Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

How has America paid its way?

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And to start off the quibbling, here are my top 5:

  • Vaccination
  • the Green Revolution
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers
  • American football, though the world appears ungrateful

I pulled this out of my a..um, thin air at 2 in the mornin, so be gentle.  As gentle as some you can be.  your list?

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  1. Some poignant, some not so much…

    • GPS
    • The Internet
    • The Apollo project
    • Buffalo wings
    • Hollywood

    • Buffalo wings.

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      We could add BBQ (not grilling!), which is an enire cuisine, to the list.

  2. A model for functioning republican (small “r” government.

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    The United Nations (in concept, anyway, if not execution)

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    Wealth.

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    Truly prolific innovation in music, in almost every genre.

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    Technology (which is what allows people to HAVE the time to waste waiting in line for baubles, rather than toiling in a field)

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    Honorable mention to the Apollo program, Franjk Lloyd Wright (inventor of modern architecture), and our thus far unique ability to invent a nationality that is separate from ethnicity.

  3. and his realization that people, like gall wasps, are naturally quite variable in many traits, and that a spectrum variability is normal.

  4. if we can make our way through the right-wing attack on the Constitution, I’d say the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the idea that governments can be govern by the people is a pretty good start.

    • I almost put populism on my list, but it lost out to BTVS. 
      To me, populism gets us government by the people.  Before that (Andrew Jackson), it was government by afew of the people — whether the beginning of the US, or ancient Greece.

  5. Vaccination is credited to Edward Jenner, a Brit, and Louis Pasteur, a Frenchman.  Actually, some believe it was used a couple of millenia earlier.

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    My nominations for the top five (in no particular order)

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    * Space exploration, including the Apollo moon landing

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    * Nuclear power (not the atomic bomb–the first sustained and controlled reaction was conducted by Enrico Fermi at the UnivChicago)

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    * Agreed about the “Green Revolution”–it pretty much began with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (NB: she’s taken a bit of a beating recently, mostly from liars)

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    * The transistor and its progeny (integrated circuits) without which we wouldn’t be conversing here

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    * Mass Media (although possibly some might believe that this should be among the bottom five).

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    Honorable mentions (acknowledging some of the above), Kinsey (generally misquoted), GPS (it’s a useful technology, but its usefullness hasn’t been nearly plumbed).

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    The UN?  Not so much: it is really a tool of the “great powers”; now, the “great power” (US), although some of its agencies are useful  The WHO and IAEA, for example, although it’s been reported that the IAEA has recently been starved for funds.

    • Goof call on the transistor.  We could add Bell Labs, generally.

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      I think the concept behind the UN, first articulated by Woodrow Wilson, is a useful one, even if the execution of the concept is flawed.  Obviously we have different views of why it is flawed.  You are right that in any event its successes– I would include UNICEF– compensate to a degree for its flaws.

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      I’m not sure that Rachel Carson had much to so with the Green revolution which refers to the use of technology, pesticides and chemical fertilizers to increase agricultural output on a vast scale.

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