75 years after the rise of the One Big Master Race, the one holding the one Master Key to fit in the one Master Lock of Charles Lyell's
world of stasis and equilibrium, we can better see that the Nazis were not anti-modern barbarians as is often claimed about them by others.
Rather we can now see them , as they themselves claimed to be : the people who best took the full logic of Modernist Science to its ultimate conclusion.
Its ultimately absurd conclusion, because Modernist Science was Bad Science.
It always had been, but it wasn't broadly revealed as such until 1939-1945.
The War stressed the tape holding Modernist Science together well beyond the breaking point.
The unexpected result was not just that many citizens of the Axis changed their mind about the value of Modernist Science, but that also so did many people in the Allied and Neutral countries as well.
WWII was the triumph of the weak and the wild over the forces of the might and of the will.
The bacteria and the Jews were still there but the mighty Third Reich like the dinosaurs before it was gone.
As had happened so often in the past history of global catastrophes, r-selected trumped K-selected once again...
Monday, March 28, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
During WWII, the "4Fs of the 4Fs of the 4Fs" were the non-motile bacteria
No head or eyes or ears or nose or mouth, no arms or legs, just incredibly tiny bags of salty water floating about where ever the currents took them.
No wonder that during WWII zoologists and eugenicists (is there a difference?) called the non-motile bacteria living fossils from the childhood of the origins of life.
The stupidest of the stupidest, the unfittest of the unfit.
Sulfa drugs were expected to make short work of them and soon all the infectious hospitals would close for good.
Problem solved.
But it turns out that non-motile bacteria have been on earth for 4 billion years and will be here long after we depart.
They occupy every possible spot on Earth - hottest to the coldest, high in the stratosphere to deep in the bowels of the earth.
They are so numerous and successful that their biomass outweighs us and all the mammals even though we individually outweigh them individually a trillion times over.
Most of the cells in us aren't us at all - they're them.
Now that is a miscegenation nightmare for the latent eugenicist !
They can do things to DNA that we can only dream of - including altering our DNA to better suit them.
No better proof of how off target was the very concept of the unfit than how the educated middle class of WWII viewed the unfit bacteria world....
No wonder that during WWII zoologists and eugenicists (is there a difference?) called the non-motile bacteria living fossils from the childhood of the origins of life.
The stupidest of the stupidest, the unfittest of the unfit.
Sulfa drugs were expected to make short work of them and soon all the infectious hospitals would close for good.
Problem solved.
But it turns out that non-motile bacteria have been on earth for 4 billion years and will be here long after we depart.
They occupy every possible spot on Earth - hottest to the coldest, high in the stratosphere to deep in the bowels of the earth.
They are so numerous and successful that their biomass outweighs us and all the mammals even though we individually outweigh them individually a trillion times over.
Most of the cells in us aren't us at all - they're them.
Now that is a miscegenation nightmare for the latent eugenicist !
They can do things to DNA that we can only dream of - including altering our DNA to better suit them.
No better proof of how off target was the very concept of the unfit than how the educated middle class of WWII viewed the unfit bacteria world....
WWII's biggest battle didn't happen between six military empires
You all know the score: WWII was all about the empires ---- the
empires of Britain and American and Russia and China fighting the empires of Germany and Japan.
Six huge military empires (and their allies) with hundreds of millions of men under arms, fighting for six long years all over six huge continents.
75 million dead, trillions and trillions of dollars of non-renewable resources blown up or sunk or burned.
K-selected history with a vengeance.
The God of WWII history books seems definitely on the side of the big battalions.
But I argue the biggest battle of World War Two actually happened off the battlefield and occurred instead, inside the educated middle class's collective conscience - and I aim to compress that battle into three short hours and three tiny rooms in a New York hospital and thrust it onto a stage near you.
This is the r-selected history of WWII - cutting it down to the essence...
empires of Britain and American and Russia and China fighting the empires of Germany and Japan.
Six huge military empires (and their allies) with hundreds of millions of men under arms, fighting for six long years all over six huge continents.
75 million dead, trillions and trillions of dollars of non-renewable resources blown up or sunk or burned.
K-selected history with a vengeance.
The God of WWII history books seems definitely on the side of the big battalions.
But I argue the biggest battle of World War Two actually happened off the battlefield and occurred instead, inside the educated middle class's collective conscience - and I aim to compress that battle into three short hours and three tiny rooms in a New York hospital and thrust it onto a stage near you.
This is the r-selected history of WWII - cutting it down to the essence...
WWII's biggest battle happened inside our collective conscience
History is written by the losers, not the winners - the winners have better things to do.
It is written by the losers with l'argent .
As a result, history's losers say that Modernity won WWII - by defeating the forces of darkness that were the Nazis and their friends.
So why then was the film TRIUMPH OF THE WILL was replaced at the moment of victory by the film ... DOUBLE INDEMNITY ?
