Goodbye so soon
And isn't it a shame?
We know by now that time knows how to fly
So here's goodbye so soon
We'll go our separate ways
With time so short I'll say so long
And go
So soon
Goodbye

You followed me, I followed you
We were like each other's shadows for a while
Now as you see, this game is through
So although it hurts, I'll try to smile
As I say

BRITONS WITH BALLS – part XVII

Michael Faraday

Born 1791 Surrey, England
Died 1867

English physicist and chemist who made major advances in the study of magnetism, electricity, and the chemical effect of a current, and is regarded as the greatest scientist of the 19th century. He started his working life as a bookbinder, but in 1813 became laboratory assistant to Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution, where he eventually became director. Working as an analytical chemist, he discovered benzene in 1825 and prepared the first known compounds of carbon and chlorine. He also investigated the composition of alloy steels and optical glasses.

But his greatest achievements were in electromagnetism. In 1821 he constructed a simple form of electric motor. In 1831 he published his laws of electromagnetic induction and put them to practical use in the dynamo and the transformer, two Faraday inventions that are fundamental to large-scale electricity generation and supply. His laws of electrolysis, published in 1834 and named after him, described the changes caused by electric current passing through liquids. Other discoveries included diamagnetism (a weak magnetic effect present in all materials), and the rotation of light waves by strong magnetic fields.

”The World little knows how many thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator and have been crushed in silence and secrecy of his own criticism.”

You said – ”… Anyone ELSE slips up, you use it as an excuse to invalidate their arguments….”

As far as I am concerned, Marian Schedenig doesn’t have an argument to invalidate….unlike yourself, whose philosophies I take great delight in invalidating.

The fact is Wedge, both you and Marian Schedenig are wrong to pick me up anyway.

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of a ‘tidal wave’ is – a great wave caused by the tide, an earthquake or a landslide.

WATCH OUT USA!

When 500 billion tonnes of rock plunge into the sea off the west coast of Africa, people in the US had better head for the hills.

ANY day now, a gargantuan wave could sweep westwards across the Atlantic towards the coast of North America. A mighty wall of water 50 metres high would hit the Caribbean islands, Florida and the rest of the eastern seaboard, surging up to 20 kilometres inland and engulfing everything in its path. If you thought the tsunamis that periodically terrorise the Pacific Ocean were big, consider this: the Atlantic wave will be five times bigger. It will start its journey 6000 kilometres away, when half an island crashes into the sea.

Huge landslides and the mega-tsunami that they cause are extremely rare; The last one occurred about 4,000 years ago on the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. The growing concern amongst British scientists is that the ideal conditions for just such a landslide and consequent mega-tsunami - now exist on the island of La Palma in the Canaries.

In 1949 the southern volcano on the island of La Palma erupted. During the eruption an enormous crack appeared across one side of the volcano, as the western half slipped a few metres towards the Atlantic before stopping in its tracks.

Although the volcano presents no danger while it is quiescent, scientists believe the western flank will give way completely during some future eruption on the summit of the volcano.

At some time in the next few thousand years a huge section of La Palma, weighing 500 thousand million tonnes, will fall into the Atlantic Ocean to generate a mega-tsunami. The mega-Tsunami will surge across the Atlantic travelling at a speed of a jet aircraft.

The Mega Tsunami would engulf the whole US east coast, sweeping away everything in its path up to 12 miles (20km) inland. Boston would be hit first, followed by New York, then all the way down the coast to Miami and the Caribbean.

English scientist Simon Day of the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre at University College London has discovered that a huge chunk of La Palma, the most volcanically active island in the Canaries, is now unstable. "If the flank of the volcano slides into the ocean, the mass of moving rock will push the water in front of it, creating a tsunami wave far larger than any seen in history," says Day. "The wave would then spread out across the Atlantic at the speed of a jet airliner until it strikes coastal areas all around the North Atlantic."

The idea that collapsing islands can cause giant tsunamis dates back to the 1960s when Jim Moore, a geologist with the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, was studying early bathymetric maps of the sea floor around the Hawaiian islands. He spotted what he thought were huge chunks of volcanic rock strewn across the seabed up to 140 kilometres from the nearest islands. Moore believed these were the debris from titanic landslides.

It was not until the early 1990s that Moore's suggestion began to be taken seriously. By then, higher-resolution maps of the sea floor showed evidence for dozens of landslides in the Hawaiian islands. And sea-floor surveys near Réunion in the Indian Ocean, the Marquesas in the western Pacific, Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic and El Hierro in the North Atlantic showed that collapses of oceanic volcanoes into the sea occur worldwide.

Moore also suggested that the Hawaiian landslides generated giant waves. He attributed marine deposits in the Hawaiian islands that lie up to 375 metres above sea level to the action of tsunamis, though this is still highly controversial (New Scientist supplement, 7 August 1999, p 4). But most scientists now agree that island collapses around the world would inevitably have caused gigantic tsunamis. For instance, giant wave deposits found in the Bahamas coincide with a past collapse in the Canaries (see "Island catastrophe").

