Ol' Tom made life in this loony society.. that much more bearable.. in worst of the times -

Am nyever fyerget when I am meet the greaat mathematician, Lobachevsky who said: "The secret to mathematics is plagiarism". ..
So let not a thing evade your eyes.. don't shade your eyes but..

Plagiarise! Plagiarise! Plagiarise...!
(but please to call it .... research)


Aii!
Nikolai Ivanovich ... Lobachevskii was his Naaame !!
Aii!

{sniff}


Ashton
He shall live Forever.

I tried in HS to construct a mnemonic for at least the first 3 'octaves' of that wondrous creation, The Periodic Chart. Still works. (Transuranic will kill ya though). Yeah.. chem is beautiful - do they teach that anymore? Do many (10% ?) 18 year olds know what valence is?

Yup - Great Minds. I may still.. yet.. memorize The Elements (though they aren't in order - poetic license and all). Use it or lose it.

..All Go Together not merely fav but - appropriate for so many er *decades*. Somehow we squeaked by, despite flights of Canada Geese and twitchy folk on the other side.

The Old Dope Peddler - prescient, now we gots a War (on the millions of users who don't get caught) and all the BS that feeds our penchant for War on __. I WANT: A War on (Wars on__)

Sad that there are no successors to Tom, also Tommy Smothers, Laugh-In .. all the radio comedians. All we get is juvenile toilet jokes except

The Comics {sigh}. The talent may be there somewhere: just not on the meeja, that 24/7 maw which will fill each hour with *something*, no matter how tacky.



Ashton
Tom Lehrer for Pres - wherever he be.
(he's too smart to take it)

Poisoning Pigeons in the Park is my fav for Ecology Day. Note that even *here* among the vestiges of Murican intelligentsia or something.. ecology is now deemed Pee Cee (that lovely blanket-malphism for er any of those issue-thingies we don't really want to -->| Face) 'cause we'd have to change those consumption habits.

So under-attended is the topic, that indeed some of the PeeCee stuff is even valid (believe we can blame that too on our kultur of forgetfulness?). For many it IS YAN Corporate $-game. Just as 9/11 spawned the auto industry's er Fire-sale.. on all the left-over UAVs: One's Patriotic Duty to Keeeep Spending on those maxed-out CeeCees, you Peepul.

(Hydrogen.. betcha a couple measly million might get spent paying lip service. Meanwhile Dubya n'Dick n'Daddy and the boys.. make sure the Saudi-connection endures, [oil] remains King o' the financiers.. down to the last million barrels. Then a Cra$h Program [cost-plus contract natch] to do what -- we knew we should have started just after the 1973 GAS LINES.)

{sigh}

Alas, poor Wernher has lots of company. For deeming all science activity to be 'perfectly' ~amoral (er, leave it to our Statesmen to worry pretty little heads) .. Statesmen ?? .. all the countries were busily at work tryin to work out new bugs capable of devastating all homo-saps (and anything else is OK - just collateral). I gather that at least a few have found some organism-creation techniques as virtually promise a fully Doomsday-ready Super-bug. That is, I've heard this 'direction' mentioned obliquely, fortunately without specificity.

Now if just One has that clue.. publish or perish. Winning is Everything.. Ah but Recognition! is even More than Everything [Else]. So, Tom has Our Song ready for that final triumph of ego over planetary survival. Too!

Yup - ecology - who Needs that Crap !? Let's get that cel-fone brain implant --> Market reel soon, I say. (MP-3 attachment First, o'course). Wernher was a piker! compared to them Other researchers on Governments' payrolls. (Yeah, I've met some of those guys.. needed three showers afterwards.)


Cheers,

Ashton
Mark Twain & Tom Lehrer would have made good dinner companions.
Ever read his (posthumous!) analyis of The Damned Human Race ? He grokked to fullness. (But didn't dare publish that while still in a form to be.. burned at the stake by Puritans: a practical man.)

That's comforting, a bit. I suspect that the key to beginning to appreciate the beauty of 'chemistry' prolly begins with several hours of (brilliant!) lectures, demos of - the Periodic Chart; how prescient was Mendeleev - the chart even predicting the [holes]: missing elments! IIRC #43 called (uninspiredly) Technetium (Tc) was the first one as verified the correctness of the model. The valence numbers would appeal to a numerologist's heart too, the series 2:8:18.. describing and explaining how the shells of electrons are filled.

Everything around us (that we think we 'see') derives from these few magical relationships. Sad when a new group gets their driving licenses (after which.. most thought ceases? for a lengthy period) before - grokking this stuff.

Anyway.. there have been some great Showmen around. One comes to mind - he would dress in the costume of the period (of some great Chemist, Physicist) and do a demo lecture - to give the flavor of what was known/ not yet known, and how they reasoned about his New Theory (and rejected and dissected) etc.

Methinks that great ideas deserve great theatre: folks remember and generate that Interest essential for moving further. Bland techno-texts cannot catalyze this - only great teachers. The Biznesss Model ever believes: a spreadsheet can measure anything 'important'. And currently: These pipsqueaks Rule all life on the planet.

{sigh}


Ashton
Hell, mere brain chemistry explains autistic Billy! - and look at what He's brought us (to). Now as to Ashcroft's brain chemistry? Think: Control.. of All. As raison d'etre.

Quite true. In splendid metaphysical isolation. On that scale: nothing here matters except as a play to be transcended.

Then relax. They don't know what that is, and will fail in taking that away. They thought that in 1933 in the great German Universities too, as Hitler became Chancellor. Ignore these thugs; they don't know what we're about and will leave us alone...

I can quite ignore the trends all around, too. 'They' haven't come for me yet, either! Comfort is a serious drug: don't OD on it.



Ashton