PUBLIC NUISANCES: The Mystic Pope/Captured by the Ethernet

Tyrell, R.Emmett Jr.

PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMMETT TYRELL, JR. The Mystic Pope WASHINGTON N THE SPRING OF 1978 I WAS IN ROME On a glorious sunny morning, and after my matutinal coffee I strolled up...

...Yet there is another element, one mentioned by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan frequently...
...But does it work in theory...
...He championed reason...
...Yes," they might say...
...What is more, there is no sign the innovations are ending...
...Reviewing that memorable 1978 morn in Rome as I wrote it up in The Conservative Crack-Up, I noticed that nowhere in the book did I mention John Paul II...
...Inflation was singeing the dollars in our pockets...
...That is the growth in productivity stemming from the surge in scientific and technological innovation that was celebrated with the National Science and Technology Medals...
...They are more dependent on objective evidence...
...Three years later he with David Boggs had the system up and running...
...Peter's to exploit John Paul II's funeral did return zaniness to the Vatican for a few hours, but after that it was back to normal...
...When informed of the Polish cardinal's surprising election Nixon speculated to members of Parliament in the House of Commons that here might be the "spark" to ignite the forces of freedom against Soviet 70 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005 domination throughout what was then called Eastern Europe...
...Jim Jones would lead 900 or so of his faithful to their poisonings that fall...
...One of the awardees is Bob Metcalfe...
...Seated next to a bored cop was a fat greasy man in his early 30s dressed only in a T-shirt, a pink diaper, and a baby's bonnet...
...That is what a mystic is, even when he is the head of a 2,000-year-old institution comprised of a billion constituents...
...There were many others: dirty, tired-looking hippies from earlier in the decade now burned out and vacant...
...Yet his practical application of the theoretical system he dreamed up in 1973 actually provoked not applause among his engineering colleagues but vexed controversy...
...This Pope would pray four hours a day, sometimes more...
...Several months later an obscure Polish cardinal would be elected Pope...
...He was, after all, at bottom an Aristotelian-Thomistic philosopher...
...The stories are not as popular today...
...John of the Cross...
...Ethernet allowed local area computers to communicate...
...Yes, there were great schools of pious Christians swimming across the Piazza's old gray stones and into the great cathedral, but it seemed there were lunatics everywhere...
...As I recorded in The Conservative Crack-Up over a decade later it was a time of "idiot whirl...
...The Rev...
...Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, and of course Hitler, Mao, and Stalin now have a silver-haired man of God in their ranks...
...In 1973 he wrote the memo that invented Ethernet...
...The President presided over a morning ceremony at the White House, and there was a classy dinner in the evening, with the honorees present...
...Now all the politicians who have hustled off to Rome to bid the Pope adieu surely want to be the best that they can be and do the best job they can, but would any of them set aside hours every day to pray when other responsibilities beckoned...
...Conceivably these chips will keeps us alive forever...
...It was impossible "in theory...
...As I say, the present surge in science and technology is almost too much to bear...
...slis MAY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 71...
...The Piazza San Pietro was experiencing the whirl too...
...The consequence of each innovation is usually apparent...
...America has been riding a surge in scientific and technological innovation for decades, and if anything the surge has grown broader...
...It consisted of groups of 15 or so young men devoted to prayer and contemplation...
...From this experience Wojtyla gained his lifelong interest in the mysticism of the Carmelite order and the teachings of the 16th-century Spanish Carmelite, St...
...I suspect the economic impact of these three men has amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars...
...Their reason...
...John's mystical communion with God...
...Then came the capacity to search and index documents on the Net that is Google...
...All the rest of his life, no matter the demands the world placed on him, his foremost concern was his own communion with God...
...After that came the vast worldwide communication system that is the Internet...
...So were individuals...
...During the Nazi occupation of Poland in 1940 the 20-year-old Wojtyla came under the spiritual influence of a deeply religious middle-aged layman, Jan Tyranowski, who presided over something called the "Living Rosary...
...P U B I C NUISANCES R . E M M E T T T Y R R E L L , J R. The Mystic Pope WASHINGTON N THE SPRING OF 1978 I WAS IN ROME On a glorious sunny morning, and after my matutinal coffee I strolled up the via della Coneiliazione to St...
...Yet this is not always the case...
...John Paul II has been the greatest Pope of the last 500 years, as well as one of the great political figures of the 20th century...
...They will notify us when our cholesterol count or some enzyme count signals danger...
...Over the next few years the chaos of the Piazza receded...
...What attracts me to these awards is that unlike those for the humanities these are harder to fake...
...The idiot whirl of the Western world receded too...
...He invented Ethernet, which was an early step towards the Internet...
...Suggestive of the whirl, that pert ignoramus, Jimmy Carter, was dithering through the last years of his idiot presidency...
...Consider the tiny computer chips that might be lodged in our bodies someday, serving the same purpose larger chips now serve in our automobiles...
...Moreover some of the latest are so complicated and portend such far-ranging change as to bewilder readers...
...There were new fanatics everywhere and crazy suicidal cults...
...After this Pope and all the history made since the late 1970s by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and their confused Marxist-Leninist accomplice, Mikhail Gorbachev, the world is a saner place, albeit still troubled...
...Vital organs will be monitored by the tiny computers and replaced in due course by new improved vital organs...
...A demented woman carrying a birdcage was howling to the crowd...
...John Paul did that and much more, as every obituary has affirmed...
...Unlike any of the other historic figures of the century, the Pope was a mystic...
...Captured by the Ethernet WASHINGTON R EcENTI Y, the National Science and Technology Medals were handed out here in our nation's capital...
...But then I have missed things over the years...
...Most of this has been dilated upon during the worldwide spectacle of the Pope's death, a spectacle unlike anything that might have been anticipated, we are told...
...Tax cuts, incidentally, and the efficiency of American markets explain the long period of vigorous economic growth that the country has enjoyed since the early 1980s...
...After the huge sendoff the world has given him, it will be difficult to repeat that omission...
...I missed it...
...A certain policy, say tax cuts, works in practice...
...In past decades we read newspaper account after newspaper account of miraculous innovations that were about to transform our lives...
...Prayer and contemplation of God was the source of all he did in life...
...His intellect, goodness, and political acumen have all been remarked on, but few have noted its provenance...
...The dinner invitation came snail-mail, so I was there, in black tie with pen in hand to record the doings...
...The day one Karol Wojtyla became John Paul II, Richard Nixon, still in disgrace, was visiting London...
...That reminds me of the old joke Ronald Reagan used to make at the expense of economists...
...True, the narcissistic contingent of American politicians who descended on St...
...Industries were failing...
...The event brought together stars far more worthy of our awe than any stars the world of entertainment might summon to dinner...
...We have become inured to the miraculous innovations all around us...
...Their response to the functioning Ethernet was that it was impossible...
...I was writing about the condition of conservatism in the late 20th century, yet somehow I missed the Pope...
...America was derided around the world...
...As Ethernet's use spread there remained engineers that scoffed at it as a theoretical impossibility...
...Even in his last weeks he gave the suffering of the very old meaning...
...I actually got to meet Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, the men who took Metcalfe's Ethernet and made it Internet...
...He revived the spiritual vigor of his Church, reinvigorated ecumenism, acknowledged Christianity's debt to the Jews and the wrongs committed against them, and raised the dignity of human life for all to contemplate...
...An invitation was tendered tome, but it came in over the Internet as e-mail...
...Politics and lobbying is more difficult in science and technology than in belles lettres or the plastic arts...
...They will warn us that a knee is wearing out and in need of replacement...
...At the dinner whole teams of scientists and engineers were recognized for ingenious inventions and procedures...
...That sounds very unprofessional to me...
...I missed the morning ceremony, for I remain after all these years technologically baffled...
...He had as many responsibilities as any head of state, but all his decisions depended on prayer and PUBLIC NUISANCES contemplation...
...Peter's for a visit...
...While the Nazis prowled Poland, Wojtyla meditated and deepened his understanding of St...
...Metcalfe tells an amusing story demonstrating that this week's awards are not completely free of politics...
...He was a great proponent of freedom but he insisted it was meaningless unless it pursued the virtues...

Vol. 38 • May 2005 • No. 4


 
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