Day began his work on the Canary Islands in 1994, at the invitation of Spanish geologist Juan Carlos Carracedo from the Volcanological Station of the Canary Islands in Tenerife. Carracedo had already found evidence for at least one collapse on the neighbouring island of La Palma, which had apparently come from the extinct Taburiente volcano in the north of the island. He wanted to know if there was any risk of a future collapse of the Cumbre Vieja, the active volcano that forms the southern half of La Palma.

The best way to predict the volcano's future, Day believed, was by studying its past. Over the next two years, he carefully surveyed the summit area of the Cumbre Vieja, identifying dozens of volcanic vents that had been formed by successive eruptions over the past hundred thousand years. From several of these vents, Day collected samples of lava and charcoal from trees burnt by the molten rock. His colleague, Herve Guillou of the Laboratory of Climatic and Environmental Sciences in Gif-sur-Yvette in France, then used potassium-argon or carbon dating to find out when the vents formed.

By 1997, Day and Carracedo had enough data to assemble a detailed geological map of the Cumbre Vieja. They found that most of the vents were organised in three rift zones, laid out in a three-pointed "Mercedes star" configuration, facing south, north-east and north-west. The north-east and north-west rift zones have become inactive in the past few thousand years, but the remaining southern rift zone has extended northwards, gradually bisecting the volcano.

In a paper published late last year, Day and his colleagues suggested that this structure could lead to a mighty landslide. Day believes that the western flank of the volcano is becoming gradually detached from the eastern half. What's more, he thinks the western flank is subtly altering in shape, making it easier for magma to break through to the surface. During the three most recent summit eruptions in 1585, 1712 and 1949, vents opened up on the western flank of the volcano, while none appeared on the eastern flank.

Day has other evidence to support his theory. During the 1949 eruption, the island was racked by two large earthquakes. A day later, Spanish seismologist Juan Bonelli Rubio discovered a crack on the summit of the Cumbre Vieja. It could not be a new volcanic vent, as no lava or steam was coming from the fissure. Bonelli Rubio suggested that it was the fault responsible for the earthquakes.

During 1995, while mapping the summit region, Day noticed something unexpected about the 1949 fault: rather than opening up horizontally the way vent fissures do when magma rises to the surface, the land surface on the western side had slipped down 4 metres relative to the eastern side. "It is the first time we've seen a fault like this on the volcano," says Day. For him, the appearance of the fault in 1949 proved that the whole of the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja is poised to collapse into the Atlantic Ocean.

It's hard to imagine what would happen if half a trillion tonnes of rock slid into the sea. But Hermann Fritz, a PhD student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, has spent several years modelling how landslides generate waves when they fall into water. Earlier this year, he constructed a lab model of the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja in a wave tank. The model is an elongated wedge-shaped block resting on a 10-degree slope with the tip of the block lying just under the water. When the block is released, it slides down the slope generating a wave, which is recorded by a high-speed camera.

Fritz found that the sliding block generated a long, shallow, fast-moving wave--the classic profile of a tsunami. Scaling up 10,000 times, the model predicts that in real life the crest of the wave generated by the collapse of the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja would initially be a staggering 650 metres above normal sea level, more than enough to submerge the tallest building in the world. Fritz admits that there is a big size difference between his model and the real tsunami, but he has no doubt that the dimensions of the wave are in the right ballpark.

Where would the wave go? Because the unstable flank of the Cumbre Vieja faces west, if it collapsed the resulting tsunami would race across the Atlantic towards North America. It wouldn't be half a kilometre high when it arrived, though. Waves that radiate out from a single point, like ripples on a pond, decrease in height as they travel. But it would still be a monster. If the La Palma collapse produced a single tsunami, it would be 40 to 50 metres high when it reached the American coast. "That mass of water moving at that speed would remove buildings, trees, roads, everything," says Day.

Given the evidence that the Cumbre Vieja is poised to collapse and the catastrophic consequences of such an event, Day had to find out when the volcano might let go. First, he wanted to know if the fault that appeared in 1949 is still moving. Over the past few years, Jane Moss, a student at the College of Higher Education in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, has used the satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) to monitor the positions of 20 markers around the volcano on both sides of the fault. Late last year, she concluded that the fault has completely stopped moving--at least for now.

If nothing is pushing the fault today, why did it form in the first place? Day believes that water trapped in the volcano is the key. On the face of it, water is not an obvious factor: the volcanic rock of La Palma is so permeable that when rain falls it quickly soaks through, leaving the surface as dry as a bone. But inside the volcano, impermeable dykes--columns of magma that fed previous eruptions--cut through the permeable volcanic rubble. These dykes act like a series of dams, trapping rainwater.

Day realised that when magma rises towards the surface through wet rock, the water in the pore spaces within the rock is heated and expands. Because liquid water is incompressible, small increases in water temperature can significantly increase the water pressure in a confined space. Working with Derek Elsworth of Pennsylvania State University, Day performed some calculations to see if the pressure generated by heating water would be enough to make the rock fracture. Sure enough, relatively modest warming gave huge increases in water pressure. At 1 kilometre below the surface, for instance, a temperature increase of as little as 15 °C would increase water pressure from around 160 atmospheres to 400 atmospheres--more than enough to split the rock and cause a collapse.

