Category: Uncategorized

In praise of Lysenko

My new icon is in honor of Trofim Denisovitch Lysenko.

Who was he? Here’s a man who saw around the foolish plodding of the so-called scientific method. Starting as an unknown country agronomist, he carved himself a place in this world with good peasant sense, pluck, spunk, and old fashioned elbow grease.

Of course the “geneticists” didn’t buy his theories, but Trofim Denisovitch went over their heads to the real guardians of sanity: the Soviet government. And Josef Stalin listened, because Stalin was smarter than those stuck-up biologists too. They complained like crazy, but try as they might they couldn’t stop this feisty underdog with a plan to save his country. And if they tried, they were shot or jailed. That may sound harsh, but standing in the way of the happiness of the people is a serious matter, and bad science has to be rooted out deep or it’ll come back. And you know, those science guys, they were elitists who weren’t in touch. Arrogant nerds. A lot of them were Jews and they had all kinds of chips on their shoulders, you know.

Of course none of his science worked just right. It was all pretty crazy. You can’t “vernalize” plants by cooling them down to make them produce more. You can’t change the next generation of plants by modifying this generation, either; it’s called the Lamarckian mistake and everyone knows this. But you couldn’t slow down a man like this with theories; he was about cold hard facts. And if those were hard to come by, he could scare up a few; he was good at scaring. If the man asked you how the vernalization was going on your collective farm, some answers were healthier than others, and even starving peasants don’t care to be shot.

Soviet biology and agriculture didn’t recover from Lysenko. His theories were used well into the 1960s, and even later in China. Some of Lysenko’s agricultural innovations played a part in Mao’s unfortunate farming changes in the Great Leap Forward, contributing to famines that may have killed tens of millions of people; the statistics are hazy but not so good. But we know that’s not the point. He’d given all those people something: hope. And that’s what it’s all about, really.

Why is Lysenko our hero today? He had vision. And he understood something about science that we’re only just rediscovering today. Scientists shouldn’t keep nattering away about global warming, or Peak Oil, or the ozone layer, or all of these other crappy negative theories. That doesn’t make our nation proud and strong, and it sure doesn’t help us fight terror. We need science that builds us up instead of breaking us down. And if people don’t like evolution, stop ramming it down their throats. Who’s paying your salaries, anyway?

Learn something from Trofim Denisovitch. A guy from nowhere with a can-do attitude is worth more than a hundred overeducated weenies with permanent jobs! Maybe you guys can give us some science we can use for a change, something to make people feel the pride again. Something positive.

And if you don’t like the way things are going, watch your mouth. Naysayers need to be isolated and dealt with around here, or we’re just playing into the hands of the terrorists.

Freedom science is on the march.

NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE

I really like The Pope.

I say this not because I’m friends with the one guy’s fiancĂ©e and met him a couple times, but because I just finally got the mp3-trola on myspace to work properly and listened to their music and it blasted my pants right off.

You’re supposed to mention at least two bands they sound like, old rock crit rule. So I pick Half Japanese and Mission of Burma. They have that “this entire record was recorded inside a coffee can” sound that I love from Half Japanese, and they’re anarchic and noisy as fuck. There’s an element of “Help, I am being kicked downstairs into the trash bin” listening to this stuff that really makes me warm and happy inside.

But they’ve got melody and guitar riffs, and the songs go from point A to point B instead of just being slices of noise. I can’t be down with the slices of noise thing; it puts me to sleep. This sound is more like giving a very talented and angry ADHD victim access to drums and guitars and asking him how he feels about his mother. BAM BAM RAAAR YEE HAW CLONK BLONK RRRROAR WHAMMEDY BLAM.

Oh yeah, and Flipper. A lot like Flipper. Anyway I just ordered their CD.

appeal.

oxfam

Famine in Niger, war and famine in Sudan, famine and disease after the tsunami, predatory landlords, dirty drinking water, the abuse of women and children, yet more war everywhere, AIDS, hurricanes, the impossible life of the subsistence farmer, drought, endless cycles of poverty and corruption, malaria, and still more war.

What’s a person to do?

Give a few bucks to Oxfam if nothing else. 77% of their donations and 90% of their emergency fund donations go directly to operations. They help in emergencies and crises, and they fight the root causes of the world’s miseries too. They do it locally, with global reach.

For those outside the U.S., the donation link is this one.

80s Flashback Block Party: Son of SDI

strangelove

I found that Twain bit during a long web search for something I couldn’t find: a satire on new weapons technology from the 1860s that is anthologized in The Sub-Treasury of American Humor. I can’t find that book in my house yet either; the search continues. It’s a lovely bit of writing and entirely appropriate today.

The whole search was sparked by this hilarious/horrible article on the return of the discredited, stupid, and entirely evil “Brilliant Pebbles” weapons project, part of the Reagan era Strategic Defense Initiative that was popularly known as the “Star Wars” system.

This is courtesy of Lowell Wood, our current living Strangelove. A disciple of Teller, he believed in every mad science approach to strategic defense: killer satellites, nuclear explosions in space, throwing rocks really fast at missiles, and X-ray lasers. The last one is a beauty: nuclear bombs in satellites would be detonated and their radiation focused into laser beams.

Wood’s still at it. His entire career and ego are attached to the scheme.

Mark Twain on the Flag and Foreign Wars

Twain had declared the American Flag polluted by the new imperial adventures in the Philippines, and had come in for a load of criticism. Here was his response.

The Flag Is Not Polluted [1901]

I am not finding fault with this use of our flag; for in order not to seem eccentric I have swung around, now, and joined the nation in the conviction that nothing can sully a flag. I was not properly reared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be sacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts, lest it suffer pollution; and so when it was sent out to the Philippines to float over a wanton war and a robbing expedition I supposed it was polluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so. But I stand corrected. I concede and acknowledge that it was only the government that sent it on such an errand that was polluted. Let us compromise on that. I am glad to have it that way. For our flag could not well stand pollution, never having been used to it, but it is different with the administration.