Positive Quiddity: Raymond Aron

Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron (14 March 1905 – 17 October 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist, journalist, and political scientist.

He is best known for his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, the title of which inverts Karl Marx’s's claim that religion was the opiom of the people – Aron argues that in post-war France, Marxism was the opium of intellectuals. In the book, Aron chastised French intellectuals for what he described as their harsh criticism of capitalism and democracy and their simultaneous defense of Marxist oppression, atrocities, and intolerance. Critic Roger Kimball suggests that Opium is "a seminal book of the twentieth century." Aron is also known for his lifelong friendship, sometimes fractious, with philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

He is also known for his 1973 book, The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World 1945-1973, which influenced Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, among others.

Aron wrote extensively on a wide range of other topics. Citing the breadth and quality of Aron's writings, historian James R. Garland suggests, "Though he may be little known in America, Raymond Aron arguably stood as the preeminent example of French intellectualism for much of the twentieth century."

Life and Career

Born in Paris, the son of a secular Jewish lawyer, Aron studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure, where he met Jean-Paul Sartre, who became his friend and lifelong intellectual opponent.  He was a rational humanist, and a leader among those who did not embrace existentialism.  Aron took first place in the Agrégation of philosophy in 1928, the year Sartre failed the same exam. In 1930, he received a doctorate in the philosophy of history from the Ecole Normale Superieure.

He had been teaching social philosophy at the University of Toulouse for only a few weeks when World War II began; he joined the Artmee de l’Air. When France was defeated, he left for London to join the Free French forces, editing the newspaper, France Libre (Free France).

When the war ended Aron returned to Paris to teach sociology at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration and at the Paris Institute of Political Studies.  From 1955 to 1968, he taught at the Sorbonne, and after 1970 at the College de France. In 1953, he befriended the young American philosopher Allan Bloom, who was teaching at the Sorbonne.

A lifelong journalist, Aron in 1947 became an influential columnist for Le Figaro, a position he held for thirty years until he joined L’Express, where he wrote a political column up to his death.

He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academyt of Arts and Sciences in 1960.

Aron died of a heart attack in Paris on 17 October 1983.

Political Commitment

In Berlin, Aron witnessed Nazi book burnings, and developed an aversion to all totalitarian systems. In 1938 he participated in the Colloque Walter Lipmann in Paris.

Political Thought

Aron is the author of books on Karl Marx and on Carl von Clausewitz.  In Peace and War he set out a theory of international relations. He argues that Max Weber’s's claim that the State has a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force does not apply to the relationship between States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Aron

The Hundred Years' War: A Summary

The Hundred Years' War was a series of conflicts waged from 1337 to 1453, that pitted the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England, against the House of Valois for control of the French throne. Each side drew many allies into the war.

The war had its roots in a dynastic disagreement dating back to the time of William the Conqueror, who became King of England in 1066 while retaining possession of the Duchy of Normandy in France. As the rulers of Normandy and other lands on the continent, the English kings owed feudal homage to the King of France.  In 1337, Edward III of England refused to pay homage to Philip VI of France, leading the French King to confiscate Edward's lands in Aquitaine.

Edward responded by declaring himself to be the rightful King of France rather than Philip, a claim dating to 1328 when Edward's uncle, Charles IV of France, died without a direct male heir. Edward was the closest male relative of the dead king, as son of Isabella of France who was a daughter of Philip IV of France and a sister of Charles IV. But instead, the dead king's cousin, Philip VI, the son of Philip IV's younger brother, Charles, Count of Valois, had become King of France in accordance with Salic law, which disqualified the succession of males descended through female lines. The question of legal succession to the French crown was central to the war over generations of English and French claimants.

Historians commonly divide the war into three phases separated by truces: 1) the Edwardian Era War (1337-1360); 2) the Caroline War (1369-1389); and 3) the Lancastrian War (1415-1453).

