbon uses that produce CO2? He replied that the methane problem is still, currently, smaller; However, landflll has been reduced by half over the last few years (without explaining what happens to the displaced substances, elsewhere - our London "compostable waste" goes to council silos where no doubt it rots to methane - unanswered questions there ...) and he suggested we (the globe - that's you, and us) are not in disaster mode on that score, yet. But it was the beasties and their digestions that are a particular problem. USA, Argentina, even Scotland, all far away. He didn't think that experiments dosing cattle diets with something, yet, promised much. Best not to raise too much dairy.
In answering someone else's question "what about China" he suggested that on his visits there he had been impressed by their conscientious awareness of the problem and intention to do something about it. However, on his visits to the US he was horrified at the substantial 'denialist' camp (threatening to swamp the AlGoreniks). He said the commercial lobbies had made this headway, and it was harmful.
HOWEVER
He said that the US is still the world's great powerhouse of ideas and invention, emerging from the nexus of business/universities, and he hoped that something miraculous would emerge therefrom.
I think a further question, nobody had time to ask - is: are not the Chinese officials just more successful dissemblers? - the US more open and candid?
The Noble Lord closed with the famous "Layard graph" showing how when a certain GNP level has been reached, per country, there is not much if any gain in well-being. Therefore, as we (UK) have reached that point, it wont hurt us to cut back on (carbon costly) growth mania.
The flipside of that, which I put to him in chat at the reception afterwards, was to focus on those clusters of countries as yet UNDER the magical layard cusp - might they not prefer to pump themselves up any which way, likely to be quite carbon-careless.. .?.. he admitted - yes.
Finally, I also asked him why the cinderella in the evening's story had been nuclear - virtually unmentioned - and what about Thorium? He was good enough to say straight away that he didnt know about thorium.
Well now ...
Fore someone chairing a project of this sort, and saying he had 'read all the papers' (about some other technical question) - is this slightly worrying?
A tall man at his right elbow began to explain ....but too late to affect the published report ...
... woven through all this are questions of "how do you persuade the public" and "with WHAT story do you set out to persuade the public?"
also, interesting questions emerged, of how one gets the 'administrative machine' to think and act with its focus on the future rather than the past; sadly no time to discuss those matters.
time for me to go home and I left on my carbon clean bicycle....
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