!!!!!!!!!
Surely this must rank as the sourest victory pageant ever staged.
It rather casts doubt on just how strong a triumph for Modernity were the victories of 1945.
I argue that ,in fact , the unexpected events of 1939-1945 dealt Modernity such a severe blow that it never recovered.
And that the last 65 years have merely recorded its slow steady death throes.
No where is this more clearly seen than in the concept of the unfit, a concept that held wide support among the world's educated middle class from Berlin to Boston and from Toyko to Moscow for almost a hundred years.
But that concept 'unfit' was transformed - in the narrow Henry Dawson sense of that word - by the actions of the 'unfit' and the 'fit' during WWII.
Remember the unfit's ranks could take in not only most of humankind but also most of the planet's lifeforms and even most inanimate planetary activities like the weather.
You and I probably fitted into it at various times and circumstances.
So a change in the concept of the term was bound to change almost everything.
But pushed to the wall in 1939-1945 by the fit, the unfit unexpectedly bit back hard and Modernity itself faltered.
This was because the conscience of educated middle class was gradually badly troubled by the events of WWII.
Slowly but surely, its members became progressively less and less glib about making easy assertions that the world neatly (and permanently) divided itself into the fit and the unfit.
After 1945, PostModernity then slowly arose from the resulting moral ruins....
It is written by the losers with l'argent .
As a result, history's losers say that Modernity won WWII - by defeating the forces of darkness that were the Nazis and their friends.
So why then was the film TRIUMPH OF THE WILL was replaced at the moment of victory by the film ... DOUBLE INDEMNITY ?
!!!!!!!!!
Surely this must rank as the sourest victory pageant ever staged.
It rather casts doubt on just how strong a triumph for Modernity were the victories of 1945.
I argue that ,in fact , the unexpected events of 1939-1945 dealt Modernity such a severe blow that it never recovered.
And that the last 65 years have merely recorded its slow steady death throes.
No where is this more clearly seen than in the concept of the unfit, a concept that held wide support among the world's educated middle class from Berlin to Boston and from Toyko to Moscow for almost a hundred years.
But that concept 'unfit' was transformed - in the narrow Henry Dawson sense of that word - by the actions of the 'unfit' and the 'fit' during WWII.
Remember the unfit's ranks could take in not only most of humankind but also most of the planet's lifeforms and even most inanimate planetary activities like the weather.
You and I probably fitted into it at various times and circumstances.
So a change in the concept of the term was bound to change almost everything.
But pushed to the wall in 1939-1945 by the fit, the unfit unexpectedly bit back hard and Modernity itself faltered.
This was because the conscience of educated middle class was gradually badly troubled by the events of WWII.
Slowly but surely, its members became progressively less and less glib about making easy assertions that the world neatly (and permanently) divided itself into the fit and the unfit.
After 1945, PostModernity then slowly arose from the resulting moral ruins....
Thursday, January 27, 2011
If it feels like AKTION 4F's alter ego - that's because it is
This is new, additional, blog that will largely parallel the theme of my AKTION 4F blog.
So why yet another blog?
It is because I am 'test driving' my book series' title and subtitle which will appear on the books' front cover, website, posters etc.
Should it be:
The OTHER Manhattan Project
(In between the big, top, title and the small, bottom, subtitle will be my painted illustration of an August 1944 faux 'group photo' --- 4 team members using crutches, canes or wheelchairs, together with two patients in wheelchairs, all exhibiting an air of tired and tattered triumph.)
Aktion 4F
Or should it be :
AKTION 4F
(In between the big, top, title and the small, bottom, subtitle will be my painted illustration of an August 1944 faux 'group photo' --- 4 team members using crutches, canes or wheelchairs, together with two patients in wheelchairs, all exhibiting an air of tired and tattered triumph.)
the other Manhattan Project
I am inclined to favor option one , but I will have to await further reader feedback....
So why yet another blog?
It is because I am 'test driving' my book series' title and subtitle which will appear on the books' front cover, website, posters etc.
Should it be:
The OTHER Manhattan Project
(In between the big, top, title and the small, bottom, subtitle will be my painted illustration of an August 1944 faux 'group photo' --- 4 team members using crutches, canes or wheelchairs, together with two patients in wheelchairs, all exhibiting an air of tired and tattered triumph.)
Aktion 4F
Or should it be :
AKTION 4F
(In between the big, top, title and the small, bottom, subtitle will be my painted illustration of an August 1944 faux 'group photo' --- 4 team members using crutches, canes or wheelchairs, together with two patients in wheelchairs, all exhibiting an air of tired and tattered triumph.)
the other Manhattan Project
I am inclined to favor option one , but I will have to await further reader feedback....
