It seems that Arthur was taken to a hausik in South Wales a week ago and he can be reached through this email address:

[email protected]

To get you in the right frame of mind, here’s the message I’ve sent to Phyllis, who will read it to Arthur, along with yours I hope:

Dear Arthur

The picture here is, I feel sure, one that you remember. It's certainly one that stays with me. A photo of an erudite man, comfortably at home and probably preparing to send another rather lengthy, well worked out and readable article to PNG Attitude.

I’ve heard from Phyllis that you're crook and baled up in one of those brilliant hausiks in South Wales. We’ve been missing your sometimes acerbic and always enthralling communications to our Recent Comments column.

The first of these appeared, appropriately enough, on May Day 2010, and concerned one of your primary targets – the unscrupulous mining companies who despoil precious parts of the environment and cheat the people who live there.

That first letter to PNG Attitude ended:

Government allowed the filth from Panguna, quickly followed by Ok Tedi, to pollute PNG’s waters. So it was OK too for Porgera and Misima Island. Lihir Island followed the same destructive practice, which then opened the door for Simberi and now for Ramu and so it will go on.

Unfortunately, Arthur, you were correct, it did go on, but you win high praise for directing readers’ attention to it and similar issues where people who should know better plotted against the beautiful people of New Ireland. You ended this first composition:

Arthur Williams of Cardiff on Taff, which has been polluted for over 150 years by greedy, uncaring mining companies. Only a few miles south of the Aberfan Disaster in October 1966 that killed 144 people, 116 of them primary school children.

We all felt the cut of that, Arthur, nobody could ever accuse you of not being passionate, polemical or eristic (which sounds like a Welsh word but would have had to make its way from Greece after the first man uttered it in 1630).

I know you’re OK with this, Arthur, because, as you would sometimes remind us, you were once a school teacher – and I bet you kept their noses down and the japes left for the playground.

Your last contribution to our bloggy pages is dated 21 December 2022, and directed t PhilF tzpatrick. I’ll indulge in a longish quote from it here:

OK Phil - It's the Taffy Christian who has taken your second bigger clickbait. I swam around in the murky waters of your 13 December diatribe against St Patrick's ill effects on the Emerald Isle, PNG and the world in general but I am one of the (Acts 9 v5) nasty pricks you are kicking against even though or perhaps because it is the last week before Christmas.

Phil to get out of your personal sloth of despond you could do worse than read about 'Penrose's Number', which I had never heard about until researching and meditating what I could reply to you today. Below is a snippet:

“In the early seventies, scientists studying the many aspects of the physical realities of the universe began to discover the confluence and simultaneity of a variety of physical constants that made some researchers postulate the possibility that the universe was tuned for biological life, particularly human life.

“They identified a few physical constants of the physical universe that were absolutely necessary for human life to exist. They called their theory, the 'anthropic principle'.

“Over the ensuing decades the number of crucial constants has grown to over 100 apparently 'tuned' constants present in the universe that make human life a realistic and real possibility.

“The fine tuning of these constants is so crucial that if a mere exponent of any of these crucial constants was changed the universe would not exist as it is, nor would human life be possible.

“Notice the appeal here is to scientific facts and the systemic interrelatedness of these crucial constants. Here is an appeal to science and to mathematics, both of which strongly imply a possible intention or plan. Or, at the very least, a highly unlikely probability that all this 'tuning' happened by accident, by mere chance.

“To take this a bit further, a scientist named Roger Penrose calculated the probability that the “tuning” of the universe, such as it is, could have happened accidentally. He wanted to examine the real probability that all this apparent complex tuning was reasonably explainable through the accidental processes of an unguided, mechanistic universe.

“His mathematical probability became known as Penrose’s Number. It indicated the possibility of the universe’s tuning occurring accidentally was 1 in 1010/123. That’s one in ten to the tenth to the one hundred twenty third power. (10^ 10 x 10^123).

“That number was so infinitesimally small, making an accidentally tuned universe all but impossible. To give you a sense of how small the probability is that there is a chance, a probability that the universe came about by accidental processes, the probability is so small that we cannot even write the number.

“We must resort to description of this vast number, for it is almost unimaginable. For the probability of the universe with all its fine tuning came about accidentally is stated as 1 in 10 followed by more zeroes than there are molecules in the universe. Crazy, right? So, the possibility that this fine tuning of the universe for human life, based on scientific findings thus far, was accidental is a mathematical impossibility.”

Phil, being guilty of so many sins in my lifetime I'm am the least worthy to criticise anyone, but believing in the doctrine of Christ's forgiveness being available for all I must close my puny efforts with part of a sermon couched in Victorian era-spik in 1866 by Charles Spurgeon:

“O sensible, thoughtful man, kick against the pricks no more. If you do not become a Christian, do not be a persecutor. There is no need to make your eternal portion worse. "Suppose you think that the gospel is not true, at any rate do not fight against it, for if it be of God you cannot prevail against it, and if it be not it will go down without you.

"Do not, however, think that we ask you to cease from wrath because we are afraid of you. The gospel is like an anvil; you may hammer it and it will break your hammer, and itself remain unbroken.

"You may stumble against this stone and you will be broken, but you cannot break or remove the stone. Woe unto you if that stone fall upon you, for on whomsoever this stone shall fall it will grind him to powder. Stop and think.

"If we can get men to think we may have good hope of them. At any rate religion is worth a thought. If you must and will go to hell, go there with your eyes open, and do not be deceived."

No matter how you view it, have a blessed Christmas Phil.

________

Arthur, I want to thank you for your contributions to PNG Attitude, to the projects we ran and, beyond that, your service to the people of Taskul, New Ireland and Papua New Guinea.

We miss the flaming prose of our dear Welsh mate, Arthur Williams, of Cardiff in Taffy country.

And one day, we hope to read more of it. Good luck, old pal.