The Kilns,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford
26 June 1956

Dear Joan–

Thanks for your letter of the 3rd. You describe your Wonderful Night v. well. That is, you describe the place and the people and the night and the feeling of it all, very well — but not the thing itself — the setting but not the jewel. And no wonder! Wordsworth often does just the same. His Prelude (you’re bound to read it about 10 years hence. Don’t try it now, or you’ll only spoil it for later reading) is full of moments in which everything except the thing itself is described. If you become a writer you’ll be trying to describe the thing all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of books, one or two sentences, just for a moment, come near to getting it across.

About amn’t I, aren’t I and am I not, of course there are no right or wrong answers about language in the sense in which there are right and wrong answers in Arithmetic. “Good English” is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another. Amn’t I was good 50 years ago in the North of Ireland where I was brought up, but bad in Southern England. Aren’t I would have been hideously bad in Ireland but very good in England. And of course I just don’t know which (if either) is good in modern Florida. Don’t take any notice of teachers and textbooks in such matters. Nor of logic. It is good to say “more than one passenger was hurt,” although more than one equals at least two and therefore logically the verb ought to be plural were not singular was!

What really matters is:–

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’timplement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Thanks for the photos. You and Aslan both look v. well. I hope you’ll like your new home.

With love
yours
C.S. Lewis

(Source: C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Children)

Now we progress to this…

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/12/premeditated-murder-of-newborns/#.T177R1ey120.facebook

The goal is to make it legal to kill as many babies as the Machine deems need killing. Most of the deaths are and will be so-called “undesirables” such as minority babies, poor babies, ugly babies, physically challenged babies… etc.. etc…

It is happening now and is called abortion and the link I provided clearly shows that there are some in the medical community that see no difference between killing a baby for convenience sake before birth or a day or two or week after birth. They see no difference because there really is no difference.

Here is the entire article, provided in case the link goes dead, which they alway do…

Late last month, two bioethicists – Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva – published an outrageous “paper” in the Journal of Medical Ethics justifying the deliberate, premeditated murder of newborn babies during the first days and weeks after birth.

Mr. Giubilini and Ms. Minerva wrote “when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”

If a newly born child poses an economic burden on a family, is disabled or is unwanted, that child can be murdered in cold blood because the baby lacks intrinsic value and, according to the professors, is not a person.

Mr. Giubilini and Ms. Minerva wrote, “Actual people’s well-being could be threatened by the new (even if healthy) child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of.”

As any parents – especially moms – will tell you, children in general and newborns in particular require enormous energy, money and boatloads of love. If any of these are lacking or pose what the authors called a “threat,” does that justify a death sentence?

Are the lives of newborn babies so cheap? Are babies so expendable?

The murder of newly born children is further justified by Mr. Giubilini and Ms. Minerva because newborn infants, like their slightly younger sisters and brothers in the womb, “cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing.”

In other words, no dreams, no plans for the future, no “aims” that can be discerned, recognized or understood by adults means no life.

This preposterous, arbitrary and evil prerequisite for the attainment of legal personhood is not only bizarre, it is inhumane in the extreme. Stripped of its pseudo-intellectual underpinnings, the Giubilini and Minerva rationale for murdering newborns in the nursery is indistinguishable from the motive of any other child predator wielding a knife or gun.

The authors say the devaluation of newborn babies is inextricably linked to the devaluation of unborn children, and is indeed the logical extension of the abortion culture. They “propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion,’ rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus. … Whether she will exist is exactly what our choice is about.”

These anti-child, pro-murder rationalizations remind me of other, equally disturbing rants from highly credentialed individuals. Princeton University’s Peter Singer suggested a couple of years ago, “There are various things you could say that are sufficient to give some moral status [to a child] after a few months, maybe six months or something like that, and you get perhaps to full moral status, really, only after two years.”

James Watson, Nobel laureate for unraveling the mystery of DNA, wrote in Prism magazine, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”

In like manner, Francis Crick, who received the Nobel Prize with Mr. Watson, said, “No newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests, it forfeits the right to live.”

The dehumanization of newborns isn’t new but it’s getting worse.

