Chagall: Blue Violinist, 1947THE GRAY ONES
San Pedro, California
The Gray Ones
The Gray Ones
they watch
three crones
from hand to hand
passing their one eye
through the eye they see
gray wed with the gray
ring of the horizon
the waves bring
pebbles weeds
an occasional hero
*
Something in the night
drew the three of us
to the shafts of light
diving in the dark
desire of the harbor
we had only one hat
we divided time
you and you and I
three heads one by one
entered the cave of warmth
warmer on each return
our magic hat
lined with our thoughts
and we knew we had lain
awake thinking soon
I’ll be forty fifty sixty
the crone in us
lapped by the voices
of the shining tide
Time waits for no woman
the Gray Sisters warned
a hat for a hat
an eye for an eye
are you brave
are you brave enough
Time to enter
a larger speech
the Gray Sisters crooned
plucking pebbles
from the ocean’s mouth
but the hero the hero
who will be
our hero we cried
the bay rocked
waiting boats
the wind beat its one wing
the Great She-Bear
suckled winter sky
you and you and I
the waves brought
and took back
the reply
~ Oriana
DANTE’S BEATRICE: BITCH OR SAINT?
~ Beatrice, Bice, beloved of Dante. What a surprise she is when, rather late in the game, we finally meet her in person. To get to that point, of course, we have to read all 34 cantos of Inferno (where she’s only spoken of and not that often) and then have to read 30 of the 33 cantos of Purgatorio. And meanwhile, because so much happens to our eponymous hero, and we get introduced to so many other captivating characters along the way, she tends to fade into the background. At least she did for me.
Of the enduring figures in the Divine Comedy, relatively few are female. We do meet a few nuns who abandoned their vows on the lowest rung of Paradise. (Yes, in Dante’s version of the afterlife, even Paradise has rungs: Good, better, better-yet, etcetera, until you get to best-ever.) Many of the women in the Comedy are simply names known from history and literature. Cleopatra is, as you might expect, in Hell’s second circle, for lusters, as is Helen, “Whose bad-girl behavior set in motion years / Of nonstop mayhem.”
The most well-known woman of the Comedy is undoubtedly Francesca, whom we meet on that same Inferno circle where Helen and Cleopatra are being eternally battered by the howling winds of sexual desire. Commentators believe the character of Francesca was based on Francesca da Rimini (nee di Folco Portinari) who, forced into a marriage of political expedience at at the age of 20 to a much older man, fell in love with her husband’s younger brother Paolo (also married). After an illicit relationship of ten years, the husband surprised his wife and brother in bed and killed them both. The way Francesca tells it, Paolo fell in love with her and since anyone who is loved has to love back, she was helpless to resist (Inf. V. 100–105):
Love, which is impossible to not return when one is loved,
In our sympathy for the ill-fated lovers, encouraged by Dante—his empathic connection is so great he faints at the end of her story—we tend to overlook the fact that Francesca is in hell at least partly because she deflects the blame for her offense instead of taking responsibility for it. Responding to Dante’s question of when she first felt “some spark— / That dubious sense that even the air is softly sighing— / That this was love and worth perdition?” she describes the scene so charmingly, that we too fall in love (Inf. V. 127–138):
More than once, while reading, we looked up
We were reading about the longed-for kiss
Trembling, kissed my lips.
First, the fault was Paolo’s love, now it’s the author of the book the two were reading—Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake), a 13th-century Old French prose poem in which the knight Lancelot falls in love with Queen Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur of Camelot. The book acted like “Gallehault,” the traitorous character who becomes friends with Lancelot and arranges for the smitten knight to secretly meet with Guinevere, whom he has already convinced to kiss Lancelot.
Is it her weakness that makes Francesca so attractive to readers? She certainly fits the mold of the classic tragic heroine who sacrifices all for love. Countless notable poets, playwrights, composers, and visual artists have been inspired over time to memorialize Francesca, resulting in a vast Francesca-sparked corpus that includes paintings, sculptures, symphonies, chamber music, and not just one but two Italian Paolo e Francesca films (1950, 1971). If you look, however, at the listing on the Wikipedia page for Francesca, you’ll notice all but one of these commemorating works are by men. The single exception is a composition by Olga Gorelli, d. 2006, a lesser-known Italian-born composer who immigrated to New Jersey.
Whatever the source of her appeal, Francesca forces Beatrice into second place for the most famous woman of the Comedy. Unlike Francesca, who’s remembered for what she does, Beatrice is usually remembered for simply being the object of Dante’s love. Except for the Pre-Raphaelites, she’s had far less of an impact on artists. There is an asteroid named after her, 83 Beatrix, the last of the nine asteroids identified between 1849 and 1865 by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis.
We first hear of her in Canto 2 of Inferno when the ghost of the Roman poet Virgil explains how he’s the edge of the dark forest from which Dante just emerged (forest equals psychic crisis). Beatrice came down to Limbo and, with tears in her eyes, pleaded with him to rush to where Dante was and rescue him from the three beasts blocking his way. If you only read Inferno, and that is the case for many readers, her brief appearance via Virgil’s report will give a false impression of her as a typical damsel in distress, even if the source of distress is Dante’s plight and not her own. Beatrice’s name gets dropped by Virgil a few more times in Inferno and Purgatorio, most often as a prod to hurry Dante along when he’s tired and wants to take a rest. In each case, Dante immediately perks up, as if he’s the Pavlovian dog that salivated at the sound of the feet of the lab assistant that brought its kibble.
According to the poems in Dante’s book of sonnets with prose explications, Vita Nuova, she became the object of his affection when he was nine (and she was eight), when he was taken by his father to her house for a May Day celebration. He writes that he only saw her one other time, at the age of 18 (twice nine, which is divisible by the divine number three, the Trinity)—when she said hello to him (at precisely nine o’clock) while walking with two other women (another group of three). She goes on to marry a banker and dies three years later at the age of 25. On hearing of her death, Dante has a vision of her rising to Heaven surrounded by angels. Afterwards, he considers her his spiritual guide.
Until we meet her in Purgatorio 30, we have no idea what sort of woman Beatrice is, neither in life nor in the Comedy. Dante describes her in Vita Nuova as glorious, excellent, and gentilissima, very kind or very polite, which hardly constitutes a penetrating character analysis. He actually has more to say about the dress she had on when he met her as a child and his initial overwrought reaction:
“She was wearing an extremely dignified little dress: demure, blood-red, belted and modestly trimmed in a manner that was perfect for a girl her age. I can honestly say that at that moment, the animating spark of life that lives in the deepest recess of the metaphoric heart exploded with such force that I felt it in every fiber of my being. I was shaken by what it implied: A stronger god than I is about to take control. That’s exactly when the animal within—which occupies that attic room where all the sense perceptions travel, especially the visual—was filled with awe and said to the eyes: Get ready to see blessedness. Then the primitive part of nature, at the most basic level of the gut, began to cry and crying said: Hello misery, my suffering is going to go on forever.’
Several times in Purgatorio, Virgil defers to her when he reaches the limits of his pagan knowledge and can’t answer Dante’s questions, each time saying something like, “I’ve told you all I know. Ask Beatrice when you see her.” I took Virgil’s deference at face value: she’s Christian, she has Christian faith, she’ll know what a pagan can’t fathom. Of course, that was my mistake. Each time the poet Dante has Virgil say “ask Beatrice,” he is laying the groundwork for a character so psychologically astute that she’s nothing short of amazing.
