I have not seen it, why would I want to? When a unique opportunity presents itself, we should not play with trifles. The BBC article refers to a film clip which has apparently been doctored, a term which is strangely used, but regardless:
Goebbels was incensed by the Lambeth Valk; would YouTube or Facebook have banned it in the face of dogged (careful with that word) complaints by the elected government of our Saxon cousins? Should YouTube even now ban it? It is clearly a ‘deep fakes’ video that has been edited, using then readily available technology, to realistically portray something very different. Charles Ridley should have referred to his employer as the British Ministry of Misinformation. The article tries to say that context matters ‘Simple matters of context make those arguments fall away’ but does it really?
Exeter University sacked an employee because he used words similar to the ones that answered my opening question on the grounds that this was a quotation from Rommel. Context matters. Rommel echoed these thoughts in the desert of northern Africa. Exeter University used them in promotional material. Whether the words were true or not did not seem to come into play. Neither did the context matter, the same words said in the heat of battle convey a different urgency than when read in the cool context of potential students’ studies. The irony of the Exeter situation is deepened of course in that Rommel was not actually quoted. What we read are the words of a translator not Rommel’s words. I do not dispute that the translation is accurate merely point out that the words were not Rommel’s. Perhaps the editor of the material would have done better, and been safer, to have produced his own translation and left it unattributed.
Secondly, there are other areas where mockery may be seen to be prejudicial to what would otherwise be good. There is much debate today about the mmGm vaccine. The smallpox vaccine was in for far worse treatement when it was introduced over two hundred years ago. Given what we could do eighty years ago, James Gillray may have marvelled at what he could have produced today in place of what we would now see as an amusing caricature of the vaccine based on cowpox. Would we permit such a video to reside in the pages of YouTube or FaceBook? But we do, except it is to be found on NetFlix where it is called family entertainment or perhaps better horror movies.
We must admit that fake news can be dangerous. It was, with hindsight an inopportune time, but perhaps some of you actually heard the 1938 announcement about the invasion from Mars, or at least know someone who did. What were the consequences of that piece of ‘fake’ information? More seriously, and I doubt that any of us could claim to know an eyewitness to another event but eyewitnessed it was, a group of individuals met Joshua (Joshua 9) about 3200 years ago with fake news, the consequences of which would be felt for many hundreds of years and be very severe for Israel. The Gibeonites were permitted to remain in Canaan. Fake news has been around for a long time, it is not new, just presented in different ways.
Fake news can be both dangerous and amusing. What are the warning words of the slapstick comedy? Don’t try this at home, it has been staged. In the words of another man who must not be quoted: Sie müssen sich hüten.
Would that we had the man of the stature and skill of Gillray to doctor the first mentioned video, perhaps then it would be worth watching.
The Cow Pock. James Gillray
Crushing into a small, crowded room out of a small pox infested London, the Cockneys submitting themselves to the quacks, yielding to the bovine infusion, awaited the inevitable apocalyptic extrusions.
Buxtehude called Bach The Master, and nobody disagreed.
Mahler was a superb master of key and modulation.
Bruckner was a superb organist, so much so that it has been said that when he played the orchestra he made it sound like an organ.
Schubert knew how to modulate but never wrote a successful fugue in his life.
Palestrina was the father of counterpoint. If it could be counterpointed, then Palestrina knew how to do it, even if he had deemed it would have been quite inappropriate to have done so for his audiences.
Paul McCartney is a successful song writer unlike Schubert but he neither knew how to write a fugue nor how to modulate, though he could change key.
It was at a gathering of music students and staff of the first Viennese school that the game gained great popularity. It was very much as all student games are full of challenges, where penalties and rewards were handed out to the amusement and humiliation of those who were willing to complete and also on those who refused the invitation to do so. The game was very simple. It was to right(sic.) a fugue. The fugue would be five minutes long, no more no less.
A fugue as you well know is a five part masterpiece. You have a statement, a counter-statement, a, for want of a better word, middle section (some might say a development but that concept was not familiar to all of the members of the first Viennese School as it was an innovation introduced in its, some would say, dotage), a restatement and a coda. In the game each section was to last only one minute.
There were two versions of the game. In one there would be five competitors, and to each was allocated, by lot, a section of the fugue. Each section would be worked out in turn with the intention of ending at a point where the next player could take over, at the end of one minute the adjudicator would halt the player, and allow thirty seconds for the next to take his place for the following section. In the other version you were permitted to volunteer to step in, or to challenge the allotted player, or you may be invited to do so. If you refuse to take part a penalty would be paid. If you take part and fail to do the job then a penalty must be paid. If you succeed you hand over to the next, and if you take the coda to its conclusion you win. So it was quite easy to be penalised, less easy to avoid a penalty and quite difficult to win. Failure was recognised when you could not using the material already provided to move from where the previous player had left you to where you should be at the end of one minute. If no-one challenged you, then you had to continue the next section. Woe betide you if you could not complete it from where you had left it! The worst of all possible penatlies would be applied.
Each game would therefore take a maximum of seven minutes, allowing for the full thirty second interval between the sections.
Haydn was the first play. He was a master of his art. His fugue started as always with at least the feinting echo of a familiar tune. Mozart did not hesitate to follow with a remarkably exquisite counter-statement. Beethoven intervened with characteristic grumpiness and demonstrated how such exquisite familiarity could become something quite extraordinarily violent. How could anyone follow that? the others thought. Prokofieff, being a master of the classical form, which he hardly ever used, was ready to move Beethoven aside and with ingenious facility turned the violence of the middle section into an almost unrecognisable restatement of the first and second subjects combined. Liszt and Paganini were in awe of the classical beauty of the cascade of notes which came from his fingers. There was no hint of chromaticism in the restatement but all the necessary modulation took place, almost imperceptibly. They both itched to be able to go alongside him as he put the restatement of the fugue together. Richard Strauss however beat them to it. He arrived at the keyboard just as Prokofief played his final note and without a moment’s silence proceeded into the coda, where classical elegance slowly drifted into a dreaminess of the later years of the Viennese School, where the familiar tune with which Haydn had begun was heard amid a swirling pianissimo of chromatics as it rose into the stratosphere finally closing a full four octaves above Haydn’s view of the world, barely heard, but every note clearly sounding.
