As the Kilns myth grows, naively sentimental writers sometimes refer to C.S. Lewis’s no-nonsense red brick house as a “fairy-tale cottage” set in a “magic wood.” The film “Shadowlands” romanticizes it as elegantly picturesque (and brickless). In reality, since Maureen Dunbar sold the front yard of the Kilns to a housing developer, Kilns charm exists only in the minds of Read More ›
The Sunday Telegraph, 15 January 1989 John Wain was born March 1925 and died 24 May 1994. Fellow-poet Peter Levi wrote, “Who will speak of his sweetness, untidiness, scholarship, or deep, deep generosity? Of the clarity and perfect phrasing of his letters, of his genius for friendship?” Wain described the relationship between Hooper and Lewis as like ivy growing over Read More ›
…I remember the first time an American university lecturer remarked to me innocently, “I teach Auden.” My impulse was to reply, “Yes? And what d’you teach him?” That was 30 years ago. I would not have that impulse today, when we are all taught and “done” and bundled up and handed out as part of a package of Education. Does Read More ›
Edited by Pat Bozeman Cloth, 180 pages, 3 b&w illustrations.OAK KNOLL BOOKS, ISBN 0-938768-22-0 * Price $25.00 In the past few years the world of rare books and manuscripts has been severely shaken by a number of highly publicized cases of forgery. The media has been most attracted to the Mormon document forgeries of Mark Hofmann which ended in bombings Read More ›
Big Government and Mass Media always feed on fear of monsters. While politicians promise to protect the people from the dreaded private sector, leading newspapers such as the Washington Post and network shows such as “60 Minutes” chime in with continuing reports on the economy as seen from the shores of Loch Ness. Peering through the shifting, inscrutable murk of Read More ›
Imagine it is 1971 and you are chair of the new Federal Computer Commission. This commission has been established to regulate the natural monopoly of computer technology as summed up in the famous Grosch’s Law. In 1956 IBM engineer Herbert Grosch proved that computer power rises by the square of its cost and thus necessarily gravitates to the most costly Read More ›
Can scientists change their minds about controversial ideas? Can they reject theories if evidence requires? That may depend upon what theories are at stake. Consider a disturbing case in California involving a distinguished biology professor, Dean Kenyon. A year ago, Kenyon was removed from his biology classroom at San Francisco State University after a few students complained to administrators about Read More ›
There is a world of poverty, decline, and decay, and every place has problems that are promoted by government into crises that then have to be “solved” by new government programs. Now, my great theme for the last decade or so, which I have adopted from Peter Drucker, who is one of the great men of our era, is “Don’t Read More ›
In 1994, four years after I wrote the first edition of Life After Television, the cornucopian afterlife is indeed at hand. With microchips and fiber optics eroding the logic of centralized institutions, networks of personal computers are indeed overthrowing IBM and CBS, NTT and EEC. But as the great pyramids of the broadcast and industrial eras — the familiar masters Read More ›
In her Dec. 15 letter responding to my December 6th editorial-page piece “A Scopes Trial for the ’90s” Eugenie Scott claims that Prof. Kenyon and I misunderstand the nature of science. What she means, of course, is that we understand it — and its current arbitrary prohibitions — all too well. The Kenyon case underscores a fact that Dr. Scott Read More ›