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Einstein- Husband, Lover and Father
evilsheep writes "A large collection of correspondence shedding light on Einstein's personal life and perspectives was made public today by The Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Spanning almost 3500 pages, the correspondence encompasses letters to and from his first and second wives and children between the years 1912-
1955.This newly released batch of letters fill in details to create a 'higher resolution' image of Einstein beyond what was previously known of his personal life. The collection has been in the Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University for many years, but was not made public in accordance with the will of Einstein's stepdaughter, Margot, who specified that they not be revealed until 20 years after her death. Margot died in July 1986.
Einstein wrote almost daily letters to his second wife Elsa and to her daughter Margot whilst away from home about delivering and listening to boring lectures, playing music with friends, or trying to stop smoking."
So Albert Einstein is actually human. For all these years, I thought he existed only in Apple's "Think Different" advertisements.
One hopes that the discovery of new correspondence will result in some more up-to-date biographies. My favourite, Albrecht Folsing's Albert Einstein: A Biography is only 13 years old, but recent archival findings suggest a need for an update, and these letters reinforce the need all the more.
Personally, I'd like a biography that focuses more on Einstein's role in the Cold War. Was he really a moonbat like some conservatives now accuse?
"You don't have to be Einstein to know smoking is bad for you... but it doesn't hurt!"
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
It's in a journal, so it's probably true. I wonder if this is actually provable with dead-tree sources (the article the poster cites is not on the web).
For more information, click here.
CNN also has an article on the release of the letters:e instein.reut/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/10/israel.
Looks like he wasn't a true geek! He had six girlfriends in addition to his wife.
But why is the rum gone?
...anymore than caring about some professional writer's take on physics?
I thought PBS already made a better resolution picture Einstein when they began broadcasting their shows in HD. Does this mean I can get him in 1080p now?
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
The kicker is that after his divorce from the woman who helped make him famous, the guy married his cousin. Yup, his COUSIN!!!!
Check out cousin marriage. You might be surprised that this isn't illegal and/or controversial. If you're going to complain about the man, find something valid to complain about.
Wouldn’t a colon be more appropriate, viz. “Einstein: Husband, Lover, and Father”?
Bonsai Kitten: TNG
Come on.. Throw the game-geek shut-ins a bone!
Didn't Einstein have a daughter from his first marriage that basically disappeared, and whom nobody really knows what happened to her? I always found it curious that such a smart man could also have such a lousy private life.
Do these letters say anything about her?
-> I dislike sigs...
The article there also includes excerpts from some of the letters.
And a Commie, don't forget that terrorist was a Commie.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Please learn to keep an open mind. In many societies, marrying your cousin is a common practice. Generations of inbreeding among cousins is necessary before birth abnormalities become statistically important, so the practice is more a social deviance than a health concern in the United States.
A confusing headline is less than useless. If the author can't get the headline correct, why should anybody read the article? It makes me think I'll have to slog through an article by another idiot-author who doesn't know how to use a comma.
I meant "healthy" in the emotional and mental sense, not physical.
With that said, would you stick it in your cousin?
That's funny, I read it and wondered if he was a husband, lover and father to the same person. I lost a lot of respect for him, but then I realised I just couldn't comprehend sentences very well. It seems like you have the same problem.
and a comma before "and":
This seems to no longer be a requirement of English grammar. It's the way most of us were taught to write, but both are allowed. "A, B, and C" -or- "A, B and C" are apparently both acceptable these days.
Actually, these new documents seem to change his public image for the better. He used to be known as a completely uninvolved and irresponsible father, but these documents show that at least later in life he really cared about his second wife and one of his kids. People change as they get older. Einstein certainly wouldn't have signed the famous letter to Roosevelt advocating the development of the atomic bomb after the war - although one could certainly argue about whether that means anything.
http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/
r/e Mileva Maric
I found this fascinating - Einstein is an iconic figure, so criticism is not taken well, but I found these to be a fascinating read. No idea how good the underlying sources are, but if there is any merit to them, he may not deserve a good deal of the credit he is given. Reminds me of Tesla vs. Marconi or Tesla vs. Edison.
Such lovely logic there. We talk down to you because you are totally fucking stupid.
You can still marry your cousin in Colorado. Yee-Haw!
you've obviously never tried to raise a child with serious impediments like schizoprhenia.
wishing the child had never been born does not make one evil, only human. and how do you draw the conclusion of "denied sympathy?" simply because he voiced a desire any parent in that situation might also voice?
