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There once was a place called Rhodesia where scientific research was being done on plagues like Bilharzia, Sleeping Sickness Malaria, Ebola, and Marburg Virus among others. The world judged Rhodesia to be too racist and evil to be allowed to exist as a political entity, so the country was handed over to Mugabe, at the very time people in Rhodesia were trying to sort out their own problems.
" So who has got away with murder? Not, of course, the British government. They merely covered up, as one does, the offensive corpses. Though not literally. That was done by person or persons unknown. So who has committed murder? Not, of course, the highly respectable firm of KDH Pharmaceutical, which has enjoyed record profits this quarter, and has now licensed ZimbaMed of Harare, to continue testing Dypraxa in Africa. No, there are no murders in Africa. Only regrettable deaths. And from those deaths we derive the benefits of civilization, benefits we can afford so easily... because those lives were bought so cheaply." From The Constant Gardener by John le Carre. www.imdb.com/title/tt0387131/q…When I was a student at the University College Of Rhodesia I was shown and little hand build laborotary rigbult byan M.Philstudent onwhich he could tether a fly,which would then fly around in a circle. He used an accurately pulsed strobe light to determine the wing beat frequency, excercised the flies for set periods of time, and then minced up and analysed the flight muscle tissueusing cutting edge biochemistry laboratory techinques and equiment. Why? What was worth all that fiddly scientific work, apart from the resulting University Degree certificate? The answer is that he worked under Professor Bursell, all of us biologists did. It was Professor Bursell he instructed me to test extracts from some very small samples a botanist had extracted from Salvinia auriculata or Kariba weed, thought to be an invasive pest at that time. Professor Bursell was inolved because the tests had to be done on exposed locust hearts. He insisted that all test subjects, even insects, had to be anaesthetised prior to dissection. In the event both extracts turned out to be heart stopping toxins, but the Kariba weed situation began to stabilise witout intervention after Dr. Mirchell had spent nine years on it for his dissertation. So why was the good Professor so interested in fly flight metabolism? Because it was the Tse Tse fly he was studying. He had shelved his ambition to learn more about how consciousness is produced in order to become the world's leading expert on the dreaded Sleeping Sickness vector. The northern part of Zimbabwe near Lake Kariba is in the 'Tse Tse belt'.
Eventually, Professor Bursell appeared on UK TV in a documentary about field tests that he and his students had been doing in the 'Tse Tse belt'
Mr aegiandyad
A few weeks ago I lost my beloved spouse, whom I adored. We were extremely close. He was a brilliant scientist and faithist who was always surprising in his responses to questions about everything under the sun. No chatbot could possibly respond the way he did. He was never banal or predictable and always made me laugh. Spontaneous comedy is the hardest act to replicate. When previous beloved relatives died I always saw visions or dreams reassuring me that they were well and happy. Memorably, my uncle appeared in a dream walking through parallel realms of fields filled with flowers. Some were familiar. Most were not. Perhaps he was reassuring me that life after death is wonderful in ways we cannot predict. After my mother's death I saw her flying between stars, all of which were strange yet intriguing. As my husband was dying in hospital I dreamt that his soul was rising upwards in a spiralling movement of pixelation, similarly to the illustration above. I am
Children are fun.
I was looking through the baby photos of our children and it struck me forcibly that every child looked exactly as they turned out grown up. By that I mean their characters were written on their faces early on. Our oldest child loved playing with numbers and rearranging plant pots in ever increasing circles using a range of small and bigger plant pots which he would re-arrange over several happy hours on the front room floor. Our first daughter was a climber. She started by climbing up the ironing board and sitting on it while waving her little legs joyfully beneath her. We were having house renovations and up she'd go on the highest ladders. We frequently panicked but learnt to trust her as she eventually came down herself unharmed. As she grew older she hazarded risky sports, single handedly sailing boats and often winning races. Other people used to marvel at how much this slight teenage girl would risk. The third child, a boy, was always very caring and loving. He would ask us
Children are fun.
I was looking through the baby photos of our children and it struck me forcibly that every child looked exactly as they turned out grown up. By that I mean their characters were written on their faces early on. Our oldest child loved playing with numbers and rearranging plant pots in ever increasing circles using a range of small and bigger plant pots which he would re-arrange over several happy hours on the front room floor. Our first daughter was a climber. She started by climbing up the ironing board and sitting on it while waving her little legs joyfully beneath her. We were having house renovations and up she'd go on the highest ladders. We frequently panicked but learnt to trust her as she eventually came down herself unharmed. As she grew older she hazarded risky sports, single handedly sailing boats and often winning races. Other people used to marvel at how much this slight teenage girl would risk. The third child, a boy, was always very caring and loving. He would ask us
Joyce's Ulysses is 100
There is a global intellectual game called, "Have you read and understood Ulysses? Or have you read Proust? This game was played when I was 16, living as far away as Zimbabwe, where the country's intellectuals played it, as did many across the globe. My best friend went on to study French at Cambridge and wrote a thesis on Proust. If you think of Ulysses as a musical comedy that might help. Stravinsky talking about Beethoven's 'die große Fuge', said that it was utterly avant garde and would be for all time. That applies just as much to Ulysses. Joyce uses the English language as music to show its many possibilities, cadences and variations. For instance the first sentence "STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: -- Introibo ad altare Dei." It is a perfect image of a
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