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live
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Sept. 29, 1898: Stalin’s Scientist Sees First Light | This Day In Tech | Wired.com
1898: Trofim Denisovich Lysenko is born in Karlovka, Ukraine. As dictator Joseph Stalin's lapdog and top scientist, his influence will almost
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Gittes,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great assortment of thought provoking article links.
I have some Potemkin village duties this morning.
I am anxiously awaiting a chance to properly explore and then digest the linked articles.
claudio
Gittes,
ReplyDeleteI must comment on the blog linked article,
“Sept. 29, 1898: Stalin’s Scientist Sees First Light”
about that disgusting excuse for a human being, Trofim Denisovich Lysenko.
Here are some breath taking quotes from the article,
“Lysenko’s star was definitely on the rise, thanks to officialdom’s alarming ability to ignore the facts in order to obtain the desired results.”
“In the early 1930s he was appointed head of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences and became the de facto arbiter of all the sciences, a mini-commissar, if you will. It was a catastrophe for Soviet science.”
“Lysenko was hot-tempered, and he brooked no criticism of himself or his work. Legitimate Soviet geneticists and other scientists who dared oppose him often learned this hard truth with a one-way ticket to the gulag. Lysenko, in fact, despised his more-learned colleagues in a way that only a complete fraud with near-absolute power can.”
My most favourite quote segment, “…Lysenko, in fact, despised his more-learned colleagues in a way that only a complete fraud with near-absolute power can.”
Can you guess who I pictured as I read the phrase,”complete fraud”.
Yes, Club Clair’s own, “Grey Owl”, and to think they are both of Ukrainian ethnicity.
claudio
Gittes,
ReplyDeleteReturning to Lysenko, from Wiki,
The Great Chinese Famine (simplified Chinese: 三年大饥荒; traditional Chinese: 三年大饑荒; pinyin: sān nián dà jī huāng), officially referred to as the Three Years of Natural Disasters (simplified Chinese: 三年自然灾害; traditional Chinese: 三年自然災害; pinyin: sān nián zì rán zāi hài), was the period in the People's Republic of China between 1958 and 1961 characterized by widespread famine.
According to government statistics, there were 15 million excess deaths in this period. Unofficial estimates vary, but are often considerably higher. Yang Jisheng, a former Xinhua News Agency reporter who spent over ten years gathering information available to no other scholars, estimates a toll of 36 million.
Along with collectivisation, the central Government decreed several changes in agricultural techniques based on the ideas of later-discredited Russian agronomist Trofim Lysenko. One of these ideas was close planting, whereby the density of seedlings was at first tripled and then doubled again. The theory was that plants of the same species would not compete with each other. In practice they did, which stunted growth and resulted in lower yields. Another policy was based on the ideas of Lysenko's colleague Teventy Maltsev, who encouraged peasants across China to plow deeply into the soil (up to 1 or 2 meters). They believed the most fertile soil was deep in the earth, allowing extra strong root growth. However, useless rocks, soil, and sand were driven up instead, burying the topsoil.
Here’s the governing equation,
Lysenko’s lies = 36 million Chinese dead
This is why meritocracy is the only hope for the education systems of the world and education remains mankind’s only remaining hope.
claudio