Un-Super Heroes : a biography of NEW DEAL penicillin ...

The post-modern NEW DEAL extrusion onto the landscape of the Modern Age

British Conservative wartime penicillin or American Republican wartime penicillin , if they had succeeded, would have totally altered the generally favourable image we have today of penicillin.

It would have been regarded as needlessly expensive and originally available - by design -  to only the richest and whitest classes.

By contrast the wartime penicillin we actually got in the end  - NEW DEAL penicillin - is probably the world's best known medicine almost entirely because it is also the most beloved of lifesaver.

It remains non-patented ( in the public domain) and naturally made and hence both cheap and available to all nations to make.

During the war this non-patented natural penicillin was made available to all those in the world dying from lack of it only because the New Deal oriented super agency known as the WPB (War Production Board) willed it to be so.

In many accounts, the New Deal was definitely on its way out in Washington and America by 1945 and the gift of cheap natural penicillin for all was merely its final, departing, gift.

But in my view, the informally postmodern New Deal morphed seamlessly into formal post-Modernity in late 1945 and the gift of  cheap natural penicillin for all became merely postmodernity's opening gambit...

The GREAT DISCONNECT : our 200 year old party ideologies vs today's Science

Today's parties are as old as her !!

It might surprise many but all of our governing party ideologies - ALL of them - are as old as Queen Victoria.

Before the rise of mass democracy, there were no need for formally constituted political parties with a consistent political ideology to rally around --- all that began to change after the end of the Napoleonic wars.

Check out the formal birth date for any party of your own choosing : from the British Conservative party to the American Democrats to the German Social Democrats to the Russian Communists to the Spanish Anarchists and you will find the ghost of Queen Victoria hovering over them.

All of them born trying to deal with the new world, post Napoleon and post the American and French Revolutions.

(Note ye well , I said our governing parties: the Green Parties decidedly postdate the Queen's death in 1901 but have not yet been the sustained majority government in any country.)

So all our parties have moved along, more or less, with changing times --- but their ideologies have not - by definition.

(Any "ideology" that changes with the polls, like some Mormon weathervane or Etch a Sketch, is many things but it is not an ideology.)

We can not modify or update core ideologies anymore than we can modify or change our date of birth : we can only drop one and take up another, as many did in the decade of the 1910s , going from being Liberals to become Labour voters in Britain.

The problem with all our Victorian political ideologies, from Conservatism to Communism, is that they are - well - so bloody Victorian : so optimistic , so activist, so human-oriented.

They are all the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed children of the optimistic First law of Thermodynamics --- the governing meme of the physical and social sciences of their day.

Other philosophies of their day (based upon religious or on  science of the natural history kind) were more Nature-oriented and more skeptic of the possibility of humans successfully controlling reality.

But these philosophies failed to engender any really successful political ideologies, though they did sponsor some fairly successful political parties.

 Such as Germany's Christian Democrats , who despite their 'Christian' name are rather too easy to confuse with plain old Conservatives or Republicans.

The GREAT DISCONNECT : in the 200 years since our party ideologies were created, science has changed ---- but they haven't.

Roll the movie ahead 200 years : now the Second law of Thermodynamics is the governing meme of today's (21st century) science ----- and it is as mutually hostile with our creaking old 19th century party ideologies as can be imagined.

Unless we develop new - 21st century - political ideologies to go along with our better current understanding of natural reality than what we held in 1812, we will find our political Rhetoric will always fall short of our real world physical Reality - to great cost to us and our world....

Merkel "betrays" fellow conservative Harper with visit to Halifax climate change project

Harper ain't Happy !

HALIFAX - Privately, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his fellow Conservatives are said to be livid over Germany Chancellor Merkel's freelance visit to Dalhousie University to see the launch of a climate change study --- but in public it is all "sunshine and smiles".

Officially, Merkel is merely visiting Halifax's Dalhousie University to help launch a joint project on climate change between Dalhousie's Marine Research Institute and the German Helmholtz Association --- a job usually left for an official from the German Embassy in Ottawa to perform.

But Merkel has always made it clear that resource-poor and now population-poor Germany can only survive by (a) using its brains - ie science and (b) using those brains on up and coming global issues before others  see the future opportunity.

 And in practise, that means above all else, being there first on energy shortages and climate change. 

By contrast, Harper is a Calgary-based MP and has always ensured his own personal re-election by working tirelessly to see that his governing party is nothing more than mere putty in the hands of  Canada's massive Calgary-based Oil industry.

Under his watch, Canada's Conservatives have become the world's first governing "fossil energy lobby group".

He himself is one of the world's biggest and most tireless (tiresome ?) climate deniers but is not content, like most of them, to merely rant against the climate in a blog.

Harper has taken positive steps to kill the climate debate in Canada : conducting extensive witch hunts and mass firings throughout Canada's scientific community.

In fairness, Mr Harper has shown some restraint : he hasn't yet ordered any 'hits' on pesky climate change supporters.

But his trigger finger must really be twitching this week over the fact that Ms Merkel's highly public pro-climate change action is taking place in his own 'hood. De Capo is not pleased !

Harper hates warmist 'traitors' in his family of fellow conservatives.

But fortunately for the German Chancellor, Harper and Canadian Conservatives are also, and not so secretly , 'loving' the way that Merkel has slapped down those dark and swarthy Dagos from Greece and Spain over their financial deficits.

This fact has restrained Harper and his cabinet cronies from publicly launching their normal full-press character assassination on anyone who dares oppose them.

Still the anger must go somewhere -no wonder then that extra amounts of high blood pressure pills had to be delivered to this week's Cabinet meeting, as a medical precaution...

The Science of CERTITUDES to the Science of UNCERTAINTY : no wonder conservatives dislike the new science...

Michael Marshall

It is a given that conservative personalities crave certitudes and fear uncertainty.

(To be clear - this means, for example, that Russian conservative personalities yearn for the good old days of Stalin and fear greatly
the fact that tiny Estonia isn't under Russia's firm thumbs.)

Modernist Science was full of certitudes - all lies of course, the sort of self-flattering lies we humans delude ourselves with.

As those lies were exposed - by further scientific activity - scientists gradually abandoned modernist science and became more commensal and green --- and more and more willing to accept that humanity's knowledge had its limits and human uncertainty would always exist about life and reality.

Conservative personalities naturally found this hard to take and abandoned post-modern science and this age of commensality and sought out the old science of certainty in whatever elderly nooks it could be still found in.

Conservative personalities haven't changed - never can and never will - that is what makes them conservative.

But scientists have ....