WWII, Irag, Local Food, Jazz, Lactose Digestive Capacity, and More

Only three of us available today, what with business and vacation travel out of time, but it was a great conversation. I'm going to hurry up and try to get some bullet points down and then flesh them out later (maybe). Others can use the comments to add to and correct my memories. Or, if you want to be able to make posts here, just let me know!

J talked about a recent BBC report (which I have been unable to locate yet, no link, sorry) on the various roles of British, American, and other allied troops during the fall of Germany at the end of WWII. Apparently, the worst violators, in terms of treatment of the Germans and looting of German treasures were the British, while Americans and others weren't so bad. One of the mistakes the British made was in completely disbanding the German military and also working to diminish German productive capacities in ways that led to needless resentment and poor conditions. One example was a German plant that manufactured the kinds of large cranes, which were needed for reconstruction. The British insisted that it be destroyed.

J said that at the end of the discussion parallels were made between the behavior of British troops and treatment of the Germans in WWII, relative to the American benignity, that were peculiar because the parallels of American behavior in Iraq have tracked so closely with British 1940s behavior, not American.

This led us to some digressive discussion about the recent revelations that Pat Tillman, whose "friendly fire" death in Afghanistan, was covered up, and who it now appears may have been deliberately murdered.

T almost wanted to talk about the recent discovery by the mainstream media that Hillary Clinton has breasts, but we kept that to a minimum.

T did talk about the relatively recent understandings that the normal condition for humans is what we used to call "lactose deficiency," and that instead, a Lactose Digestive Capacity (LDC) is a relative new phenomenon that has only developed in human populations in the last 10,000 years or less and only in populations living pastorally and making use of the milk of other animals. It has resulted in measurable human genetic evolution in recent times. A central paper on this is the 1997 Phylogenetic Analysis of the Evolution of Lactose Digestion in Adults from Human Biology.

M talked about the Barbara Kinsolver book, The Year of Eating Locally, about the time she and her family spent trying to eat locally, and the insights gained through it about food, food processing, transport, etc.:

"Locally grown," by contrast, is a designation that's incorruptible. Buying food from growers at small markets or through Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) is really the only way for most of us to step away from a disordered food system. Food from your neighborhood will likely be whole, unprocessed vegetables, fruits, or animal products grown on small, diversified farms by growers committed to the health of their land. The food is good for you, and the money you spend on it stays in your community, helping to keep those nearby green spaces intact and strengthening your local food economy.

J also talked about the book, A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission and the Price He Paid to Save His Country, by Benjamin Weiser:

Whenever I read monographs about foreign intelligence or the biographies of spies, I am beset by doubts about the books' reliability even if they are based on authentic documents. Intelligence services normally are loath to reveal their secrets. On the rare occasions when they consent to the release of documents, they may just be playing some sort of game. The fear that this is exactly what is taking place pertains also to events from the past, as with Benjamin Weiser's book. After the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, the release of documents about Cold War events presumably would no longer cause harm to the countries involved, but the intelligence services in Poland, the United States, and the former Soviet Union—the main parties in the events discussed by Weiser—have been notoriously reluctant to declassify information about espionage. Nonetheless, because of the role and personality of the hero of A Secret Life and because of Weiser's doggedness in arriving at the truth, his book is worthy of careful study. *** Despite lingering "blank spots" and frustration caused by the CIA's persistent refusal to disclose material from Kuklin'ski's file, Weiser has written one of the most interesting, most important, and best documented books on Cold War espionage.

T also talked about the book, In War Times, by Kathleen Ann Goonan:

Sam Dance enlists in the Army in 1941, interrupting three years of study in chemical engineering. He is placed in a special program taught by visiting European scientists, one of whom is Eliani Hadntz, who seduces him and gives him secret plans for a device she says may help change humanity and prevent future wars and human suffering. After Sam's brother Keenan is killed at Pearl Harbor, Sam is transferred to Aberdeen, where he, and new friend Al Winkelmeyer, a fellow budding jazz musician, work on the top-secret M-9 Director, a short-wave radar targeting system, spending weekends in Harlem, sometimes playing with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others in the nascent New York jazz scene.

M also talked about the book, The Bear Comes Home, by Rafi Zabor:

The hero of this sensational first novel is an alto-sax virtuoso trying to evolve a personal style out of Coltrane and Rollins. He also happens to be a walking, talking, Blake- and Shakespeare-quoting bear whose musical, spiritual, and romantic adventures add up to perhaps the best novel, ursine or human, ever written about jazz.

We also discussed some current politics and, typically for a bunch of codgers, engaged in some lamenting and much discussion about how thin a veneer separates the lives we live from the rather brutish and unhappy things that humans somehow maintain the capacity or even need to do to each other, despite wonderful individuals. There was more, but one has to get back to work!

Frankly, I had a great time and have lots to think about. We're going to schedule this weekly, knowing that from time to time not everyone (like this time) can make it.