velvet mafia

Though the truth is a very difficult matter to reconstruct, small bridges to the real story virtually pulverised by redaction and secrets yet to expire, the testimony of those he worked with and his compatriots of the so called Cambridge Five, a spy ring recruited from impressionable or impassioned students from the University by the Soviet Union in the interbellum period and for the course of the war, that operative Guy Burgess was the most ruthless and diplomat with the less tact was probably no hyperbole.

Committed to the belief that there were only two alternative world-views for a world that was dangerously close to slipping back into grave conflict, communism or fascism, and fearful that England would side for fascism ultimately and continue with appeasement of Nazi Germany, Burgess worked covertly to forward the agenda of the Bolshevik government. Despite or possibly because of his nature as a double-agent, Burgess not only ingratiated himself to the media, directing several programmes that covered parliament and foreign policy matters, he also came to earn the trust and confidence of powerful members of the Foreign Office and diplomatic mission to the United States. With essentially unchecked access to thousands of documents, Burgess was able to provide his controllers with incredulous amounts of information—and even they began to be skeptical of his sources and how long this relationship might go on before all were caught. That Burgess was flagrantly homosexual—but seemingly not blackmailed into treason like some of the other spies at the time, and was just as uncensored in that aspect of his personality as in all others, might have elevated him above suspicion in a way. That’s just Burgie, queer duck. Maybe that affectation kept others at a safe distance—or maybe no one dared risk having their own dirty laundry aired. Or maybe the British Intelligence services were devising a triple bluff, with voluminous but harmless information to distribute with hopes of catching bigger offenders. I don’t suppose that that truth will ever out.
Throughout the war and in the aftermath, Burgess funneled the Soviet Union details of treaty negotiations, the alliance between Britain and America and how the Marshall Plan would take shape. An aside: it is worth noting that the small-minded laws that criminalised homosexual-pratises in the UK never seemed to adversely affect a traitor but destroyed a genius and hero, Alan Turing, whom were incidentally both recently portrayed by the same actor—the former on stage and the later in film. Around 1951, feeling that his activities were about to be discovered, Burgess fled to Moscow. Burgess settled in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, but was reportedly never very happy there because he couldn’t carry on like he was accustomed to, despite being permitted to openly reside with a male-lover. Burgess never returned from exile, fearing he would stand for high treason if he tried to enter the UK. The courts were not forthcoming about the fact that the charges would most likely be inadmissible since it mostly came from fellow-defectors.

don’t gobblefunk around with words

Roald Dahl, the great Welsh author of Norwegian extraction, may be best known for his timeless and imaginative children’s tales but he was also a story-teller for all audiences, writing for Playboy magazine, was a compatriot of Ian Fleming and wrote the screenplay for one James Bond movie, featured on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and later hosting his own television series in the same genre.  

Dahl came into the profession somewhat by mishap, having in his earlier career as a dogfighting ace in North Africa during World War II and sustained a traumatic bump on his head that left him temporarily blind and apparently rewired his temperaments towards writing.  Dahl was compelled to resign his commission afterwards, but that accident—and subsequent manuscript of the event he wrote—Dahl’s plane had strayed too far off course and there was not enough fuel to get him back to base, and with the sun setting, Dahl choose to try to bring the plane down while he could still see obstacles on the ground and how he survived, but the article’s publishers tweaked the title to make the circumstances sound more harrowing, stating explicitly Dahl was shot down—led to a diplomatic posting as a sort of military attaché to the ambassador in Washington, DC in the office of propaganda, meant to align American commitment to the war in Europe.  Supposedly, after all that, which is barely even the introduction, Dahl had originally hoped to be a doctor.  The talent for story-telling that was violently thrust upon Dahl was surely regarded as a blessing but not a curse, but a lot of his personal life is tinged with sadness and loss, which influenced his plot twists and sometimes rather frightful ordeals and was surely an outlet besides. 