It was an astonishing performance, and completed seamlessly in five minutes. No penalties were awarded, and all five participants were lauded winners.
Next up, five had agreed to take part: Bach, Buxtehude, Monteverdi, Palestrina and Tallis. They were assigned their positions in accordance with the rules of the game.
Tallis was to start. And start he certainly did. By the time thirty seconds had passed it seemed as if he had introduced six parts to the fugue. The others certainly thought so, as could be seen by the length of dismay showing on their countenances, except for Bach who had heard something that the others had not. Mozart appeared not to be listening, but was busy writing in his note book. Beethoven was writing too, but spent more time crossing things out than writing them.
It was time for Monteverdi to take part, at least he thought to himself, I only have to make a counter statement, so he spent fifty seconds of his time using only four parts to take Tallis’s English ideas and counterstate them in an Italianate style. Only in the final few bars did he hint at the fifth and sixth parts.
Palestrina had to take over. Six parts, English and Italian styles, but it was no trouble for him, he had had already worked out what he would do. So had Mozart, for now Mozart was writing in his notebook far more furiously than before. As he wrote Allegri looked over his shoulder and recognised what he had written. It was every note that both Tallis and Monteverdi had played, and as he watched he read what Palestrina was playing, only it was even more astonishing, Mozart was putting the notes onto the paper even before Palestrina had played them.
As Palestrina came to a close Bach walked up to the keyboard and waited. He asked the adjudicator whether he may be permitted to proceed, or was there another who would wish to challenge him for the place? The adjudicator was now obliged to give the thirty seconds for a challenger. Bach waited patiently. Was he working out what he was going to do? Was that the reason for the delay? the others asked themselves. Mozart in the meanwhile had closed his notebook and also waited. Beethoven scribbled a few notes, almost stood up, but then made it appear as if he were just himself getting comfortable.
There was no challenger. Buxtehude however was getting quite fidgety. Bach spoke, Gentlemen, as we have had such a long break, and no challenger has been forthcoming, if I may be permitted I shall repeat what we have just heard and continue with the restatement. Mozart, as if he needed to do so, opened his notebook. Bach played note for note all that Tallis, Monteverdi and Palestrina had played. Mozart was entranced, he turned the pages but hardly ever looked at his book. Then the restatement began. Allegri stretched out his neck as Mozart took up his pen and began to write, but now Mozart was always a bar behind Bach not ahead of him as he had been with Palestrina. Allegri could hardly contain the question he desperately wanted to ask: How did you know what Palestrina would play?
Bach moved skilfully and switfly. The six parts had been reduced to three. Bach had heard the trick that Tallis had used to give the impression of six parts. Monteverdi slapped his own head in an expression of disgust that he had himself, until then, failed to see it. Then the modulation started. Tallis had not strayed far. Monteverdi was simply chromatic. Palestrina had been quite conservative but exceedingly beautiful.
It was Mahler who spotted Buxtehude leaving the hall. Buxtehude, where are you going? he asked. Buxtehude replied, The Master is playing. He is already four cycles away from the tonic. I am up next, and he will be six away before it is my turn. It is too much. I must go.
Then who will play? Mahler asked. You do it. You can take Bach back home, he replied. And with that Buxtehude departed.
Mahler, having been listening carefully as they had talked, with his confident foreboding returned and mistakenly sat where Buxtehude had been.
Bach reached the end as Buxtehude had predicted so far from home that it seemed impossible to return in the one minute available in the coda. All eyes turned to Buxtehude, only to see Mahler sitting there.
Where is Buxtehude? the adjudicator asked, he is up next.
Mahler not wishing to humiliate his friend apologised for him that Some urgent and unexpected business had necessitated his immediate departure.
Then who will step in, or shall we allow Mr Bach to continue?
Now everyone was quite sure that Bach would be able to complete the coda, but none, but one, really wanted it to happen. There had to be a challenger. And they only had thirty seconds to find one.
Mahler, you are in Buxtehude’s seat, you come up! someone called out.
Mahler hesitated. The young man sitting between Mahler and Schubert spoke to him: Go on, you can do it. Remember what you did in your fourth.
Turning to him, Paul, Mahler replied, you are a young man, the fourth was a symphony, I had an hour in which to do as I pleased. This is a five minute fugue with one minute to go. I shall pay the penalty.
Mahler declined the adjudicator’s offer to allow him to play.
Someone else shouted out, Where is Webern? He can do it.
The adjudicator graciously pointed out that Webern belonged to the second not to the first Viennese School.
Paul turned to Schubert. Franz, what about you? You know how to change key. (Remember, Paul does not know what modulation is). Remember your C minor quintet. You can get us back home.
Paul, Schubert replied, I am a song writer like you. I have never written a successful fugue in my whole life.
Five seconds to go, and dismay was falling upon the house. Bach was going to take all.
Mozart had not closed his book, but was waiting, and in the meantime sketching out what he thought he might do to go home from where Bach had left off, but in reality he longed to hear how Bach would do it. He prepared to transcribe what Bach played.
The young man ran over to the organ keyboard, just in time. Thank you, Mr McCartney, the adjudicator rejoined. Herr Bach you may stand down. Mr McCartney you have no experience of this, you are new in the school. Are you sure you wish to take up the challenge?
I am, Sir, and if I may, as The Master did, can I do a quick recap before I begin the coda?
With the permission of the House, you may do so.
Paul sat at the keyboard, found his place, and began. He played the last ten bars of Bach’s restatement, which had ended on a pedal note almost as far removed from home as you could be. He held onto the pedal whilst he brought the statements and counter-statements into line, making use of the syncopation that Bach had introduced but not even attempting to change key.
Mozart had become intrigued. There is no time left. He can’t do it, he thought to himself as he continued to write in his book. Then thirty seconds into the coda abruptly the pedal changed and he was home. The syncopation continued, the statements and counter-statements continued to dance as they faded away and Paul over the last fifteen seconds closed the stops on the organ one by one until only the pan pipe remained at which point he slowly closed the grill on the sound box and all was in silence.
The hall too was in silence, apart from the sound of Mozart’s pen. He was trying to work out what he had missed when the pedal changed. He was completely convinced he had not heard something, but what was it? How did this young man, who only wrote songs, do it? he asked himself.
