The Plato Papers
This book spins me out.
I read it all in one sitting, this afternoon (it is only 139 pages), and I’m glad I did – it had a greater impact because of that, I think. It’s a bit weird, and I am left with a number of questions unanswered: what are these ‘people’ like – would they be recognisably human? How do they classify themselves if not by such systems as we deem fundamental, such as gender? Who are they? But it has also given me questions to ask about history as we tell it. If they can make the logical assumption that “Charles D”, author of The Origin of Species is Charles Dickens, and that it is “a comic masterpiece”, what sort of erroneous assumptions may we have made in our reconstructions? This is something that has always caused me some grief – in particular I’ve never really known whether or not to be suspicious of the ‘argument from silence’ line, since who knows what we may have lost between now and ‘then’? And then there’s the whole point of cultural context, let alone oral history…
It is a good book, for all that, and I think it should probably appear on the reading list for some history courses – like the prereq subject for honours at Melbourne – just to make people think.
One of the black angels died yesterday; it was quite sad and unexpected
No visible symptoms – guess it’s a good thing they’re in quarantine. We caught the one baby we still have from the last batch and moved her to the qt – because she’s a she and we don’t need more babies. She seems to enjoy swimming with the white angels.
As well, we got a parcel from Aquamail yesterday – very exciting. So we now own a 25 foot gravel vacuum, and a huge amount of food. We had given up on our order ever turning up, so we bought a bucket of flakes from Coburg anda some sinking tablets, and then Aquamail comes through with a bucket of flakes and two containers of freeze-dried tablets (the sort we originally had). Well, I guess it will keep. James insisted on trying out the vac; it worked well in the qt, and then we tried it in the main tank – it worked quite well; there’s a small section that looks remarkably clean – but it stirred the crap up a lot, too (or that might have been James’ technique). Of course, it’s a bit hard to do with all the plants. We may have to do as I heard someone else say – de-plant and vacuum sections at a time, do the whole tank over a year or so.
Warriors of God #2 – who does he think he’s kidding??
Describing James d’Avesnes: “who apart from Richard was the most gallant and chivalrous warrior of the entire European army.” Sorry? What’s your definition of chivalrous here?? I don’t think that your discussion of Richard so far allows for him to be called the most chivalrous warrior in the army by any stretch of the imagination!
I don’t think he can make up his mind whether Saladin was a wonderful person or not; sometimes he is the oh-so-holy Defender of the Faith, and sometimes he is “cruelly” beheading Christians – how do you do that cruelly, anyway? I guess he doesn’t have to make up his mind, but in these sections it seems like he has, and then he changes it…
I’m about 2/3 through, and I’m glad to have read it for a look at the period and people but, obviously, I have some issues with the portrayals.
Warriors of God
It’s not as academic as I had hoped. The author, James Reston, has probably set out to write a very approachable books – and it is, which is great. However, it rankles when he says ‘one chronicle remarks…’ and doesn’t tell you which chronicle that is. And, probably the most annoying thing, he does not give much reason for wholeheartedly accepting the theory that Richard and Phillip Augustus were lovers… and that annoys me. I don’t care if they were, I just object to the unscholarly way he approaches it – like he’s sensationalising it, and making Richard seem more modern, or something.
He also seems to have a love of Saladin and rather ambiguous feelings towards Richard. Which is fine, and I don’t mind authors saying that, but I do think they should make an effort to present balanced evidence, however much that is possible when you’re writing history.
It is a good book, though, and I think it is a good introduction to the period and people. I even like that it has me annoyed and asking questions, because that gets me doing my own research.
New books
Very exciting – bought two new books today. Readings have a $9.95 table at the moment, so I got Peter Ackroyd’s The Plato Papers and Jim Paul’s Catapult: Harry and I build a Siege Weapon, which is apparently now ‘a much beloved classic’ although I’ve never heard about it before. So, they look good.
Babies!! So many babies!
Probably close to 30, I think; so exciting. She is looking much slimmer, naturally… but a little harried. I’d like to catch her and put her in the qt, but a) she’s very hard to catch and b) there are 5 angels in there, so that might go against the whole idea of having a qt. So yes, we got angels on Friday – which was also highly exciting – three white, veil-finned ones (long fins), and 2 mostly black fairly normal looking ones. They seem to be quite happy in there today – eating, etc.
So exciting: I think the qt is ready
Ammonia is 0, nitrites are 0, and nitrates are very low – I guess because there is little ammonia entering the system. This happened on Monday; I added some more ammonia then, just to be sure, so I will check again today. SO tomorrow we will probably go to Coburg and get me some more fish – angels! hooray.
The other exciting thing at the moment is that all three cloaches have been out and about heaps. It happened after we moved the rock to check that the cloach lying in there really was still alive – we didn’t move it to a different position, so that doesn’t really explain why they’ve recently come to play more. I’m not complaining, though – it’s very exciting to see all three cruising around together.
The molly still hasnt’t had the fry… poor girl. The tank is quite overgrown at the moment, so I think I’ll leave it like that until after the babies are born and grow a bit.
Found another dead tetra stuck to the filter intake last night; then there were three…
Quite sad about that… again, no visible symptoms. Guess it’s the poisoning catching up – can’t think of any other reason.
The tank looks quite good at the moment, with the plants etc.
Poor gourami is building another bubble nest
We also have nitrites in the qt! Hooray! Guess I should add some more ammonia, to keep that bacteria multiplying and growing.
Miss Molly hasn’t had more fry yet… it will be interesting to see how many she has.
Randomly Yours, Alex 