All fall down: water trapped inside an erupting volcano could force it collapse
Gary McMurtry at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu agrees that water is vital, but disagrees with Day and Elsworth on exactly how water causes collapses. McMurtry thinks collapses in the Hawaiian islands are triggered when rainwater penetrates shallow magma chambers and causes so-called phreatomagmatic eruptions--large, violent explosions that occur when hot magma comes into contact with water and turns into a pressurised mixture of molten rock and steam.

"Everywhere we look on the sea floor around the Hawaiian islands, we see volcanic ash. That's telling us that there has been explosive volcanism," says McMurtry. He believes the force of these explosions, rather than the expansion of liquid water, causes volcanic island collapses. However, Day argues that this model does not apply to the Canaries, where magma reservoirs lurk deep in the Earth's crust, out of the reach of rainwater. He points out that on La Palma in 1949, no explosive activity was recorded on the volcano when the fault line appeared.

Whether the expansion of liquid water or steam explosions are the driving force, Day and McMurtry agree that the combination of water and magma triggers collapse. Day says this leads to an important prediction: if the Cumbre Vieja collapses, it is likely to happen during a future eruption. "It is reassuring that the Cumbre Vieja isn't going to collapse spontaneously," he says. But it's also worrying. After all, the volcano erupts once every few decades.

Still, not every eruption happens in the right place to cause a collapse--or even to make the fault more unstable. The last one was in 1971, but that took place on the southern tip of the island, well away from the unstable summit ridge. According to Day, how dangerous an eruption is depends on how long it lasts, where on the volcano it occurs and how much magma is involved. "It's unlikely that the volcano will collapse during the next eruption," he says, and it may take many more before the fault finally gives. But when it does give, watch out USA.

A tsunami, also called SEISMIC SEA WAVE, or TIDAL WAVE, is a catastrophic ocean wave, usually caused by a submarine earthquake occurring less than 50 km (30 miles) beneath the seafloor, with a magnitude greater than 6.5 on the Richter scale. Underwater or coastal landslides or volcanic eruptions also may cause a tsunami.

After the earthquake or other generating impulse, a train of simple, progressive oscillatory waves is propagated great distances at the ocean surface in ever-widening circles, much like the waves produced by a pebble falling into a shallow pool. In deep water, the wavelengths are enormous, about 100 to 200 km, and the wave heights are very small, only 0.3 to 0.6 m (1 to 2 feet). The resulting wave steepness, or ratio of height to length, ranges between 3/2,000,000 and 6/ 1,000,000. This extremely low steepness, coupled with the waves' long periods that vary from five minutes to an hour, enables normal wind waves and swell to completely obscure the waves in deep water. In any progressive oscillatory wave, the actual water motion at the surface consists of a vertical orbit with a diameter equal to the wave height, coming full circle during the period of the wave. Thus, a surface-water particle or a ship in the open ocean experiences the passage of a tsunami as an insignificant rise and fall of only 0.3 to 0.6 m, lasting from five minutes to an hour.

The surface orbital motion of any progressive oscillatory wave is transmitted diminishingly downward through the water, becoming insignificant at a depth below the surface equal to approximately half the wavelength. Tsunamis, however, being enormously longer than even the greatest ocean depths, experience significant retardation of orbital motion near the seafloor and behave as shallow-water waves regardless of the depth of the ocean the waves are propagated across. The velocity of shallow-water waves is controlled by this friction with the bottom, obeying the formula in which c is the wave velocity, g is the acceleration of gravity, and D is water depth. This relationship was used to determine the average depth of the oceans in 1856, long before many deep-sea soundings had been taken. Assuming an average velocity for seismic sea waves of about 200 m per second (450 miles per hour), an average oceanic depth of about 4,000 m is obtained; this figure compares very well with the modern estimate of 3,808 m. The relationship has enormous practical value, enabling seismologists to issue warnings to endangered coasts immediately after an earthquake and several hours before the arrival of the tsunamis.

As the waves approach the continental coasts, friction with the increasingly shallow bottom reduces the velocity of the waves. The period must remain constant; consequently, as the velocity lessens, the wavelengths become shortened and the wave amplitudes increase, coastal waters rising as high as 30 m in 10 to 15 minutes. By a poorly understood process, the continental shelf waters begin to oscillate after the rise in sea level. Between three and five major oscillations generate most of the damage; the oscillations cease, however, only several days after they begin.

Tsunamis are reflected and refracted by nearshore bottom topography and coastal configurations as any other water waves. Thus, their effects vary widely from place to place. Occasionally, the first arrival of tsunami at a coast may be a trough, the water receding and exposing the shallow seafloor. Such an occurrence in Lisbon, Port., on Nov. 1, 1755, attracted many curious people to the bay floor; and a large number of them were drowned by the succeeding wave crest that arrived only minutes later. Perhaps the most destructive tsunami was the one that occurred in 1703 at Awa, Japan, killing more than 100,000 people. The spectacular underwater volcanic explosions that obliterated Krakatau (Krakatoa) Island on Aug. 26 and 27, 1883, created waves as high as 35 m in many East Indies localities, killing more than 36,000 people.