So amazing, in fact, that it’s not difficult to see why, beginning with Dante’s death, there was pushback against the Beatrice character. Guy Raffa, in his recent book, Dante’s Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy (Harvard University Press, 2020), writes about how Cecco d’Ascoli, a lecturer in astrology at the university of Bologna, was particularly scathing in “dismiss[ing] Dante’s embrace of Beatrice, a flesh-and-blood woman, as his intellectual and spiritual guide. Declaring that attributing intellect to women was like ‘looking for Mary in the streets of Ravenna.’” I think we can safely read “in the streets” as “among street-walkers.”
As a character, she’s truly ahead of her time, and further proof that Dante as a poet was ahead of his. I was in awe watching her confront our hero and chip away at his defenses. It was like watching an old Perry Mason movie where we sit on the edge of our metaphoric seats as we get closer and closer to the complicated truth. She arrives on the scene in Purgatorio in Canto 29 but neither we nor Dante realize it.
Dante, having made it up the seven-tiered Mount Purgatory (a level of penance for each of the deadly sins), is now at the Terrestrial Heaven, the old abandoned Eden, standing along the River Lethe with a small group that includes a woman named Matilda (Beatrice’s quasi-assistant, as we’ll find out later). He’s transfixed by an elaborate pageant: seven tree-sized candelabra with banners of colored smoke forming a canopy; twenty-four elders walking two-by-two crowned with fleur-de-lis; four animals, each with six wings; a two-wheeled chariot drawn by a part-lion/part-eagle griffin; two groups of dancers at the chariot’s wheels; and then seven more elders (two, four, and one last straggler), crowned with red flowers. Then, a cliffhanger ending where a clap of thunder brings the parade to an abrupt halt.
As Canto 30 begins, Dante makes out the shape of a woman through a flurry of lilies a choir of angels is lavishing on the chariot: red dress, green cloak, white veil held in place by an olive wreath. The olive wreath cues Minerva, goddess of justice, the art of war, and wisdom, which, as it turns out, fits Beatrice to a T. The veil keeps Dante from recognizing her, although he senses “traces of my ancient flame.” He turns to share this with Virgil only to discover that “Virgil had slipped away, having left us / Dumbfounded after him. Virgil, dearest father, / Virgil to whom I gave myself for safekeeping.” At which point, tears. And to be honest, my eyes welled up too.
This is, by any measure, the saddest moment in the Comedy. It stands for every loss we’ve ever endured, which makes it all the more stunning when the veiled woman speaks: “Dante, just because Virgil’s run off / Don’t cry yet; save your crying; / There’s another sword coming to make you cry.”
What pre-modern heroine have we ever heard talk like that, outside perhaps a few Greek and Roman goddesses? Plus, when we do get to hear someone like Beatrice speak, the speech is usually presented from the vantage of a male translator, who softens what they have to say even when they’re at their most acerbic:
Evidence of how Beatrice is meant to sounds is in Dante’s response. He eyes the speaker and thinks: haughty, imperious, an admiral overseeing a fleet. Then, a taunting revelation and two razor-sharp questions: “Look really well, I’m really Beatrice, I really am. / How were you able to access the mountain? / You know, don’t you, everyone here is happy?” Suddenly, he’s a shamed child looking down at his feet, and she’s no longer a military man but a “mother on her high horse.” He then becomes hard-packed snow trapped by winds on the ridge of mountain (what better metaphor for when our defenses click in?).
When the angels begin to sing softly, which he takes as a plea on his behalf that she lighten up (“As in ‘Lady, must you crush him?’”), the ice around his “strangled heart” cracks, and then melts, and he begins to sob uncontrollably—
Beatrice ignores Dante (“the sniveling one / Over there”) and addresses the angels, reminding them of all she’s done to try help him, coming to him in dreams, begging for divine intervention, and how he always resisted. The stakes are too high now to compromise—after all, he was at the edge of the abyss and about to give up. She knows what’s in his mind. He’ll later say (in Paradiso), she “saw through me as well as I saw / Myself.”
Unlike Francesca, she’s not going to throw it all away for love. Dante has to suffer in order to achieve contrition and he has to achieve contrition to enter Paradise. Beatrice tells the angels:
She then turns to Dante—“O you, on the other side of the holy stream,” / Getting right to the point, as if the edge / Of what she’d already said wasn’t sharp enough”—and confronts him for having allowed himself to get drawn in by “some young thing or fly-by-night novelty.” "Lift up your beard,” she tells him, and he totally gets it. “[B]y her saying ‘beard’ and meaning ‘face’ I felt all the venom behind the pretext.”
She is glorious, with a candor that results from a clarity of thought. What looks like heartlessness, or arrogance, is the awareness that if she shows Dante mercy, she’ll jeopardize the outcome. She’s not about to fail. Not Beatrice. She tells him, “This judge knows things!” After a lifetime of mythologizing Beatrice into a lodestar that would show him the way and, once there, wrap him in her loving arms, he’s come face to face with reality: to earn the respect of this woman, who sits in God’s inner circle, he can’t behave like an immature beardless boy.
Once the Dantean crisis is resolved—confession, remorse, sinful memories erased, memories of goodness restored—he goes with Beatrice to Paradise and becomes one with the cosmos. He finally faces God, where, in a flash of insight, his will and wishes become one with the love that moves the sun and other stars. Knowledge is everything but it has to be achieved. Beatrice’s excellence, which shines through her eyes and mouth, is the result of having knowledge and acting on it. Oh, to be Beatrice. To always know all there is to know and be guided by it. No faltering, no flub-ups. ~
https://lithub.com/mary-jo-bang-wonders-why-it-takes-so-long-meet-beatrice-in-dantes-inferno/?fbclid=IwAR1aI-WMZAGqnDiqL-G7WCLBTgb2urfIfl8nElle-2mvUmtOjAcnf4XOldA
Botticelli: Dante meets Beatrice in Paradise
Oriana:
Although this article provides the rationale for Beatrice's bitchiness when we first meet her in the Divine Comedy, I still can't bring myself to like her. I loathed her the moment she began she began her nagging. It's so good to know that no person like that is going to meet us just when we've lost our own Virgil-like figure (if we were ever lucky enough to have such a wise guide). As the author points out, Virgil's disappearance is the saddest moment in Dante. Beatrice nagging adds the proverbial insult to that injury.
And no, I don't see that dominatrix shaming Dante for being simply human as a woman ahead of her time. True, it's just fiction – but fiction is drawn from experiences, and yes, alas, we meet such individuals.
The irony here is that Dante meant to glorify Beatrice. But I doubt that any reader cares for her. We certainly don't fall in love with her, and can't understand why Dante did. But then he's never had a real relationship with her. As is so often the case with first love, the drama was all in his head.
*
WHY SOME GERMAN WOMEN VOTED FOR HITLER
~ More than 30 essays on the subject “Why I became a Nazi” written by German women in 1934 have been lying fallow in the archives of the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto for decades. These essays were only unearthed three years ago when three Florida State University professors arranged to have them transcribed and translated.
As scholars of Holocaust studies, crimes against humanity and political behavior, we believe the accounts of these women give an insight into the role of women in the rise of the Nazi party. They also point to the extent to which women’s attitudes on feminism differed after the Great War – a time when women were making gains in independence, education, economic opportunity and sexual freedom.
The German women’s movement had been among the most powerful and significant in the world for half a century before the Nazis came to power in 1933. Top-quality high schools for girls had existed since the 1870s, and German universities were opened to women at the beginning of the 20th century. Many German women became teachers, lawyers, doctors, journalists and novelists. In 1919, German women got the vote. By 1933, women, of whom there were millions more than men – Berlin had 1,116 women for every 1,000 men – voted in roughly the same percentages as men for Hitler and National Socialist candidates.