Contemporary conflicts in neighboring areas, which were directly related to this conflict included the War of the Breton Succession (1341–1364), the Castilian Civil War (1366–1369), the War of the Two Peters (1356–1375) in Aragon, and the 1383-85 Crisis in Portugal.  Later historians invented the term "Hundred Years' War" as a periodization to encompass all of these events, thus constructing the longest military conflict in history.

The war owes its historical significance to multiple factors. By its end, feudal armies had been largely replaced by professional troops, and aristocratic dominance had yielded to a democratisation of the manpower and weapons of armies. Although primarily a dynastic conflict, the war gave impetus to ideas of French and English nationalism. It saw the wider introduction of weapons and tactics that supplanted the feudal armies where the use of heavy cavalry had dominated. The first standing armies in Western Europe since the time of the Western Roman Empire originated during the war, composed largely of commoners and thus helping to change their role in warfare. With respect to the belligerents, English political forces over time came to oppose the costly venture; while the dissatisfaction of English nobles, resulting from the loss of their continental landholdings, became a factor leading to the civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487).  In France, civil wars, deadly epidemics, famines and bandit free-companies of mercenaries reduced the population drastically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War

The Impaired Are Shunned

Curse of Being Elderly, Mentally
Impaired, or Physically Disabled
By John J. Suarez, Yahoo Contributor Network

(May 19, 2011) -- Few of us contemplate or even consider, much of what millions amongst us go through on a daily basis. Few of us, ever ponder what it is like to be in these persons’ shoes. Yet, most of us do live our lives avoiding, steering clear and even resent, being "rejected." Sad part of life is, that these people exists amongst us everywhere we go: The old, incapable and unable to function at what is termed, "normal."

What got me to write this article, is my long time companion and "wife." A person who knows the subject of this article all too well, for you see, she was born mentally "impaired," or what most of you would without feeling refer to as "retarded." I could say I don't know much about the subject of what it is like to be rejected simply out of people's prejudices, but I would be lying. Most of my life, I have gained attention from others though I never wished it. I have played music on my guitar and gained attention, I have gone to school and been considered a genius. Even when I went into the Marine Corps., during Vietnam, I couldn't avoid being recognized by the CO's at the Recruit Depot. Everyone likes to praise someone above the ranks of what we wish to consider as NORMAL. So for me to write this article "for" my wife is unusual, for the most part because she requested it. Requested that I publish what she endures through, and has had to endure through in her life as a mentally impaired person.

Last year we celebrated being together for twenty-five years. This summer will be twenty- "six." Odd part of our relationship, is the fact we never intended it to be a long lasting one. Prior to meeting each other, I had been a Developmental Training Specialist, along with having worked with the elderly and disabled. When I saw how people treated this person simply for being mentally incapable of fending for herself, it angered me. Angered, to the point that the relationship began to mold itself into a loving relationship. It has remained as such to this day, not out of sympathy, because of my training to understand that ANY mentally impaired person is not an object to discard out into society, but a person with feelings and emotions, too.

Being well respected, many began to see our relationship as "odd," and could not understand how I could get together with a person who was not as smart as I was, or "normal." By then, I had taken care of many persons who were elderly, and disabled, both physically and mentally. To approach a person who was used to nothing more than being shunned and rejected by people was not unusual for me but what was unusual for me to see, was the behaviors of social workers she would turn to for help, and be hurt by their actions.

Society, as a whole, has little understanding of what it is like for anyone who is incapable of caring for themselves. I have found out in all the years of living with a mentally impaired person, that not even Social Security or Social Service agencies, will take the time within its own workers to teach them to understand the very people they help. Of all the many I have dealt with, it isn't hard to understand why so many persons who are disabled in one way or another, die, are shoved aside or simply "rejected." Rejected as most of society does to that which they do not wish to deal with.