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Ungrateful bastards : Manhattan's penicillin saved a family member of everyone of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists
I admit that I didn't start this project on Dr Dawson's penicillin crusade with any intention to call it "the OTHER Manhattan Project".
But here is how it all came about, as best I remember it.
I was watching a CBC TV debate about the reasons why Manhattan was attacked on 9/11; this was some time in 2005... or even 2006.
Someone on the panel was trying to explain that older people everywhere around the world, rather like Frank Sinatra, just loved the Hollywood movie version of New York City.
However the younger generation, in general and not just in the Muslim world, had some quite different, additional, images conjured up whenever 'Manhattan' was mentioned .
Such as the worldwide recession and high youth unemployment caused by the excessive 'Greed-is-Goodism' of a small handful of traders from Manhattan Island's Wall Street.
And the prospects of Mankind blowing us all up, thanks to the nuclear bomb possibilities generated by "The Manhattan Project."
At this point, I yelled up to my better half, Rebecca, in my usual exasperated TV-watching tone, "What about the OTHER Manhattan Project??"
"I'd bet my life", I said," that someone in everyone of those 9/11 hijackers' families at some time or other had their life saved by the antibiotics that came out of wartime Manhattan and Dr Dawson's quixotic efforts ----- those un - grate - ful bastards !!!!"
I promptly forgot all about it after blowing off steam.
But I soon took to calling my effort, informally and only to Rebecca, Manhattan's other Project or the other Manhattan Project.
But I didn't take it too seriously as an actual concept or theme.
Dusty - or muddy - areas as empty of people and urbanity as Manhattan was full of them.
Clever, very clever.
But actually the planners of the Atomic Project were even cleverer.
They took a page from Edgar Allan Poe and put the brainy bits of the atomic effort in Manhattan - "hidden in plain sight" - and only put the final production plants out in the desert. But all that high tech equipment and manpower out in the desert actually came out of the North East industrial core, in particular from the Greater New York City area.
Atomic Historian, Robert S Norris, set the world straight on the massive amount of atomic history that happened first and foremost in the New York area.
But what I specially noted, even if Norris didn't particularly highlight the fact, was that the Cold War Nuclear Threat was actually birthed in Harlem, not out in the desert, and within a few hundred meters of the most dramatic single event in all the penicillin saga.
As a Baby Boomer, 1950s antibiotics ending childhood diseases and Cold War mass production of A- bombs possibly ending childhood, period, interested me far more than the small amount of inefficient bomb materials developed out in the desert to end WWII but then were never used again to make A-bombs.
If our world should end tomorrow, it is gaseous diffusion uranium that did it - and that was the stuff developed in Harlem's Nash Building and then taken up by all the world's big nuclear bomb makers.
Now I had the two biggest news stories of the entire 20th Century ( according to a poll of 35,000 Americans ) happening in the same year in the same 80 acre space in North West Harlem - what a story !
And I stand by my claim - everyone on Earth, 60 years after the beginnings of the Antibiotic Era, has had a family member, now or in the past, whose life was saved by the antibiotic revolution.
You all remember the british policeman, one of the most famous patients in all history, who told his family when they saw the tiny dot of blood on his cheek, "Don't panic - I just got scratched by a rose while out gardening and you can't possibly die from that !"
But before antibiotics, you could.
And he did.
Hospitals back then were filled with foul-smelling septic wards and filled with septic cases, sad stories of healthy young people dying needlessly of blood poisoning that all started with a little infection.
You don't have to be at death's door to have a course of antibiotics 'save your life' ---- you just need to make the emotional leap back in time to think what might of happened to you if your minor infection hadn't been nipped in the bud.
So don't be like those ungrateful 9/11 bastards.
Thank your lucky stars, and thank Dr Dawson, the next time your doctor yawns behind their hand while they write out a prescription for a course of antibiotics after discovering you have a minor bacterial infection.
'May life-saving always be so routine' .....
But here is how it all came about, as best I remember it.
I was watching a CBC TV debate about the reasons why Manhattan was attacked on 9/11; this was some time in 2005... or even 2006.
Someone on the panel was trying to explain that older people everywhere around the world, rather like Frank Sinatra, just loved the Hollywood movie version of New York City.
However the younger generation, in general and not just in the Muslim world, had some quite different, additional, images conjured up whenever 'Manhattan' was mentioned .
Such as the worldwide recession and high youth unemployment caused by the excessive 'Greed-is-Goodism' of a small handful of traders from Manhattan Island's Wall Street.
And the prospects of Mankind blowing us all up, thanks to the nuclear bomb possibilities generated by "The Manhattan Project."
At this point, I yelled up to my better half, Rebecca, in my usual exasperated TV-watching tone, "What about the OTHER Manhattan Project??"
"I'd bet my life", I said," that someone in everyone of those 9/11 hijackers' families at some time or other had their life saved by the antibiotics that came out of wartime Manhattan and Dr Dawson's quixotic efforts ----- those un - grate - ful bastards !!!!"
