We have 37 guests and no members online
There are no articles in this category. If subcategories display on this page, they may have articles.
Have you read this???
- this content changes with each opening of a menu item
September 2014
Off the plane we are welcomed by a warm Autumn day in the south of France. Fragrant and green.
Lyon is the first step on our short stay in Southern France, touring in leisurely hops by car, down the Rhône valley from Lyon to Avignon and then to Aix and Nice with various stops along the way.
Months earlier I’d booked a car from Lyon Airport to be dropped off at Nice Airport. I’d tried booking town centre to town centre but there was nothing available.
This meant I got to drive an unfamiliar car, with no gearstick or ignition switch and various other novel idiosyncrasies, ‘straight off the plane’. But I managed to work it out and we got to see the countryside between the airport and the city and quite a bit of the outer suburbs at our own pace. Fortunately we had ‘Madam Butterfly’ with us (more of her later) else we could never have reached our hotel through the maze of one way streets.
Read more ...
Recently I've been re-reading Point Counter Point by Aldus Huxley.
Many commentators call it his masterpiece. Modern Library lists it as number 44 on its list of the 100 best 20th century novels in English yet there it ranks well below Brave New World (that's 5th), also by Aldus Huxley.
The book was an experimental novel and consists of a series of conversations, some internal to a character, the character's thoughts, in which a proposition is put and then a counterargument is presented, reflecting a musical contrapuntal motif.
Among his opposed characters are nihilists, communists, rationalists, social butterflies, transcendentalists, and the leader of the British Freemen (fascists cum Brexiteers, as we would now describe them).
Taken as a whole, it's an extended debate on 'the meaning of life'. And at one point, in my young-adult life, Point Counter Point was very influential.
 Point Counter Point | [eBook for Kindle] | 701 kB |
| Point Counter Point | [ePub for e-readers] | 448 kB |
Most informed commentators agree that Australia needs a better mix of energy sources. We are too dependent on fossil fuel. This results in a very high rate of carbon dioxide production per capita; and this has international and domestic implications in the context of concerns about climate change.
Read more ...