marat

Any cow in a paddock would be able to tell you that it takes only a few hours for a cowpat to dry hard… This observation would be appreciated by a certain Mr Lavoisier, but he would demand accurate measurement of time, of weather conditions and place.

Apparently ultimate scientific accuracy is what did him in… A “journalist" called Marat had invented a stupid pseudo-scientific machine that did bugger all with no precision at all… He presented his plans to the well-known noble Lavoisier to get a pat on the back. Some historians see this as a turning point. Rejected by Lavoisier, Marat vowed red hot revenge and the French revolution came about. Lavoisier was guillotined by Marat’s mob and Marat was assassinated by a brave woman while Marat was taking his medicinal bath. She was guillotined for doing a good deed. Marat was a rotten journalist. This was a simplistic view of the French Revolution by Gustaphian.

The picture is famous. Jacques-Louis David, the master of the Brush and supporter of the revolution, till Napoleon came along, did his best to record the damage. Marat? dead... Then Jacques-Louis David painted the Emperor until he became persona non-grata for not painting Napoleon often enough and David had to seek asylum in Belgium...

Sciences need precision. The Covid-19 political management in NewwSouthhhWhailes has been overwhelmed by the uncertainty of biological reactivity because politics is about trying to be as accurately “responsible” as possible. If you can’t stop laughing here, you will be shot. So far, the authorities have been painting a picture that will never be finished, because nature is not about responsibility, but about rorting the place by seizing opportunities and stealing proteins… That's the true nature of politics.

After being imposed severe reluctant lockdowns as per decree 179.5A of section 6B in the Fascist Health manual, we are slowly being prepared to live with Covid-19-21-22-etc amongst us. We are discovering that zero tolerance to Covid-19 by the government — especially ScoMo’s in Kanbra, eager to relaunch the capitalist economy by burning more fossil fuel — is not working and is impossible to achieve because of a limo driver (nothing to do with him but the media was eager to find a culprit)… So, from severe pandemic confinements we are about to be wheeled out to a picnic in the park, like the mental patients in a Pink Panther asylum on a sunny day. Remember? Inspector Clouseau trying to rescue his former boss from drowning? Many restriction will be lifted when we reach the magic numbers from 70 to 80 per cent vaccinations of the populace. 

It’s a bit vague, but we, old people, are also vague in our recollection of ration colouring books. By then we will have had enough time to get our two shots of AZ (what’s this, an entire alphabet soup?), sometimes three if we forget we had the second jab at the local pub. Though we might catch the disease, we won’t die from it. But if we die from it, it will be recorded as something else, because of course when one is old, not all our bits are in full working condition. 

Meanwhile we still have have to wait at home until we reach the magic numbers possibly just before Christmas if we believe the latest charts — and see nobody without a blue mask or the more effective KN95 from Bunnings. 

So we have picnics on Zoom. The amount of alcohol we consume on these virtual outings is moderately twice or thrice what we would usually get pissed on, because we don’t have to drive. The battery in the car is depleting as our glasses get refilled… We’re rotten bad but there is no-one to see us enjoy ourselves silly. Pity.

The politics of sciences have shifted the focus of our life, as we quietly engage the fourth gear of the third age. And we’ve seen nothing yet. Our real concern is for the young people whose life have been disrupted. We have to believe they are adaptable. Overall they’re not as susceptible as we oldies are to the disease. They might get sick for a couple of weeks on average, counting those who recover in two days and those who struggle for month after catching Covid-19. And most young people nowadays are responsible and follow government orders, unlike us when we were at Woodstock...

And we sadly cry about the mess we've made in Afghanistan. 20 years… We had hopes then but our governments were bullshitting and kept on bullshitting us while bombing the place in one of the “forever wars” with no end. Tautology? Did we run out of bombs? Anyway, We’ve let devils in charge despite the claim by the Taliban of being kinder than before. The Taliban lies. That’s a given. We lied about what we did there as well, though some good people helped create a new freedom for the new generations of some Afghan people. And this is sad. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do anymore, because over 20 years we did not do enough. We can still try to get as many people out of there as possible. In a hurry. But our ScoMo government is weary, slow and suspicious — basically blaming the poor people who helped us for their own predicament — demanding these people who will get massacred next week to provide proofs in triplicate of their bona fide… This is a dangerous place. We fucked up. The Afghan situation is like a revolution in reverse in which eliminating freedom is the goal, while murdering those who don’t want their freedom to think, sing and dance, to vanish. Especially women. 

The French revolution was a dangerous time with arbitrary death penalty and host to many other unspoken terrible act. This was a horrid way to create equality-freedom-fraternity between people, 250 years ago. It seems like yesterday for the French who are still fighting the ever screwing Covid-restrictions… Presently in Afghanistan, we're observing a return to the religious Middle-Ages or the inquisition, where freedom to chose, the second most important gift from nature, is being destroyed by old-men-from-god who believe in their given right to impose a ridiculous joyless morality upon their bearded selves, and enslave women. We can only hope that this time, the Taliban will be more reasonable than they were in 2001. No more inshallah here. Sharia is not a human way to live.

Let’s hope we can write in 20 years time that the Taliban in 2021 was a kinder outfit that recognised people’s freedom to choose, from the onset. The future will be a dark alley otherwise.

The Death of Marat is the 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David of the murdered French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. It is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution. David was the leading French painter and a member of the revolutionary Committee of General Security. The painting shows Marat, the radical "journalist" lying dead in his bath on 13 July 1793, after being murdered by Charlotte Corday. Jean-Paul Marat was a political theorist, physician and scientist. He was a vigorous defender of the sans-culottes, and published his views in pamphlets, placards and newspapers. His periodical L'Ami du peuple (Friend of the People) made him a strong link with the radical Jacobin group that came to power after June 1793.

His journalism was full of fierce tone, advocacy of basic human rights for the poorest members of society, and support for the leaders and institutions of the revolution. Responsibility for massacres has been attributed to him, given his position of authority before the time of the massacres. Some political academics argue that the collective mad murderous mentality resulted from circumstances and not from the will of any particular individual, like Marat. Obviously Corday disagreed with these academics of the 20th century. "He did not publish any papers after this".

Painted in the months after Marat's murder, the painting has been seen as the first modernist painting, for taking real politics as its inspiration… The original is in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium. A replica created by the artist's studio is on display at the Louvre.

Science moves in mysterious ways. We can observe we are about to stuff up planet with CO2…

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (26 August 1743 – 8 May 1794),[4] was a French nobleman and chemist who was central to the 18th-century revolution in chemistry and who had a large influence on the history of biology as well. Lavoisier's great accomplishments changed the qualitative chemistry to a quantitative one. 

Lavoisier is noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. He recognised and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783). Lavoisier helped devise the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and reformed chemical nomenclature. He predicted the existence of silicon (1787) and discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same:

Nothing is gained, nothing is lost, everything transforms….

Lavoisier was a powerful member of aristocratic councils, and an administrator of the Ferme générale — one of the most hated components of the "Ancien Régime" because of the profits it took at the expense of the state, the secrecy of the terms of its contracts, and the violence of its armed agents.  We recognise this in our modern politics as rorts, (secret) contracts in confidence and now the police imposition of lockdowns while awaiting our summer picnic...

Lavoisier's activities enabled him to fund his scientific research. He was charged with tax fraud and selling adulterated tobacco by the revolutionaries, and he was guillotined. A loss to sciences. 

One is never sure the future we are snuffing out with our moral bombings… Same with the Taliban elimination of freedom. The future shall be an escape for some, for others the dark ages are coming back.

GL.

Old and decrepit existentialist

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