What more can I say? shortly after 11…
Partial eclipse
Author: admin
Editors
There is increasing evidence that the editor no longer reads the articles placed in the newspaper critically. Sometimes the most obvious mistakes are made, up with which the later Sir Winston would not have put but which featured often in the Grauniad. Take this as a recent example:
“Up to half of people died when the Black Death swept through Europe in the mid-1300s.”
I wondered whether the editor had read the title, saw who wrote it and concluded that having obtained his own degree at the LSE he would not have a hope of understanding what the gentleman scientist had said so simply signed it off. Perhaps the words following ‘A pioneering study analysing the DNA…’ confirmed him in his misconception.
However, such mistakes are evident even to the man on the Clapham omnibus to whom the learned judge appealed, and are just as likely to appear in the work of this uneditored writer as in that which has passed the mis-scrutiny of the most eagle-eyed editor when presented with academic superiority. ‘Trust the science’ we have often been told of what was heralded as a new Black Death, but as the ASA has noted recently in relation to the green-washing of a bank without borders, it is possible to present the science without disclosing all of the relevant and material facts.
Now I am sure you have seen the obvious mistake that the editor missed, but did you see the second? The context of the article is Europe, so we do not need to consider death rates outside Europe, which may have been more or, it is thought perhaps, less than that among Europeans. There is a missing article in the sentence; possibly also a qualifier, and adjective or adjectival phrase, for the word people which would be helpful towards the understanding of what is said.
But the second mistake is perhaps even more clear: that there are no survivors today of the Black Death that swept through Europe in the 14th century, tells us quite clearly that all of the people of Europe have died who lived in the time of the Black Death. It was not simply half of them, and in the manner of counting deaths from the recent plague, all of them having had contact with the Black Death and were therefore Black Death deaths.
Science is useful, but when you hear the words ‘Trust the science’, ask: Which science? The science of yesterday, of today or of tomorrow? Let the scientist remember that the science of today is often overturned by that of tomorrow. Is the certainty of what science says 5%, 70% or 95% ? But as every man who goes into a betting shop knows, even a cert (100%) does not win every race.
But there is one who is the same yesterday, today and forever. Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines). He may be trusted when he speaks, so when you hear his voice do not harden your hearts against him. Jesus cries out: Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden, and I shall give you rest. We of today must all die as those of the 14th century did, but he has overcome death by giving his own life on a cross, and as he rose from the dead, he shall raise us from the dead when he comes again.
Trust the science, but know its limits, and do not be carried about with various and strange ideas that are like shifting sands. But better trust Jesus who said: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away.
SARS
I normally think that when a thing is referred to by the initial letters of its proper name there is no need to add an S to pluralise it. The plural S is hidden behind the initial capital letter. So we have, for example, OS. You would not ask how many different OSes are there? You would ask how many different O(perating) S(ystems) are there. The plural s is hidden. There are exceptions of course but these prove the rule for the combination of the initial letters has become a noun in itself which does not describe the same thing as the string of words describes, so though we refer to LASER, if we have two sources we shall speak of having two lasers.
I should also like to make a further exception in response to a suggestion by a Western oligarch that one country become an special administrative region of another country. I shall refer later to this as the Type B proposal. That other country is well known for its SARS which were first identified there about twenty years ago. Much effort is put into the elimination of these SARS for they are quite dangerous things. The effects that they have on the people of that country are quite severe and if left uncontrolled would have serious adverse social and economic consequences, so the (dis)benefits of these SARS must, so we are led to believe, be curtailed at all costs.
The truth of these remarks would of course be clearly seen if the doctrine behind this suggestion were pressed to its logical conclusion, and it was proposed that the other country should become a special administrative region of the one. The objective of the underlying doctrine would be equally achieved. I shall refer to this as the Type A proposal.
Both proposals are the logical outcome of the foundational doctrine held by the other country, so why would not a Type A solution be acceptable to it? Is it a fear that it, as a SAR, would go the way of all other SARS?
Harvest time
It is the end of harvest time.
If you received the letters ‘himnnsy’ in Scrabble, you might think you had been dealt a loser, unless you were second to play and the first word put down before you was ‘groin’. On the other hand ‘harvest’ is full of possibilities, you would stare at the vast array knowing that would not starve for choice as you share the heat with your opponents, just as the pastor demonstrated in his children’s talk today, and when you add a single letter to them the field is fully ripe to harvest. There will be no tares or tears when your turn comes round. But there were two words he did not mention, probably because they were not in line with what he wanted to say today, but do you see them?