It is THIS that my wife wished for me to write about. That LOVE, PATIENCE and UNDERSTANDING, is the CURE, if only many took the time to understand that they are also human beings deserving of NORMAL "treatment." Being disabled is something no one asks for nor wishes to be, yet growing old, is a disability most will deal with in their lives, and the curse of being in the shoes of personal "need."

http://voices.yahoo.com/curse-being-eldery-mentally-impaired-physically-8504165.html?cat=9

Pluto Fly-By In Just One Year

New Horizons Only One Year from Pluto

July 14, 2014: In July 2015, NASA will discover a new world.  No one knows what to expect when the alien landscape comes into focus.  There could be icy geysers, towering mountains, deep valleys, even planetary rings.

At this point, only one thing is certain:  Its name is Pluto.

On July 14^th, 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will make a close flyby of that distant world. "Because Pluto has never been visited up-close by a spacecraft from Earth, everything we see will be a first," says Adriana Ocampo, the Program Executive for NASA's New Frontiers program at NASA headquarters. "I know this will be an astonishing experience full of history making moments."

The mission's principal investigator, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, has likened the way New Horizons will revolutionize knowledge about the Pluto system to the way that Mariner 4, which flew past Mars in July 1965, revolutionized knowledge of that planet.  At the time, many people on Earth thought the Red Planet was a lush world with water and vegetation friendly to life. Instead, Mariner 4 revealed a desert world of haunting beauty.

New Horizons’ flyby of Pluto will occur almost exactly 50 years after Mariner 4’s flyby of Mars—and it could shock observers just as much.

Pluto is almost completely unknown. It is so far away, that even the Hubble Space Telescope strains to see it.  The best images so far show little more than Pluto's shape (spherical) and color (reddish).  Over the years, changes in those color patterns hint at a dynamic planet where something is happening, but no one knows what.

By late April 2015, New Horizons will be close enough to Pluto to take pictures rivaling those of Hubble—and it only gets better from there.  At closest approach in July 2015, New Horizons will be a scant 10,000 km above the surface of Pluto.  If New Horizons flew over Earth at the same altitude, it could see individual buildings and their shapes.

Flying so close to Pluto could be risky business.  Pluto has five known moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Numerical simulations show that meteoroids striking those satellites could send debris into orbit around Pluto, forming a debris system that waxes and wanes over time in response to changes in the bombardment.  During the approach to Pluto, the science team will keep a wary eye out for debris, and guide the spacecraft away from danger.

"The New Horizons Team continues to do a magnificent job in keeping the spacecraft healthy and ready for this incredible rendezvous," Ocampo says.  "The spacecraft is in good hands."

No one knows what New Horizons will discover. "Many predictions have being made by the science community, including possible rings, geyser eruptions, and even lakes," says Ocampo. "Whatever we find, I believe Pluto and its satellites will surpass all our expectations and surprise us beyond our imagination."

"Think about seeing something for the first time and discovering the unknown," she concludes.  "That’s what we're about to do."

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/14jul_pluto2015/

Viruses as Evolutionary Forces

Introduction by the Blog Author

Quanta magazine from the Simons Foundation has a hypnotic article from the July 10, 2014 issue by Carrie Arnold.  It starts with a picture of a pithovirus, “the largest virus ever discovered — larger even than some bacteria. Many of its 500 genes are unrelated to any other genes on this planet.”

That caught my attention right there: a huge virus exists with a lot of genes, and many of those genes are not seen anywhere else on earth.  That’s inherently fascinating for a scientific mind.  Here’s more of what the article says:

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If giant viruses are as old as Caetano-Anolles’ calculated, the implications are staggering. It means that a giant virus or one of its ancestors existed before other types of life and may have played a major role in shaping life as we know it. This could mean that viruses are one of the dominant evolutionary forces on this planet and that each organism has a deep, viral past.

http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140710-hints-of-lifes-start-found-in-a-giant-virus/

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[And think about this disagreement between two microbiologists included in the article above:]

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“Whenever you mix a bunch of small RNA molecules together, you get a bunch of parasitic sequences that aren’t good at anything except making copies of themselves faster than anything else,” Szostak said. For these sequences to become similar to modern viruses, they need to parasitize a living cell, not just another strand of RNA.