Bach and Palestrina were in conference. They knew that questions would be asked, and wanted to be ready.
The Classicists, other than Mozart, were furious. He has broken all of the rules, they said. If you want to change key you have to do it properly. To modulate, you prepare for it and then you move.
Schubert broke in, Why? You can change key just for effect, can’t you?
The Late Romanticists replied: Schubert, yes, you did that all the time, but all you did was sidestep and then return home straightaway. You, Classicists, though, you are wrong. Key is fluid, you can move freely between all of them but it should not be obvious, and certainly not abruptly like this. Music is so much more lush when the key is indeterminate, do you not think? The Classicists obviously did not think so. The Romanticists would have done better not to have asked the question, they might then have had their support.
The discussion in the hall was becoming rather heated, until a little understood group of English and Italian musicians began to sing: Dowland led the group, and as they sang they shifted the keys as abruptly as had been done. There was a call for them to be silent until Josquin (desPrés) nodded his approval of the singing. The group then turned to a song which none, except Paul, in the hall knew: Penny Lane. There it was again, the very trick that he had used in the Coda.
Mozart continued to scratch his head. Beethoven meanwhile began to revise the development section of his Eroica
1 You may disagree with the facts. Coco has no claim on their veracity. 2 You may notice, or thingk you have noticed some spelling mistakes, then repent for
a mistake is only a mistake if it is not deliberate
you may have misunderstood the meaning and the word is correctly spelt,
If you had ever thought that She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore was difficult – consider a puzzle in the style of Carroll –
Chinese is already confusing enough with all of its tones, characters, markers and lack of articles, inflections and tenses, but this poem really shows just how difficult Chinese is especially for the native Mandarin.
A Chinese author, 趙元任, expressed the puzzle in this way:
In a stone den lived a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict. He had resolved to eat ten lions. He often went to the market to look for lions. At ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market. At that same time, Shi Shi arrived at the market. He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die. He took the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den. The stone den was damp, so he asked his servants to dry it. After the stone den had been wiped dry, he tried to eat those ten lions. When he ate, he realized that the ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.
石狮
Coco thought you might like to hear Google read the words for you in languages that either still use Hanzi (漢字) or have only recently adopted other forms of writing.
MandarinJapaneseVietnamese
Empty block
Coco cannot explain it, but a useful discussion of the purpose of the puzzle may still be found here: pinyin.info
☺
With apologies in advance for errors of syntax, orthography and grammar which may be found embedded in this document whether arising from oversight, incorrect application of language packs or generally any other misadventure; and in general for any offence given inadvertently or inappropriately or both taken or not taken by those whose sensibilities, whether grammatical, orthographical, moral or simply personable, have been offended whether, not or if you have not incorrectly misunderstood the content, intent, meaning and purpose of this article, and to those whose copyrights may have been inadvertently or wantonly infringed, but never as to cause damage the copy holder’s rights, and, if you have managed to read this far, for any errors or omissions whether wilful, unintended, innocent or deliberate in the content of this polemic, and with thanks to you who have made it thus far for your patience.
Did you read the recent article about the black light?
You have probably heard about them before, perhaps in the context of a disco or the sun tan parlour. Black lights were given that name because they produced ultra violet light which of course we cannot see, but which when absorbed by other materials produces photosynthesis, suntan, strange glows, which were considered to add atmosphere, or ambience, to the venue, otherwise known as fluorescence, sunburn and cancers. But the article was not talking about that sort of black light, but something quite different. It was felt for a long time that the search for the black light was rather akin to the long running race to breed the first truly black tulip. Many very dark tulips have been bred of course, but rather like the familiar black lights used in discos they are actually simply a very dark shade of violet¹.
The actual engineering of a black light showed itself as a possibility with the advent of the wave particle duality coupled with its quantum mechanical aspects. In theory a black light light could be produced simply by reference to wave mechanics, and an appropriate use of laser technology. Interference is a well understood phenomena, even if it is generally unwelcome when used in actual communications (aka TV signals), and the existence of nodes, essentially a point in space in which the wave dynamic amplitude is reduced to nil. In sonic applications, in particular sound damping applications in industry, interference is often used to silence what would otherwise be an intolerable sound. This works well where the sounds are regular and predictable. Often however the complexity of the wave formations in the real world, and we are thinking now of the electromagnetic waves which we experience as light, make the use only of wave mechanics an impossible mountain to climb, and even if it were possible to climb it the computing power required to control the laser output is simply beyond anything that we have yet been able to build. Quantum computing may overcome this of course, but that is still in its infancy.
The alternative approach which relies upon the quantum effects of the wave particle duality however help us to overcome the computing difficulty. What we are doing, in layman’s terms, is moving the computing power required out of the machines that we build and into the real world and utilising its own quantum effects. This is analogous to the industrial sound damping problem where a digital solution fails, but an analogue solution prevails. You will all be aware of the difficulties of quantum mechanics in the real world; this is the Schrödinger’s cat problem. The Schrödinger’s cat problem however relates to a single quantum event. In the real world we are dealing with billiards of events and across these we can predict with certainty the outcome of the events taken as a whole. This has been understood clearly throughout most of the twentieth century, but the problem then became how can this understanding be applied to the black light problem? The breakthrough came in the early years of the twenty first century. One year before beforehand the year 2000 problem hit many of our computers. Of course adequate preparations had been, by all who knew that moving from dates with years commencing 19 to years commencing 20 would be an issue, made and most of the popular operating systems had addressed the matter many years earlier. A few machines were however ill-prepared for the change.
The specific issues that these machines faced is not the subject of the article, of course. They were not machines that had any public impact, but were used in many academic laboratories. The anomalous results produced in that final year of the twentieth century led to an investigation into the nullification (actual nihilifaction, but that is quite a difficult technical term to describe in this bus passengers’ summary of the scientific article. I also read of kenotic interactions in the main article, a term which inspired more dread even than the first) of photons in free space, and it was discovered that this was a process that had taken place quite naturally and we had not even noticed. Quantum interactions took place in parallel with the interference observed in wave mechanics to produce nodes in the space-time continuum which were free of, in simple terms, light. In other words those nodes were in complete darkness.
