If for Americans, at least, the Great War could sometimes be imagined as a brief, quasi-athletic lark, the Second War permitted no... such melioration by the spirit of adolescent optimism. In North Africa alone, the 1st Infantry Division spent more time in mortal contact with the enemy than all the time it spent--forming up, marching, drawing equipment, lining up at the mess hall, training, bitching--in all of the First World War. And on December 7, 1941, the American navy lost in one day more men killed--2008, to be exact--than in all the days of the earlier war. The Second World War, total and global as it was, killed worldwide, more civilian men, women, and children than soldiers, sailors, and airmen. And compared with the idiocies of Verdun, Gallipoli, or Tannenberg, it was indescribably cruel and insane. It was not until the Second World War had enacted all its madness that one could realize how near Victorian social and ethical norms the First World War really was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How much atonement is enough? The bombing must be allowed as at least part-payment: those of our young people who are concerned ab...out the moral problem posed by the Allied air offensive should at least consider the moral problem that would have been posed if the German civilian population had not suffered at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo- a...nd heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole i...s designed to remain a tadpole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A partner evoked by sophisticated electric brain stimulation could be as real and much more satisfying than the boy or girl next d...oor.... All the stars in Hollywood living or dead are there for your pleasure. Sated with superstars, you can lay Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Isis, Madame Pompadour, or Aphrodite. You can get fucked by Pan, Jesus Christ, Apollo or the Devil himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »