Von Braun in the Rainbow

[Mark Kohut]

Freeman Dyson: 
I agreed emphatically with Henry Stimson. Once we had got ourselves into the business of bombing cities, we might as well do the job competently and get it over with.
I felt better that morning than I had felt for years… Those fellows who had built the atomic bombs obviously knew their stuff… Later, much later, I would remember [the downside].[27]

1977.....supervised a young Princeton man making a "nuclear weapon" [if wikipedia uses the correct words to describe]
Was awarded the Telluride Technology Award in 2003.!
Templeton Prize in Religion (the one for scientists who make the greatest contribution to "religion")
Writings "full of compassion and humanity", it says on wikipedia. 
Mark





----- Original Message ----
From: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
To: monte.davis at verizon.net
Cc: robinlandseadel at comcast.net; P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 2, 2008 12:56:04 PM
Subject: Re: Von Braun in the Rainbow

> My involvement in this thread  began when Rich Romeo characterized Freeman
> Dyson's review of the Neufeld WvB biography as "particularly insufferable"
> -- as best I can tell, because Dyson
>
> (1) doesn't devote enough of the review to Dora and the Mittelwerk to suit
> Rich
_______________
that's my opinion, dude--read the review.


>
> (2) doesn't agree with Rich about the psychological effect of the V-2 on
> people at the time

>
> Now, I tend to think that Dyson's presence in the UK during the V-weapon
> attacks...
_____________
using that logic--well, Hitler fought during the Great War--he was
there, I wasn't--hey, maybe Germany was stabbed in the back by the
communists and Jews

> His personal involvement in tactics of mass destruction during WWII
> (operations research on Lancaster bombing raids over Germany), and his
> decades of reflection on that...
>
> His long association with many of those working on American nuclear weapons,
> delivery systems, and space programs...
>
> The whole body of his writings...
>
> And my personal experience with him... all support the viewe that he has
> been thinking deeply, knowledgeably and sensitively about weapons and
> technology longer than Rich, or I, or most of the people on this list have
> been alive. He probably has a livelier sense of von Braun's guilt, and is
> farther from ignoring or exculpating it, than anyone here.  So I found it
> "particularly insufferable" to see him thus admonished.
__________________

all i'm saying is you wouldn't have known that from reading the
review, Monte. just a little ol'general reader here.

> If your take-away is "good guys and bad guys and morals to be learned,"
> Robin, I honestly don't see why you bother with Pynchon. Comic books have
> that (a-and lively illustrations too!)
___________
let's not lose the moral outrage in Pynchon that is evident in his
work despite the many warnings of bad shit/excluded middles. Do you
not feel a certain disgust by the Von Brauns of the world?

Rich

>
>
>


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