This discovery led the academic teams to consider three general areas:
whether the size of these nodes could be controlled
whether it was possible to generate these nodes – in whatever way
whether it was possible to stabilise the nodes in the fourth (time) dimension
This is a huge simplification of course, and others may take exception to the way I have presented the issues in these three areas. It will do for me today, if you can think of a better simplification, and I have no doubt that text books will soon be published which provide a different but nevertheless isodocic, or at least not incongruent, with mine, presentation; please, let me know.
The first step was to demonstrate the possibility of supporting negative energy fields. Other so-called forbidden energy states, and in particular transitions to and from them, are well understood, in the matter for example of phosphorescence. The ideas underlying this concept had been present in quantum theory since at least the days of Paul Dirac’s quantum sea proposal: Don’t worry that is the only equation you will see in this article. It is perfectly well explained in other publications, but in any event it has been superseded by a better understanding of these things. The results of the new work were presented at the Icarus Project. At that stage the end game of the studies was kept well under wraps.
Further work however was required to answer the questions that had been posed. Progress was slow, but the theory answered yes to each of these matters. Having shown in theory that it may be possible to control the nodes, various aspects of the theory were put to the test, primarily through post graduate doctoral theses, as these were relatively cheap, and being quite narrow in their scope would not give away the big idea too soon. Each thesis had to design, run and prove experiments to test some aspect of the theory. After several years the original team had dispersed across several universities, but continued to work together on this project utilising the time of whatever PhD student was willing to work on it. As the individual parts of the theory were proven, where they could, testing began on multiple aspects. All of the abstracts to these doctoral theses are available online in the usual places, if you have access to the appropriate libraries. For the full script you must approach the authors or visit the university libraries.
Eventually it was possible to involve the engineers, who were to build prototype engines which were intended to control the size, shape, intensity and stability of the nodes. One engineer of German descent hit upon a relatively simple model engine, which his colleagues wished to name Awesome, but he insisted in honour of his much loved Oma that it be named Aweful which was a play on her name and his family name, though it required significant power input. At a power input of 40kw it was able to produce a stable intensity of -300lumens/s/cu.m in a volume of 2.5l for a period just under 10ms. The earlier attempts were able to produce nodes for durations measured only in nanometres and µs.
This was a great achievement, in scientific and academic terms, but a wholly impracticable solution for the real world. Further developments were made. Input to output ratios were lowered by a factor of ten thousand, but stability proved to be a greater problem. Advances in other forms of lighting engineering however were adopted which produced significant improvements. The original machine design was retained, but the components were upgraded to use the newer materials which had become available. There was then an unexpected shift in both the I/O ratio and the stability of the luminous intensity. For the academics, this required further work on the theory, as they were reluctant to proceed without a proper understanding of what had changed. The engineers however were delighted with the result and pressed ahead building into their designs and machines control mechanisms to prevent overloading of the output. At the same time they looked at the possibility of controlling the output through processes similar to the optical amplification and stimulation techniques which were used for lasers. In their view this would provide a much safer source than the original idea of a random source.
The engineers raced ahead with the material they had, though not understanding why things were working until the academic team had caught up with them and were able to confirm an understanding of the results that had been seen in the real world.
They were then ready to go public on the matter. By now the engineers had been able to produce a machine that was little larger than a lectern and would run, though admittedly not for very long, on batteries. They packed the batteries into the lectern stand, controls on the face of the reading desks and the source into a rather bulbous expansion box at the top of the reading desk. The academics sought the lecturer who had given the negative enegry field presentation at the Icarus Project and arranged for the first public presentation to take place from a viewing platform high above the city.
The quality of the picture is not good, but the engineering did not fail. The source was able to produce a black out flux at approximately -10000 lumens/s/cu. m for thirty seconds. This black out flux was able to control the whole of the pyramidical space delineated in the image, a volume of roughly 1 cu. m. You will note from the shadows that the source was pointing directly at the sun, thus demonstrating the efficacy of the flux. An appendix to the paper provides technical details explaining the marginal effects of tinting in the windows.
The academic team are now looking for industrial partners to develop the Aweful engine further. There are many commercial, industrial and military uses for Aweful, providing it can be scaled up.
It is seen as an effective and non-lethal weapon. A sufficiently powerful source would be able to provide a black out flux across a wide area, such as a battlefield, ensuring that no fighting could take place. Infrared and night vision goggles would be rendered ineffective. Radio and wireless communication of all sorts would also be impossible as the flux operates on all electromagnetic waves through their quantum interactions. With further work it is thought that frequency specific holes could be left in the black out to allow defenders to communicate. Laser technology would allow the source to be placed high in the sky, perhaps even ultimately on a satellite, and the black out applied with precision and considerable accuracy. Presently the technical challenges of providing a sufficiently powerful energy supply would militate against the use of a satellite.
It is also seen as a security device. A black out device could be used in any place which requires high security, even in homes, to protect against intruders. But perhaps the most likely use will be in the field of entertainment. There are many places which would benefit from such a device. A lower powered device, which would be able say to continuously provide -5000 l/s/cu. m, would be sufficient to provide a sufficiently dark ‘room’ even in the open air as it operates by bathing the area in negative luminous energy, the flux. In a completely blacked out zone, any light from sources in, or shining into, the zone is nihilifactored (neutralised to you and me) by the kenotic quantum interactions with the flux from the source, but if the black out is not complete then it is rather like being in a room with very low level lighting. This would provide some very interesting possibilities if the frequency specific holes problem can be solved.
Thus there are many exciting commercial prospects and already the engineers have prepared to lodge a planning application to the Sydney City council for the provision of a day time open air discothèque on Bondi beach, concluding that the black out lighting would have not only value as an entertainment venue, but also have collateral health benefits, in that day time exercise could be obtained in the open air without the issues of overdoses of UV. It would also reduce the number of shark attacks as the day time occupants of the beach would be likely more attracted to the disco than to the sea.
Shark attack
In the assured prospect that the appropriate planning consents will be provided, the dear lady after whom the Aweful flux engine has been named, Frau Awril Fuhldü, has agreed to be present for the opening of the venue, and she has said, to be the first to dance the floor.
1 The claim may be disputed by some. The date of that article, unlike this, is undisclosed. 2 Apologies to anyone whose copyrights Coco may have inadvertently infringed.
