Peter, welcome. You aren't expecting to meet Mark Twain and the gang up there, are you?

I believe you're thinking of Ambrose Bierce.

Oh, yes, that's right. I get my C19 American pseudo-sages mixed up sometimes.

Well, no. As far as I can tell, RAH was making a funny based on Blavatsky's riotous misinterpretation of buddhism as theosophy, which I believe he was exposed to as a kid. Her mountain-sage theme was later truly done to death by those twin charlatans, Lobsang Rampa and Carlos Castenada. RAH's 1941 story is interesting, though, in that it's the first where he uses the phrase "stranger in a strange land", with which it shares many themes.

No, I don't expect it, but still I want to go see ...

As our resident RAH scholar, perhaps you could spare a few moments to address a question that's been puzzling me for years.

In Tunnel in the Sky, all these kids are trained up to be interplanetary explorers, then sent on a field-trip as a final examination. Why is it assumed that at least some of them will play "passing the exam" (that is, surviving in the wilds for a few days before returning home) as a zero-sum game? While I don't often agree with the world-views that RAH presents in his books, I do usually understand them, but this one has me stumped. Especially as we see in the book that these kids have been trained (correctly, I believe) that a group acting co-operatively have a better chance than any of a bunch of individuals.

How did the unkown person who goes around killing and stealing from a few of the kids (but who is never unmasked, or indeed mentioned again) even get to take the exam? What is RAH getting at here, or have I completely missed something? -- Keith Braithwaite

Um, I dunno. Maybe the great man needed to make a car payment and rushed the galley proofs. Maybe a rogue editor bollocksed him up. Maybe he was going to reveal all in a sequel. My best guess is he didn't think very hard about it - just plonked down, started typing, and painted himself into a corner. Golden age SF is full of crap like that - cf Clarke's massive gaff in "Imperial Earth". Myself, I've never taken RAH's juveniles terribly seriously, except of course in debate with RK ...

Any combination of those four things, I suppose. I'm happy to hear that it probably is just bad writing, rather than me losing my grip, necessarily. A lot of "Golden Age" stuff is very, very badly written, you're right. I still can't make head nor tail of Van Voght. RAH at least seemed to know at what a convincing characterisation was supposed to look like, whereas Sir Arthur, to name but one, seemed neither to know nor care. But then that wasn't the point, I suppose.

By the way, did you know that Christoper Logue is preparing a new "translation" of The Iliad by means similar to those you are applying to the Tao Te Ching? --Keith Braithwaite

What, he's going to sit down with the old ANU sinology mailing list and have himself hammered upside his head by Dan Lusthaus for a couple of years? Good bloody luck to him then :-)

Ah-hahaha. The word was similar. Logue doesn't read Greek, you see, so he's "interpolating" the translations of Chapman, Pope, Derby, Murray, Rieu and Carne-Ross into contemporary English. Being a somewhat willfull poet, he's probably not seeking any kind of validation from the Classicists

I don't think much of the idea then. The trouble with interpolating is it's too damn easy to gloss even when you don't intend to. You need someone who really knows to keep you honest. But by coincidence (Are There Coincidences?) I've been listening to a wonderful talking book version of Robert Fagles' translation of the iliad read by derek jacobi on my commute. Recent translation, very nice, now I have to pick up the corresponding odyssey ...

Peter, just signed in and seen that we do have a lot of the Eastern material from Wiki. Thank you very much for spending the time on this. -- Richard Drake

No worries, Richard. One potential eastern page I've left there is Wabi Sabi. It's more about building things than about eastern thought per se I think. But were there others you had in mind for the move? --Pete.

No, the "a lot of" meant I hadn't checked, not that I had checked and found you wanting! Definitely right to leave Wabi Sabi I'd say. Great stuff.

Let me add my thanks, too, Peter. --Keith Braithwaite

An experiment:

It's better to build than to destroy. Better to foster harmony than to interfere. Better to increase diversity than to determine truth. Better to keep an open mind than to believe in what you've learned so far. Better to innovate than to stagnate. Better to take part than to stand and watch. Better to live long than to live short. Better to follow love than to follow law.

I suppose I learned these things watching Astro Boy as a child. Of course I also learned it's better to destroy giant self-constructing robots than to let them rampage out of control, but that's beside the point. I've been consistently surprised for the last thirty years that such truths are not universally held to be self evident. Though they seem to hang together, philosophically, I don't know what to call them.

Do they have a name? Is there some school of enterprise that follows such precepts? Has anyone heard of such a thing before? It seems like such a simple philosophy - how come I can't find any reference to it on google? If there were a club with those precepts, I think I'd rather like to join it. Where do I sign up?

A few days later: well, if there wasn't such a place before, there is now. I'm proud to announce the birth of Green Cheese. Big Omega bless her, and all who sail in her.

For reasons alluded to on Green Cheese, I'm going to have less time for wikis for a while. Why has been fun, but I see it's now taking rather a different direction than the one I'd hoped for it. Pages whose subject matter tends to exclude non-christian ideas are too numerous to deal with in a coherent manner without investing way more time that I possess. Richard and Keith, love to you both, but I'm kind of out of here, at least for now. Stop by Green Cheese if you need me. --Peter Merel

Thanks for popping in so much. All the best with the novel.

Peter, thanks for initiating us into the first level (is that commensurate with page version?) of the Pythagorean Cult. Sorry that you obviously (from the logs) tried to say something further on that which we blitzed in the last 48 hours. Reminiscent of my actions on Wiki way back when you put up something on the Bavarian Illuminati there heh? I enjoyed that, it had a mock Spooky feel to it I thought. In this case I promise the trashing was unintentional. Well, unintentional as far as my conscious decision making process is concerned. That leaves a lot of intentionality still in play I guess.

Anyhow, did you look for long at that third reference, the paper Mathematics As Theology, out of interest? It looks extremely interesting, thanks. What did the author study, do you know?

While I'm in thankful mode, same for the explanation in response to my query in Nature's God, which I admit I have only skimmed, and for your own "naive" questions in Athanasian Creed. The latter are often extremely helpful to us. This hoary old list deserved more than a few such. -- Richard Drake

PS This stuff on Phase Space, Everett and Many Worlds also looks cool. Haven't jumped in, probably won't read carefully enough to do that. But I'd like to put forward some time some of the content of a paper I read in the last year by a trained physicist criticizing the use of probabilities in quite a few many-worlds arguments. When I find the paper and the time and the ability to grok it ... you may have left Why to its own devices or crevises or whatever. But thanks a great deal for your input this week. -- Richard Drake

Pete,

Where, physically, are you at the moment? The timing of your posts suggests you are either in Europe or keeping odd hours. -- Tom Ayerst

Minor reshapings today raised the question once again. How is it that the same brilliant software pioneer could be responsible both for the lovely interjection in I Climbed Mount Everest Yesterday (much appreciated by Matthew by the way) and for that Blackball Me You Bum-inspired outburst of Explicit Sexual Content? Ah well. Best wishes to Pete and all our other contributors of yore who appreciated him; those less bold perhaps yet equally mixed-up?

Yore? Is that anything like Yule? I'm writing a story about Yule ...

Why Kudos for God's Bug