I’d forget about buying a surfboard if I were you. Take a leaf out of Chris Kinsinger’s book and concentrate on deflecting the tidal wave onto some other poor unsuspecting sod, THROUGH THE POWER OF PRAYER!!! HALLELUJAH!!! PRAISE DE LORD!!!!

You said – ”Oh, and about Moses: Your quaint little theory explains very little.”

This isn’t my theory, this is the accepted theory of the scientific community. The fact is, not one particle of what I have said at this thread is original, none of it is my theory – everything I have written here is based on the discoveries and doctrines of the scientific community and many, many other people who are prepared to face the reality of mankind’s lonely and insignificant place within the universe.

With the Moses discussion, I am merely illustrating the fact that even some of the bible’s more fanciful tales are embellished from actual naturally occurring phenomena, except in the case of the parting of the ‘sea of reeds’, that was down to a spelling error which has led everyone to think it was the ‘Red Sea’. Of course, not everything in the bible can be explained in this way, but – what cannot be explained by science is purely the invention of man’s imagination.

You said – ”It is you, not I, who is imitating the ostrich…”

You are the one afflicted with ostrich-like tendencies – if I am not mistaken , you even reject the overwhelming evidence that supports the theory of evolution.

Ask yourself this John - If the Ostrich has wings and feathers, why can’t it fly?

You said – ”I fully believe that God could have and would have saved those children, both of them, had we let Him.”

If God is so merciful and all-powerful, why do we have doctors and hospitals? Should the man diagnosed with a fatal heart condition rely on his faith in God, or should he be given a heart transplant? There is not one recorded instance in medical history where faith alone has healed a diseased heart. Next you’ll be telling me that physicians are emissaries of the ‘devil’. If God is so rewarding of faith, why do we grow crops? Surely we could expect our bread-baskets to become full thanks to a ‘divine harvest’.

Think about this John. Why is it that so many people with devout faith in God still suffer the agonies of cancer, still have their homes and possessions torn apart by tornadoes and are still murdered in their beds? Perhaps you will argue that such people have transgressed, and that God is exacting punishment. Therefore, you would have to believe that all of the suffering that is endured by the peoples of planet Earth is due too ‘God’s punishment’? Would you walk up to an AIDS victim and say, ‘oh ye of little faith, thy Father in heaven has smited your Earthly body for your sins’? And why is it that some of the greatest ‘evils’ in mankind’s history have been perpetrated in the ‘name of God’? Where is your ‘Christian charity’ now?

Your God is indeed a jealous God.

Your philosophy, John, doesn’t contain just one or two holes…it is one great big hole, with a few crumbs of substance blowing about within it. I liken modern society’s rejection of traditional religion to a torrent of reality and enlightenment that is sweeping into oblivion the few remaining particles of superstitious faith in a fictional entity.

Ask yourself this John - If God intended us to live in Dark Ages’ ignorance, why did He give us the ability to think?

Pursuing it with warty feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

In this spirit, I allowed myself to create the follow-up thread Another ? for PETER K.. I suggest that we post a link to the new thread in the FINAL post on THIS thread, so we can continue there. And I ask everyone NOT to post at the new thread until THIS thread is finished.

Whoever posts the final post in this thread, and wants like I do to continue in another thread, please add a link to the successor thread (see above) in that final post.

In 1947, the California golden trout was made the official state fish of California.

For the first time, the Academy Awards ceremony was opened to the general public in 1947.

From 1944 to 1947, James Mason was the top box-office draw in Britain.

In 1947, 40-year-old British actor Laurence Olivier was knighted, becoming the youngest actor to be so honored.

Jason Robards, nominated for more Tony Awards than any other actor, made his New York City acting debut in 1947 as the rear end of a cow in a production of "Jack and the Beanstalk."

The 1947 World Series brought in television's first mass audience. It was carried in New York, Philadelphia, Schenectady, and Washington, D.C., and was seen by an estimated 3.9 million people – 3.5 million of them in were in pubs and bars.

The Waldorf-Astoria was home to the first annual Tony Awards presentation in 1947.

In the United States, Jeno Paulucci made Chinese food, under the Chun King label, available in supermarkets nationwide for the first time in 1947. He later brought out Jeno's pizza.

In 1947, Toys for Tots started making the holidays a little happier for children by organizing its first Christmas toy drive for needy youngsters.

Baseball's first Rookie of the Year was Brooklyn Dodger Jackie Robinson, who was given the award in 1947. Forty years later, it was officially renamed the Jackie Robinson Award.

Two objects have struck the earth with enough force to destroy a whole city. Each object, one in 1908 and again in 1947, struck regions of Siberia. Not one human being was hurt either time.

Artificial rain was first used near Concord, New Hampshire, in 1947 to fight a forest fire.

Daniel, you are absolutely incorrigible. You gleefully twist my words at every turn.