Coco thought he would offer two different perspectives on the day which we call Good Friday. Please grant him an indulgence for this first one. The second perspective has been inspired by events at the focus of the Sinospheric regions. He shall come to that shortly.
They knew it was not just to be a normal day, but a mood of gloom had spread over the hosts of angels which was, if it could be, even deeper than the gloom which rested upon the earth1. They thought it would never end. Gabriel was in his office, he really did not know what to do. They saw what was going on, but did not understand it at all. They knew it was very serious, they had heard someone say in Egypt2: the gods must be very angry about something. He looked at the throne. He could not approach it, God was clearly angry, very angry. Gabriel had never seen this sort of anger before.
Just a twenty four hours earlier they had had instructions to prepare and twelve thousand angels had spent several hours polishing their armour and sharpening their swords, for it was not known whether they would be called upon or not3. But the call to arms did not come. What had happened? One of their number had been sent to a garden, but had not returned with a message to send more4. They were in limbo (not that there is a limbo of course, but you understand Coco’s meaning).
They knew of course what was happening on earth. They had seen it before the thick darkness fell. Three men had been taken to a hill to be crucified, and one of them was their lord, the other two were thieves. Why had they not been sent to rescue him? They had not been short in their preparation. But now the darkness had fallen, they could not see through it, this was the kind of darkness that they had never seen before. Even though they knew that when light shines in the darkness the darkness cannot overcome it5, this darkness seemed to be even darker than that and had all the appearance of being able to prevail.
Just when Gabriel thought it could not get any worse, a large shipment of cloth arrived. Gabriel was not unused to this, red, blue and gold cloth6 were not uncommon as they were used for the priestly garments, but this was different. It was fine white linen. Gabriel could not think of a use for it (He should have remembered what one of his co-workers had done when Joshua appeared before the throne7). Where was he going to store it? He had no idea, and even if he did none of the others had at that time any motivation to be able to do anything. Then a note came giving instructions on what to do with it. They were to make garments out of it, and quickly as one set would be needed within the next hour.
Gabriel was almost at his wits end. How could he do this? No-one had a heart to work, and he had no pattern to use, and even if he did, he did not know what size would be required. Just as he was pondering this, there was a knock on his office door and an angel burst in.
“Gabriel,” he said, “something big is happening. There is an enormous commotion over by the gate, and we cannot control it. The gates, you know they are normally quite sedentary, but they are moving, not only that they are lifting up the doors. Another group of angels is singing8 to them: ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates! Be lifted up you everlasting doors.’ What was going on? Can you tell us?“
Then Gabriel remembered the words of David in Psalm 249, and asked: “Has the darkness gone?” The message quickly went out to the others, they all looked. “Yes!” they shouted back, “The darkness on the earth has gone.” “Then we had better get ready quickly, the King is coming back. David spoke about it9: ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates, be lifted up you everlasting doors and the King of Glory shall come in.’ Quickly, everyone go to your posts! We must welcome our lord, he is coming home.” Then another angel shouted out: “I heard him cry out: ‘It is finished‘10, just before the darkness went.”
Gabriel went to the gates, they had now stopped moving. They were ready, they had lifted up their heads and lifted up the doors, and were waiting.
Then a man appeared, it was one of the two thieves who had been crucified that day. ‘What is he doing here?11‘ they thought. He was filthy, he looked as if he had been running around the street all night and was very much the worse for wear, he needed a good wash and new clothes. They were aghast. An angel stepped forward to bar the way12 of the man. The thief gave him a slip of paper, which was passed to another angel to give to Gabriel. It simply said, ‘Put clean clothes of fine linen on him.’ Gabriel then remembered what the prophet Zechariah had said13 and understood why the fine white linen had arrived. In the earlier commotion he had forgotten about the linen and the instructions, and was about to be embarrassed by the lack of a fine linen tunic, when another angel stepped forward and placed one in his hands. One of the deputies had seen the instructions which Gabriel had left behind and several of the angels had already started work. This was the first item, which had only been sent over as a sample for approval. Gabriel went over to the thief and placed the fine linen tunic on him, at which point the old clothes and all of the filth was washed away.
A second man then walked through the gates, he too was bruised, battered, covered in his own blood, with fresh wounds in his hands, feet and side14, but he was glorious in appearance15. The angels fell on their faces and worshipped him as he walked over to the former thief, and said to him: “I told you, today! Come, let me show you to your room and then let us go to the Father16, 17 & 18. Then I must leave you, for I have more work to do.“
Coco Spring 2019
Of course this is an entirely fantastic (lit.) story, but Coco hopes to have given you enough references to see it is not entirely implausible. Perhaps the biggest error here is that Coco has attributed human limitations to the angels, but as Coco does not know any angels yet, he does not know what the limitations are that should be placed upon them, though we can see some of them in God’s word, so he hopes you will be indulgent towards him.
The real point here is that two men were crucified with Jesus19. One of them said to the other one: “We deserve to be here, but [Jesus] does not.” Then he bowed the knee (not that when you are nailed to a cross you can do that literally, but he did so in the way that matters – he submitted his heart and mind to the Lord) to Jesus and said: “Lord, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus replied: “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”
The other thief continued to blaspheme and was lost.
There are only two possible endings, a good one and a bad one. One thief knew that Jesus was the Christ, but did nothing with it. The other thief appeared to know but a little about Jesus, but he took what he did know and went to Jesus with it. Take what you know about him to him, and ask him to show you what you do not know, and get to know him as Saviour and Lord.
Please bear with me. There have been many cæsars who have not cared for the king of kings. It was on a day like today that the representative of one such cæsar asked a man: ‘Are you a king then?‘ Only to be told that though he was a king, his kingdom is not of this world. And so, we may understand, that if his kingdom is not of this world then it is no threat to the kings of this world. Indeed, where his subjects live in another kingdom they bring great benefit to that kingdom. ‘What am I to do with these Christians?‘ Pliny wrote to Cæsar20, ‘They don’t do any harm, indeed they do good to everyone in the city‘ (I paraphrase Pliny). Now you must remember that these cæsars were originally a bit like the chairman of the senate, it took a little while for them to attain a godlike status in the empire.