In his family, several of his children suffered tragedies and his wife, actress Patricia Neal fell victim to a massive stroke.  Dahl helped rehabilitate her with constant physical therapy and practice—which was unconventional for the 1960s when it was thought that no one could recover from such a bad and debilitating blow, but he refused to give up on her and and his wife learnt to speak and walk—and act again.  As Neal was figuring out to put words together again, her bittersweet malapropisms became the basis of the way the Giant speaks to the curious little girl (patterned after his own daughter, who sadly died from an avoidable case of measles, prompting Dahl’s campaign for getting children vaccinated) in his whimsical story, The BFG—Big Friendly Giant.

link toundup: five-by-five

wikiholics anonymous: discover some of the most dedicated article editors

monoglot: why did science switch to English-only?

sapporo: beautiful prewar Japanese beer advertisements

great big convoy: interactive map illustrating common occupations in the US trends for the past thirty-six years

a.i.: Tim Urban ponders how terraflops figure into the intelligence quotient

catchpenny or clickbait

What is it driving this Anti-Vaxxer phenomenon? I too am, I think, healthfully skeptical of the pharmaceutical lobby when it comes to rigour, transparency and the production of medicines as lifestyle accessorisers (potions to counter all those self-inflicted ailments), but I don’t feel that we ought to take for granted the science that’s really enabled population health in manner that’s seen little precedence in human history and risk resurgence of otherwise preventable diseases.
I feel that this anti-science drift, for what it’s worth, which includes the climate-change deniers—and no, questioning does not belie conspiracy but I think rather than educating themselves, some go along with the propaganda they know and see the counter-arguments as mere propaganda, too, evidence fabricated and institutions manipulative—has parallels in the last wave of worry—which although far from hysterical can and has been displaced by this movement of distrust for drugs and doctors. Americans were passionate about being spied upon—though the lack of outrage when they bought the lie that such eavesdropping activity was limited to overseas solicits little sympathy, and the tantrum subsided rather quickly. I am not sure how the revelation was received that the intelligence agencies are not staffed with savants and are bound by the same laws of mathematics that allow encryption to work and remain virtually imperviously to prying, and it was only that the big telecommunication conglomerates giving the secret agents the secret-knock that allowed them to get inside. Service providers may not have willingly surrendered to government pressure but certainly did not disclose the scale of collaboration either, and they managed to escape suffering too much damage to their reputation over public ire. We of course tell on ourselves too, and refrain passing judgment on the real peddlers of snake-oil.

flux-capacitor

Quartz Magazine features a very engrossing and inspiring profile of the unsung inventor, John Bannister Goodenough, who gave the world its mobility and galloping pace of miniaturisation with the lithium-ion battery. This robust and rechargeable power-source is in every electronic gadget worldwide and in the motors of hybrid vehicles, and I could imagine that the world might look very different if Goodenough had not found the right balance and combination to improve upon the transistor. Goodenough achieved his breakthrough at the age of fifty-seven—and now at the age of ninety-two, he’s far from ready to retire, believing that he can develop the next generation of storage-medium that could help finally wean the world off oil and start to reverse climate change. I wager that he’ll be about to deliver.

quod numquam

Though the popular myth that no one expected the Spanish Inquisition has been dispelled for the most part, it’s a pretty fun thing to proclaim and the phrase might have its origins in another Church culture struggle. In 1875 on this day, Pope Pious IX issued the encyclical called Quod Numquam, “What we never Expected” to Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Prussian King Wilhelm I during the height of what was known as the Kulturkampf, the systematic dissolution of Church holdings in Protestant territories and discriminatory measures taken against the congregation, including the forced exile of priests and bishops. What was never expected was that the House of Prussia might turn its back on Catholicism, and though no on the level of the Crusades, clerics ignited a holy war to sue for the freedom of religious worship.

redirected from berenstein

Via Reddit, an older speculative post on a blog called the Wood between Worlds by the self-described world’s worst scientist puts forward such a profoundly baffling psychological blind-spot that the imaginative explanation—that we are in our own parallel universe, seems pretty plausible.

Like the cognitive dissonance that occurs when the seating arrangement of the Last Supper (with Mary Magdalen next to Jesus) is pointed out or a revisionist Orwellian memory hole, the Berenstein Bears—and I distinctly remember the book covers and the stories that my Mom read to me, though I knew nothing about an animated syndicate in the mid-80s or relaunch—is and always was Berenstain. Either we’re all remembering it incorrectly, like some famously misquoted line from a movie that no one bothers to correct, or there’s an element of time travel or dimensional engineering involved. One ought to read the whole post through, and I am glad it’s of the right vintage to have garnered a lot of responses, to be rewarded with a comment from the son of the authors with an explanation about the spelling of the family name. Can you think of other examples were something false was so broadly ingrained? I hope the Scientist is continuing his intrepid research.