We've all seen enough films and TV to be wrongly confident of what a typical lifelong serial contract killer looks like.
They are ultra normal looking .
Even good looking.
Oh so symmetrical in features and body shape, modest in speech, polite, neat , always tipping the waitress well, always picking up a fluffy animal 'for the daughter' on these infrequent way-from-home business trips.
But their quick, clean, cold hits include a lady doctor who advises on abortions, an investigative journalist and a small time drug dealer who ran short on his returns to his supplier, Mr Big.
They are , in a word, a moral monster : with our fascination for them entirely wrapped around how such seemingly normal people can be so evil.
Now physical monsters are not merely scaled up ten feet tall versions of Ms Right, the serial killer, a monster who can now kill with her bare hands instead of with a high powered sniper rifle.
Instead these monsters are always disgusting and repulsive , as well as being cold blooded determined to kill on sight.
Why ?
Showing posts with label slime monsters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slime monsters. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Monday, September 8, 2014
WWII's paradigm shift - at least publicly , modern scientists forced to repress their Id fears about natural penicillin's slime monsters
We have long been taught that 1950s science fiction movies with all their red-colored Blob taking over and consuming little towns were really just a stand in for the dreaded red Russian commies taking over.
But this does those wonderfully slimy monsters a big disservice.
They do symbolize real fears but those fears are much deeper and far more profound than jus fearingt some opposing political party.
The values of the Modern Age (now called (big M) Modernity) were an unconscious (Id-induced) reaction to the events of late Victorian (small m) modernization (now more usually called globalization) that was both consciously welcomed and unconsciously feared.
But this does those wonderfully slimy monsters a big disservice.
They do symbolize real fears but those fears are much deeper and far more profound than jus fearingt some opposing political party.
The values of the Modern Age (now called (big M) Modernity) were an unconscious (Id-induced) reaction to the events of late Victorian (small m) modernization (now more usually called globalization) that was both consciously welcomed and unconsciously feared.
Twelve year resistance against injecting crude natural penicillin was normal...science
Doctors Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey did nothing at all about injecting crude natural penicillin into patients to try and save lives during the 12 long years between the Fall of 1928 and and the Fall of 1940.
But they did nothing more (less ?) than did all the other doctors in the world.
Their (lack of) response to the great potential in a crude penicillium liquid that was very non-toxic to primates and very toxic to death-dealing bacteria was perfectly normal..science.
Because doctors - just like the rest of us - also have unconscious Ids and also have unconscious fears about monsters.
Back in that era - pace H P Lovecraft and innumerable horror movies - the unconscious monster feared the most were the slime beings lying an uneasy halfway between stable solids and mobile liquids.
The scientific reluctance to inject the poop and pee of slime molds into the temple of the human body might have had a multiple of scientific excuses to support it but let's be frank - it was really was just an Id thing .
After all , doctors had no such reluctance to inject all sorts of man-made chemicals into the body - very dangerous chemicals like Salvarsan and Sulfa drugs.
They also had no reluctance to inject dangerous horse serum into humans.
But they did nothing more (less ?) than did all the other doctors in the world.
Their (lack of) response to the great potential in a crude penicillium liquid that was very non-toxic to primates and very toxic to death-dealing bacteria was perfectly normal..science.
Because doctors - just like the rest of us - also have unconscious Ids and also have unconscious fears about monsters.
Back in that era - pace H P Lovecraft and innumerable horror movies - the unconscious monster feared the most were the slime beings lying an uneasy halfway between stable solids and mobile liquids.
The scientific reluctance to inject the poop and pee of slime molds into the temple of the human body might have had a multiple of scientific excuses to support it but let's be frank - it was really was just an Id thing .
After all , doctors had no such reluctance to inject all sorts of man-made chemicals into the body - very dangerous chemicals like Salvarsan and Sulfa drugs.
They also had no reluctance to inject dangerous horse serum into humans.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Natural penicillin's unexpected triumph --- against Synthetics' 1939-1945 war against Nature
Big Science - Synthetic Science - had a lot of triumphs during WWII, the war that its promises , not Hitler's megalomania, actually started.
Synthetic Oil, Synthetic Rubber, Synthetic Silk, Synthetic Quinine , Synthetic Man , Synthetic Penicillin all sought to replace 'unreliable' natural products with new improved Man-perfected 'predictable' substitutes.
Synthetic Plutonium (sic) , Synthetic DDT, Synthetic Zyklon-B , Synthetic Freon, and Synthetic Napalm went one step further when Man was considered to have created new products that Nature could never have dreamed up.
Thank God for Nature then !
And as for Man-made predictability , it is worth recalling that human chemists only make a tiny minority of all chemical compounds.
Chemists usually stumble on a compound with useful properties and then go to work on replacing its side chains until even better properties emerge.
But so too the environment and biological beings do the same to the sidechains of Man-made chemical compounds such as Freon and DDT.
In the process Nature created massive un-natural disasters Scientific Man could never have predicted precisely but human humility might have considered a distinct possibility .
Synthetic Oil, Synthetic Rubber, Synthetic Silk, Synthetic Quinine , Synthetic Man , Synthetic Penicillin all sought to replace 'unreliable' natural products with new improved Man-perfected 'predictable' substitutes.
Synthetic Plutonium (sic) , Synthetic DDT, Synthetic Zyklon-B , Synthetic Freon, and Synthetic Napalm went one step further when Man was considered to have created new products that Nature could never have dreamed up.
Thank God for Nature then !
And as for Man-made predictability , it is worth recalling that human chemists only make a tiny minority of all chemical compounds.
Chemists usually stumble on a compound with useful properties and then go to work on replacing its side chains until even better properties emerge.
But so too the environment and biological beings do the same to the sidechains of Man-made chemical compounds such as Freon and DDT.
In the process Nature created massive un-natural disasters Scientific Man could never have predicted precisely but human humility might have considered a distinct possibility .
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