But the kings of the earth cannot bear to think that they have a rival. The meetings of the subjects of the king of kings are treated as politically subversive, seeking to overturn the established social order, without actually considering that the king himself taught that his subjects are like the yeast which fills the whole of the dough and makes the bread bread21. In practice they were to be subject to the earthly kings22 & 23 and indeed to pray for them24.
So, these cæsars required men to come into line. They demanded from men what was not fitting or proper either for men to give to them or for men to receive. They wanted to be worshipped as gods themselves. All you had to do was say ‘Cæsar is lord‘ and burn a little incense. This has continued to this day. It is still within living memory that one king gave up his claim to divinity, but this view that cæsars have of themselves seems to have made a resurgence in other places.
This resurgence however has made for some interesting apposition. If anyone was going to report on this it had to be an Australian source25, who would get there first after the original post.
In the photograph we see a picture of a cross on a hill flanked by the photographs of two gentlemen the heads and shoulders of whom are placed, perhaps auspiciously, at the same level as the head and shoulders of the one who would have been on the empty cross. It is strangely reminiscent of another occasion when an empty cross (I presume that because Jesus was already dead, he was taken down before the two thieves were taken down) was flanked by two other men: ὅπου αὐτὸν ἐσταύρωσαν, καὶ μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἄλλους δύο ἐντεῦθεν καὶ ἐντεῦθεν, μέσον δὲ τὸν Ἰησοῦν26. For those who like Coco cannot read Greek this is broadly understood to read: In that place him they crucified, and with him others two side and side, in the middle Jesus. We read that both of these two men mocked and blasphemed Jesus, as did most of the crowd who were gathered there to watch27, but as time went on28 one of the thieves saw something that the other did not. As the first railed at Jesus, saying: “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” the second replied to him: “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same condemnation? We are getting what we deserve for what we did, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then this second one turned to Jesus and said to him: “Lord, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.”
One of the two men had suggested that revolution does not come in quietly like a well-beloved, courteous and welcome friend, but it is troublesome and harsh. The other seems to show the same sort of concern that the recipient of Pliny’s letter showed. He did not want any subversion of the current social order, and people who thought in a different way were perceived to be such a threat. It is strange that the cæsars of this world are all pretty much the same. Can they not learn from history? The history of the Roman Cæsars shows that they cannot overcome the kingdom which is not of this world. Eventually one of their number joined that kingdom and the persecutions ceased. Coco shall make no further comment here on the consequences of that capitulation.
Let us come back to the present, do you remember the promise Jesus made to the second thief? ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ he said.
Only one of the men flanking the cross of Jesus joined the kingdom which is not of this world. Only one of the thieves entered Paradise. Only one of the men flanking the empty cross in our picture is alive today. Only one of them can join the kingdom. Only one can enter Paradise. Will he do so?
‘Therefore I urge first of all that that supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks be made…for kings and all who are in authority‘29… Paul, a servant of the king in his first letter to Timothy.
Coco heard the other day about Bill and Ben, not the famous flower pot men, but a pair of mountaineering brothers, indeed twins, and their little sister. They were well known by all for their many adventures. They did everything together, and would only ever climb if they were both in the team.
Although they were twins, the two brothers were very different. Bill was tall and lanky, a head and shoulders above anyone else. Ben was quite short and stocky. Whilst Bill was able to reach out to the hold that no one else could reach, Ben could scramble across anything. So by working together no mountain side was outside their capabilities; it was really little wonder that the club were always very glad when they were able to join the expeditions. Faith, who being ten years younger was still but a child always came along to help. She was not allowed to climb, but she did not care about that. She was quite happy to sit in the Gelato parlour or play in the park whilst they battled with the mountain. Even better, she thought, that Bill and Ben had to pay for her.
It was much like that at home too. Contrary to expectations, Bill was no tenor, but he had a voice so deep that even Rachmaninoff had not written anything that could do justice to his lowest notes which we were quite as strong as your or my middle C. On the other hand Ben had an exquisite tenor range which really only began beyond where any baritone would be embarrassed to go. When the family sang together at home, Ben led them from above, Bill supported them from below and mother, father and little Faith just filled in the middle as best they could.
Now whilst Bill and Ben loved their little sister, Faith was always up to tricks with them. She teased them mercilessly. There was an occasion when, knowing how much common sense they lacked she took advantage of it. They were a little younger then, shall we say immature? at the time. Whenever they went away, their mother made sure that Bill and Ben each had their names stitched into every item of clothing that they had. Was this for their benefit or to let others know whose cllothes they were in mother’s mind? Well little Faith was quite sure that the boys were so lacking in common sense it was to make sure that they wore their own clothes not each others. So one night whilst on camp she crept into their room, stole away all of their clothes and took them to her own room where she proceeded to carefully unpick every label and stitch them back into the other brother’s clothes.
She did not believe it would work as well as it did. The following morning, she was up early for breakfast much to the astonishment of her parents who had learned that she really did prefer to lie in the hot bath than to eat, but despite the lack of sleep, she did not want to miss anything that might happen that morning. Suddenly the breakfast hall fell into fits. Bill had arrived in what could have been a pair of shorts, followed by Ben who appeared to be wearing the bellows of an accordian on his legs when you caught a glimpse of them peeping out from underneath a rather long and tight Jersey jumper. There were hoots and whistles from their fellow campers which did not seem to perturb them until they were taken across to a mirror. How embarrassed they became, especially when Faith asked: Did you not realise the labels were the wrong way round? She had caught them once again.
She never ceased to plan little tricks like this, and Bill and Ben had to be constantly on the watch for the next one, but they would never be without her. As she grew the tricks became more elaborate, she waited to catch them out when they were not expecting it. Well, she was now a young woman and she had planned this one for years. She knew that she would only be able to do it once, and she also had to get it exactly right otherwise the consequences might be, as she put it, somewhat unfortunate. So she waited for the right opportunity. It would come she said to herself.
But she needed to practice somewhere first to ensure she would get it right, so the previous summer she had gone to Iceland on her own. It was most unusual. She never went out on the mountains to climb with her brothers so they wondered whether she had met someone but didn’t want any one to know at the time. She explored the interior, not the usual tourist spots, which was of great concern to them as Iceland is geologically active, and whilst she was there there were reports of some irregular geologic activity. But all was well, and after she returned try as they would they could not get anything out of her. They had to think that whatever it was, it had all come to nothing.
