16 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Orwell Notes Hitler's Rigidity of Mind
It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost...He notes that Hitler's ideas did not change at all over 15 years and that is a mark of madness.
13 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Emergence of the Week Began the Scientific Mind
The making of our week was another forward step in man's mastery of the
world, in his reach toward science. The week was man's own cluster, not
dictated by the visible forces of nature, for the planetary influences were
invisible. By seeking astral regularities, by imagining that regularly recurring
forces at a distance, forces that could be judged only by their effects,
might govern the world, mankind was preparing a new arsenal of thought,
an escape from the prison of Again-and-Again. The p...It was the first time human beings established an artificial order to things, setting up cycles.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Sifting Through Photographs of Our Ancestors to See Evolu...
Find a picture of yourself. Now take a picture of your father and place it on top. Then find a picture of his father, your grandfather. Then place on top of that a picture of your grandfather's father, your great-grandfather. You may not have ever met any of your great-grandfathers. I never met any of mine, but I know that one was a country schoolmaster, one a country doctor, one a forester in British India, and one a lawyer, greedy for cream, who died rock-climbing in old age. Still, even if...A great thought-experiment that takes us all the way back to when our ancestor was a fish, but shows us that the neighbors of any ancestor looked identical.