Dolja disagrees, saying that cells could not have evolved without viruses. “In order to move from RNA to DNA, you need an enzyme called reverse transcriptase,” Dolja said. “It’s only found in viruses like HIV, not in cells. So how could cells begin to use DNA without the help of a virus?”

[These two points of view are followed by a third theory:]

Abergel and Claverie, however, believe that viruses emerged from cells. While Forterre and collaborators contend that the unique genes found in giant viruses are a sign that they evolved before modern cells, Abergel and Claverie have a different explanation: Giant viruses may have evolved from a line of cells that is now extinct. According to this theory, the ancestor of giant viruses lost its ability to replicate as an independent life form and was forced to rely on other cells to copy its DNA. Pieces of these ancient cells’ genes survive in modern mimivirus, pandoravirus, and pithovirus, which would explain the unique genes found in this group. “Life didn’t have one single ancestor,” Claverie said. “There were a lot of cell-like organisms that were all competing, and there was one winner, which formed the basis for life as we know it today.”

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Footnote by the Blog Author

I also like the comments at the bottom of this article – they are good examples of how real scientists actually correct and clarify each other, itself something that shrivels when scientific research is politicized.

Baroque Parody -- P.D.Q. Bach

P. D. Q. Bach is a fictitious composer invented by musical satirist "Professor" Peter Schickele. In a gag that Schickele has developed over a five-decade-long career, he performs "discovered" works of the "only forgotten son" of the Bach family.  Schickele's music combines parodies of musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque and classical music, and some slapstick comedy.

The name "P. D. Q." is a parody of the three-part names given to some members of the Bach family that are commonly reduced to initials, such as C. P. E., for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.  PDQ is an initialism for "pretty damn quick".

Biography]

Schickele gives a humorous fictional biography of the composer with citations such as the following:

• P. D. Q. Bach was born in Leipzig on March 31, 1742, the son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Anna Magdalena Bach, the twenty-first of Johann's twenty children.  According to Schickele, Bach's parents did not bother to give their youngest son a real name, and settled on "P. D. Q." instead. The only earthly possession Johann Sebastian Bach willed to his son was a kazoo.
• P.D.Q. attributed his frequent headaches to his having been christened in a shipyard rather than a church.
• Defined the doctrine of Originality Through Incompetence.

In preconcert lectures, Schickele joked that P. D. Q. Bach influenced Beethoven's famous deafness: Beethoven came to dread P. D. Q. Bach and his music so greatly that Beethoven resorted to stuffing coffee grounds into his ears whenever he saw P. D. Q. Bach coming.

In a running gag in Concerto for Horn and Hardart and in the introduction to Six Contrary Dances on his Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion album, Schickele inferred from fictional evidence that P. D. Q. Bach had a hollow leg that was considerably longer than the other one which explains the odd patterns in his dance music.

Music

Schickele describes P. D. Q. Bach as having "the originality of Johann Christian, the arrogance of Carl Philipp Emanuel, and the obscurity of Johann Christoph Friedrich". The most distinguishing feature of P. D. Q. Bach's music, in the words of Schickele, is "manic plagiarism".

Schickele's works, attributed to P. D. Q. Bach, often incorporate comical rearrangements of well-known works of other composers. The works use instruments not normally used in orchestras, such as the bagpipes, slide whistle, kazoo, and fictional or experimental instruments such as the pastaphone (made of uncooked manicotti), tromboon, hardart, lasso d’amore, and left-handed sewer flute. The works also incorporate items not normally used as musical instruments, such as balloons, fog horns, and bicycles. His music also calls for unusual methods of playing traditional instruments, such as blowing through double reeds by themselves (that is, detached from the instruments) throughout Iphigenia in Brooklyn. His parts for vocalists include coughing, snoring, sobbing, laughing, and yelling.

