A black-and-white photograph from a black-
And-white film ravishes imagination:
The sensuous appeal of an idea,A girl in uniform who might have died
For an idea. No words could have conveyed
The seductive beauty of an actress
And the seductive beauty of ideas,
The sexual pleasure of the murderous act.
Only a photograph could have revealed
That perfect Aryan face for which men
Would kill. Such pornographic images
Would travel east; we'd follow communism,
Democracy and nationalism with
The erotomania of jealous murderers.
Plutonium
It is rare to name a chemical element after a living person. But Glenn Seaborg had an exceptional claim to that honour. Dr.Seaborg was recruited into the Manhattan Project (America's wartime effort to build an atomic bomb)". When the bomb was built, however, he was among the Manhattan scientists who put their names to a letter to President Truman asking that the Japanese be given a demonstration - and a chance to surrender - before the device was used on a city. Their plea was rejected.- Obituary, The Economist
Not everyone can have an element
Named after him. Seaborgium. Nice sound.
Explosive.
He died at the age of 86.
The Japanese today live that long, don't they?
Ironic, that. They weren't meant for war
But peace and a long life. Pass the sake.
They had no choice, but to defend themselves,
Ever since Perry's gunboats announced the West.
Defence equalled offence, and to be free
Was to enslave, and to be free of the West
Was to mimic the West - now, anamnesis shows
Mimesis to have been their worst offence.
Invention proved too individual,
Like conscience, and no Seaborg in the East.
The Widdy-Widdy Bush
Proudly, the government of Antigua reports that its "offshore financial industry has grown by leaps and bounds." The American State Department agrees.... Antigua, the department said ... is "one of the most attractive centres in the Caribbean for money launderers."
Such comments were wounding to Vere Bird, who dominated Antiguan politics....
In 1951 he persuaded Antigua's sugar workers to strike for more pay. ...When a white planter asked what the strikers would eat, Vere Bird said, "We will eat the widdy-widdy bush."
The widdy-widdy is a weed once used to feed slaves.
- Obituary, The Economist
The Royal African Company had some
Distinguished shareholders, one of them being
John Locke, the champion of liberty.
The buying and selling of freedom in
The agora was his inheritance
From Greek antiquity : a phobia
Of the agora was to be expected
From the victims of the Companies.
The repetition of the sound 'widdy'
Betokens hunger, pain, indignity,
In greater eloquence than simple 'weed'
Or speech of abolitionist; through hint
Of the antithesis of sweet of sugar,
The taste of bondage, and the taste of freedom.
Everest
On returning to his barracks, Mallory, who was riding a motorbike, hit a pillar at the entrance to his camp and crushed the same foot, incapacitating himself for the rest of the year. He wrote to his father shortly before the armistice: "I should have liked to return home, if not a hero, at least a man of arms more tried than I have been...my instinct is to want more fighting." It was a telling comment given that many of his pupils, though younger, would by the end of the war have been more tested than he.
- The Economist, July 15th, 2000
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