The essays unearthed at the Hoover Institution give an insight as to why some of them did.
Dissatisfaction with the attitudes of the Weimar era, the period between the end of World War I and Hitler’s rise to power, is clear in the women’s writing. Most of the essay writers express distaste with some aspect of the political system. One calls women’s voting rights “a disadvantage for Germany,” while another describes the political climate as “haywire,” and “everyone was everyone’s enemy.” Margarethe Schrimpff, a 54-year-old woman living just outside of Berlin, describes her experience:
“I attended the meetings of all … parties, from the communists to the nationalists; at one of the democratic meetings in Friedenau [Berlin], where the former Colonial Minister, a Jew by the name of Dernburg, was speaking, I experienced the following: this Jew had the audacity to say, among other things: ‘What are the Germans actually capable of; maybe breeding rabbits.’
"Dear readers, do not think that the heavily represented stronger sex jumped up and told this Jew where to go. Far from it. Not one man made a sound, they stayed dead quiet. However, a miserable, frail little woman from the so-called ‘weaker sex’ raised her hand and forcefully rejected the Jew’s brazen remarks; he had in the meantime allegedly disappeared to attend another meeting.”
These essays were originally collected by an assistant professor at Columbia University, Theodore Abel, who organized an essay contest with generous prizes with the cooperation of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Of nearly 650 essays, roughly 30 were written by women, and Abel set them aside, explaining in a footnote that he intended to examine them separately. But he never did. The men’s essays formed the basis for his book, “Why Hitler Came To Power,” published in 1938, which remains an important source in the global discourse about the Nazi rise to power.
Summarizing Abel’s findings, historian Ian Kershaw wrote in his book on Hitler’s rise to power that they showed that the “appeal of Hitler and his movement was not based on any distinctive doctrine.” He concluded that almost a third of the men were attracted by the indivisible “national community” – Volksgemeinschaft – ideology of the Nazis, and a similar proportion were swayed by nationalist, super-patriotic and German-romantic notions. In only about an eighth of the cases was anti-Semitism the prime ideological concern, although two-thirds of the essays revealed some form of dislike of Jews. Almost a fifth were motivated by the Hitler cult alone, attracted by the man himself, but the essays reveal differences between men and women in the reason for the enthrallment with the Nazi leader.
THE CULT OF HITLER
For men, the cult of personality appears to center around Hitler as a strong leader charging toward a Germany which defined itself by those it excluded. It’s not surprising that women, on the cusp of exclusion themselves, were less captivated by this component of Nazism. Rather, the women’s essays tend to refer to religious imagery and sentiment conflating piety with the Hitler cult. The women appear to be moved more by Nazism’s proposed solutions to problems such as poverty rather than the supposed grandeur of Nazi ideology in the abstract.
In her essay, Helene Radtke, a 38-year-old wife of a German soldier, describes her “divine duty to forget about all my household chores and to perform my service to my homeland.”
Agnes Molster-Surm, a housewife and private tutor, calls Hitler her “God-given Führer and savior, Adolf Hitler, for Germany’s honor, Germany’s fortune and Germany’s freedom!”
Another woman replaced the star on her Christmas tree with a photograph of Hitler surrounded by a halo of candles. These men and women shared the message of National Socialism as if it was gospel and refer to new party members as “converts.” One such woman describes early efforts to “convert” her family to Nazism as falling “on stony soil and not even the slightest little green sapling of understanding sprouted.” She was later “converted” through conversations with her mailman.
The essays do not only serve as historical curios, but as a warning as to how ordinary people can be attracted to extremist ideology at a time of social distress. Similar language has been used to describe the current political climate in the United States and other countries. Perhaps, as some do today, these women believed all their society’s ills could be solved by the restoration of their nation to a perceived state of former glory, no matter the cost. ~
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-did-women-vote-for-hitler-long-forgotten-essays-hold-some-answers?utm_source=pocket-newtab&fbclid=IwAR3AL4Kl1A4N6MnDDSFojliDkNJMdBpQU4oiNWWx2H5K7ZBET9KcPaId8cQ
Mary:
The religious language in the women's essays about Hitler does sound dangerously familiar to what we hear from the evangelicals and the Trump devotees. Their fervid adoration is neither based on nor amenable to reason, in fact, they call Trump a savior sent by Jesus despite his not displaying even one of the Christian virtues, and many sins Christianity condemns. This is almost farcical, yet it fits with the Evangelical Right and their prosperity gospel, a "theology" that turns Christianity on its head, equating the rich with virtue and righteousness, seeing poverty as a mark of moral failure.
They seem blissfully unaware that their version of Christianity is an inversion, and this blindness helps in understanding how they can see a moral reprobate like Trump as a "savior." It's like Newspeak, virtue and vice changing place — despite the fact that Trump is not successful at being rich, only at assuming the pose, playing a grifter's game of working the system, cheating, lying and evading his way from one bankruptcy to another while still finding financial backers..at least to this point. Now that no bank will have him he has rallies and grifts his followers for contributions, and they willingly, enthusiastically, give.
I think there is anther similarity with Hitler, his angry, bombast answering the anger and frustration of a populace that feels it has been cheated, deprived of its rightful place, made powerless, ignored. Those are the feelings Trump's bullying, angry, uncivil rants, echoes and feeds into. All those people in rural, flyover country, uneducated, untraveled, unable to reach the standard of living their parents had, feeling their voices are unheard and their needs ignored, hear in Trump their anger made loud, given space and attention. They listen to his rants and see him as "strong," compared to voices that are reasonable, and civil, that they see as "weak."
How this will play out, I can’t imagine. The country is divided, troubled, and facing huge threats as well as enormous challenges. It would be foolish to assume we are safe from threats to our democracy, that another coup attempt will not come, that things will not get worse before they get better, or that the worst can never come. We need to pay attention, stand guard, resist the attempts to unravel the constitution and the rights it protects. Cults and conspiracy theories..oh yes, we've seen where that goes — and even if such madness, like Hitler and his Nazis, eventually fails. The cost is too much, the losses too great to allow.
Oriana:
Yes, the religious fervency of those women who saw Hitler as “savior” is unnerving — especially since we’ve seen it repeated in some women’s adoration of Trump, whom they see as second only to Jesus, or more — this is the “second coming.” It’s beyond me how a man who has sex with a porn star soon after his wife gave birth, and then giving the porn star hush money (to give only one example of what we’d think women would find repulsive in a man) can inspire devotion in female voters. Of course religion itself is non-rational, so I’ve given up trying to understand this phenomenon.
What keeps coming up in articles that try and try to understand is the idea that some people are uncomfortable with modernity and with the Enlightenment-derived foundations of the United States, especially “that all men were created equal.” The need to feel superior to others may be deeply ingrained, but an enlightened person will resist that need — and the need to adore a “strong leader.” Yes, very scary.
STALIN, A-BOMB, AND JAPAN
~ The U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II has long been a subject of emotional debate. Initially, few questioned President Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, in 1965, historian Gar Alperovitz argued that, although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. 1. Their use was, therefore, unnecessary. Obviously, if the bombings weren’t necessary to win the war, then bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong. In the years since, many others have joined the fray: some echoing Alperovitz and denouncing the bombings, others rejoining hotly that the bombings were moral, necessary, and life-saving.
Both schools of thought, however, assume that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with new, more powerful weapons did coerce Japan into surrendering on Aug. 9. They fail to question the utility of the bombing in the first place — to ask, in essence, did it work? The orthodox view is that, yes, of course, it worked. The United States bombed Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, when the Japanese finally succumbed to the threat of further nuclear bombardment and surrendered. The support for this narrative runs deep. But there are three major problems with it, and, taken together, they significantly undermine the traditional interpretation of the Japanese surrender.
