I'm in shock that so may people here agree that Tolkien's prose is a problem. Far from that being the case, Tolkien is so sensitive to prose rhythm that I use it from time to time to teach how to appreciate rhythm in prose or poetry. Take, for example, the ride of the Rohirrim, at the end of chapter 5 of the Return of the King. It starts off at a walk ("Then suddenly Merry felt it at last, beyond doubt: a change. Wind was in his face! Light was glimmering.") picks up a bit to a trot ("But at that same moment there was a flash, as if lightning had sprung from the earth beneath
the City. For a searing second it stood dazzling far off in black and white, its topmost tower like a glittering needle: and then as the darkness closed again there came rolling over the fields a great _boom_.") a canter ("With that he seized a great horn from Guthláf his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder. And straightway all the horns in the host were lifted up in music, and the blowing of the horns of Rohan in that hour was like a storm upon the plain and a thunder in the mountains."), and then a full-out gallop ("Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first _éored_ roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Théoden could not be overtaken.") Then, once the cavalry has bashed through the enemy lines and the fighting's intensity lags, we slow down to a walk again ( And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.") I could also point out the careful word choice for alliteration ("and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder") and assonance ("the host of Rohan"). Reading this page aloud is a joy. If you appreciate the King James Bible, or Old English poetry, you can appreciate this.

But he doesn't always write in this style. There are homely conversations between country folk, and orders in the field, and descriptions of landscapes, and "dropped in" details that suggest thousands of years of history that are simply not explained, but make Middle Earth seem real.

By the way, I would take Ursula Le Guin's opinion on prose quality pretty seriously. She is a fan of Tolkien's writing, too, calling it "a great wind blowing" that could have overwhelmed her own voice if she had read it earlier than she did. (http://greenbooks.theonering.net/tributes/files/ursula_leguin.html)

So, again, I don't get where this opinion that Tolkien writes badly. The man put more care into a sentence than others do in a chapter.

-Gareth

So there are only three categories of people: civilians, tyrants, and criminals? I thought there were others, such as members of the armed forces, security forces for legitimate governments, and police officers, too.

-Gareth
 

You are correct, they are not fundamentalists. Your unstated assumption is correct that it would be irrational to start a major war, although China has had small ones with, for example, India and Viet Nam, and a much larger one some time back in Korea. However, what does rationality have to do with such decisions when passions are at play? I believe that war between China and the U.S. is a possibility that could be triggered by the ambitions of both to have naval dominance leading to a series of incidents, or by the claim to Taiwan heating up, or by the claims to almost all of the China Sea leading to more friction with Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. A BBC report a little while back speculated that the strong statements recently for these claims was to let the government seem to be leading the passions of the public, and therefore maintain credibility with the public. It sounds plausible.

-Gareth

Charging for news is a great way to drive readers to the BBC. That fine source of news makes its money through a mandatory fee and is, I believe, required by law to make its content available, at least to those who pay the fees, without further cost. Entering this kind of cartel would involve a big political debate.

If you haven't tried it, go to news.bbc.co.uk

-Gareth

You're right. I jumped on his comment with both boots on. Comments about Canada being less than a nation or less than a democracy because of our form of government do bother me, but I shouldn't have been so touchy here.

-Gareth

We've had representative government from the start. We got responsible government through negotiation. We achieved independence and ended slavery without a war for either. We just happen to split the function of "head of state" away from the function of "head of the executive branch," which allows us to think as witheringly as we please about the latter without having to show him any respect in his role as the former. The United States never figured out the advantages of that.

In short, we've got democracy. (Look up what happened to the Conservative Party after Brian Mulroney if you don't believe me). Take your cultural chauvinism home.

-Gareth

To tell the truth, I never minded having it called "OpenOffice.org" because no-one ever bothered to say ".org." On the other hand, you've got a good point that the names are stupid...but the names of the components. You've got Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, and Draw. These are, respectively, noun, contracted verb or noun, verb, contracted noun, and verb. Could we even be less consistent? We'd have to create a new component that was named with a preposition, participle, or conjunction...for example a mail component called Into, Mailing, or And.

I hope that this new start lets even something so basic get fixed.

-Gareth

It works if you pronounce it French-style instead of Spanish-style. Lee-BRUH, not Lee-BRAY. (Do Zebras bray?)

-Gareth

With reference to "Snowball Earth" and the possibility of life arising twice,

But if life has arisen twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for extinction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

(Apologies to Robert Frost)

-Gareth

Rather than re-invent the wheel, he could also have a look at South Africa's free science and math textbooks: http://www.fhsst.org

-Gareth

He's also mentioned in Aristophanes' play THE CLOUDS, so Socrates was definitely a well-known fellow.

After reading your post, I refreshed my memory by looking up an earlier leak, the Pentagon Papers. I believe that particular leak was completely justified because it proved that a succession of presidents had lied to the American people. The reason that the Pentagon and the diplomatic corps are worried about this current leak may just be that they have similar wrongdoing in them...because they acted improperly and illegally and do not want this known. Personally, if there's anything in them about "extraordinary rendition" or torture, I want that known, and it will NOT come out through proper channels. For such things, the system does not and cannot work.

So what should a moral citizen do? The answer is that he DOES make the determination himself that certain things are immoral to keep hidden. No man should ever place his conscience in another's keeping. The Nuremberg trials were all about that principle.

So, break the law if you feel it necessary. This is called "Civil Disobedience." And yes, sooner or later pay the price for it. My impression is that the founder of Wikileaks knows that he will pay the price eventually, but wants to have an effect on the world first. My feeling is that the price he will pay with is his life. Our governments are not above assassination, any more than they are above kidnapping or torture.

-Gareth

I wouldn't say it was 100% "practical." When there are the same number of acupuncture points as there are days in the year, there's magical thinking going on. When a chi master is believed to be able to expel the chi force in his body and fly, there's magical thinking going on. Chi, mana, magical force, no difference. When the system of meridians is differentiated from the blood vessels only by the proportions of blood and chi in them (mostly chi, some blood flowing, vs. mostly blood, some chi flowing), even though blood vessels are easily discoverable in the body and the meridians are not, well, science is not at work.

In a great many ways, Chinese traditional medicine is spookily similar to Western traditional medicine. There, too, health depends on the amount and proportion of a few essential fluids in the body. What the Chinese called qi flowing in meridians, the West called pneuma flowing in veins (until the experiments of Galen disproved that theory). There was a founder of medicine in both traditions (Yellow Emperor, Hippocrates), and Chinese herbal thinking had its counterpart in Western herbal medicine. (Compare the Shénnóng bnco jng to Dioscorides' Materia Medica).

The more you look, the more similarities you see. The big difference is that the West turned its back on traditional medicine a bit over a hundred years ago, and it's largely been forgotten; in the East, it has been retained beside Western medicine, as a parallel system. Many people trust in both systems simultaneously...except for surgery. There is no such thing as "Chinese Traditional Surgery" being practiced.

-Gareth

I've always liked an Indian saying that Kipling quoted. "Your gods and my gods...Do you or I know which is stronger?" Sounds pretty civilized to me.

-Gareth