Did find another super-shy seer-scientist though: Frederick Griffith - a bacteriologist who was the first to demonstrate that a 'gene molecule' could carry hereditary instructions between organisms in his research on Streptococcus pneumoniae (smooth vs. rough coat). Excerpt from Mukherjee's The Gene [pg 114]: 'Griffith published his data in the Journal of Hygiene - a scientific journal whose obscurity might have even impressed Mendel.' Like Newton and Darwin, Griffith needed to be prodded to publish. And, like Darwin and then Crick&Watson, his transformative idea was only alluded to.
]]>F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas, son of a coal merchant, veteran of the Polish-Soviet war of 1920, employee of a prominent French fashion house between the wars, SOE operative during World War II, winner of the George Cross, and defense witness for Otto Skorzeny.
J. Rives Childs. His Wikipedia entry is sparse. His obituary in the New York Times gives more detail, but still misses some important things. Childs was drafted into the US cryptologic effort during World War I because he was mistaken for someone with a similar name who had published some things on codes and ciphers, and ended up a wartime colleague of people like Herbert Yardley and Friedman. After the war, he made a career in the US State Department, culminating in a posting as Ambassador to Ethiopia, despite the fact that part of what made him an expert on Casanova was extensive (and documented in a published memoir!) work on duplicating Casanova's love life, and also despite his vocal advocacy for hard left causes.
Childs bumped into another interesting character during World War I, Major Malcom Hay. A Scots Catholic aristocrat, Hay was taken prisoner at Mons, paroled back to England, and eventually led the British War Office SIGINT group MI1b during World War I. When Hay failed in a bid to be appointed to head the Government Code & Cypher School, he resigned in a fury and spent much of the rest of his life writing correctives to Protestant historiography, and he was one of the first historians to spend time srious time breaking ciphers in journals and the like. (To be fair, he had experience others lacked.) During a papal audience, he gave the Pope advice on cryptography.
Russian history has some very interesting characters, too.
Shades of Geoffrey Tandy; an expert in cryptogams who allegedly got picked for Bletchley for that reason.
]]>'Catherine represented the interests of the "new men", commoners who had been brought to positions of great power by Peter based on competence.'
She continued Peter the Great's modernization of Russia and, by claiming the throne upon his death, led the way for future Empresses.
]]>More significantly, he took it into his head - with the support of certain Florentine scholars and humanists - to go searching the libraries of the various religious institutions of Europe for surviving copies of classical Latin works, recovering a huge trove of material which in turn really kick-started the humanist movement that led in the end to the Enlightenment. Where he encountered reluctance on the part of institutions to part with mouldering relics he wasn't averse to bribing monks or resorting to outright theft. Wrote prolifically, and while he hewed to Latin rather than vernacular he was a shrewd social observer - you could say his collection of jokes and funny stories from across Europe has never been out of print except it predates the printing press. His handwriting was so famed for its clarity and legibility that it formed the basis of the Roman script, and later typeface. His best buddy Niccolo Niccoli was similarly honoured, his method of handwriting being the prototype for Italic.
Would be interesting in a fictional sense to wonder what other, less famous, works he was looking for in Cluny and Reichenau - and who his sponsors were...
]]>Try this - looks as if we are close to being able to speak to Dolphins - will they want to speak to us is the next question ....
]]>Now the ficional stuff: As we all know, the Thule Gesellschaft was very active in squashing the Munich council Republic (abducting one of their ministers, etc ...). What if, in working for the council government, Ret Marut encountered something even more sinister about their workings, caught a glimpse of the horrors they tried to summon? As someone in the know, he was even more in danger than other prominent members of the council government and made his escape as quickly and as far away as possible. Even as B. Traven he stayed reclusive - after the first chapters of his first novel as Traven where published, his old comrade Erich Mühsam speculated loudly that B. Traven must be Marut, so he needed to stay in hiding (only dealing with his publishers via proxys or by mail, sending a proxy to counsel on filming the treasure of the Sierra Madre, etc.). His studies of native american culture and language, the expsidtion to Chiapas, where not idle curiosity, but an attempt to look for an antidote to the eldritch horrors the Thule society and their ilk had been working with - and seeking to find it in the customs mayas' descendants.
So much for the fictous scenario, now here's where it breaks down: Anarchocommunism of the sort Traven likely believed in (his novels where AFAIK not author tracts (I only read one) but big on social criticism of the powers that be and typically featured working class heroes) is essentiall a humanism: We are all basicall equal and decent human beeings. We could easily live lives full of freedom, equality and solidarity if only states and capitalism would'nt get in the way. This humanism is not compatible with the one true religion of the Laundryverse.
]]>I'd add that Psychological Warfare is still in print and still worth reading, not only for insight into current political campaign tactics (yet another instance of The Street finding its own use for things), but also for his comments on the utility of a trustworthy and independent media in counteracting propaganda attacks. In a fit of postmodernism, we've gotten away from trusting any information source, and that might not have been a completely good idea. If you believe Linebarger (who went through the 1930s and 1940s and got to see and presumably write a lot of propaganda first hand), that lack of trust in our news paradoxically makes us more susceptible to propaganda attacks, not stronger. Apparently, if you believe that everyone's lying to you, for most people, the tendency is to believe what they feel to be true, rather than try to thread the mirror maze rationally. Linebarger believed that rational skepticism thrived on a bedrock trust of some source of information, rather than in an space where nothing was trustworthy. He based his belief on how well propaganda did in countries where the official media were in the government propaganda game and nobody trusted them.
]]>Dear Charlie,
As I understand, for 90% of this planet's population "graduation from from school/university" is an unattainable dream (think about war zones in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq etc.) In fact, even the "birth of a child" may be quite problematic when US, UK, or RF planes are dropping cluster munitions on your village. Anyway, why are you so dismissive of the achievements of the lucky few, who managed to follow the path to so called "normal life"?
Sincerely,
Ivan Belkin
]]>Bear in mind, when comparing war deaths, that 150,000 people a day die from non violent causes (mostly age related)
]]>