TIMING
The first problem with the traditional interpretation is timing. And it is a serious problem. The traditional interpretation has a simple timeline: The U.S. Army Air Force bombs Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon on Aug. 6, three days later they bomb Nagasaki with another, and on the next day the Japanese signal their intention to surrender. One can hardly blame American newspapers for running headlines like: “Peace in the Pacific: Our Bomb Did It!”
When the story of Hiroshima is told in most American histories, the day of the bombing — Aug. 6 — serves as the narrative climax. All the elements of the story point forward to that moment: the decision to build a bomb, the secret research at Los Alamos, the first impressive test, and the final culmination at Hiroshima. It is told, in other words, as a story about the Bomb. But you can’t analyze Japan’s decision to surrender objectively in the context of the story of the Bomb. Casting it as “the story of the Bomb” already presumes that the Bomb’s role is central.
Viewed from the Japanese perspective, the most important day in that second week of August wasn’t Aug. 6 but Aug. 9. That was the day that the Supreme Council met — for the first time in the war — to discuss unconditional surrender. The Supreme Council was a group of six top members of the government — a sort of inner cabinet — that effectively ruled Japan in 1945.
Japan’s leaders had not seriously considered surrendering prior to that day. Unconditional surrender (what the Allies were demanding) was a bitter pill to swallow. The United States and Great Britain were already convening war crimes trials in Europe. What if they decided to put the emperor — who was believed to be divine — on trial? What if they got rid of the emperor and changed the form of government entirely?
Even though the situation was bad in the summer of 1945, the leaders of Japan were not willing to consider giving up their traditions, their beliefs, or their way of life. Until Aug. 9. What could have happened that caused them to so suddenly and decisively change their minds? What made them sit down to seriously discuss surrender for the first time after 14 years of war?
It could not have been Nagasaki. The bombing of Nagasaki occurred in the late morning of Aug. 9, after the Supreme Council had already begun meeting to discuss surrender, and word of the bombing only reached Japan’s leaders in the early afternoon — after the meeting of the Supreme Council had been adjourned in deadlock and the full cabinet had been called to take up the discussion. Based on timing alone, Nagasaki can’t have been what motivated them.
Hiroshima isn’t a very good candidate either. It came 74 hours — more than three days — earlier. What kind of crisis takes three days to unfold? The hallmark of a crisis is a sense of impending disaster and the overwhelming desire to take action now. How could Japan’s leaders have felt that Hiroshima touched off a crisis and yet not meet to talk about the problem for three days?
If Hiroshima really touched off a crisis that eventually forced the Japanese to surrender after fighting for 14 years, why did it take them three days to sit down to discuss it?
One might argue that the delay is perfectly logical. Perhaps they only came to realize the importance of the bombing slowly. Perhaps they didn’t know it was a nuclear weapon and when they did realize it and understood the terrible effects such a weapon could have, they naturally concluded they had to surrender. Unfortunately, this explanation doesn’t square with the evidence.
First, Hiroshima’s governor reported to Tokyo on the very day Hiroshima was bombed that about a third of the population had been killed in the attack and that two thirds of the city had been destroyed. This information didn’t change over the next several days. So the outcome — the end result of the bombing — was clear from the beginning. Japan’s leaders knew roughly the outcome of the attack on the first day, yet they still did not act.
Second, the preliminary report prepared by the Army team that investigated the Hiroshima bombing, the one that gave details about what had happened there, was not delivered until Aug. 10. It didn’t reach Tokyo, in other words, until after the decision to surrender had already been taken. Although their verbal report was delivered (to the military) on Aug. 8, the details of the bombing were not available until two days later. The decision to surrender was therefore not based on a deep appreciation of the horror at Hiroshima.
Third, the Japanese military understood, at least in a rough way, what nuclear weapons were. Japan had a nuclear weapons program. Several of the military men mention the fact that it was a nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima in their diaries. Gen. Anami Korechika, minster of war, even went to consult with the head of the Japanese nuclear weapons program on the night of Aug. 7. The idea that Japan’s leaders didn’t know about nuclear weapons doesn’t hold up.
Finally, one other fact about timing creates a striking problem. On Aug. 8, Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori went to Premier Suzuki Kantaro and asked that the Supreme Council be convened to discuss the bombing of Hiroshima, but its members declined. So the crisis didn’t grow day by day until it finally burst into full bloom on Aug. 9. Any explanation of the actions of Japan’s leaders that relies on the “shock” of the bombing of Hiroshima has to account for the fact that they considered a meeting to discuss the bombing on Aug. 8, made a judgment that it was too unimportant, and then suddenly decided to meet to discuss surrender the very next day. Either they succumbed to some sort of group schizophrenia, or some other event was the real motivation to discuss surrender.
SCALE
Historically, the use of the Bomb may seem like the most important discrete event of the war. From the contemporary Japanese perspective, however, it might not have been so easy to distinguish the Bomb from other events. It is, after all, difficult to distinguish a single drop of rain in the midst of a hurricane.
In the summer of 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force carried out one of the most intense campaigns of city destruction in the history of the world. Sixty-eight cities in Japan were attacked and all of them were either partially or completely destroyed. An estimated 1.7 million people were made homeless, 300,000 were killed, and 750,000 were wounded. Sixty-six of these raids were carried out with conventional bombs, two with atomic bombs. The destruction caused by conventional attacks was huge. Night after night, all summer long, cities would go up in smoke. In the midst of this cascade of destruction, it would not be surprising if this or that individual attack failed to make much of an impression — even if it was carried out with a remarkable new type of weapon.
We often imagine, because of the way the story is told, that the bombing of Hiroshima was far worse. We imagine that the number of people killed was off the charts. But if you graph the number of people killed in all 68 cities bombed in the summer of 1945, you find that Hiroshima was second in terms of civilian deaths. If you chart the number of square miles destroyed, you find that Hiroshima was fourth. If you chart the percentage of the city destroyed, Hiroshima was 17th. Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer.
In the three weeks prior to Hiroshima, 26 cities were attacked by the U.S. Army Air Force. Of these, eight — or almost a third — were as completely or more completely destroyed than Hiroshima (in terms of the percentage of the city destroyed). The fact that Japan had 68 cities destroyed in the summer of 1945 poses a serious challenge for people who want to make the bombing of Hiroshima the cause of Japan’s surrender. The question is: If they surrendered because a city was destroyed, why didn’t they surrender when those other 66 cities were destroyed?
Gen. Anami on Aug. 13 remarked that the atomic bombings were no more menacing than the fire-bombing that Japan had endured for months. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no worse than the fire bombings, and if Japan’s leaders did not consider them important enough to discuss in depth, how can Hiroshima and Nagasaki have coerced them to surrender?
STRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE
If the Japanese were not concerned with city bombing in general or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in particular, what were they concerned with? The answer is simple: the Soviet Union.
The Japanese were in a relatively difficult strategic situation. They were nearing the end of a war they were losing. Conditions were bad. The Army, however, was still strong and well-supplied. Nearly 4 million men were under arms and 1.2 million of those were guarding Japan’s home islands.
Even the most hard-line leaders in Japan’s government knew that the war could not go on. The question was not whether to continue, but how to bring the war to a close under the best terms possible. The Allies (the United States, Great Britain, and others — the Soviet Union, remember, was still neutral) were demanding “unconditional surrender.”