Mr. Giubilini and Ms. Minerva’s article must be a wake-up call. The lives of young children – an unprotected class – are under assault. Hard questions need to be asked and answered, and defenders of life must mobilized. We have a duty to protect the weakest and most vulnerable from violence.

As lawmakers, we must strive for consistency.

Why do so many who claim to be proponents of human rights systematically dehumanize and exclude the weakest and most vulnerable human beings from legal protection?

Why the modern-day surge in prejudice and ugly bias against unborn children and newborns? Why the policy of exclusion rather than inclusion?

Why is lethal violence against children – abortion and premeditated killing of newborn infants – marketed and sold as benign, progressive, enlightened and compassionate?

Why have so many “good people” turned a blind eye and looked askance as mothers are wounded by abortion and babies in the womb are pulverized by suction machines 20 to 30 times more powerful than household vacuum cleaners, dismembered with surgical knives or poisoned with chemicals? Looking back, how could anyone in this House or Senate, or both presidents Obama and Clinton, justify the hideous procedure called partial-birth abortion?

Since 1973, more than 54 million babies have had abortion forced on them. Some of those children have been exterminated in the second and third trimester, suffering excruciating pain as the abortionist committed his violence.

Why are some surprised that the new emerging class of victims – newborns – are being slaughtered in the Netherlands and elsewhere, while a perverse proposal to murder any newborn child – sick or healthy – is advanced in an otherwise serious and respected ethics journal?

Children – born and unborn – are precious. Children – sick, disabled or healthy – possess fundamental human rights that no sane or compassionate society can abridge.

The premeditated murder of newborn babies is being justified as morally equivalent to abortion.

Congress, the courts, the president and society at large have a sacred duty to protect all children from violence, murder and exploitation. We don’t have a moment to lose.

Rep. Chris Smith is a New Jersey Republican. Found at the Washington Time.com, March 13, 2012

whyatt.com.au

“We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” said the bartender.

A neutrino walks into a bar.

(Author unknown)

No, it is not photoshopped.

U.S. President Barack Obama waves while standing with other leaders during the Open Government Partnership event at the United Nations September 20 in New York City. The United Nations General Assembly kicks off September 21, with leaders from around the world attending.

From… http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/20/7862290-barack-obama-joins-open-government-partnership-for-group-photo

No actual men (or their preferences) were referenced in this article.

Men?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904900904576554380686494012.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_editorsPicks_2

Tunnels of Doom

I spent a lot of hours moving a pixelated-looking guy through hours of colored tunnels fighting pixelated-looking monsters.  The graphics were terrible, the sound effects were poor, the song that played as the game loaded seared into my brain in such a manner that I can still hum it after 30 years.

Part of the game’s code was located on a cassette tape.  I had to purchase a cassette player and a special cable in order to load the entire game into the computer’s memory.

I still have my original TI99/4a computer.  Somehow it stayed with me over the years.  A couple of years ago I pulled it out to see if it still worked and found that it worked perfectly.  I managed to find a cassette player at Goodwill and was able to run Tunnels of Doom.  I was surprised that the cassette tape was readable after 30 years.  You can purchase old Tunnels of Doom cartridges on Ebay, but you will rarely see the cassette portion of the program.  Magnetic tape doesn’t last forever.  Eventually all of the Tunnels of Doom cassettes will die from old age and then there will no way play the game.

With this in mind I decided to try and digitize the cassette in order to preserve it for those who might want to run the game sometime in the future.  I remember hearing (back in the 1980s) that the cassettes were copy protected.  During the process of digitizing the tape I was able to use software to bypass the protection.  I am not going to explain how I accomplished the feat in this post.  It would require to much typing.  But I will explain the process to anyone who is interested, if they send me an email.

Below are links to download the files of both games that were included on the cassette, Pennies and Prizes and Quest of the King.  I tested both recordings and they worked in place of the original cassette.  The volume, during input, has to be within a certain range in order for the TI99 to read it.  If you have trouble loading the sound file try adjusting the volume level of the device feeding the sound into the TI99.  I used my Mac laptop to play the sound files and fed them into the TI99 using a 3.5 inch connecter from the Mac headphone jack to the TI99′s input jack.

Quest of the King (36.6 MB, WAV format)

Pennies and Prizes (38.4 MB, WAV format)