Yet another speech:
As an organization One Army promotes itself as a gentleman’s organization. What does that mean though? Do we have soft hands? Do we gallop around on horses, saving women from rabid dogs? Do we annunciate our words with an English accent?
There is an old proverb that defines genius as “an infinite capacity for taking pains,� and the same description would serve to define a gentleman. The real gentleman is one who leaves nothing to chance. It is not enough to make sure one’s clothes are smart, of the finest cut and quality, and in immaculate order. After all, there is one’s physical appearance to consider.
They do not publicly display doo-rags, jerseys, wife-beaters or grills. They are well-groomed, orderly and chiseled.
There was an English comedian in the 1930s who described himself as “Billy Bennett – Almost a Gentleman.� The concept is outrageous. One cannot be almost a gentleman. One either is, or one isn’t. One cannot be almost a gentleman. Standards are set, and must be kept up. It is better not to try to appear to be a gentleman if one is likely to fail to make the grade.
A gentleman does not pretend to be one in private and then a womanizer in public. They are consistent without reservation.
A gentleman is always thoroughly decent, always instinctively does the right thing. When one is a gentleman, one makes sure all the women and children are safely in the lifeboats while one goes down with the ship. One never maltreats a horse or betrays a friend. One knows when a lady desires company and when she wishes to be left alone. He does not hound them, stalk them or slip them ‘roofies.’ One is always polite, even in the face of arrogant rudeness on the part of lesser mortals.
In a word, a true gentleman is classy.
Two movies portraying these traits:
An Officer and a Gentleman; Scent of a Woman
Note: some content referenced via Bernhard Roetel’s, Gentleman’s Guide To Grooming And Style, p. 8
Over the past few years the term nanobots has become a staple of bleeding-edge research. Over the last few days several news releases have dealt with this wave of applicable technologies in terms of theoretical implications in the medical field, insurance risks for businesses and actual production of said concepts.
- Via Fighting Aging, Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle’s latest collaboration - like the Nanomedicine volumes, part of the groundwork for the future of nanotechnology - is now available for free online:
With 200+ illustrations and 3200+ literature references, [Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines (KSRM)] describes all proposed and experimentally realized self-replicating systems that were publicly known as of 2004, ranging from nanoscale to macroscale systems. The book extensively describes the historical development of the field. It presents for the first time a detailed 137-dimensional map of the entire kinematic replicator design space to assist future engineering efforts.
Via BetterHumans,
Scientists and insurance experts have concluded that five near-market nanotech manufacturing processes pose fewer risks than common processes such as oil refining—and some are as benign as making wine or aspirin.
Their study compares the risk of making quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, buckyballs and two types of nanoparticles with the risks of making six commonplace products—silicon wafers, wine, high-density plastic, lead-acid car batteries, refined petroleum and aspirin.
- Via ScienceDaily,
“Essentially, we’re forming artificial solids from artificial atoms — about 10 times larger than real atoms — whose properties we can fine tune on the quantum level,” said Drndic, an assistant professor in Penn’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. “Artificial solids are expected to revolutionize the fabrication of electronic devices in the near future, but now we are only beginning to understand their fundamental behavior.”
Artificial solids, in general, are constructed by specifically assembling a number of nanocrystals, each composed of only a few thousand atoms, into a closely packed and well-ordered lattice. Previous researchers have demonstrated that quantum dots can be manipulated to change their physical properties, particularly their optical properties. In fact, the blue laser, which will soon be put into use into commercial products, was a result of early research in changing the colors of quantum dots.
