SLPAD - 18

[Michael Bailey]

I remember reading this next page about Clausius, Norbert Wiener, and Henry
Adams & nodding along in agreement.

Then being drawn up abruptly by “A pose I found congenial in those
days—fairly common, I hope, among pre-adults—was that of somber glee at any
idea of mass destruction or decline.”

I misread that “fairly common, I hope, among pre-adults” pretty badly, I
think.

“Why,” asked I of myself, “does he want young people to revel in the notion
of mass destruction?”

It seems more likely that he hoped that his fascination wasn’t his own
bizarre invention, but rather a phase like one of the series of age-related
insanities postulated by the educator Kugelblitz in _Bleeding Edge.”

There are a lot of black-clad teens and young adults in movies and tv who
do seem steeped in that notion.