Secretly Red

Between 1979 and 1988 - during the Cold War - the Americans flew with Russian MIG-17, MIG-21 and MIG-23 aircraft to train USA-pilots. Under the secret and classified project Constant Peg almost 6,000 pilots (in table: 5,930 exposures) learned to fight their enemy in air-to-air combat. This project was declassified in 2006.

In the book 'America's Secret MIG Squadron. The Red Eagles of Project Constant Peg' (2012) one of the 'Gang of Three' pilots who got things going for this secret MIG squadron, this is Gaillard Peck (callsign Evil), writes about its history:

1. Goal of Constant Peg was to give pilots ten missions that would be as close to combat as training would permit. Based on the notion that, "if a fighter pilot could survive his first ten combat missions of a war, he had a highly increased probability of survive his entire combat tour." Training to manage the rush of adrenalin and overcome "bug fever" that comes during actual combat with MIGs.
2. Maintenance was the true key to the success. "Tech data for [aircraft] parts, as we knew it, was almost absent, so our folks were in a constant cycle of identification, reverse engineering, reconditioning and substitution."
3. The product of this training contributed to the combat success of 170 kills by F15 and F16 pilots without a single loss in return to enemy aircraft.
4. After the Cold War the project was ended due to cost and reduced percieved need for the program.

 Another book with a lot of lovely details. Nothing beats a history book. Nothing beats the real thing.

After All

What a lovely read: Greenblatt, 'The Swerve. How the World Became Modern' (New York 2011). Did I already say that it is a must read?

This book has for me three story-lines:

1. Book hunter Poggio Bracciolini who "discovered" in 1417 a copy of Lucretius 'De Rerum Natura' (English: On the Nature of Things) in a monastery. Probably the monastery of Fulda in Germany.
2. The message of Epicurus via the poem of Lucretius.
3. Lucretius' poem as the key on how the world became "modern" in the Renaissance.

What is the message of Epicurus (Ancient Greece 5th century BC) in the poem of Lucretius (Ancient Rome 1th century BC):

• Everything is made of invisible particles. Lucretius didn't use the Greek word 'atoms' but "first things", "first beginnings", "bodies of matter" or "seed of things".
• Elementary particles of matter are eternal. Greenblatt: "The invisible particles from which the entire univere is made, from the stars to the lowiest insect, are indestructible and immortal, though any particular object in the universe is transitory. That is, all the forms that we observe, even those that seem most durable, are temporary: the building blocks from which they are composed will sooner or later be redistributed."
• Elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size.
• All particles are in motion in an infinite void.
• Universe has no creator or designer.
• Everything comes into being as a result of a swerve. Latin words for 'swerve' are 'clinamen', 'declinatio' or 'inclinatio': an unexpected, unpredictable movement of matter.
• Swerve is the source of free will.
• Nature ceaselessy experiments. Greenblatt: "All living beings, from plants and insects to the higher mammals and man, have evolved through a long, complex process of trail and error. The process involves many false starts and dead ends (...)."
• Universe was not created for or about humans.
• Humans are not unique. We are made of the same stuff as everything else.
• Human society began not in a Golden Age of transquility and plenty but in a primitive battle for survival.
• Soul dies.
• There is no afterlife. When you grasp that your soul dies with your body, you also grasp that there can be no reward or punishment when you die. Greenblatt: "Life on this earth is all that human beings have."
• Death is nothing to us.
• All organized religions are superstitious delusions.
• Religions are invariably cruel.
• There are no angels, demons or ghosts.
• Highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain.
• Greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.
• Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder.

Life's ultimate goal is pleasure and not worshipping JWH, God, gods, ancestors, family, city or state. What a scandal it must have been for the Jews and later the Christians. Not only a scandal but above all a conflicting reason to be (French: raison d'être).

For me this book was above all a meditation on what is lost and the life-cycle of books before the invention of the printing press. So many pagan (read: non- or before-Christian) texts and so little survived over time. Books deteriorate over the centuries by water, fire, touching,  unrolling and rolling, bookworms, etcetera. Books deteriorate inevitable! The only way to preserve them is to read them and before they are worn out, copy them. A work that was done by scribes in monasteries. The copying of manuscripts turned out to be crucial to the survival of Lucretius and other pagan texts.

It reminds me that I've to educate my kids on Epicurus. Sometimes I think they are drowned too much into worldly delusions. Cut the crap and read Epicurus! I've bought two more books of my Epicurean-bible: a book with fragments (not all) of Epicurus translated into Dutch. The book that gave me the words, the worldview, the antidote against Christianity. In case you missed it: I am very Epicurean.

P.S. I wrote many times about Epicurus: here.

P.S. Did you know - not in this book - that Karl Marx's earned his PhD on Epicurus: here?

Golden Instant NOW

Orhan Pamuk in his book 'The Museum of Innocence':

“In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant "now," even having lived such a moment before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe in the certainty of a happier moment to come. Because how could anyone, and particularly anyone who is still young, carry on with the belief that everything could only get worse: If a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happiest moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful, more so.”

Manuscript Hunter

Checking out Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459). The rediscoverer of Lucretius' 1st century BC manuscript 'De rerum natura' (English: On the Nature of Things).

Sowhat? A little patience please, I almost finished reading Greenblatt, 'The Swerve: How the World Became Modern' (2011). 

Lucretius? Yes, the one who explained 4th century BC epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. You remember Epicurus, right?