The reason why there are so many packed hospitals in the world is the very same reason why a crowd of people tortured and crucified an innocent man 2000 years ago.
The vast majority of the earth's population rejects God's free gifts. They do not want His salvation, His direction, His provision, His wisdom or His healing, and they would rather see an innocent man executed than to receive any of it. Divine Healing has always been available to everyone, and God is still healing people today the very same way that Jesus did when He walked the earth. God said, "My people perish (are destroyed) for lack of knowledge, because you have rejected knowledge." - Hosea 4:6 This fact grieves the heart of our Creator. He has offered to each one of us the Way, the Truth and the Life.
And there you sit, Daniel. You have rejected it all, and yet you have the audacity to complain about the consequences.

quote:

---

Would you walk up to an AIDS victim and say, ‘oh ye of little faith, thy Father in heaven has smited your Earthly body for your sins’? And why is it that some of the greatest ‘evils’ in mankind’s history have been perpetrated in the ‘name of God’? Where is your ‘Christian charity’ now?

---

Perhaps Daniel 2, an self-proclaimed enlightened individual, is unfamiliar with the fall from paradise, and the notions of free will and prayer.

and why is it some of the greatest 'evils' in mankind's history have been perpetrated in the name of persecution of Christians?
where is your pagan charity now?

a strong Christian would walk up to this hypothetical AIDS victim and not judge him, but invite him into his home and offer food and shelter, if he needed it.

~The Book Of ? For PeterK~

We'd have "? for PeterK vol. II," "III," "IV," etc.

Congrats guys.

? #1 for PeterK
? #2 for PeterK
...

Lewis Carroll….

….pseudonym of CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON

Born Jan 27, 1832, Daresbury, Cheshire, England
Died Jan 14, 1898, Guildford, Surrey

English logician, mathematician, photographer, and novelist, especially remembered for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass (1871). His poem The Hunting of the Snark (1876) is nonsense literature of the highest order.

Dodgson was the eldest son and third child in a family of seven girls and four boys born to Frances Jane Lutwidge, the wife of the Rev. Charles Dodgson. He was born in the old parsonage at Daresbury. His father was perpetual curate there from 1827 until 1843, when he became rector of Croft in Yorkshire--a post he held for the rest of his life (though later he became also archdeacon of Richmond and a canon of Ripon cathedral).

The Dodgson children, living as they did in an isolated country village, had few friends outside the family but, like many other families in similar circumstances, found little difficulty in entertaining themselves. Charles from the first showed a great aptitude for inventing games to amuse them. With the move to Croft when he was 12 came the beginning of the "Rectory Magazines," manuscript compilations to which all the family were supposed to contribute. In fact, Charles wrote nearly all of those that survive, beginning with Useful and Instructive Poetry (1845; published 1954) and following with The Rectory Magazine (c. 1850, mostly unpublished), The Rectory Umbrella (1850-53), and Mischmasch (1853-62; published with The Rectory Umbrella in 1932).

Meanwhile, young Dodgson attended Richmond School, Yorkshire (1844-45), and then proceeded to Rugby School (1846-50). He disliked his four years at public school, principally because of his innate shyness, although he was also subjected to a certain amount of bullying; he also endured several illnesses, one of which left him deaf in one ear. After Rugby he spent a further year being tutored by his father, during which time he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford (May 23, 1850). He went into residence as an undergraduate there on Jan. 24, 1851.

Dodgson excelled in his mathematical and classical studies in 1852; on the strength of his performance in examinations, he was nominated to a studentship (called a scholarship in other colleges). In 1854 he gained a first in mathematical Finals--coming out at the head of the class--and proceeded to a bachelor of arts degree in December of the same year. He was made a "Master of the House" and a senior student (called a fellow in other colleges) the following year and was appointed lecturer in mathematics (the equivalent of today's tutor), a post he resigned in 1881. He held his studentship until the end of his life.

As was the case with all fellowships at that time, the studentship at Christ Church was dependent upon his remaining unmarried, and, by the terms of this particular endowment, proceeding to holy orders. Dodgson was ordained a deacon in the Church of England on Dec. 22, 1861. Had he gone on to become a priest he could have married and would then have been appointed to a parish by the college. But he felt himself unsuited for parish work and, though he considered the possibility of marriage, decided that he was perfectly content to remain a bachelor.

Dodgson's association with children grew naturally enough out of his position as an eldest son with eight younger brothers and sisters. He also suffered from a bad stammer (which he never wholly overcame, although he was able to preach with considerable success in later life) and, like many others who suffer from the disability, found that he was able to speak naturally and easily to children. It is therefore not surprising that he should begin to entertain the children of Henry George Liddell, dean of Christ Church. Alice Liddell and her sisters Lorina and Edith were not, of course, the first of Dodgson's child friends. They had been preceded or were overlapped by the children of the writer George Macdonald, the sons of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and various other chance acquaintances. But the Liddell children undoubtedly held an especially high place in his affections--partly because they were the only children in Christ Church, since only heads of houses were free both to marry and to continue in residence.

Properly chaperoned by their governess, Miss Prickett (nicknamed "Pricks"--"one of the thorny kind," and so the prototype of the Red Queen in Through the Looking-Glass), the three little girls paid many visits to the young mathematics lecturer in his college rooms. As Alice remembered in 1932, they used to sit on the big sofa on each side of him, while he told us stories, illustrating them by pencil or ink drawings as he went along . . . . He seemed to have an endless store of these fantastical tales, which he made up as he told them, drawing busily on a large sheet of paper all the time. They were not always entirely new. Sometimes they were new versions of old stories; sometimes they started on the old basis, but grew into new tales owing to the frequent interruptions which opened up fresh and undreamed-of possibilities.