Japan’s leaders hoped that they might be able to figure out a way to avoid war crimes trials, keep their form of government, and keep some of the territories they’d conquered: Korea, Vietnam, Burma, parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, a large portion of eastern China, and numerous islands in the Pacific.
The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator — he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally dramatic. Most of Japan’s best troops had been shifted to the southern part of the home islands. Japan’s military had correctly guessed that the likely first target of an American invasion would be the southernmost island of Kyushu. The once proud Kwangtung army in Manchuria, for example, was a shell of its former self because its best units had been shifted away to defend Japan itself. When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas.
The Soviet 16th Army — 100,000 strong — launched an invasion of the southern half of Sakhalin Island. Their orders were to mop up Japanese resistance there, and then — within 10 to 14 days — be prepared to invade Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s home islands. The Japanese force tasked with defending Hokkaido, the 5th Area Army, was under strength at two divisions and two brigades, and was in fortified positions on the east side of the island. The Soviet plan of attack called for an invasion of Hokkaido from the west.
It didn’t take a military genius to see that, while it might be possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions. The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive while the bombing of Hiroshima was not.
The Soviet declaration of war also changed the calculation of how much time was left for maneuver. Japanese intelligence was predicting that U.S. forces might not invade for months. Soviet forces, on the other hand, could be in Japan proper in as little as 10 days. The Soviet invasion made a decision on ending the war extremely time sensitive.
And Japan’s leaders had reached this conclusion some months earlier. In a meeting of the Supreme Council in June 1945, they said that Soviet entry into the war “would determine the fate of the Empire.” Army Deputy Chief of Staff Kawabe said, in that same meeting, “The absolute maintenance of peace in our relations with the Soviet Union is imperative for the continuation of the war.”
A CONVENIENT STORY
Despite the existence of these three powerful objections, the traditional interpretation still retains a strong hold on many people’s thinking, particularly in the United States. There is real resistance to looking at the facts. But perhaps this should not be surprising. It is worth reminding ourselves how emotionally convenient the traditional explanation of Hiroshima is — both for Japan and the United States. Ideas can have persistence because they are true, but unfortunately, they can also persist because they are emotionally satisfying: They fill an important psychic need.
For example, at the end of the war the traditional interpretation of Hiroshima helped Japan’s leaders achieve a number of important political aims, both domestic and international.
Put yourself in the shoes of the emperor. You’ve just led your country through a disastrous war. The economy is shattered. Eighty percent of your cities have been bombed and burned. The Army has been pummeled in a string of defeats. The Navy has been decimated and confined to port. Starvation is looming. The war, in short, has been a catastrophe and, worst of all, you’ve been lying to your people about how bad the situation really is. They will be shocked by news of surrender.
So which would you rather do? Admit that you failed badly? Issue a statement that says that you miscalculated spectacularly, made repeated mistakes, and did enormous damage to the nation? Or would you rather blame the loss on an amazing scientific breakthrough that no one could have predicted? At a single stroke, blaming the loss of the war on the atomic bomb swept all the mistakes and misjudgments of the war under the rug. The Bomb was the perfect excuse for having lost the war. No need to apportion blame; no court of inquiry need be held. Japan’s leaders were able to claim they had done their best. So, at the most general level the Bomb served to deflect blame from Japan’s leaders.
But attributing Japan’s defeat to the Bomb also served three other specific political purposes. First, it helped to preserve the legitimacy of the emperor. If the war was lost not because of mistakes but because of the enemy’s unexpected miracle weapon, then the institution of the emperor might continue to find support within Japan.
Second, it appealed to international sympathy. Japan had waged war aggressively, and with particular brutality toward conquered peoples. Its behavior was likely to be condemned by other nations. Being able to recast Japan as a victimized nation — one that had been unfairly bombed with a cruel and horrifying instrument of war — would help to offset some of the morally repugnant things Japan’s military had done. Drawing attention to the atomic bombings helped to paint Japan in a more sympathetic light and deflect support for harsh punishment.
Finally, saying that the Bomb won the war would please Japan’s American victors. The American occupation did not officially end in Japan until 1952, and during that time the United States had the power to change or remake Japanese society as they saw fit. During the early days of the occupation, many Japanese officials worried that the Americans intended to abolish the institution of the emperor. And they had another worry. Many of Japan’s top government officials knew that they might face war crimes trials (the war crimes trials against Germany’s leaders were already underway in Europe when Japan surrendered). Japanese historian Asada Sadao has said that in many of the postwar interviews “Japanese officials … were obviously anxious to please their American questioners.” If the Americans wanted to believe that the Bomb won the war, why disappoint them?
Attributing the end of the war to the atomic bomb served Japan’s interests in multiple ways. But it also served U.S. interests. If the Bomb won the war, then the perception of U.S. military power would be enhanced, U.S. diplomatic influence in Asia and around the world would increase, and U.S. security would be strengthened. The $2 billion spent to build it would not have been wasted.
If, on the other hand, the Soviet entry into the war was what caused Japan to surrender, then the Soviets could claim that they were able to do in four days what the United States was unable to do in four years, and the perception of Soviet military power and Soviet diplomatic influence would be enhanced. And once the Cold War was underway, asserting that the Soviet entry had been the decisive factor would have been tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
It is troubling to consider, given the questions raised here, that the evidence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is at the heart of everything we think about nuclear weapons. This event is the bedrock of the case for the importance of nuclear weapons. It is crucial to their unique status, the notion that the normal rules do not apply to nuclear weapons. It is an important measure of nuclear threats: Truman’s threat to visit a “rain of ruin” on Japan was the first explicit nuclear threat. It is key to the aura of enormous power that surrounds the weapons and makes them so important in international relations.
But what are we to make of all those conclusions if the traditional story of Hiroshima is called into doubt? Hiroshima is the center, the point from which all other claims and assertions radiate out. Yet the story we have been telling ourselves seems pretty far removed from the facts. What are we to think about nuclear weapons if this enormous first accomplishment — the miracle of Japan’s sudden surrender — turns out to be a myth?
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-bomb-didn-t-beat-japan-stalin-did?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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THE NEW AMERICAN DEMOGRAPHICS
~ The United States population is getting more diverse, according to new data from the 2020 census that offers a once-in-a-decade look at the makeup of America.
The share of people who identify as white has been declining since the 1960s, when the U.S. opened up more widely to immigrants from outside Europe. But over the past decade, the total number of white people fell for the first time.
Over the past 10 years, people who identified as Hispanic, Asian or more than one race accounted for larger shares of the population, the data shows. Diversity is rising in almost every county. The overall U.S. population, though, grew at the slowest rate in nearly a century.
The total population has grown at a drastically slower rate over the past decade. As David Leonhardt has explained in this newsletter, slower population growth can expand economic opportunities for women. But it also reflects American society’s failure to support families.
The growth that did occur since 2010 — an increase of about 23 million people — was made up entirely of people who identified as Hispanic, Asian, Black or more than one race.
The multiracial category, added to the census only 20 years ago, is the fastest-growing group in the U.S. That could account for some of the decline of the white population, social scientists say; people of more than one race who previously chose white on the census form can now answer more accurately.
FAST-GROWING CITIES
The fastest-growing big city in the country is Phoenix, which surpassed Philadelphia as the fifth largest. Immigration, a tech boom and middle-class Californians seeking affordable housing all contributed to Phoenix’s growth.
The change in Phoenix reflects a trend: All 10 of the largest U.S. cities saw their populations rise in the past decade. Three big cities in Texas — Houston, San Antonio and Dallas — outpaced the national average.
