Posted on 03/31/2009 12:12:44 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
Serves as a reminder that there were, once upon a time, a few human beings on the planet with a full set of balls.
Back in day, I never trusted anyone who didn’t drink in morning.
Edward Teller (an Hungarian Gentile) attributes it to other cultural factors in the German scientific community. Fission was certainly discovered by a German and there were plenty of German physicists who knew what it would take to make a bomb. (The Germans spent more on the militarily useless V2 than the Americans spent on the Manhattan project, so they did not fail for lack of resources.)
As Teller tells it, early attempts at making a nuclear reactor were fustrated because normal commercial grade carbon is contaminated with boron, a neutron absorber. Leo Szilard, another Hungarian physicist, who had been a chemist, and was at Columbia at the time, recognized this and the Americans (and Fermi, also a Gentile) succeeded in making a nuclear reactor by using far more expensive reagent grade carbon. Teller claims that Heisenberg, who was leading the German efforts, would never have talked to a chemist.
Yes, but der Fuehrer had his own vices, namely, amphetamines, injected several times daily....
Churchill was a great man, but had real issues nontheless. During WWII, he underwent fits of debilitating depression. He probably needed alcohol as a pick-me-up to face the day.
In one of Churchill's better biographies -- The Last Lion, I believe -- the author mentioned that Churchill was rarely, if ever, completely sober during his entire adult life. He wasn't a drunkard, but he always had alcohol in his bloodstream.
As for his depression, he called it his "little black dog," that followed him around his entire life. Depression seems to be the mark of many great people.
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