....Gold Medalist Winner (Underwater Basketweaving, Speed Macrame & Theory of Relativity Triathalon)
/sig "Shop smart! Shop S-Mart!"
In some jurisdictions this would be considered illegal as incest.
Some think it's acceptable. Some think it's not. Sounds controversial to me.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Wife to Einstein:
Imagine that we would have kids together: they might be as smart as you and as pretty as me.
Einstein to wife:
But what if they would be as ugly as me and as stupid as you?
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Sweet I have this cousin that went to U.C. Boulder... heh, just kidding.
I'm willing to bet that the pages will show no evidence of dyslexia. And yet thousands of people will choose to ignore it, and go on believing that Einstein was, in fact, dyslexic.
Personal God meaning the God that orders destruction the way the Christian and Muslim gods seem to do.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
With all due respect to Einstein, what I really want to see today is a story covering Nikola Tesla's 150th anniversary (he was born 150 years ago today, July 10th 1856).
In many cases, cousins who marry didn't grow up together or have much of a childhood relationship. The only difference between them marrying and two unrelated people marrying is the social stigma associated with it. Even if they did grow up together, who are we to judge peoples' choices in that respect? It's like developing a relationship later in life with an old childhood friend.
For those not simply trolling, another who thinks religion and science and well connected is Gerald Schroeder, who wrote an excellent couple of books on the subject. My favorite is The Science of God. Schroeder is an Israeli physicist (MIT educated if memory serves), and Genesis scholar.
His main assertions are that neither top scientists nor top theologians often understand the other, and that much of the debate stems from dogged stubornness in current beliefs - think of how the Catholic Church once thought it heresy to teach the heliocentric instead of the geocentric universe, when today we know that it's really all just a matter of perspective, but that centering the universe on Earth or the Sun is not such a great idea. He really knows his science (leaves you behind very quickly if you don't grasp relativity and cosmology well, but kindly gives you a warning before diving into the particulars) and Genesis, and tries not to take a stand on one explanation or another - simply says the two aren't incompatible, especially if you acknowledge that the point of both is to seek the truth (or Truth, your choice).
Sure Einstein had some faults, but don't we all? Instead of reading these correspondences with criticizem for his faults lets just be greatful that we have so much information on him so we can learn from his genius as well as his blunders. Here's to the memory of a great man!!!!
Einstein is always depicted as an flawless icon in our pop culture. Great Physicist yes but 214,000 people might disagree on the great person part.
I've always thought "A, B and C" is the correct way of doing it. The "A, B, and C" method is much easier to print out of for loops, however :)
It's not exactly new. I was taught to not put the comma before the 'and' and that was about 20 years ago. It came as a surprise to me to find out that most people were taught the other way.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
I personally don't care about his personal life, but I am intrigued by the idea that Marie Curie may not have been the only phenomenal woman of her generation. That women of the last century did NOT have access to a potentially phenomenal role model disturbs me.
I don't care how much pussy he got or where it came from, but my image of him is hurt IF it is true that his first wife helped him and generations of young women were deprived of a role model.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
By your rational marrying your sister would be okay if you never met her before (adopted, whatever). Pretty creepy if you ask me.
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not to pull the privacy cat out of the bag but.. at what point do we draw the line for dead people's privacy? do we just allow anyone to open up our emails after we die because some distant relative says its ok?
I was taught that using the comma after the and is acceptable just as not using it is. However, since the purpose of the comma is to serve the same purpose as using "and" (in the example of A, B and C), using a comma after B is redundant and, thus, unnecessary.
Also, getting back to the topic of Einstein wishing his son had not been born, no human is above being human(and all the emotions and fallabilites that go with it). Wishing one's son wasn't born is hardly on par with removing the son's life, something many have done but Einstein did not. Hardly worth finding fault in the man.
It's not a question of "no longer"; it has been debated for several years. See Serial comma.
yes !
Ah, except that's when recessive genes start to become a concern.
I have a beef: this story is not about science. It is about history, or perhaps about history of science, but it is not about science.
It could also be "Einstein: Husband, Lover, and Father" (don't forget that a colon can do the trick as well.) Regardless, the dash used is probably incorrect.
I wasn't aware that one of the necessities of having a role model scientist was that of said role model being the same sex. I wouldn't say anyone was "deprived". There are many people who don't reach the public eye yet do great things, and we aren't upset about that. There are plenty of good and bad examples alike around to discern truth and goodness from. That said, I'm not advocating the theft of anyone's work, I just think the above point was somewhat over-dramatized. I don't think all women between the ages of 8 and 80 are feeling robbed by this possibility.