On July 4, 1862, Dodgson and his friend Robinson Duckworth, fellow of Trinity, rowed the three children up the Thames from Oxford to Godstow, picnicked on the bank, and returned to Christ Church late in the evening: "On which occasion," wrote Dodgson in his diary, "I told them the fairy-tale of Alice's Adventures Underground, which I undertook to write out for Alice." Much of the story was based on a picnic a couple of weeks earlier when they had all been caught in the rain; for some reason, this inspired Dodgson to tell so much better a story than usual that both Duckworth and Alice noticed the difference, and Alice went so far as to cry, when they parted at the door of the deanery, "Oh, Mr. Dodgson, I wish you would write out Alice's adventures for me!" Dodgson himself recollected in 1887 how, in a desperate attempt to strike out some new line of fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards.

Dodgson was able to write down the story more or less as told and added to it several extra adventures that had been told on other occasions. He illustrated it with his own crude but distinctive drawings and gave the finished product to Alice Liddell, with no thought of hearing of it again. But the novelist Henry Kingsley, while visiting the deanery, chanced to pick it up from the drawing-room table, read it, and urged Mrs. Liddell to persuade the author to publish it. Dodgson, honestly surprised, consulted his friend George Macdonald, author of some of the best children's stories of the period. Macdonald took it home to be read to his children, and his son Greville, aged six, declared that he "wished there were 60,000 volumes of it."

Accordingly, Dodgson revised it for publication. He cut out the more particular references to the previous picnic (they may be found in the facsimile of the original manuscript, later published by him as Alice's Adventures Underground in 1886) and added some additional stories, told to the Liddells at other times, to make up a volume of the desired length. At Duckworth's suggestion he got an introduction to John Tenniel, the Punch magazine cartoonist, whom he commissioned to make illustrations to his specification. The book was published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. (The first edition was withdrawn because of bad printing, and only about 21 copies survive--one of the rare books of the 19th century--and the reprint was ready for publication by Christmas of the same year, though dated 1866.)

The book was a slow but steadily increasing success, and by the following year Dodgson was already considering a sequel to it, based on further stories told to the Liddells. The result was Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (dated 1872; actually published December 1871), a work as good as, or better than, its predecessor.

By the time of Dodgson's death, Alice (taking the two volumes as a single artistic triumph) had become the most popular children's book in England: by the time of his centenary in 1932 it was one of the most popular and perhaps the most famous in the world.

There is no answer to the mystery of Alice's success. Many explanations have been suggested, but, like the Mad Hatter's riddle ("The riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all"), they are no more than afterthoughts. The book is not an allegory; it has no hidden meaning or message, either religious, political, or psychological, as some have tried to prove; and its only undertones are some touches of gentle satire--on education for the children's special benefit and on familiar university types, whom the Liddells may or may not have recognized. Various attempts have been made to solve the "riddle of Lewis Carroll" himself; these include the efforts to prove that his friendships with little girls were some sort of subconscious substitute for a married life, that he showed symptoms of jealousy when his favourites came to tell him that they were engaged to be married, that he contemplated marriage with some of them--notably with Alice Liddell. But there is little or no evidence to back up such theorizing. He in fact dropped the acquaintance of Alice Liddell when she was 12, as he did with most of his young friends. In the case of the Liddells, his friendship with the younger children, Rhoda and Violet, was cut short at the time of his skits on some of Dean Liddell's Christ Church "reforms." For besides children's stories, Dodgson also produced humorous pamphlets on university affairs, which still make good reading. The best of these were collected by him as Notes by an Oxford Chiel (1874).

Besides writing for them, Dodgson is also to be remembered as a fine photographer of children and of adults as well (notable portraits of the actress Ellen Terry, the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and many others survive and have been often reproduced). Dodgson had an early ambition to be an artist: failing in this, he turned to photography. He photographed children in every possible costume and situation, finally making nude studies of them. But in 1880 Dodgson abandoned his hobby altogether, feeling that it was taking up too much time that might be better spent. Suggestions that this sudden decision was reached because of an impurity of motive for his nude studies have been made, but again without any evidence.

Before he had told the original tale of Alice's Adventures, Dodgson had, in fact, published a number of humorous items in verse and prose and a few inferior serious poems. The earliest of these appeared anonymously, but in March 1856 a poem called "Solitude" was published over the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. Dodgson arrived at this pen name by taking his own names Charles Lutwidge, translating them into Latin as Carolus Ludovicus, then reversing and retranslating them into English. He used the name afterward for all his nonacademic works. As Charles L. Dodgson, he was the author of a fair number of books on mathematics, none of enduring importance, although Euclid and His Modern Rivals (1879) is of some historical interest.

His humorous and other verses were collected in 1869 as Phantasmagoria and Other Poems and later separated (with additions) as Rhyme? and Reason? (1883) and Three Sunsets and Other Poems (published posthumously, 1898). The 1883 volume also contained The Hunting of the Snark, a narrative nonsense poem that is rivalled only by the best of Edward Lear.

