To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

~George Santayana~

"A second result of man's animal vulnerability to death and his
symbolic consciousness of it is the struggle to get power to fortify
himself. Other animals must simply use those powers that nature
provided them with and the neural circuits that animate those
powers. But man can invent and imagine powers, and he can invent
ways to protect power. This means, as Nietzsche saw and shocked his
world with, that ALL MORAL CATEGORIES ARE POWER CATEGORIES; they are
not about virtue in any abstract sense. Purity, goodness, rightness—
these are ways of keeping power intact so as to cheat death; the
striving for perfection is a way of qualifying for extraspecial
immunity not only in this world but in others to come. Hence all
categories of dirt, filth, imperfection, and error are vulnerability
categories, power problems."
~Ernest Becker

When I was bombing cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and France in the Second World War, the moral justification was so simple and clear as to be beyond discussion: We were saving the world from the evil of fascism. I was therefore startled to hear from a gunner on another crew -- what we had in common was that we both read books -- that he considered this "an imperialist war." Both sides, he said, were motivated by ambitions of control and conquest. We argued without resolving the issue. Ironically, tragically, not long after our discussion, this fellow was shot down and killed on a mission.

- Howard Zinn

Great Letter!

I was on the scientific faculty of a "well-known American university" for 10 years. Academic freedom is a fairy tale, and universities are essentially corrupted by their funding. Here's why:

- A faculty member is a nobody if he/she doesn't pull in enough grant money. To get, say, $100,000 in grant funding, we had to get $167,000, of which the administration immediately took away $67,000 ('overhead'). This 'overhead' determined your stature with the boss ('dean').

- 90% of the grants in my department were with either federal agencies or the military.

- The administration's evaluations of faculty were largely based on grant income (not teaching or research). Untenured faculty without grants were fired, period.

- Even tenured faculty were considered 2nd-class citizens (low pay, lousy assignments) if they had no grants. It was a grim fate.

To promote 9/11 Truth, a professor would have to throw it all away: no grants, no research, low pay, crappy treatment. Also, his administration would desperately try to shut him up, out of fear of losing university-wide grants.

This is why so few academics have spoken up, and amounts to corruption of what should be a free-thinking part of society. One has to admire the courage of people like Steven Jones (and he left BYU, remember?).

Great letter, Christian, and my heart is with you as you rattle the cages at BU. It takes guts to do what you have done.