Great article! If, however, you happen to be in Switzerland at any time during the next couple of months there is an Albert Einstein exhibit at the History Museum in Bern. There are audio tours given in all languages, and it covers both his scientific achievements and his personal life. The exhibit attempts to explain his achievements in a way that uninitiated would understand, and it succeeds somewhat. For more info see http://www.bhm.ch/en/ausstellungen_sonder_01.cfm
Is it so improbable that Einstein took advantage of his celebrity status and embraced the women flocking to him? What may be shocking is how he treated his wives but he did act honest. Personally I wouldn't get cuckolded. I do understand that schizo is a bad life for a large amount of the time. I think we need to hear more summaries of the letters.
However, since the purpose of the comma is to serve the same purpose as using "and" (in the example of A, B and C), using a comma after B is redundant and, thus, unnecessary.
This very much depends on the sentence structure. For example:
My favorite sandwiches are turkey, ham and cheese and tuna fish.
vs
My favorite sandwiches are turkey, ham and cheese, and tuna fish.
From your link
"The Americans anticipated losing many soldiers in the planned invasion of Japan, although the actual number of expected fatalities and wounded is subject to some debate and depends on the persistence and reliability of Japanese resistance and whether the Americans would have invaded only Kyushu in November 1945 or if a follow up landing near Tokyo, projected for March of 1946, would have been needed. Years after the war, Secretary of State James Byrnes claimed that 500,000 American lives would have been lost--and that number has since been repeated authoritatively, but in the summer of 1945, U.S. military planners projected 20,000-110,000 combat deaths from the initial November 1945 invasion, with about three to four times that number wounded. (Total U.S. combat deaths on all fronts in World War II in nearly four years of war were 292,000.) However, these estimates were done using intelligence that grossly underestimated Japanese strength being gathered for the battle of Kyushu in numbers of soldiers and kamikazes, by factors of at least three. Many military advisors held that a worst-case scenario could involve up to 1,000,000 American casualties.
The atomic bomb hastened the end of the Second World War in Asia liberating hundreds of thousands of Western citizens, including about 200,000 Dutch and 400,000 Indonesians ("Romushas") from Japanese concentration camps. Moreover, Japanese troops had committed atrocities against millions of civilians (such as the infamous Nanking Massacre), and the early end to the war prevented further bloodshed.
Supporters also point to an order given by the Japanese War Ministry on August 1, 1944. The order dealt with the disposal and execution of all Allied POWs, numbering over 100,000, if an invasion of the Japanese mainland took place.[30] It is also likely that, considering Japan's previous treatment of POWs, were the Allies to wait out Japan and starve it, the Japanese would have killed all Allied POWs and Chinese prisoners.
In response to the argument that the large-scale killing of civilians was immoral and a war crime, supporters of the bombings have argued that the Japanese government waged total war, ordering many civilians (including women and children) to work in factories and military offices and to fight against any invading force. Father John A. Siemes, professor of modern philosophy at Tokyo's Catholic University, and an eyewitness to the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima wrote:
"
Einstein actually did almost no work on the Atomic Bomb project. Had he not wrote the letter it may have been dropped six months later but it would have been developed. Are the deaths of over 200,000 people tragic? Yes. Is the choice between 200,000 plus deaths and possible over a million deaths anything but terrible? Had Japan not attacked China, had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbor, or had Japan surrendered when it was clear the war was lost then those deaths would have been avoided.
The simple truth is that the decision to develop and to drop the Atomic bomb was made by human beings. Roosevelt and Truman are regarded as two of the greatest leaders of their time. They where also known for being extremely humane men.
Didn't the government of Japan have the responsibility to protect it's citizens? Shouldn't they have made decisions that would been in the best interest of their population? In the end all the death of Japanese citizens where the responsibility of the Japanese government.
I guess it is easy to feel superior to the men that decided to drop the Atomic bombs than to try to understand why it happened.
So I take it that you would have chosen to over one million dead from Japan, China, Korea, UK, US, and Indonesia over dropping the Atomic Bombs? I wonder how the million plus people that would have died then would feel about you?
History is only simple if you don't think about.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Blah blah blah.
I wouldn't screw my cousin, it's gross as hell, because I share the same taboo you do.
But that's what it is -- a taboo. Not every culture shares it. Many don't.
I can understand that. You just keep saying the equivalent of "evil! taboo! dirty!"
You must understand your own cultural context before you can judge others.
The enemies of Democracy are
The people who died in the nuclear blast and the resultant radiation did not deserve it. Japan however did. The society needed to be humbled and it actually could use some more humility. Japan is not some hapless victim. They were ruthlessly evil in their conquest of Asia. Most asian countries still hold a grudge against japan. Look at it this way, The JApanese were preparing for a conditional surrender. They meant to keep some of the land they conquered and bargain for the survival of their monarchy. This proccess would likly take months. In the course of those montsh thousands of JApanese and american soldiers would die, major centers in japan would continue to be bombed, and Japans rapist army would still be raping and pillaging in the few locatiosn they still held. As well the russians would be have pressed ever closer. The death toll would have been equal to the death toll of the two bombs but just more spread out and nations that are soverign may have remaind under Japanese control. A quicker end to war was preferable. The civillians deatsh regrettable and the blow to the JApanese psyche was well deserved and not nearly great enough for their crimes.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I was somewhat enlightened to this dilemma in a recent Business Communications class. The instructor flat out told us that English classes and Business Communication are two entirely different animals. Things that are approrpiate in "essays" or "stories" are not necessarily seen as appropriate in analytical reports, letters, memos, etc. This included grammar. One of the issues we discussed was comma placement as noted here. I am coming to accept that there really are to different types of writing and that they can both be used. But it sure does not help many people who are looking for the gold standard way of doing things.
Actually, you can marry your first cousin in many many states.
Disclaimer: my wife is in no way related to me by blood. I swear.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
If Einstein's first wife participated in the 1905 papers and was never given credit for such an incredible accomplishment, women were indeed deprived of a role model.
Yes, women can look to Victor Weisskopf, Richard Feynman, and Wolfgang Pauli for inspiration, but it is NOT the same, especially considering that a woman, Mileva Einstein, may have co-authored the greatest physics papers of the twentieth century.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Well, it's all relative.
I wasn't aware that one of the necessities of having a role model scientist was that of said role model being the same sex.
That's okay, it's pretty common for males in a male-dominated society with plenty of male role models to fail to see the significance of the sex of said role models. Yet I'm sure that if you think about what you know about role models in general, starting with those basic role models that define how we perceive gender roles -- i.e. our parents -- then you should see how having same-sex role models in professional fields can be important.
Then consider what happens when there are very few or no same-sex role models in a given field, and the opposite sex role models are of the often vocalized opinion that members of your sex are not suitable for that field. I mean, this goes on even today, but think of what it was like more than fifty years ago. In this context a strong same-sex role model is even more important as they can serve as a powerful counterexample to the naysayers.
I don't think all women between the ages of 8 and 80 are feeling robbed by this possibility.
Um, yeah, because if this is true most of them don't know about it -- I'd never heard it before either. That wouldn't alter the fact that they were robbed, even if the impact this had on their lives would in most cases be small. Certainly there are cases where it could have been very big.
The enemies of Democracy are
is that when my mother was a child, he helped carry her books for her at Princeton after school - my grandmother was working there at the time.
Basically, he was a nice guy to kids, is what I'm trying to say, no matter what other quirks he may have had.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Start talking quantum physics to a woman and it's not long before the clothes come off.
Ah, but for a true discourse on quantum physics, you need to make sure it's not just you taking off your clothes, but that both participants interact on an equal level.
In other words, in addition to charm, beauty, and truth, you need to make sure she also takes her clothes off as well.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Okay you have convinced me....
I for one welcome our cousin-fucking overlords!
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From reading one of the biographies of Einstein, it seems quite apparent that Einstein despised his Jewish heritage and even renounced the Jewish faith. It seems quite odd that the Israelis would place him as a martyr for one who hated them so much.
They both stole their intellect from the people that labored under them.
without prejudice
He cannot live alone, has almost no social skills, and is very easily shaken into paranoid episodes - which cause him to quit taking his meds, which make it all worse.
Not to diminish the suffering of your family, no less the girlfriend; but that sounds exactly like the average slashdotter!
Good thing I'm below average!
Excellent example of how to use commas, commas and "and", and "and."
Wouldn't have thought of it without your example.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Not that it isn't required; mostly people are lazy and don't bother putting it there.
Perhaps it's just my perception, but there are slight differences in the meanings depending upon the punctuation. "A, B, and C" would indicate "A AND B AND C" whereas "A, B and C" seems to indicate "A OR [B AND C]." Further, the absent serial comma after B hints at more choices after C, i.e. "A, B and C, and D" as if B and C must be considered as a single unit.