P. D. Q. Bach's work pokes fun at musical genres including Baroque, Romantic, modern, country music (Oedipus Tex and Blaues Gras), and rap (Classical Rap). The "Schickele" or "S." numbers whimsically assigned to P. D. Q. Bach's works parody musicologists' catalogues of famous composers, such as the Kochel catalogue of Mozart’s works.

There is often a startling juxtaposition of styles within a single P. D. Q. Bach piece. The Prelude to Einstein on the Fritz, which alludes to Philip Glass' opera Einstein on the Beach, provides an example. The underlying music is J.S. Bach’s first prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier, but at double the normal speed, with each phrase repeated interminably in a minimalist manner that parodies Glass's. On top of this mind-numbing structure is added everything from jazz phrases to snoring to heavily-harmonized versions of Three Blind Mice to the chanting of a meaningless phrase ("Koy Hotsy-Totsy," alluding to the art film Koyaanisqatsi for which Glass wrote the score). Through all these mutilations, the piece never deviates from Bach's original harmonic structure.

The humor in P. D. Q. Bach music often derives from violation of audience expectations, such as repeating a tune more than the usual number of times, resolving a musical chord later than usual or not at all, unusual key changes, excessive dissonance, or sudden switches from high art to low art.  Further humor is obtained by replacing parts of certain classical pieces with similar common songs, such as the opening of Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 with “Beautiful Dreamer”, or the opening of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with Yankee Doodle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._D._Q._Bach

The Most Toxic Poison Snake

The inland taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus), also commonly known as the western taipan, the small-scaled snake, or the fierce snake, is an extremely venomous snaker of the taipan (Oxyuranus) genus, and is endemic to semi-arid regions of central east Australia.  Aboriginal Australians living in those regions named the snake Dandarabilla.  It was first described by Frederick McCoy in 1879 and then by William John Macleay in 1882, but for the next 90 years, it was a mystery species to Western Science.  No more specimens were found, and virtually nothing was added to knowledge of this species until its rediscovery in 1972.

The inland taipan is considered the most venomous snake in the world; based on the median lethal dose value in mice, Its venom, drop for drop, is by far the most toxic of any snake – much more so than even sea snakes.  And it has the most toxic venom of any reptile when tested on human heart cell culture.  Unlike most snakes, the inland taipan is a specialist mammal hunter so its venom is specially adapted to kill warm-blooded species.  It is estimated that one bite possesses enough lethality to kill at least 100 full grown men, and, depending on the nature of the bite, it has the potential to kill someone in as little as 30 to 45 minutes if left untreated.  It is an extremely fast and agile snake which can strike instantly with extreme accuracy, often striking multiple times in the same attack, and it envenoms in almost every case.

Although extremely venomous and a capable striker, contrary to the rather aggressive natured coastal taipan, the inland taipan is usually quite a shy and reclusive snake, with a placid disposition, and prefers to escape from trouble.  However, it will defend itself and strike if provoked, mishandled, or prevented from escaping.  Also because it lives in such remote locations, the inland taipan seldom comes in contact with people; therefore it is not considered the most deadly snake in the world overall, especially in terms of disposition and human deaths per year.  The word "fierce" from its alternative name describes its venom, not its temperament.

Diet and Behavior

The inland taipan consumes mostly rodents, such as the long-haired rat (Rattus villosissimus), the plains rat (Pseudomys australis), the introduced house mouse (Mus musculus) and other Dasyurids, and birds.  Unlike other venomous snakes that strike with a single, accurate bite then retreat while waiting for the prey to die, the fierce snake subdues the prey with a series of rapid, accurate strikes. It is known to deliver up to eight venomous bites in a single attack. often snapping its jaws fiercely several times to inflict multiple punctures in the same attack.  Its more risky attack strategy entails holding its prey with its body and biting it repeatedly. This injects the extremely toxic venom deep into the prey. The venom acts so rapidly that its prey does not have time to fight back.

In captivity it may also eat day-old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_taipan