Later in life, Dodgson had attempted a return to the Alice vein but only produced Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and its second volume, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), which has been described aptly as "one of the most interesting failures in English literature." This elaborate combination of fairy-tale, social novel, and collection of ethical discussions is unduly neglected and ridiculed. It presents the truest available portrait of the man. Alice, the perfect creation of the logical and mathematical mind applied to the pure and unadulterated amusement of children, was struck out of him as if by chance; while making full use of his specialized knowledge, it transcends his weaknesses and remains unique.

MAJOR WORKS

Children's books.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865); Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871); The Wasp in the Wig: A "Suppressed" Episode [of the latter] (1977).

Verse.

Phantasmagoria and Other Poems (1869); The Hunting of the Snark (1876); Rhyme? and Reason? (1883); The Collected Verse (1929).

Mathematical books.

A Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry (1860); Euclid and His Modern Rivals (1879); Curiosa Mathematica (1888-93). Symbolic Logic, Part I (1896), published with Part II (1977), ed. by William W. Bartley III.

Other works.

Sylvie and Bruno, 2 vol. (1889-93), novel.

You said – ”…and why is it some of the greatest 'evils' in mankind's history have been perpetrated in the name of persecution of Christians? where is your pagan charity now?”

The words ‘pagan’ and ‘charity’ are Christian inventions, but those attributes that make up a ‘charitable act’ can be found in Christian and non-Christian alike.

You said – ”The reason why there are so many packed hospitals in the world is the very same reason why a crowd of people tortured and crucified an innocent man 2000 years ago. The vast majority of the earth's population rejects God's free gifts.

So, what you’re saying is, if one has faith in God, one is likely to receive ‘His salvation, His direction, His provision, His wisdom or His healing’.

Then how do you account for the fact that our ‘packed hospitals’ are full of devout Christians, as well as non-believers….those with faith suffering the same agonies of terminal illness as those who choose not to believe? I’ve seen it Chris. Throughout my life, just like everyone else, I’ve seen members of my family stricken with illness….and those of devout faith have received no special dispensation ‘from above’. And Chris, how do you account for the fact that many of the people buried under the rubble in the wake of the Indian earthquake were devoutly religious (including many Christians)?

The thing is Chris, whether these victims of the earthquake were religious or were non-believers, if He really did exist, your God could have saved them – but he didn’t. God showed no mercy, because God is not there - only the dispassionate and random ‘course of nature’, that is all that governs man’s destiny. But if God were there, because he ignored the plight of the earthquake victims, that would make him culpable. And, don’t forget, he’s not saving people from the earthquake, he caused it by having ‘created’ the world in the first place. I liken God to a child who puts ants in a jar, and then revels in their torture and destruction.

So, the truth of the matter is, there is no God. Believer or atheist, we all suffer and prosper according to the random forces of nature, the support or sabotage of another human being, and the consequence of our own actions, be they ambitious or cautious. There is no ‘divine power’ influencing our lives…though it may be argued that faith in a God emboldens and strengthens a human’s resolve and well-being. Chris, you are not finding your strength from God, you are finding it from within yourself. You are a good man Chris, and it is you who deserves the credit for that, not a fictional entity.

I’m not relying on a fictional deity, or on a mortal who claimed to be the ‘son of God’ for my salvation….just as there is no ‘good God’, there is no ‘devil’ to be saved from.

You said – ”And there you sit, Daniel. You have rejected it all, and yet you have the audacity to complain about the consequences.”

And considering my atheism, I’ve enjoyed 68 years of reasonably good health whilst many of those around me with devout Christian faith have suffered premature, and often agonizing, death.

Go figure!

Anybody else out there disenchanted with the increasing phenomenon of cell phones? The Saudis have a solution of sorts:

BRITONS WITH BALLS – part XIX

William Shakespeare

Born 1564 Stratford-upon-Avon, England
Died 1616 Stratford-upon-Avon, England

English dramatist and poet. His works, translated and performed throughout the world, have made him the most celebrated and most quoted of English writers. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, the son of a glover, and in 1582 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children. He is known to have been active in the London theatre by 1592, but nothing is recorded of his earlier education or working life. As an actor and playwright he worked for the Lord Chamberlain's Men (known from 1603 as the King's Men), the leading company which from 1599 occupied the Globe Theatre, of which Shakespeare was a shareholder.

Shakespeare's unparalleled reputation rests on the plays' memorable and complex characters, their dynamic movement through rapid alternations of short scenes, and above all the extraordinary subtlety and richness of the blank verse, dense with metaphors and elaborate in rhetoric. Since the 18th century Shakespeare has been regarded as the greatest English dramatist, and in the period of Romanticism he came to be venerated as a semi-divine genius, timeless and universal.

Below are some of my favourite extracts from Shakespeare’s life’s work, much of which is now indelibly imprinted on the English language.

All's Well That Ends Well

I am a man whom fortune hath cruelly scratched.
V,ii,28

Anthony and Cleopatra

The nature of bad news infects the teller.
I,ii,96

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetite they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.
II,ii,241

If I lose mine honor,
I lose myself.
III,iv,22

To be furious
Is to be frightened out of fear.
III,xiii,195

I am dying, Egypt, dying; only
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.
IV,xv,18

As You Like It

Well said: that was laid on with a trowel.
I,ii,100

We have seen better days.
II,vii,120

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
II,vii,139

Blow, blow thou winter wind!
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude.
II,vii,174

I am falser than vows made in wine.
III,v,73

The Comedy of Errors

Every why have a wherefore.

Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine:
Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,
Whose weakness married to thy stronger state
Makes me with thy strength to communicate.
II, ii, 172-175

For slander lives upon succession,
For ever housed where it gets possession.
III, i, 105-106

It is thyself, mine own self's better part;
Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart;
My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim;
My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim.
III, ii, 61-64

Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he's worth to season.
Nay, he's a thief, too: have you not heard men say,
That time comes stealing on by night and day?
IV, ii, 58-60

Coriolanus

In such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than ears.
III,ii,75

Cymbeline

Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
II,ii,262

Quiet consummation have,
And renowned be thy grave.
II,ii,280

The ground that gave them first has them again.
Their pleasures here are past, so is their pain.
IV,ii,289

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
I,ii,72

O! That this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world.
I,ii,129

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
I,iii,58

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be.
I,iii,75

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
I,iv,90

Murder most foul, as in the best it it;
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
I,v,27

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I,v,166

Brevity is the soul of wit.
II,ii,90

Doubt that the stars are fire
Doubt that the sun doth shine
Doubt that truth be a liar
But never doubt that I love.
II,ii,116

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
II,ii,207

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.
II,ii,312

The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
II,ii

To be, or not to be: That is the question:--
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.
III,i,56

Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the threat of something after death,--
That undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,--puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others we know not of?
III,i,76

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is slicked o'er with the pale cast of thought.
III,i,83

Get thee to a nunnery.
III,i,121

God has given you one face
and you make yourselves another.
III,i,144

Be not too tame neither, but let your own
Discretion be your tutor; suit the action
To the word, the word to the action.
III,ii,17

Some must watch, while some must sleep;
So runs the world away.
III,ii,279

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
III,iii,97

O shame, where is thy blush?
III,iv,83

I must be cruel only to be kind.
III,iv,178

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king,
And eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
IV,iii,27

He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone
IV,v,29

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio
A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy;
V,i,185

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince.
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
V,ii,360

Henry IV, Part I

If all the year were playing holidays
To sport would be as tedious as to work.
I,ii,208

There's villainous news abroad.
II,iv

The better part of valour is discretion.
V,iv,119

Henry IV, Part II

Open your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?
Introduction,1-2

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
III,i,31

How quickly nature falls into revolt
When gold becomes her object!
IV, v, 65-66

How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester!
V, v, 48

Henry V

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
III,i,1

Men of few words are the best men.
III,ii,37

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distill it out.
IV,i,4

There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things.
V,i,3

Henry VI, Part I

Fight till the last gasp.
I,ii,127

Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.
I,ii,133

Unbidden guests
Are often welcomest when they are gone.
II,ii,55

Delays have dangerous ends.
III,ii,33

Care is no cure, but rather corrosive
For things that are not to be remedied.
III,iii,3

Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety
III,iii,9

Henry VI, Part II

To weep is to make less the depth of grief.
II,i,85

The game's afoot!
III,i,32

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.
III,i,53

The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers.
IV,ii,75

Small things make base men proud.
IV,i,106

Presume not that I am the thing I was.
V,v,57

Henry VI, Part III

My crown is in my heart, not on my head;
Not deck'd with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen: my crown is call'd content;
A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.
III,i,62

Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.
IV,i,18

A little fire is quickly trodden out;
Which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench.
IV,viii,7

And many strokes, though with a little axe,
Hew down and fell the hardest-timbered oak.

King Henry VIII

Two women placed together make cold weather.
I,iv

Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain-tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such an art,
Killing care and grief of heart.
III,i,3

Julius Caesar

Beware the Ides of March
I,ii,18

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
I,ii,194

Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock'd himself nad scorn'd his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything!
I,ii,205

You are my true and hounorable wife:
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.
II,i,288

When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
II,ii,30

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
II,ii,32

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
I,ii,192

Et tu, Brute? Then fall Caesar.
III,i,77

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
III,i,254

Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war;
III,i,273

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
III,ii,75

This was the most unkindest cut of all.
III,ii,185

Good reasons must of force give place to better.
IV,iii,202

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when serves,
Or lose our ventures.
IV,iii,217

King John

Strong reasons make strong actions.
III,iv

What surety of the world, what hope, what stay,
When this was now a king, and now clay?
V,vii,68

King Lear

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
I,i,124

Who is it that can tell me who I am?
I,iv,236

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have an ungrateful child.
I,iv,295

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both.
II,iv,271

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire; that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.
IV,vii,46

The wheel is come full circle.
V,iii,176

Macbeth

If you can look into the seeds of time,
And tell me which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.
I,iii,58

Yet I do fear thy nature;
It is too full of the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.
I,v,17

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly.
I,vii,1

We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail.
I,vii,58

Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done is done.
III,ii,11

We have scorched the snake, not killed it.
III,ii,13

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
III,iv,63

Great business must be wrought ere noon.
III,v,22

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
IV,i,10

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
IV,i,45

Out, damned spot! Out, I say!
V,i,38

What's done cannot be undone.
V,i,71

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying n