Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList PS On this list at least there are definitely people who believe that DNA is an invention/construction of some kind. PPS no-one ever accused me of patriotism before; I hope the proper people are taking note and will be kinder to me in future.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Jim heartfield
> Sent: 22 May 2000 11:27
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: 'The Web was invented by the British but exported to the
> US...We don't want that to happen again.'
>
>
>
> Mark Jones gets carried away, Crick and Watson discovered DNA, they
> didn't invent it. Cuba's government recently honoured Baron Marc von
> Montagu, an Austrian, as father of genetic engineering. I was told by
> the Nottingham University scientist who developed the science behind the
> Flavr Savr tomato that he thought it would soon be impossible to work in
> the UK - a belief supported by the courts' failure to jail the hooligan
> Lord Melchett.
>
> Mark's affection for British science is charming, if a little retro.
> British scientists were overtaken by Germans in the chemical industries
> at the end of the nineteenth century. Americans developed electric
> light, sound recording, the cotton 'gin, high yield crops and landed on
> the moon. John Logie Baird's television is not the one that is the
> basis of our contemporary TVs, which are instead based on the near
> contemporaneous American invention.
>
> Britain *did* invent concentration camps (Boer War), aerial bombardment
> (Iraq 1920), and were pioneers in secret service techniques, native
> regulation and eugenics (a monstrosity that it took American
> anthropologists to unpick).
>
> Claims to have invented computers and the web are difficult to sustain.
> After all the ancient Egyptians 'invented' steam power (to open a set of
> temple doors) and are reputed to have made large chemical batteries. But
> without any evidence of having exploited these technologies they remain
> accidental curiosities. Charles Babbage's difference engine was never
> built in his lifetime, Alan Turing was persecuted as a homosexual and
> killed himself, and Bletchley Park was dismantled after the war.
>
> This thread shows some similarity to the Soviet claims to have invented
> everything from helicopters to Shakespeare, or that of radical black
> activists that the Egyptians were the progenitors of civilisation. Such
> stories occasionally have an element of truth, but that is belied by the
> obvious compensatory psychology of such tales.
>
> Tragically, in Britain Department of Trade and Industry policy is moving
> away from investment in the sciences to the promotion of Britain as a
> cultural centre. That, along with the environmental baggage that is
> choking off British inventiveness is a counsel of despair. If you want
> to know how the British elite see themselves, you had to have visited
> the Sensation exhibition of rotting cows heads and mass murderers when
> it was showing in New York.
>
>
> In message <p04310100b54e29d36f55@[216.254.77.128]>, Doug Henwood
> <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
> >Mark Jones wrote:
> >
> >>Now that you mention it, Brits invented not just the web; there is also:
> >>computers, radar, jet engines, antibiotics, DNA + cloning, central banks
> >
> >The Bank of Sweden - Sveriges Riksbank - is older. The B of E was
> >founded in 1694; the SR in 1668.
> >
> >>(OK, the Scots), the steam engine, the power loom, television and a few
> >>other things besides.
> >
> >Gosh, no wonder they call it Great Britain. Why'd the USA take the
> >lead in developing and producing almost all the inventions you list?
> >
> >Doug
>
> --
> Jim heartfield
>