‘Have rest’ – which seems to be quite appropriate after the harvest. The summer was long, warm and wet enough; the fields have enjoyed the prolongation of this most suitable of weathers; the work of harvest in the fields was hard, onerous, perhaps dull and tedious also, but ultimately rewarding. The recompense for the work is safely stored away, delivered to the miller, and whatever else needs to be done before the winter falls upon you, and what then? You have rest. Surely, after the harvest you have rest, and there it is in the very word itself.
As we look at this world, we see that the fields are white unto the harvest. Unto – what a word! It is not often used today, but it is familiar in this context. The fields are white ready to harvest. This is the Lord’s saying to his disciples. He described the world as a field in which a crop is growing, and amongst the crop are weeds (often called tares) which are also growing. We find it hard to tell the difference between what is the good growth and the weeds as they look alike until the fruit is produced. One day, when the harvest is ready, he shall send his angels to gather in the harvest. The sickle shall be thrust in; the harvest gathered home; and the tares to be composted shall be sent.
On that day of his harvest, we shall have rest. In this world we toil, struggle, suffer pain, illness, disease and affliction but in the new world that shall follow the harvest God will wipe away every tear from our eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.
Are you ready for that day? The ancient Latin text, not stated here in full, expresses it well:
Dies iræ, dies illa,
Solvet sæclum in favilla:
Liber scriptus proferetur,
In quo totum continetur,
Unde mundus iudicetur.
Rex tremendæ maiestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatis.
Recordare, Iesu pie,
Quod sum causa tuæ viæ:
Ne me perdas illa die.
Quærens me, sedisti lassus:
Redemisti Crucem passus:
Tantus labor non sit cassus.
Iuste Iudex ultionis,
Donum fac remissionis
Ante diem rationis.
Ingemisco, tamquam reus:
Culpa rubet vultus meus:
Supplicanti parce, Deus.
Qui Mariam absolvisti,
Et latronem exaudisti,
Mihi quoque spem dedisti.
It speaks of the coming harvest day, the unveiling of the book recording all of our deeds, the judgment that follows, and of the pardon that has been bought for us by the Lord Jesus by, following his incarnation, his death on the cross. Hope of pardon for the guilty is underlined by a reference to the woman taken in adultery (here named as Mary (Mariam)) and one of the two who were crucified with Jesus. The poem goes on to speak of the worthlessness of our own prayers, representing all of our religious devotion and effort, to obtain pardon and salvation for us, it is the gift of God to those who commit themselves to the one who died for them, as the adulteress and the thief did, closing with a reminder that we must prepare for that day.
When the harvest has been brought home, will you have rest?
Copperfield
Have you read your budget commentaries yet? If not, I have no wish to distract you from them.
We read in David Copperfield that Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his room (top story but one), and cried very much. He solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter, gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for the amount, and put away his pocket-handkerchief, and cheered up.
The man who ended up in the King’s Bench Prison had some wisdom; we read later on that Mr. Micawber was a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a creature about everything but his own affairs as ever existed, and never so happy as when he was busy about something that could never be of any profit to him, but if I have read it correctly, even with his wisdom he still increases the level of his borrowing by one shilling.
I have no wish, as perhaps some do, to impugn the intellectual abilities of our government; to have even appeared on University Challenge is something to which the brain of this writer could not have aspired, but to have succeeded there also would have been, had it not been seen, incredible. It is entirely credible that those who are in leadership have the aptitude for it, and the intellectual ability to be busy about something of such importance.
It is perhaps then of no surprise that as Mr Micawber ignored his own wisdom, others today have ignored theirs only to borrow more with a further promise to pay the bearer on demand the extra shilling when required to do so.
E&OE If I have misunderstood the English of the dialect used by Mr Dickens, which is no longer commonly spoken in this land, then I apologise, but I carry some hope that you may comprehend with some satisfaction that a modified interpretation would not entirely invalidate the conclusion that has been drawn.
History
It had escaped Coco’s notice, but in 2011 EIIR said:
Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves from our recklessness or our greed. God sent into the world a unique person, neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a saviour, with the power to forgive.