New York City has grown by more than 629,000 people — or nearly 8 percent — since 2010, reaching 8.8 million and defying predictions that its population was on the decline. The city now accounts for nearly 44 percent of the state’s population.
No large city grew faster than Phoenix.
The growth along the corridor between San Antonio and Austin is ‘kind of mind-blowing.’
Diversity rises in Georgia, with whites making up only half the state.
Boston grew swiftly over the decade, as its white population waned.
A rise in Hispanic and Asian population fuels U.S. growth, census reports.
Americans kept migrating to cities, leaving rural areas depopulated.
The metro area that grew fastest since the last census, though, was not a major city; it was The Villages, America’s largest retirement community, located outside Orlando, Fla.
The data was less favorable to Republicans than some experts expected, The Times’s Nate Cohn writes. Rural areas and white people’s share of the population shrank, while traditionally Democratic cities and increasingly Democratic suburbs grew.
But Republican-controlled legislatures will still get to redraw 187 maps, compared to Democrats’ 84. “The parties do not compete on a level playing field,” our colleague Nick Corasaniti, who covers politics, told us. “While it is still very early to fully grasp the impact” of the new data, “it is perhaps most important to remember who will be drawing the maps.” ~
(Source: The New York Times Newsletter, 8-13-21)
THE "GREAT ENRICHMENT": HOW EUROPE BECAME RICH
~ How and why did the modern world and its unprecedented prosperity begin? Learned tomes by historians, economists, political scientists and other scholars fill many bookshelves with explanations of how and why the process of modern economic growth or ‘the Great Enrichment’ exploded in western Europe in the 18th century. One of the oldest and most persuasive explanations is the long political fragmentation of Europe. For centuries, no ruler had ever been able to unite Europe the way the Mongols and the Mings had united China.
It should be emphasized that Europe’s success was not the result of any inherent superiority of European (much less Christian) culture. It was rather what is known as a classical emergent property, a complex and unintended outcome of simpler interactions on the whole. The modern European economic miracle was the result of contingent institutional outcomes. It was neither designed nor planned. But it happened, and once it began, it generated a self-reinforcing dynamic of economic progress that made knowledge-driven growth both possible and sustainable.
How did this work? In brief, Europe’s political fragmentation spurred productive competition. It meant that European rulers found themselves competing for the best and most productive intellectuals and artisans. The economic historian Eric L Jones called this ‘the States system’. The costs of European political division into multiple competing states were substantial: they included almost incessant warfare, protectionism, and other coordination failures. Many scholars now believe, however, that in the long run the benefits of competing states might have been larger than the costs. In particular, the existence of multiple competing states encouraged scientific and technological innovation.
The idea that European political fragmentation, despite its evident costs, also brought great benefits, enjoys a distinguished lineage. In the closing chapter of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1789), Edward Gibbon wrote: ‘Europe is now divided into 12 powerful, though unequal, kingdoms.’ Three of them he called ‘respectable commonwealths’, the rest ‘a variety of smaller, though independent, states’. The ‘abuses of tyranny are restrained by the mutual influence of fear and shame’, Gibbon wrote, adding that ‘republics have acquired order and stability; monarchies have imbibed the principles of freedom, or, at least, of moderation; and some sense of honor and justice is introduced into the most defective constitutions by the general manners of the times.’
In other words, the rivalries between the states, and their examples to one another, also meliorated some of the worst possibilities of political authoritarianism. Gibbon added that ‘in peace, the progress of knowledge and industry is accelerated by the emulation of so many active rivals’. Other Enlightenment writers, David Hume and Immanuel Kant for example, saw it the same way. From the early 18th-century reforms of Russia’s Peter the Great, to the United States’ panicked technological mobilization in response to the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik, interstate competition was a powerful economic mover. More important, perhaps, the ‘states system’ constrained the ability of political and religious authorities to control intellectual innovation. If conservative rulers clamped down on heretical and subversive (that is, original and creative) thought, their smartest citizens would just go elsewhere (as many of them, indeed, did).
A possible objection to this view is that political fragmentation was not enough. The Indian subcontinent and the Middle East were fragmented for much of their history, and Africa even more so, yet they did not experience a Great Enrichment. Clearly, more was needed. The size of the ‘market’ that intellectual and technological innovators faced was one element of scientific and technological development that has not perhaps received as much attention it should. In 1769, for example, Matthew Boulton wrote to his partner James Watt: ‘It is not worth my while to manufacture [your engine] for three counties only; but I find it very well worth my while to make it for all the world.’
What was true for steam engines was equally true for books and essays on astronomy, medicine and mathematics. Writing such a book involved fixed costs, and so the size of the market mattered. If fragmentation meant that the constituency of each innovator was small, it would have dampened the incentives.
In early modern Europe, however, political and religious fragmentation did not mean small audiences for intellectual innovators. Political fragmentation existed alongside a remarkable intellectual and cultural unity. Europe offered a more or less integrated market for ideas, a continent-wide network of learned men and women, in which new ideas were distributed and circulated. European cultural unity was rooted in its classical heritage and, among intellectuals, the widespread use of Latin as their lingua franca. The structure of the medieval Christian Church also provided an element shared throughout the continent. Indeed, long before the term ‘Europe’ was commonly used, it was called ‘Christendom’.
While for much of the Middle Ages the intensity of intellectual activity (in terms of both the number of participants and the heatedness of the debates) was light compared to what it was to become, after 1500 it was transnational. In early modern Europe, national boundaries mattered little in the thin but lively and mobile community of intellectuals in Europe. Despite slow and uncomfortable travel, many of Europe’s leading intellectuals moved back and forth between states.
Both the Valencia-born Juan Luis Vives and the Rotterdam-born Desiderius Erasmus, two of the most prominent leaders of 16th-century European humanism, embodied the footloose quality of Europe’s leading thinkers: Vives studied in Paris, lived most of his life in Flanders, but was also a member of Corpus Christi College in Oxford. For a while, he served as a tutor to Henry VIII’s daughter Mary. Erasmus moved back between Leuven, England and Basel. But he also spent time in Turin and Venice. Such mobility among intellectuals grew even more pronounced in the 17th century.
If Europe’s intellectuals moved with unprecedented frequency and ease, their ideas traveled even faster. Through the printing press and the much-improved postal system, written knowledge circulated rapidly. In the relatively pluralistic environment of early modern Europe, especially in contrast with East Asia, conservative attempts to suppress new ideas floundered. The reputation of intellectual superstars such as Galileo and Spinoza was such that, if local censorship tried to prohibit the publication of their works, they could easily find publishers abroad.
Galileo’s ‘banned’ books were quickly smuggled out of Italy and published in Protestant cities. For example, his Discorsi was published in Leiden in 1638, and his Dialogo was re-published in Strasbourg in 1635. Spinoza’s publisher, Jan Riewertz, placed ‘Hamburg’ on the title page of the Tractatus to mislead censors, even though the book was published in Amsterdam. For intellectuals, Europe’s divided and uncoordinated polities enhanced an intellectual freedom that simply could not exist in China or the Ottoman Empire.
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After 1500, Europe’s unique combination of political fragmentation and its pan-European institutions of learning brought dramatic intellectual changes in the way new ideas circulated. Books written in one part of Europe found their way to other parts. They were soon read, quoted, plagiarized, discussed and commented upon everywhere. When a new discovery was made anywhere in Europe, it was debated and tested throughout the continent. Fifty years after the publication of William Harvey’s text on the circulation of blood De Motu Cordis (1628), the English doctor and intellectual Thomas Browne reflected on Harvey’s discovery that ‘at the first trump of the circulation all the schools of Europe murmured … and condemned it by a general vote … but at length [it was] accepted and confirmed by illustrious physicians.’
