Fossils and birds and Victor Hugo, mostly
Jul. 20th, 2015 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heliopausaHere it is Monday morning, and I'm feeling mildly cheerful about productivity, having put the finishing touches to the footnotes on a due-today report before breakfast, and after having gone to morning exercises.
However, getting to that stage did mean that I missed large lumps of the weekend, and hence am late in linking, for anyone who missed it, this wonderfully detailed fossil of a winged-and-feathered dinosaur (you can see the feathers!). The wings have been judged too small to be effective for actual flight, but I'm imagining it could go as far as wing-assisted hops up into trees, like peacocks.
and as a follow-up to the link about bird and languages last time, it seems birds can also learn other bird languages - though only at the most basic level. :)
The cricket has been being watched live in this house, thanks to the Indian internet - and lo! there was scored the first double century at Lords by an australian batsman since Bradman! :) I know this won't mean much to lots of you out there, but it's significant to australians anyway, since Bradman is a name to conjure with. (Who reading this does know the name?)
In reading, I have begun Les Miserables, which I have never yet read - so far, just book one of the first volume, and the only main character has been the bishop, the one with the candlesticks, though Jean Valjean has yet to appear. I felt Hugo was laying it on a bit thick to start with - I get it, I get it - the Bishop is a Good Man. But in the end, it really is a very winsome portrait of goodness (leaving aside his treatment of the women of the house) - which is causing me to mull over the whole matter of the depiction of goodness in fiction - both nineteenth century and fan-. How often is it attempted, how is it shown as interesting - or even exciting? I don't think Dickens ever succeeds, does he? There's Joe and Biddy in Great Expectations, of course. Good but ineffectual.
(Mildly relevant quote from Simone Weil, more or less:
as for my own writing: I'm 500 words into an NFE possibility, without knowing if this is a story I really want to write or not, or if it's the one I'll end up writing, or if I'll end up throwing in the towel. So far there's nobody particularly Good in it.
However, getting to that stage did mean that I missed large lumps of the weekend, and hence am late in linking, for anyone who missed it, this wonderfully detailed fossil of a winged-and-feathered dinosaur (you can see the feathers!). The wings have been judged too small to be effective for actual flight, but I'm imagining it could go as far as wing-assisted hops up into trees, like peacocks.
and as a follow-up to the link about bird and languages last time, it seems birds can also learn other bird languages - though only at the most basic level. :)
The cricket has been being watched live in this house, thanks to the Indian internet - and lo! there was scored the first double century at Lords by an australian batsman since Bradman! :) I know this won't mean much to lots of you out there, but it's significant to australians anyway, since Bradman is a name to conjure with. (Who reading this does know the name?)
In reading, I have begun Les Miserables, which I have never yet read - so far, just book one of the first volume, and the only main character has been the bishop, the one with the candlesticks, though Jean Valjean has yet to appear. I felt Hugo was laying it on a bit thick to start with - I get it, I get it - the Bishop is a Good Man. But in the end, it really is a very winsome portrait of goodness (leaving aside his treatment of the women of the house) - which is causing me to mull over the whole matter of the depiction of goodness in fiction - both nineteenth century and fan-. How often is it attempted, how is it shown as interesting - or even exciting? I don't think Dickens ever succeeds, does he? There's Joe and Biddy in Great Expectations, of course. Good but ineffectual.
(Mildly relevant quote from Simone Weil, more or less:
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.
Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating.”)
Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating.”)
Hugo uses this section, though, to shoe-horn in several essays and reflections about the wrongs of the time (which are also wrongs of our own time). I liked the essays and reflections, but they are very obviously primarily things he was determined to get into print somehow, whether it was part of the story or not - especially the long colloquy with the dying revolutionary.
as for my own writing: I'm 500 words into an NFE possibility, without knowing if this is a story I really want to write or not, or if it's the one I'll end up writing, or if I'll end up throwing in the towel. So far there's nobody particularly Good in it.