On the other hand Georg Hegel said:
The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
There is somewhat a contradiction here, until we look at the paradigm which drives these two assertions concerning history. Whilst one is derived from a paradigm, which whilst it sought to go beyond the scepticism and nothingness of Platonism with its vast empty abyss by the introduction of concepts such as the negation of certain determinations, which may be called determinate negations, and do not result in an empty, abstract nothing, but rather a determinate nothingness which has content, does not take us much beyond the former position, but rather lays a foundation for the ever more meaningless paradigms taken up later in the 19th and 20th centuries as men built upon the ephemeral concepts of eternal matter underpinned by an irrational cleavage to uniformity, which lead to the conclusion that we have no purpose and no responsibility towards any outside authority let alone to each other. Each of the words used to summarise the Hegelian position, you must understand, has a technical meaning into the discussion of which we shall not enter here. You may also disagree with the summary, and Coco shall be pleased to receive alternative concise summaries of Hegel’s paradigm.
The other however stands on a solid foundation, which is forever not having been laid by the hands of men, but rather by the One who made all things. Matter is not eternal; matter has a beginning. But the self-existent God has built this universe, made of matter, on the solid foundation of his own eternal faithfulness and righteousness.
The one paradigm leads to a hopelessness which results in pessimism about ourselves, our past, present and future; the other leads to an optimistic hope that despite ourselves, our past, present and future behaviours, that as a result of God’s past intervention, there is a future intervention that will straighten everything out. This universe is not to remain a vast dangerous wilderness where wild beats roam and men devour each other, but it shall be renewed in a way where the wolf shall dwell with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the young goat; the calf and the young lion and the fatling together… they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God. God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. Nothing shall hurt or harm, and men shall live in love for one another as they serve, and walk with, and enjoy the living God in the city that he has built.
But note that her Majesty does not say that we shall achieve this ourselves. God’s intervention is required, and so he sent his Son into the world as a saviour with the power to forgive. Yes, he came also teaching, preaching and healing, but primarily as he said when speaking of his death by crucifixion: Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.) The prospect of crucifixion is indeed troubling; later we hear him speak in this way: Father, if it is your will, take this cup away from me; nevertheless not my will, but yours, be done. But it was for this very purpose that he came into the world, to die to save sinners. In this way he became the Saviour of men.
Concerning his power to forgive, very early in his ministry we find this affirmed when he was presented with a paralysed man by the man’s friends: When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven you.’ This provoked outrage among some. And some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, ‘Why does this man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ They were quite right in their reasoning, but wrong in their conclusion. To show them that he had power to forgive, he healed the man who had been brought to him.
On what basis then does he forgive? Justice, as we know, demands a penalty. Forgiveness is not cheap. It is not right, as we know, to justify the wrongdoer. Are we all not revulsed when the guilty escape justice? How then can God let off the sinner? That was his dilemma, but in the infinite wisdom of God he found the way that he could be both just and be able to justify the sinner. The penalty for sin is too great for the sinner to pay, so God himself must pay it. For this reason, we read, and this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
De morte
We were in the Republic when the day came, and even though not on this occasion in a Chambre d’hôtes where Louis XXII had once resided, great consolation was shown towards us, but it was not until subjects of the House of Orange also came for refreshment, rest and repast that in the brotherhood of equality, liberty was granted to cry out:
La Reine est morte; vive le Roi.
If in the day of the death of King Saul, King David could say ‘This a day of mourning and weeping’, how much more we who have lost a Queen who had proven herself more worthy of her name in the keeping of her promises to God and to men than many others who would clothe themselves with the trappings of leadership. What freedom we have that we do not have to fight or contend over and vote for who shall rule over us, but simply lend our support and allegiance to the one who has been chosen not by the hand of man.
Long live the king! May he too be faithful to serve the people over whom the Lord has appointed him. And may the Lord give to him, as he gave to Solomon, an understanding heart to judge the people and to discern between what is good and what is evil.
Unvaccinated?
The BBC have run an analysis ‘Unvaccinated’. It is available for eleven months.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0019g27/unvaccinated
‘Covid-19 is on the rise again in the UK. After multiple lockdowns and more than 197,000 deaths, experts are warning we’re now entering a fifth wave of the pandemic. So why are around four million adults in the UK still yet to receive a single dose of the vaccine? In this timely, eye-opening investigation Professor Hannah Fry seeks to understand why so many remain unvaccinated against Covid-19.