The intellectual superstars of the period catered to a European, not a local, audience and enjoyed continent-wide reputations. They saw themselves as citizens of a ‘Republic of Letters’ and regarded this entity, in the words of the French philosopher Pierre Bayle (one of its central figures), as a free commonwealth, an empire of truth. The political metaphor was mostly wishful thinking and not a little self-flattery, but it expressed the features of a community that set rules of conduct for the market for ideas. It was a very competitive market.
Above all, Europe’s intellectuals contested almost everything, and time and again demonstrated a willingness to slaughter sacred cows. They together established a commitment to open science. To return to Gibbon: he observed that the philosopher, unlike the patriot, was permitted to consider Europe as a single ‘great republic’ in which the balance of power might continue to fluctuate and the prosperity of some nations ‘may be alternately exalted or depressed’. But this apprehension of a single ‘great republic’ guaranteed a ‘general state of happiness, system of arts and laws and manners’. It ‘advantageously distinguished’ Europe from other civilizations, wrote Gibbon.
In this regard, then, Europe’s intellectual community enjoyed the best of two worlds, both the advantages of an integrated transnational academic community and a competitive states system. This system produced many of the cultural components that led to the Great Enrichment: a belief in social and economic progress, a growing regard for scientific and intellectual innovation, and a commitment to a Baconian, ie a methodical and empirically grounded, research program of knowledge in the service of economic growth. The natural philosophers and mathematicians of the 17th-century Republic of Letters adopted the idea of experimental science as a prime tool, and accepted the use of increasingly more sophisticated mathematics as a method of understanding and codifying nature.
The idea of knowledge-driven economic progress as the primum movens of the Industrial Revolution and early economic growth is still controversial, and rightly so. Examples of purely science-driven inventions in the 18th century are few, though after 1815 their number rises rapidly. Yet dismissing the scientific revolution as irrelevant to modern economic growth misses the point that without an ever-growing understanding of nature, the artisan-driven advances of the 18th century (especially in the textile industry) would slowly but ineluctably have ground to a halt.
Furthermore, some inventions still needed inputs from learned people even if they cannot be said to be purely science-driven. For instance, the marine chronometer, one of the most important inventions of the era of the Industrial Revolution (though rarely mentioned as a part of it) was made possible through the work of earlier mathematical astronomers. The first one was the 16th-century Dutch (more accurately Frisian) astronomer and mathematician Jemme Reinerszoon, known as Gemma Frisius, who suggested the possibility of what John Harrison (the ingenious watchmaker who cracked this thorny problem) actually did in 1740.
It is interesting to note that the advances in science were driven not only by the emergence of open science and the growing sophistication of the transnational market for ideas. They were also driven by the appearance of better tools and instruments that facilitated research in natural philosophy. The most important ones include the microscope, telescope, barometer and modern thermometer. All of them were developed in the first half of the 17th century. Improved tools in physics, astronomy and biology refuted many misconceptions inherited from classical antiquity. The newly discovered notions of a vacuum and an atmosphere stimulated the emergence of atmospheric engines. In turn, steam engines inspired scientists to investigate the physics of the conversion of heat into motion. More than a century after Newcomen’s first pump (the famous Dudley Castle engine of 1712), thermodynamics was developed.
In 18th-century Europe, the interplay between pure science and the work of engineers and mechanics became progressively stronger. This interaction of propositional knowledge (knowledge of ‘what’) and prescriptive knowledge (knowledge of ‘how’) constituted a positive feedback or autocatalytic model. In such systems, once the process gets underway, it can become self-propelled. In that sense, knowledge-based growth is one of the most persistent of all historical phenomena – though the conditions of its persistence are complex and require above all a competitive and open market for ideas.
We must recognize that Europe’s (and the world’s) Great Enrichment was in no way inevitable. With fairly minor changes in initial conditions, or even accidents along the way, it might never have happened. Had political and military developments taken different turns in Europe, conservative forces might have prevailed and taken a more hostile attitude toward the new and more progressive interpretation of the world. There was nothing predetermined or inexorable in the ultimate triumph of scientific progress and sustained economic growth, any more than, say, in the eventual evolution of Homo sapiens (or any other specific species) as dominant on the planet.
One outcome of the activities in the market for ideas after 1600 was the European Enlightenment, in which the belief in scientific and intellectual progress was translated into an ambitious political program, a program that, despite its many flaws and misfires, still dominates European polities and economies.
Notwithstanding the backlash it has recently encountered, the forces of technological and scientific progress, once set in motion, might have become irresistible. The world today, after all, still consists of competing entities, and seems not much closer to unification than in 1600. Its market for ideas is more active than ever, and innovations are occurring at an ever faster pace. Far from all the low-hanging technological fruits having been picked, the best is still to come.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-europe-became-so-rich?utm_source=pocket-newtab
I'm surprised by the omission of the role of the discovery of the New World. At first this greatly enriched chiefly Spain and Portugal, but soon enough France and England responded with their own waves of exploration and settlement. The Dutch, too, established a maritime empire. Europeans, with their superior ships [which had to be sturdy enough to withstand the rough Atlantic], got to dominate the global trade.
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EARTH’S INNER CORE IS GROWING LOPSIDED
~ Each year, the solid-iron inner core at the heart of our planet expands by about a millimeter as the Earth’s nether regions cool and solidify. According to a recent study, one side appears to be growing faster — but scientists don’t know why.
This phenomenon likely dates back to the inner core’s creation, between 1.5 billion and half a billion years ago. At this point, after billions of years of cooling, the Earth’s fiery interior finally lost enough heat to begin an ongoing process of crystallization. Now, as the outer core’s molten iron loses heat, it crystallizes to become the newest layer of the inner core.
The center of this hyperactive hemisphere lies 1,800 miles under Indonesia’s Banda Sea: About 60 percent more iron crystals form at that point on the inner core than on the other side of the world.
Today, the inner core boasts a radius of about 750 miles (not to mention a scorching temperature of more than 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit). Yet even after an eon of lopsided growth, it hasn’t actually deformed. Gravity acts constantly to mold it, redistributing the excess in the east and maintaining a spherical shape. Besides posing a captivating puzzle, this asymmetrical growth may help power the Earth’s magnetic field (and enable our survival).
For such a small and distant layer in the colossal onion we call home, the inner core has tremendous influence on us surface dwellers. Daniel Frost, a geophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the new study, jokes that he is “always having to justify the importance of the inner core.” In fact, we owe it our existence — as it cools, it releases heat and creates convection in the outer core. Ultimately, that churning liquid iron (known as the geodynamo) generates the magnetic field that protects life on this planet from dangerous solar winds.
Likewise, the upper layers influence the core. “Everything is affected by what’s above it,” Frost says. The inner core is surrounded by the outer core, the outer core by the mantle, the mantle by the crust. So in order for the inner core to grow, it must transfer its heat — some residual from Earth’s formation, some radioactive from decaying elements — to each successive layer. In turn, each layer must be capable of receiving the heat.
That suggests one possible mechanism for the inner core’s uneven cooling. The point of greatest growth beneath Indonesia is a major subduction zone. There, relatively cool chunks of tectonic plates plunge into and chill the burning mantle. “It’s kind of like dropping ice cubes in,” Frost says. This temperature gradient allows the deeper layers to shed their heat, thereby solidifying the inner core.
