2013-02-23 - 5:47 p.m.
A new video from Didier using a GI-IC pieces Cold though it is I made it to the Polish shop today. I have taken to alternatives to R4 - they are R4 extra and R6. Yesterday I caught a dramatisation of towards the end of CP Snow's Strangers and Brothers series. It was much more interesting than I expected and so I started digging around in his biography. He is mainly seen these days in relation to his debate with F R Leavis on the Two Cultures. FRL didnt like the idea that there was any alternative to the culture that he took as his subject matter and he was very dismissive of CPS's suggestion that there is a second culture. From time to time people return to this debate and reassess it. FRL I think is emerging as sillier and sillier as this revaluation carries on. CPS started as a scientist and seems to have got involved at Cambridge in X Ray crystalography. This is a major discipline that has led to a lot of momentous discoveries and to be even a minor figure in that tale is quite something. But even in the 30s he started writing novels. SnBs is a long series that takes a set of characters through the war and into the 50s. CPS was involved in various policy debates in WW2 and then into the 50s. Someone has written a book about how far the SnBs series gives historical insight. As far as the R4X play is concerned it is quite obvious from early on that the Minister isnt going to achieve his goal of refocusing the UK's nuclear effort solely on peaceful goals and abandoning the weapons programme. The hero who is a senior civil servant and who supports the Minister gradually realises that he isnt going to win and then eventually resigns. There is some quite interesting spookery which comes into play when the pro-weapons lot manage to create suspicion about the hero. A spook comes over to dig into the Cambridge societies that the hero was in before the WW2. The spook has got the idea that the hero was a member of a particular society. The hero vehemently denies this on the grounds that everyone around knew that the group in question was more or less controlled by the Kremlin. There are four new pieces on the Widget - TTT Salary 3. Barrow Seven (2), Popular and Inquisition.