To fully explore this complex and deeply divisive debate, Hannah brings seven unvaccinated participants together under one roof to unpack long-held opinions, beliefs and fears that have prevented them from getting the vaccine. Together, they meet leading experts, confront the latest science and statistics to emerge in the field, and dissect how misinformation spreads on social media. At the end of the experiment, each contributor is asked if what they have learned has changed their mind, and whether they will now take up the vaccine.‘
If this is the same Professor Hannah Fry as in the Mathematics of Cities at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, then it seems to Coco that she brings the regimen of mathematics into disrepute. The study, which is designed to fully explore the complex and deeply divisive debate over whether to submit to vaccination or not, is hardly a scientific study, even by the standards of the least rigorous of the psycho-social , so-called, scientific disciplines. There is no parallel study to explore the opinions, beliefs and fears of those who have submitted to vaccination; no meeting of the vaccinated to discuss the contrary evidence and no question put to each of them whether with their greater knowledge they now understand the issues better and in the light of that would have refused the vaccination.
Whilst the setting, if the headline picture is of the location for the event, is quite pleasant, and certainly appears to be less ‘clinical’ than other centres used for similar, but quite different and putatively malicious, purposes, the description provided above suggests that this is nothing less than an attempt at re-education. It is an entirely one-sided, one-way effort to persuade individuals to change their views.
Coco is disappointed, but not astonished nor surprised by the BBC but disappointed, and astonished at UCL.
Just for the avoidance of doubt, this is not in itself a discussion of the reasons for and against vaccination. As mentioned above, the issues are complex; the science, such as it is, behind the modern vaccines is young; the language used to code biological systems is only partly and inadequately understood. There are many uncertainties. There are also complex social issues around our responses to threats, especially where there is a mixture of real, only perceived, and illusory threats some of which are propagated by those with special interests which are not fully aligned with the interests of the actual or potential patients.
E&OE
The heavens declare
The James Webb pictures have started to be released.
If you know anything about William Blake you will know of his impressive imagination. When you see something like Gerrard Hoffnung’s the Symphony Orchestra you might wonder whether it was inspired by Blake’s last judgement, turned on its head of course. What is the point of this? Well it was Martin’s The Great Day of His Wrath that set me off. It is but a short ride in a fast machine, if you can bear with it.
Did you see the James Webb Telescope’s pictures that were released a week ago? Perhaps more to the point did you watch through the live broadcast covering the release on the NASA/ESA channel? I shall refrain from any comments on that lest impunity be found in them. The pictures are as they say ‘out of this world’, but unlike Blake’s visions not of things out of this universe. I do wonder how we can say that anything is ‘out of this world’ if it clearly is in this world, but that is a different blog. What was interesting was the process by which the images are made presentable to us with the limitations of our eyes, as the new telescope does not operate in the wavelengths that are visible to us. Whilst the use of the infrared produces a great deal of information for those who can interpret it – things like spectra which reveal the presence of elements in the star light and, by inference, in the stars which produce the light – the process is not unlike that of an artist colouring in his painting. He can see what he wants to paint, and has probably already drawn the cartoons underneath – think of paint by numbers – and now he is applying the oils.
Every brush stroke matters. The precise colour will convey what he wants to convey. This is a process through which the images from the Webb must go. The people at NASA and ESA must decide how to present the images in a way that we can see them. They even have to go down to the level of each pixel – is it the right colour? Perhaps it is a faulty pixel and must be washed out. That reminds me of the little red buoy of which Constable complained: ‘He [Turner] has been here and fired a gun’ (a somewhat different understanding of the incident is set out here). When human art is imposed on a picture the nature and meaning of the picture can change.
Looking recently at the requirements for identity photographs there is a requirement that the image should not have been altered electronically in any way. The workings of modern cameras probably mean that not anything they produce is suitable, but we know what they mean. We all know of the dangers of image manipulation. Turner did it. Constable took fifteen years doing it over his painting (also here) prior to the time that it stood next to the little red buoy. NASA and ESA must do it.
This process does not detract of course from the splendid images that they have produced. Take a look at the Cosmic Cliffs:
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2022/07/Cosmic_Cliffs_in_Carina_NIRCam
Whatever the reality is behind the photograph, the beauty of the universe in which we float in this significantly special sweet spot within the Milky Way it is more than our minds can comprehend. Men have striven long to understand the universe, and the longer we look, the more we see. The more we see, the better we understand how little we understand.
The Psalmist was right to declare: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their voice has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices like a strong man to run its race. Its rising is from one end of heaven, and its circuit to the other end; and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
Let us then, as we look at the sky at night, in the day, or these pictures so beautifully produced for us remember that they declare the glory of the God who created them, and worship him.
Rainbows deserted
It was the report of an attempt to ban the standard rainbow that prompted Coco to think that it had not rained for many years in the desert, but when it did the rainbow was quite extraordinary:
