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March 18, 2008
BBC NEWS | UK | England | Tolkien's Hobbit fetches £60,000
The last known photograph of Tolkien, taken by his grandson Michael on 9 August 1973, was sold for £864.
The photograph - which was expected to fetch up to £600 - shows the author in the Oxford Botanical Gardens leaning against his favourite tree, the Black Pine he named Laocoon.
It was a gift to Elaine Griffiths from Tolkien's daughter Priscilla, who wrote on the back "For Elaine with love from Priscilla".
Tolkien, who was raised in Birmingham, spent most of his life as an academic in Oxford, before retiring to Dorset with his wife, Edith.
After she died he sold up and moved back to Oxford.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7302101.stm
Posted by thdyck at March 18, 2008 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Property plan's 'low carbon' goal
Property plan's 'low carbon' goal
By Mark Kinver
Science and nature reporter, BBC NewsFewer than 2% of US offices are classified as "green buildings"
Improving the environmental performance of buildings in North America can cut the region's carbon emissions more than any other measure, a study suggests.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7288320.stm
Posted by thdyck at March 18, 2008 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 8, 2008
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What on earth is 42?
Shakespeare's work was the product of a life, and a life lived to the full. Meaning too might only emerge from such fulsome engagement.
To put it another way, life is a gift. It is good. It flourishes in experiences like love, explains John Cottingham, professor of philosophy at the University of Reading, and author of On the Meaning of Life. He believes that philosophy can no more provide meaning than science can.
This is because life's giftedness, its goodness and its loveliness are essentially spiritual qualities. They can be assessed by rational enquiry. But they cannot be accessed by the cool calculations of reason. They must be experienced.
To put it another way, when the poet William Blake urged us "to see a World in a Grain of Sand", he was not suggesting anything literal. Rather, his words captured something of the world transfigured through beauty and meaning.
For Prof Cottingham, this is what it means to have faith. "For in acting as if life has meaning, we will find, thank God, that it does."
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What on earth is 42?
Posted by thdyck at March 8, 2008 | Comments (0) | TrackBack