The Williston - Ledecky Connection -- August 9, 2016

From comment at this post, comes this link: http://www.kfyrtv.com/content/news/As-Katie-Ledecky-swims-for-gold-her-grandmother-watches-from-Williston-389557862.html.

WILLISTON, N.D. - As America's swimming sweetheart Katie Ledecky competes in Rio, a member of her family is watching on from Williston.

A flag with the Olympic Rings waves proudly outside the home of Kathleen Hagan, grandmother to Katie Ledecky.

"I know her as a little girl growing up, and now, she's still a little girl as far as I'm concerned," says Hagan.

The 90-year old is cheering on her granddaughter. Even thousands of miles away from the competition, she gets nervous.

"Well I get nervous for Katie. I was really worried yesterday, I didn't think she could win that one yesterday," says Hagan.

Much more at the link including a great video.

Unless I have my "generations" wrong, Mrs Hagan would have been married to Dr Hagan of the Craven-Hagan Clinic, which, when I was growing up in Williston, was on Main Street, near the center of town, on the second floor. That's where I got a few of my "hay-fever" shots; most of them I received at home from my mother. The clinic fascinated me: an elevator, fairly uncommon in Williston; and, a real tropical fish tank. I believe my doctor was Dr Craven, not Dr Hagan, but I recognized both of them when out and about. True pioneers in every sense of the word.

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The Human Genome

From Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Gene: An Intimate History

Some data points:

• it has 3,088,286,401 letters of DNA (GTC&A) -- give or take a few.
• published as a book with standard-size font would be 66x the size of the Encylopedia Britannica and consist of only four letters (GTC&A)
• 23 pair of chromosomes, 46 in all
• genes: 30,687 in total. Compare with 1,796 in worms, but 12,000 fewer than corn and a whopping 25,000 fewer than rice or wheat
• parts of it are surprisingly beautiful: on chromosome 11, there is a causeway dedicated entirely to the sensation of smell; a cluster of 155 closely related genes to encode a series of protein receptors that are professional small sensors
• a bewildering 98% of the entire genetic genome DOES NOT code for genes
• it has repeated elements that appear frequently. A pesky, mysterious three-hundred-base-pair sequence called Alu appears and reappears tens of thousands of times; its origin, function, or significance is unknown
• it contains thousands of "pseudogenes"; fossils of previously active genes
• gene #1, on chromosome #1: encodes a protein that senses smell (again, those ubiquitous olfactory genes)
• last gene, on chromosome X: encodes a protein that modulates the interaction between cells of the immune system ["Last and first" are arbitrary: the longest gene on any chromosome is considered the "first" gene on that chromosome.] 

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Order In Chaos: The Memoirs of General Hermann Balck

Panzer Troops

University Press of Kentucky

c. 2015 
DD: 355 BAL

The foreword by Carlo D'Este, author of Patton: A Genius for War

Preface by the editors and translators, Major General David T. Zabecki, USA (Ret.) and Lieutenant Colonel Dieter J. Biedekarken, USA (Ret.)

Of all things, Freeman Dyson is mentioned in the foreword as praising this forgotten general.

Balck spent most of WWII on the eastern front, fighting the Russians. He spent only seven months, spread over four different periods, fighting against the western Allies.

• as the commander of an infantry regiment, he led one of the key attacks that resulted in the decisive German breakthrough against France at Sedan on the Meuse River in 1940
• commanding a Panzer regiment in April 1941, he fought against the British and New Zealanders in Greece
• as an acting Panzer corps commander in Italy he fought against the Americans during the initial stages of the Salerno landings in September, 1943
• for a three-month period at the end of 1944, he commanded Army Grup G in the Lorraine campaign

His military strategy was much like Patton's: they both preferred offense to defense. Both noted that contrary to what was being taught at the time, nothing incurs higher casualties than an unsuccessful defense; therefore, attack whenever it is possible.

Politically:

• Balck was never a member of the Nazi Pary
• he was not close to being a Nazi sympathizer
• he was not an ardent Hitler worshiper

Memoirs:

• following the war, unlike many captured German officers, Balck refused to talk
• near the end of his life, he had a change of heart and started to open up to his former enemies

Influence:

• helped the US Army develop a tactical and operational doctrine for fighting outnumbered and winning against the overwhelming numerically superior tank forces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact
• German tactical doctrine, strongly influenced by Balck, had a clear influence on the development of the new American doctrine, called AirLand Battle (this was a major subject during my two years at Air War College; I was unaware of its origin) 

Order In Chaos

• published in German, in 1981, at age 84
• from his detailed journal, kept from his earliest days as an officer candidate (1913) to his final surrender to US Army forces (May, 2945)

Freeman Dyson

• I was unaware of Freeman Dyson's research into this one question: perhaps the single overriding moral question about the Germany Army in WWII is how so many of its soldiers and officers could have fought so well for such a bad cause?
• soldiering: the distinction between soldiering as a trade and soldiering as a cult. Dyson says Balck was of the former
• Dyson noted that Balck was accused of no war crimes (in the strictest sense not accurate, but Dyson is correct in the context)

Rommel

• very different background than Balck
• Hitler was very impressed with Rommel's book published in 1937 and accounts for his meteoric rise during WWII
• Rommel's record of battlefield performance during WWII rests on:

• six weeks in May and June 1940 during the invasion of France as a Panzer division commander
• 25 months as a corps, army, and army group commander in North Africa from February, 1941, to March, 1943
• six weeks as the commander of Army Group B in June and July, 1944, during the Allied Normandy invasion
• the Battle of Gazala and the capture of Tobruk in May and June, 1942, were the peak of Rommel's career