7 ms·

A dying teenager who wanted world peace (and love)

119 points by lermontov 6y ago

082349872349872 6y ago
see also https://www.csmonitor.com/1986/0916/rpeace.html https://www.csmonitor.com/1986/0916/rpeace.html Eternal September may have brought us many bad things, but a very good thing is that it's now far, far easier to get an idea of how ordinary people live elsewhere (or even elsewhen, for a small subset of previous decades). Breaking a filter bubble is much easier than pre-VCR access to foreign or ephemeral media ever was. As someone who grew up knowing that ICBMs were only 30 minutes away, I've been keeping an ever-growing informal list of things that were pop culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain. One of my favourites is the Duck/Chicken Dance.
- Baeocystin 6y ago
  I lived in Vientiane, Laos is a kid. Mail back home to the 'states was a three-month round trip affair with only about an 80% success rate. Phone calls to family were completely impossible unless we flew to Bangkok first. Nowadays, I can click on any of a half-dozen free webcams that show the old neighborhood, whenever I want. It still kind of blows my mind, the improvements in the world's communication infrastructure when I think about it.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
>Listen, we're not the US Postal Service Just forward the letters, man! How hard can it be? I bet they’re looking into every one of them anyway… It’s kind of funny because in many languages the word for ambassador literally derives from “messenger”. Unfortunately not in English, but the words do seem related in Russian, from what I can gather. Edit: Also, the school’s Russian teacher only translated the headline?! Come on!
- guerrilla 6y ago
  You got me curious: From Middle English ambassadore, from Anglo-Norman ambassadeur. From Old Italian ambassatore, ambassadore, from Old Occitan ambaisador (“ambassador”), from Latin ambasiātor, from Latin ambasiātor. From Gothic 𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌱𐌰𐌷𐍄𐌹 From Proto-Germanic ambahtiją (“service”) Borrowed from Gaulish ambaxtos (“servant”) From Proto-Celtic ambaxtos (“servant”) From ambi- (“around”) +‎ ageti (“to drive”) +‎ *-os.
  - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
    Yeah, that’s what I had looked up as well. Pretty interesting. I don’t think I’ve come across an etymology that went from Gothic to Latin to English, but I’m hardly an expert.
- lmkg 6y ago
  The English word you're looking for is "Envoy." It's derived from the French word for messenger, and while it's not exactly the same thing as an ambassador, I would struggle to understand the difference. I guess we just happen not to use that word as the official title of certain government positions.
dehrmann 6y ago
> Jeff hoped not only that he would get that dream job with Nasa, but that the organisation would start to work with the USSR rather than competing with it. > "Even when I was fairly young, I could see the potential for collaboration between the US and Soviet Union," he says. "It just never made sense to me that we were pointing nuclear weapons at each other, when we could be collaborating to do extraordinary things in space." Oh, kids. Nasa's raison d'etre was to research how the US can watch the soviets from space or shoot them from space. That's why its budget peaked in '66. Doing "extraordinary things in space" was just a means to that end. But I do appreciate the sentiment.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  The world would be a much better place if curiosity was the main driver instead of power.
  - jedmeyers 6y ago
    As long as you have limited resources to manage, your curiosity will go nowhere without the power to obtain resources to satisfy that curiosity. I too love to dream about how great life is going to be once we all have unlimited resources.
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      We have more than enough to go around and we have for a long time.
      - Judgmentality 6y ago
        Do we? Fresh water isn't unlimited - in fact much farming today is done unsustainably by pumping ground water faster than it can be replenished. Desalination plants are expensive and not necessarily viable. Oil is obviously limited, and while there are energy alternatives it's not quite that simple. Not to mention the abundant use of petroleum in every day items we take for granted such as plastic. Sure, we can imagine a world without oil, but right now that world does not exist. Land is limited. Minerals are limited. Medicine can be limited (I'm fairly certainly whoever develops a vaccine will find it used nationally much more densely than internationally until it is ubiquitous).
gerdesj 6y ago
What a lovely story. The siege of Leningrad was a brutal affair and yet time, effort and materials were found for a child (Nina) to receive three complex brain surgeries.
- lightgreen 6y ago
  > time, effort and materials were found There were hospitals in Leningrad, doctors and medical intruments were in it. Doctor worked there, they were paid (with food stamps) to do the surgeries. It would be strange to expect that they refuse a treatment to a woulded patient.