It's quite easily the funniest Einstein anecdote I've heard.
Yeah, this is why I prefer the Oxford comma. It can cause ambiguities, but IMHO this happens less often than with the alternative.
Of course, if people actually cared about these things, they would use a more sensible means of list-grouping, such as parentheses. Thus:
My favorite sandwiches are (turkey, (ham and cheese), and tuna fish).
It's intuitively quite readable, and you can make it backwards-compatible by leaving off the parens. And when you speak the sentence aloud, then you can indicate grouping of elements by using pauses and word stress... just like you already do.
Yes, yes I would. She looks like Jessica Alba.
Einstein: Husband, Father, and Lover
But not, apparently, to the same people.
In other words you can't even intellectually recognize and work around your ingrained taboos.
;)
Sad, but common, you disgusting pork-eater.
The enemies of Democracy are
Hang in there Guru, I fully understand your situation. A friend next door has a daughter with that. A separate reality there. I guess we have to live with people like that and somehow we grow from the experience.
Jim
Now that's disgusting!
Einstein certainly wouldn't have signed the famous letter to Roosevelt advocating the development of the atomic bomb after the war
Well duh. When he and Szilard wrote the letter, people who knew about nuclear fission thought that Germany had a serious WMD program that was a threat to the world. After the war, it turned out that they weren't actually working on a nuclear bomb at all (not because the Nazis were nice guys, but because Heisenberg was either an idiot or a brilliant traitor). Oops, guess that whole Manhattan Project wasn't actually necessary.
Now why does that scenario sound vaguely familiar?
"...about delivering and listening to boring lectures, playing music with friends, or trying to stop smoking."
Einstein was a blogger...
My father played Viola as a chile and into college. When he was in college he was introduced to Einstein and ended up getting together with him and some others several times over to play music. Einstein was a violin player and apparently enjoyed getting together with friends and young people to play music. My father, who is no 76, was in his early 20's. He said they never talked about physics or math but that they did talk a lot about music, some politics and some religion. He said Einstein was very fun...good sense of humor...somewhat of a joker...but also very intense and somewhat competitive about music if someone made a mistake.
Theology doesn't seek the truth. It assumes it already has the truth (faith). Science really is a search for truth.
And it is pretty obvious which method of searching for an understanding of the universe is working. How many priests would it take to put a man on the moon? How many soul-searching monks, pouring over ancient texts would it take to create a nuclear reactor?
If there is any truth in religion, there isn't much to show for it.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Wouldn't a colon be more appropriate, viz. "Einstein: Husband, Lover, and Father"?
For a moment there I saw 'colon' and thought you were calling him an arse. No, seriously....
And amusingly, I managed to manufacture an example very similar to one provided in Wikipedia's page on the Serial Comma (as linked elsewhere in this decidedly offtopic thread).
LISP is a great language.
kaens.blogspot.com
Why not just look at "George Lucas in Love"?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5058529870 025933880
8 minutes and 44 seconds - its the last few seconds that you want to look at.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
I was taught the same thing, but I now think its wrong.
Pardon the pun, but it (dropping the comma) just doesn't "add up"
"a, b and c" seems almost like "a, (b and c)" - 2 items, like in your "ham and cheese" example ...
whereas ...
"a, b, and c" is obviously "a, b, c" - three items.
Its sort of like the problem with a date like "07-10-2006". Is it today, July 10th, or is it October 7th? Sometime the only way to tell is to try to find a date that has a day greater than 12 in it and work it backwards. Much easier to write 2006-07-10, but if someone abbreviates the year, we're back to the same problem, but worse. Is 06-07-10 July 10th, 2006, June 7th, 2010, or what?
You'd have to be an Einstein to figure it out :-)
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Shortchanged is not the word, Edison purposefully discredited Tesla and his ideas, and Tesla, not being the ruthless businessman that Edison was, ended up poor and insane. He was not just forgotten, he was (figuratively) buried alive.
I think one can compare them to Gates with DOS vs Gary Kildall and CP/M.
"Maybe if Edison was smarter he wouldn't perspire so much!" N. Tesla
Well when the atomic bomb project was started most of the people on it were woried about Germany (many of them were Jews who had fleed from Nazi Germany, including Einstein himself). Also the Einstein letter was written by Leo Szlard or at least at his urging, who convinced Einstein to sign it. Szlard was an old student of Einstein's from when they were both in Berlin.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Ok, I'll bite:
Can we please stop with all the hoolabaloo about religion and science being equal? look around you and see that reality is far more complex than the silly bible stories tell.
