The Athenaeum

"The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out"

I was lucky enough to have several close friends who attended physicist Richard Feynman's lectures at Caltech while undergraduates there, luckier still to have gone with a group of them to an informal coffee meet-up hosted by Prof. Feynman one rainy afternoon.  Among those erudite few invitees, physics, engineering, mathematics majors, plus some grad students & post docs, this English major felt out of her depth & primarily watched & listened; my only real contribution to any discourse with the great man consisted of making Feynman chuckle by describing one of my Caltech friends enthusiasm for Niels Bohr's work- "Joe thinks Niels Bohr is a really cool head, Dr. Feynman!"  (excuse offered- I seem to remember all of us talking that way "back in the day."  Ahem.)  

It was only much later when I went into teaching that I realized how useful watching/listening to Richard Feynman during that coffee had been.  A gift from an old friend of some videotapes of Feynman's Caltech lectures reinforced my opinion that here was the teaching style I wanted to emulate.  The old show business saw seemed applicable- if you're going to steal, make sure to steal from the best. It's no exaggeration to say that Dr. Feynman's at times whimsical, other times exacting method of imparting information, stirring debate, making his own wonderment at discovery/learning an integral part of the students' learning process, has informed every day I've stepped into a classroom, be it grammar, high school, or community college.    

I know many who read here are undoubtedly familiar with Richard Feynman's life & work.  For all who know of him & for those who'd like to, here is a link to the superb BBC interview with Prof. Feynman, The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out (part 1 of 5 available on youtube)

- Maureen Lang

Owen Lattimore

 "Adena" sent me the Youtube citaton for this extended interview with the late Owen Lattimore.  Lattimore was famously accused by Joseph McCarthy of being a Soviet Agant.  He was one of the "China Hands" who supposedly lost China.  It seems to have been found recently.

I have no idea if he was a Soviet espionage agent or if he was named in some way in the Venona decrypts.

A number of our family members were in China in the 20s and 30s.  I wonder if they ever met Lattimore.

As an observer of China and Mongolia he was clearly an interesting man.   pl

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F2D8B63E727174FD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Lattimore

Would Lee Have Been Confused?

"I am seriously glad to be here tonight at the annual Alfalfa dinner. I know that many you are aware that this dinner began almost one hundred years ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E. Lee. If he were here with us tonight, the general would be 202 years old. And very confused."  President Obama at the Alfalfa Dinner

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As a writer I have spent a lot of time contemplating Lee and his contemporaries and I would make the following observations:

- I doubt that Lee would have been very confused.  Barack Obama is an intelligent, well-spoken man.  A few minutes of listening to the president speak would have eliminated any confusion on the part of Lee, Jefferson, Washington and any number of other "time-travelers" who are so easily mocked.  Those who think otherwise of Lee should take the time to learn something of him.  Start here.

- The comments appended to the blog entry cited above are revelatory in the depth of animosity so easily uncovered with regard to this long gone war.  These comments contain such assertions as; "the South is a conquered nation," and that display of the Confederate flag should be made a federal crime.

- The old assertion is also made in these coments that Lee and people like him were "traitors" who should have been hanged after the war, and that Lee "deserted his post" as an army officer.

-  In fact, Lee resigned his commission as a US Army officer, and the resignation was accepted by the US Secretary of War BEFORE Lee took service with post-secession Virginia.  He could not desert a post he no longer held.

-  Lee's oath to the United States was legal, not sacramental.  It was binding only so long as he remained a US Army officer.  Acceptance of his resignation ended that.  The oaths that military and civil officials of the United States take are the same today.  They are not binding for life.  They are binding for so long as the relationship between the oath taker and the government persists.

- "Treason" is the only crime defined in the US Constitution.  The crime so defined can only be committed by a citizen of the United States.  Foreign soldiers, for example, can not commit treason to the United States.   Lee and all the other Confederates believed that the states had the right to secede, and had effectively left the Union.  They believed that they were no longer citizens of the United States.  Intent to commit a crime is a necessary ingredient for commission of a crime.  Since they did not believe that they were US citizens they could not intend to commit the crime of treason.  None of the Confederate leaders were tried for treason after the end of the war.  Why is that?  Christian or some other form of charity?  I doubt that Thaddeus Stevens, Sumner and their like felt much of that.  No.  It seems clear that the Confederates were not tried for treason because the federal government knew that their defense in court would be conducted on the basis of the legality of secession and the federal government did not want to face that issue.  Even today there is nothing in the US Constitution that says that the Union is, or was, indissoluble.  The Declaration of Independence practically encourages secession.  Read it, all of it.  Reconstruction required the re-admission of each of the Confederate States to the Union.  Why did the states have to be re-admitted if they had not actually left the Union?  None of these issues were things that the US government wanted to face in court, and so people like Lee and Jefferson Davis were never tried. 

- Now, if by "treason" is meant some feeling of loss or betrayal not founded in law but rather in nationalism, then the assertion of "treason" on the part of the Confederates becomes more comprehensible.

pl