This year the boys had planned to go with their club up the face of a little climbed mountain in Switzerland. There was only one route and so she would know exactly where they all were and when they would come back down. They walked together down the main street in the pretty little Swiss village. She was rather out of place in her prim white blouse, dark skirt, white gloves and delicate hat, when everyone else either wore mountaineering kit or Lederhosen. The boys left her as she made her way into a very neat Italian coffee shop.
A few hours or so later, ‘This is it’, she thought to herself as she supped her Gelato and espresso in the quaint little parlour at the foot of the mountain. She was now a young woman and had discovered the joys of Gelato and coffee. Everything, she mused, was ready. One of the awful things about her tricks on them was that she was often not around to see the expressions on their faces when it was pulled off. She had to listen afterwards to their own remonstrations with her, as they tried to justify their own ridiculous behaviour, as in the switched clothes episode, or themselves, and listen also to the reports and corrections of other people who were there and saw it all. Oh! how she giggled as she remembered how often she had caught them out, but felt a little sad that she was never there to see it. ‘Ah, well, at least the other club members will give me an accurate report’, she said to herself.
On the mountain, they were all well underway. They were about ten thousand feet above the coffee shop where their little sister sat eating her gelato and Bill, who, by reason of his height, had just enabled them to move across a particularly tricky part far more quickly than anyone had expected, turned his mind to her as Ben was away moving across the scree like a gazelle leading a long rope behind him that the others could use to cross more easily. It was perhaps not, or maybe it was the right time to turn your minds to your little sister. He crossed the scree on Ben’s rope. To his astonishment, Ben said to him: ‘Do you remember that morning at camp, Bill? Do you think there is something wrong with Sissy? She has left us alone ever since she came back from Iceland’. Just then there was a crack, not an unfamiliar sound to mountaineers. Rocks move, and when they do so they crack. But this crack was different. It was loud. It was impossibly loud.
Later, when she heard about it, the only thing the other members of the club could remember after that were the words screaming from the lips of Ben, as only a tenor could scream them, simultaneously with the deepest roar from Bill that any auditor had ever heard, which were:
Hmmm…this may not turn out quite as Coco had hoped..ah well here goes.
In the old days people used to write letters. Some of you will not even know what a letter could be different than these characters that we use to spell out words, but these different kind of letters were rather like posts in in this forum except that they had been written by hand using a pen to scribe letters out on a piece of paper. Such letters were greeted with great enthusiasm when they arrived in your house. They may have come from another part of the world and it may have taken several weeks to reach you (in those days in the UK you could send a letter in the morning and by the afternoon it would have reached and have been read by its recipient, but the postal service in the rest of the world was not quite as efficient as that. Since those days the UK has worked very hard to reach the same standard as the rest of the world). Often these letters would begin with an interesting story or description of an unusual event before going on to the real subject matter. Interesting things might be like, well, so much seems to revolve around those endless pictures of what is on the plate in front of you today, but it might be that you would be interested to know what I, the writer, of the letter had for breakfast this morning. Well, of course you are! Most of the time it was quite different, like the lady from sub-Saharan African who announced in her opening words that they had had a new toilet installed at their house. The choice of the preposition at is deliberate and accurate.
In fact one of these letter writers did so think that you would be interested in breakfast. Coco knew some people who worked in Brazil, well, actually in the Amazon basin, just a little way up the river…sorry it is easier to say down from the source a few hundred miles or so. Some would say the area was uncivilised, but there was a civil society among the tribes, just not the sort of civil society that you or Coco would expect, though Coco supposes today they are as busy posting into the forum of social media as anyone else. We would have called them hunter gatherers. Well one day, actually it was probably in a quarterly letter so far they were from any kind of even an irregular postal system, we were introduced to a typical breakfast, which could only be consumed of course after you had actually gone out of the village circle to gather it. French snails are interesting, aren’t they? Prawns, those cockroaches of the sea, are consumed in their millions. Aardvarks are known by another name which betrays their voracious diet. Well, here it is a five star Amazonian breakfast…
No, the grapes are not an illustration of that breakfast. Coco thought better of it. Coco changed his mind. Coco repented. It might put you off anything else that you might eat or want to eat today, or even for the rest of the week as ‘it’, the breakfast, preys upon your mind.
So let him turn to the point of this tale. The photograph is not there to show you what Coco had for supper, or anyone else had for breakfast, though it might actually do that, but to point out a fault in the grapes. There is probably also a fault in the image of the grapes, but Coco takes responsibility for that.
Should Coco take them back to the store which sold them and complain about their lack of quality control? Is this a defective grape, or has it been genetically modified? Or is it a twin? That is incorrect, are they Siamese twin grapes? Is it edible? Does the mechanism which controls twinning in grapes also produce other intensely kenotic or phthartic metabolic agents which would be toxic if ingested? These and many other similar thoughts and questions swim around as it were in a delirium.
Answers to these and many other questions may be sent on a postcard please to all of your friends. And if every one of those friends send this message, and any further messages, on on the day of receipt within one month the postal services would have to deliver approximately π billiard tonnes of postcards on the next day, if any postcards were available to be had.
If you don’t want the name, give the money back – isn’t it as easy as that?
Charities are minded to understand that if the source of the funds offered to them is questionable, they should refuse the offer.
And, as a tax professional, Coco would welcome the opportunity to refresh his estate duty knowledge as it is tracked how the Codrington Library building and contents would have passed through all of the generations of his family, and calculate the amount of estate duty due on each death, and he would also assume IHT, would now become payable – a very welcome windfall to be sure.
AT and Coco worked together for twenty years or so apart from a brief period when he escaped to a competitor firm, so you might think that I have a few tall tales to tell about him. Well, perhaps sadly I must say no. AT is so well behaved that it would be impossible to find even a single strange hair on his shoulder. That said however, when he was the custodian of some very fine white cats, you did have to be careful if you happened to use his chair in the office.
So then, just so that you know where I am going there are three things that Coco has to say about AT: His coding His language His demeanour.
Coding
Like all young men who walked into AA’s workplace in Surrey’s fields AT was required to do many things. He proved adept at writing code. Unlike some, he would fill his code with comments explaining why he had done something, what was expected to happen and what the necessary preconditions for success were.