Many great scientists believe in some religion, but it is only a form of centimental reaction causing stress relief...especially as they get older, their views change and many adopt a stand that previously condemned.
just like how they denounced clinton and such. you know...be consistent.
A friend of mine has some kind of personality disorder which he and his family thought for a long time was Asperger's. It's like he never learned quite how to act around other people, or to realize when he's talking a bit too loudly. But no, when he got diagnosed, it turns out that yes, he does have *something*, but it's not Asperger's. (I think it was PDD-NOS; they gave him drugs, which seem to have helped him quite a bit.)
It's ridiculous to remotely diagnose historical figures with these things, which aren't even that rigorously defined for people living now, being seen in person by an actual psychiatrist. I'm not quite of the encyclopedia dramatica school of thought, but I do think that the syndrome has been overly romanticized, and it feels pretty tasteless.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This is a blatant lie.
Einstein did not practice the Jewish religion but maintained a strong secular Jewish identity. He was a card carrying zionist. Among other things, he went on fundraising tours for the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization and later the first president of Israel.
And, no, unlike so many of his generation, he is no martyr.
You are right. Einstein's letter was written in the summer of 1939! Frankly for most people Japan wasn't even on most peoples minds back then. The Navy was the only group in the government that really considered them a threat. In many ways it was just one more form of racism that existed during WWII. Japan was so sure that the US couldn't compete with the Samurai spirit that it would beg for peace after one defeat. The US didn't think Japan was a threat since all they could do was make cheap copies. The times where very different back then and racism was everywhere.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Let me give you a hint.
It is taboo for Germans, Americans, and the Swiss.
The guy was a social fuck up, he stoel stuff from his wife (ideas), he was a bad father, husband, and friend, and commited a socail taboo.
Sounds like a great guy to me.
Or let me put it this way: everything I'm talking about and that you say "trivializes" Japan were the actual factors that our government and military were discussing when deciding to drop the bomb. So if you think "steel cojones" is all you need to say to justify the bomb and none of the other factors I discuss are important, well, Harry Truman, his cabinet, and the leaders of the military disagreed with you.
In particular, General McArthur disagreed with you. Say whatever you want about him and his later career; he faced and defeated Japan militarily in the Pacific theatre, and then successfully lead them into becoming a peaceful democracy in the reconstruction. I think it's safe to say that McArthur understood the Japanese as "steel cojones" warriors and their "outlook on life" as well as anyone in the West did. And he believed that we could have ended the war weeks earlier simply by accepting a conditional surrender that allowed the Emperor to remain, and that dropping the bomb was militarily unnecessary.
However, as I have already stated, military concerns vis a vis the surrender of Japan were not the only issues that influenced the decision. Like it or not, that's historical fact.
So please abandon the simplistic revisionist history that does nothing but make it easier to feel good about WWII. It is still possible to have an accurate and nuanced view of history and agree with the dropping of the bomb; the difference being that you don't turn an incredibly difficult moral dilemna into a childish "we must beat the bogeyman" scenario with only one valid choice. The real world isn't like that, in WWII Japan or in a future scenario where the lessons of WWII will be invaluable.
The enemies of Democracy are
Oops, I should be careful of this, I didn't mean to imply he wasn't an asshole. Lots of geniuses -- and non-geniuses who can nontheless be respected -- are assholes. You don't have to respect him for his personal life to respect him for his work.
The enemies of Democracy are
Well, of course she deserved most of the credit!
Most major scientists have since admitted this.
But to put things in perspective, he taught her how to iron shirts using black-body radiation, and to boil water at precisely 100 degrees Celsius. Not exactly a parlour trick, n'est-ce-pas?
Alas, too little credit has been given to Einstein's domestic abilities and talents.
Most experts believe the great man also had Asperger's, Tourette's and when in private, exhibited symptoms of flatulence and the occasional burst of Halitosis.
Medically, he was a walking time-bomb.
Even one of the pre-USA English kings claimed tobacco was unhealthy.
b acco
/ blaste/
:)
'A Counterblaste To Tobacco' by King James I of England:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Counterblast_to_To
A 'modernized' version of the text of it can be read here:
http://64.176.112.65/kjcounte.htm
The original Elizibethan version can be read here:
http://www.la.utexas.edu/research/poltheory/james
Enjoy!