119 points by lermontov 6y ago

see also https://www.csmonitor.com/1986/0916/rpeace.html https://www.csmonitor.com/1986/0916/rpeace.html Eternal September may have brought us many bad things, but a very good thing is that it's now far, far easier to get an idea of how ordinary people live elsewhere (or even elsewhen, for a small subset of previous decades). Breaking a filter bubble is much easier than pre-VCR access to foreign or ephemeral media ever was. As someone who grew up knowing that ICBMs were only 30 minutes away, I've been keeping an ever-growing informal list of things that were pop culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain. One of my favourites is the Duck/Chicken Dance.

Baeocystin 6y ago
I lived in Vientiane, Laos is a kid. Mail back home to the 'states was a three-month round trip affair with only about an 80% success rate. Phone calls to family were completely impossible unless we flew to Bangkok first. Nowadays, I can click on any of a half-dozen free webcams that show the old neighborhood, whenever I want. It still kind of blows my mind, the improvements in the world's communication infrastructure when I think about it.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

>Listen, we're not the US Postal Service Just forward the letters, man! How hard can it be? I bet they’re looking into every one of them anyway… It’s kind of funny because in many languages the word for ambassador literally derives from “messenger”. Unfortunately not in English, but the words do seem related in Russian, from what I can gather. Edit: Also, the school’s Russian teacher only translated the headline?! Come on!

guerrilla 6y ago
You got me curious: From Middle English ambassadore, from Anglo-Norman ambassadeur. From Old Italian ambassatore, ambassadore, from Old Occitan ambaisador (“ambassador”), from Latin ambasiātor, from Latin ambasiātor. From Gothic 𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌱𐌰𐌷𐍄𐌹 From Proto-Germanic ambahtiją (“service”) Borrowed from Gaulish ambaxtos (“servant”) From Proto-Celtic ambaxtos (“servant”) From ambi- (“around”) +‎ ageti (“to drive”) +‎ *-os.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  Yeah, that’s what I had looked up as well. Pretty interesting. I don’t think I’ve come across an etymology that went from Gothic to Latin to English, but I’m hardly an expert.
lmkg 6y ago
The English word you're looking for is "Envoy." It's derived from the French word for messenger, and while it's not exactly the same thing as an ambassador, I would struggle to understand the difference. I guess we just happen not to use that word as the official title of certain government positions.

dehrmann 6y ago

> Jeff hoped not only that he would get that dream job with Nasa, but that the organisation would start to work with the USSR rather than competing with it. > "Even when I was fairly young, I could see the potential for collaboration between the US and Soviet Union," he says. "It just never made sense to me that we were pointing nuclear weapons at each other, when we could be collaborating to do extraordinary things in space." Oh, kids. Nasa's raison d'etre was to research how the US can watch the soviets from space or shoot them from space. That's why its budget peaked in '66. Doing "extraordinary things in space" was just a means to that end. But I do appreciate the sentiment.

rorykoehler 6y ago
The world would be a much better place if curiosity was the main driver instead of power.
- jedmeyers 6y ago
  As long as you have limited resources to manage, your curiosity will go nowhere without the power to obtain resources to satisfy that curiosity. I too love to dream about how great life is going to be once we all have unlimited resources.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    We have more than enough to go around and we have for a long time.
    - Judgmentality 6y ago
      Do we? Fresh water isn't unlimited - in fact much farming today is done unsustainably by pumping ground water faster than it can be replenished. Desalination plants are expensive and not necessarily viable. Oil is obviously limited, and while there are energy alternatives it's not quite that simple. Not to mention the abundant use of petroleum in every day items we take for granted such as plastic. Sure, we can imagine a world without oil, but right now that world does not exist. Land is limited. Minerals are limited. Medicine can be limited (I'm fairly certainly whoever develops a vaccine will find it used nationally much more densely than internationally until it is ubiquitous).

gerdesj 6y ago

What a lovely story. The siege of Leningrad was a brutal affair and yet time, effort and materials were found for a child (Nina) to receive three complex brain surgeries.

lightgreen 6y ago
> time, effort and materials were found There were hospitals in Leningrad, doctors and medical intruments were in it. Doctor worked there, they were paid (with food stamps) to do the surgeries. It would be strange to expect that they refuse a treatment to a woulded patient.