We all had to admit that his code worked. It would never fail, indeed it could never fail, providing you had precisely the correct starting conditions and sometimes, but not always, precisely the correct data. If there were anything unexpected in the data…..
…. you then discover that you had been relying on whether or not AT had set a particular flag in a random piece of code, which may or may not have run. Or perhaps he had defined a variable, which is so beloved of programmers, which happened to have the same name as the range that you were addressing, or perhaps he had moved your favourite cursor from the A sheet to another random location. If it were a good day you might have seen an error message which suggested what you needed to look for, on a bad day you watch the edifice come down into a mysterious heap of electronic dust.
You could say that AT’s coding and his approach to coding taught us a great deal. It also prompted the system team to provide us with additional tools to clean up after ourselves.
But AT had imagination, which he used to good effect. He always had in interest in getting different things to talk together, so we had internet data collection tools in the days when the internet was little more than an expensive toy, which were crafter lovingly by the hand of the Grand Master of ‘I can write this code, and indeed any code, to do precisely one job’. Later when we had to make it do two, he became the knight in shining armour to show us how it could have been written to do that, but as it was not, it would now have to be re-written from scratch using a completely different set of tools. As we have seem recently with the upgrade from v5 to v6 of Data Import. V5 and v6 are a world apart, but without his vision for it and his determination to make v5 work, v6 would never have seen the light of day.
Language
Now the use of the English language by AT would put all but the most erudite of scholars to shame; that cannot have escaped your attention. How taught us how to put words together mostly in a meaningful way, so if you wish to attribute blame to anyone for the brevity of this eulogy, then it should not be to the orator, he is merely repeating, please do not misunderstand that, what he has been taught. We used to say of AT tat if something could be said in many different ways, then it is no waste of breath to use them all. At least if you take that approach you have more chance that you will get your message across, and you will have been understood at least in part, in not in the whole.
There was no sense with AT that he wasted his words. Words convey meaning; words are there to be used not to sit idly in a dictionary, so make use of them, and use as many of them as you possibly can as often as you can.
Now for some of us, that is an effort and requires generous preparation, hence an enormous bundle of paper is required to prepare for even the briefest of presentations, but the remarkable thing about AT was that he could do this without taking a breath, and as if he had been rehearsing what he was going to say for weeks even when he had just made it up on the spot.
And finally we turn to his
Demeanour
There is a certain humility about AT. Some people like to tell you about everything they are doing, how well it is going and what other people think about it. Some people can be full of themselves – Coco knows too well how much he suffers from this – but AT presented himself in a modest way. He is confident in his abilities, and he certainly has them. He is superbly competent! But he is more than competent. Perhaps Coco should say that if anything else is going on underneath it should be left for him to say not for others. He never speaks with a ‘look at me and what I have done’ attitude, but rather with a sense that conveys the idea that nothing at all would have been achieved if you had not also been involved. He would belittle himself in order to lift others up.
Finally, one cannot leave without remembering that it was chocolate and coffee that ensured that the wheels of his vivid, exact, far-sighted and innovative imagination ran with the utmost efficiency. In such a world, there were never any failures, only opportunities to learn, to improve and to overcome all the obstacles and hurdles that human generated data could, not to mention the detritus of only partially removed half-baked non-data, present to the unsuspecting coder.
The recent events, yes in France but also elsewhere, reminded Coco of something. Before he was crucified that the Lord, Jesus Christ, spoke to his disciples and having told them that he was leaving them he went on to say: I have told you this beforehand so that you are not discouraged. They will throw you out of their synagogues, yes, and the hour will come that everyone who kills you will think that by doing so he brings a service to God. And this they will do, because they know neither the Father nor me. But I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I told you. I did not tell you this at the beginning because I was with you [but now I am leaving you]. (ref 1)
There was one man, among many, who believed these words and he became a persecutor of the followers of Jesus Christ. This man thought that he could serve God and if anyone qualified for heaven then he did. He described himself as circumcised on the 8th day, an Israeli of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, concerning the law a Pharisee [not our modern understanding of that word, but a genuinely good man, who sought to do what was right – good words can be corrupted over time. He wanted to do what was right. He wanted to keep the law. He wanted to please God.], concerning zeal a persecutor of the called [the followers of Jesus], concerning righteousness before the law, blameless. (ref 2)
His name was Saul. Some people think they have something in terms of religion to boast about. Saul had far more. He pursued his own righteousness – or perhaps better expressed in terms that are understood more easily today, he sought to please God by what he did. There are people now in this world who think in the same way. They are pursuing their own righteousness by the works that they do, and they think killing is one of those good things to do.
But do you know? Saul changed. The Lord Jesus met him. Luke’s record in Acts chapter 9 opens with these fearful words – I love Luther’s words: Saulus aber schnaubte noch mit Drohen und Morden. It is so much more emphatic than the English: Then Saul, still breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, … You may read the rest yourself. (ref 3)
Years later he reflected upon his earlier attitude and writing then under the name of Paul, he expressed himself in a very different way in his letter to the Roman believers: I encourage you brethren in the light of the mercy of God to bring your bodies as living sacrifices, holy, well-pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service. (ref 4)
He was wrong once and he knew it. In this short encouragement he uses the same word that the Lord used when speaking with his disciples. It is service (λατρειαν – if you want to know). Was he thinking about those words which Jesus spoke? Well we have more than one reason to think that he had heard Jesus preaching. It is also not unreasonable to think that Saul may even have spoken with the Lord. It is as if he is saying here: Look, I was wrong. It is not service to offer their dead bodies to God, but to offer yourselves as living sacrifices – therefore, he says, that is your reasonable, that is your logical service. That is what you must conclude having read so much in this letter to the Romans about the mercy of God, you must now reach this conclusion that this is your reasonable service to offer your bodies as living sacrifices.
Is this not wonderful? There are people around today who think in just the same way that Saul once did. They think that they offer service to God by killing the servants of Jesus Christ, but the wonderful thing is that God no longer wants dead sacrifices – sheep, goats and the like – he wants you a living sacrifice to live your life out to the glory of his name by the power of the Holy Spirit in name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now that sacrifice is something worth living for. And if a man like Saul can see it, so can they and so can you.
Shark attack