While these “ice cubes” are puny, he suspects they may be enough to tip the scale. “This is all a delicate balance,” he says. “I don’t think you need much to precipitate a difference like this.” However, this explanation may be too simplistic: It’s unclear whether heat from the bowels of the Earth dissipates in a vertical line. The diving Indonesian crust might just as easily cool the core lying underneath, say, China or Saudi Arabia, rather than below Indonesia.
EARTHQUAKE SUPERHIGHWAY
For now, the asymmetry itself remains unexplained, but it does offer one solution to longstanding enigma: why the iron crystals in the inner core align parallel to Earth’s North-South rotation axis. (No one has observed the structure of the core directly, but seismologists have observed that earthquakes travel faster through the core between the North and South Poles than across the equator.) All things being equal, the crystals should be aligned randomly.
The Berkeley researchers suggest the answer lies in the core’s lopsided formation. As gravity redistributes the crystals, it brings them into a sort of “flow,” according to their computer model. “Imagine throwing sticks into a river,” Frost says. “If the river is flowing, the sticks will align with the flow.” Similarly, because the inner core is flowing, the crystals align with it and form an orderly lattice that serves as a high-speed interstate for subterranean tremors.
To understand the connection between this asymmetry and the magnetic field, more research is needed. But given the vital role this planetary armor plays in our existence, it’s worth investigating the processes that underpin it. Scientists have long known that the magnetic field reverses every so often (we’re overdue for a switch), and that it weakens temporarily during transition. But it isn’t evident why. When it comes to new findings on the Earth’s core, Frost says, “The question is always, ‘Does this relate to the reversal of the magnetic field?’” ~
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/earths-inner-core-is-growing-lopsided?utm_source=Yesmail&utm_medium=email&utm_email=ivy333@cox.net&utm_campaign=News0_DSC_210812_000000
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I CURSE THE RIVER OF TIME
“...when it came to dying, I was scared. Not of being dead, that I could not comprehend, to be nothing was impossible to grasp and therefore really nothing to be scared of, but the dying itself I could comprehend, the very instant when you know that now comes what you have always feared, and you suddenly realize that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember."~ Per Petterson, I Curse the River of Time
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CAN YOU OVERDOSE ON MARIJUANA?
~ Some people have long tended to lump all illegal drugs together, seeing little difference between the dangers posed by drugs like heroin or methamphetamines to marijuana. But how dangerous is marijuana, really? Can it kill you? Is it possible to overdose on weed?
The answer to the latter question is an easy “no.” There are some ways that joints, bong hits or synthetic versions of the psychoactive agents in marijuana can kill you, but overdosing on pure, unadulterated marijuana that isn’t mixed with anything is very nearly impossible.
“It’s not close to alcohol or opiate toxicity,” says Mujeeb Shad, a psychiatrist with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
WHY THE DANGER OF MARIJUANA IS SELF-MITIGATED
The reason marijuana doesn’t pose the same sort of risk as opiates, cocaine, amphetamines or even alcohol is that some of the active components of the pungent herb work against each other in your body.
Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is probably the most toxic component of marijuana. It’s also what’s responsible for most of the more potent psychoactive and addictive effects that users.
You may be familiar with CBD due to the plethora of New Age health practitioners that sell the substance in everything from balms to edible products, though the science hasn’t yet caught up to some of these claims.
But CBD dampens some of the potentially adverse effects of THC, counteracting some of its toxicity.
“[CBD] is kind of a system stabilizer,” Shad says.
Marijuana can certainly cause negative effects, whether that means nausea, paranoia, vomiting, delusions, confusion or anxiety. But it’s unlikely to kill you by itself.
The dangers of marijuana use in and of itself are often far overblown, especially when considering that another legal drug — alcohol — is far deadlier. You can probably kill yourself with less than $100 of hard alcohol if you drink it quickly enough.
“Alcohol is a relatively more dangerous substance than marijuana, and our society has completely accepted it,” Shad says. “We should not be out there condoning the use of either of the two. But at the same time, we need to educate people about these differences.” ~
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/can-you-overdose-on-marijuana?utm_source=Yesmail&utm_medium=email&utm_email=ivy333@cox.net&utm_campaign=News0_DSC_210805_000000
Oriana:
The article also warns about the dangers of using synthetic THC, which is not offset by CBD.
And smoking anything puts the inhaler at a higher risk of lung disease, including lung cancer.
Still, multiple compounds present in marijuana have a therapeutic potential, which is only now beginning to be explored.
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HEALTH BENEFITS OF AMARANTH
~ This ancient grain [not in the grass family; it’s related to quinoa and buckwheat] is rich in fiber and protein, as well as many important micronutrients.
Amaranth is packed with manganese, exceeding your daily nutrient needs in just one serving. Manganese is especially important for brain function and believed to protect against certain neurological conditions.
It’s also rich in magnesium, an essential nutrient involved in nearly 300 reactions in the body, including DNA synthesis and muscle contraction.
What’s more, amaranth is high in phosphorus, a mineral that is important for bone health. It’s also rich in iron, which helps your body produce blood.
IT CONTAINS ANTIOXIDANTS
Amaranth is a good source of health-promoting antioxidants.
One review reported that amaranth is especially high in phenolic acids, which are plant compounds that act as antioxidants. These include gallic acid, p-hydroxybenzoic acid and vanillic acid, all of which may help protect against diseases like heart disease and cancer.
In one rat study, amaranth was found to increase the activity of certain antioxidants and help protect the liver against alcohol.
IT IS ANTI-INFLAMMATORY
Chronic inflammation can contribute to chronic disease and has been associated with conditions like cancer, diabetes and autoimmune disorders.
In one in-vitro study, amaranth was found to reduce several markers of inflammation.
Similarly, an animal study showed that amaranth helped inhibit the production of immunoglobulin E, a type of antibody involved in allergic inflammation.
AMARANTH CAN LOWER CHOLESTEROL
One study in hamsters showed that amaranth oil decreased total and “bad” LDL cholesterol by 15% and 22%, respectively. Furthermore, amaranth grain reduced “bad” LDL cholesterol while increasing “good” HDL cholesterol.
Additionally, a study in chickens reported that a diet containing amaranth decreased total cholesterol by up to 30% and “bad” LDL cholesterol by up to 70%.
AMARANTH IS GLUTEN-FREE
Like rice and quinoa, amaranth can be eaten by those who avoid gluten.
AMARANTH PROTEIN IS HIGH IN LYSINE
Lysine is a building block for protein. It’s an essential amino acid because your body cannot make it, so you need to obtain it from food.
It’s important for normal growth and muscle turnover and used to form carnitine, a substance found in most cells of your body. What’s more, it helps transport fats across your cells to be burned for energy.
Lysine lowers cortisol levels.
It may also improve calcium absorption and the production of collagen. It speeds up wound healing.
The best sources of lysine are meat and dairy products, but vegetarians need for watch out for lysine deficiency. Amaranth and quinoa both provide high quality protein.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/amaranth-health-benefits#TOC_TITLE_HDR_9
General information:
Amaranth has been cultivated as a grain for 8,000 years and is also a native species to the Andean region of South America, including Argentina, Peru and Bolivia and goes by the name “kiwicha”. Amaranth is widely grown in the Andes region today. This crop was also known as “Incan Wheat” because it was a staple food for the Incas, but was used long before this time. Amaranth leaves are also edible.
A cup of amaranth contains 28 g of proteins, compared to the 13 g of protein in a cup of rice. It’s also richer in minerals such as calcium than most vegetables.
Amaranth is widely grown and consumed in India, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Amaranth harvest in India
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ending on beauty:
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night —
Press close bare-bosomed night —
Smile, for your lover comes.
~ Walt Whitman
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