I promptly forgot all about it after blowing off steam.
But I soon took to calling my effort, informally and only to Rebecca, Manhattan's other Project or the other Manhattan Project.
But I didn't take it too seriously as an actual concept or theme.
Like most of us, I had long thought the 'Manhattan' part of the Manhattan Project was a clever ruse to put the Nazis off the scent - everyone knew the atomic bomb was developed in the desert of New Mexico and also in desert-like conditions in Washington State and backwoods Tennessee .
Dusty - or muddy - areas as empty of people and urbanity as Manhattan was full of them.
Clever, very clever.
But actually the planners of the Atomic Project were even cleverer.
They took a page from Edgar Allan Poe and put the brainy bits of the atomic effort in Manhattan - "hidden in plain sight" - and only put the final production plants out in the desert. But all that high tech equipment and manpower out in the desert actually came out of the North East industrial core, in particular from the Greater New York City area.
Atomic Historian, Robert S Norris, set the world straight on the massive amount of atomic history that happened first and foremost in the New York area.
But what I specially noted, even if Norris didn't particularly highlight the fact, was that the Cold War Nuclear Threat was actually birthed in Harlem, not out in the desert, and within a few hundred meters of the most dramatic single event in all the penicillin saga.
As a Baby Boomer, 1950s antibiotics ending childhood diseases and Cold War mass production of A- bombs possibly ending childhood, period, interested me far more than the small amount of inefficient bomb materials developed out in the desert to end WWII but then were never used again to make A-bombs.
If our world should end tomorrow, it is gaseous diffusion uranium that did it - and that was the stuff developed in Harlem's Nash Building and then taken up by all the world's big nuclear bomb makers.
Now I had the two biggest news stories of the entire 20th Century ( according to a poll of 35,000 Americans ) happening in the same year in the same 80 acre space in North West Harlem - what a story !
And I stand by my claim - everyone on Earth, 60 years after the beginnings of the Antibiotic Era, has had a family member, now or in the past, whose life was saved by the antibiotic revolution.
You all remember the british policeman, one of the most famous patients in all history, who told his family when they saw the tiny dot of blood on his cheek, "Don't panic - I just got scratched by a rose while out gardening and you can't possibly die from that !"
But before antibiotics, you could.
And he did.
Hospitals back then were filled with foul-smelling septic wards and filled with septic cases, sad stories of healthy young people dying needlessly of blood poisoning that all started with a little infection.
You don't have to be at death's door to have a course of antibiotics 'save your life' ---- you just need to make the emotional leap back in time to think what might of happened to you if your minor infection hadn't been nipped in the bud.
So don't be like those ungrateful 9/11 bastards.
Thank your lucky stars, and thank Dr Dawson, the next time your doctor yawns behind their hand while they write out a prescription for a course of antibiotics after discovering you have a minor bacterial infection.
'May life-saving always be so routine' .....
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Martin Henry Dawson was grandson of Independent MLA, John Barnhill Dickie
I was bemused to see John Barnhill Dickie's name re-emerge as one of Nova Scotia's relatively rare number of MLAs who jumped the party they were elected under, to sit as an Independent or join another political party .
He represented Colchester County.
The same county represented by the province's newest ship-jumper, former Conservative Party leader (pro temp), Karen Casey.
Dickie is usually remembered today, if at all, because his inept actions as Speaker of the Nova Scotia legislature 125 years ago resulted in a very rare move by the legislature members to dump their Speaker.
He should be remembered, as well, as a very
successful businessman.
He moved from farming and schoolteaching into shipbuilding and then into banking and insurance -- all this success fueled by his extraordinary facility with mathematics.
Point of fact, he was one of the very,very first employees of the Royal Bank of Canada, aka RBC, (my bank) the largest bank in Canada and one of the largest in the world.
In addition,of course, he was the grandpa of the subject of this blog - Martin Henry Dawson - who perhaps inherited some his scientific abilities from his grandfather....
He represented Colchester County.
The same county represented by the province's newest ship-jumper, former Conservative Party leader (pro temp), Karen Casey.
Dickie is usually remembered today, if at all, because his inept actions as Speaker of the Nova Scotia legislature 125 years ago resulted in a very rare move by the legislature members to dump their Speaker.
He should be remembered, as well, as a very
successful businessman.
He moved from farming and schoolteaching into shipbuilding and then into banking and insurance -- all this success fueled by his extraordinary facility with mathematics.
Point of fact, he was one of the very,very first employees of the Royal Bank of Canada, aka RBC, (my bank) the largest bank in Canada and one of the largest in the world.
In addition,of course, he was the grandpa of the subject of this blog - Martin Henry Dawson - who perhaps inherited some his scientific abilities from his grandfather....
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