'A warm meal, a warm bed and a warm smile' : still the best medicine

"The hyssop and The Cedars" is a book about health during our past most recent man-made Apocalypse : occasionally it is about doctors and pharmaceuticals, but mostly it is not.

For the truth is that  *food* was the only medicine in really desperate short supply during WWII.

Truth is that 'a warm meal, a warm bed and a warm smile' is all most of us ever need to reach our three score and ten.

After that, we generally do need the help of hospital beds and the pharmaceutical firms.

But let us also never forget the warm smile.

Civilization, regarded as a "Cartwright Machine"

A "Cartwright Machine" is a powerful and unique way, created by famed philosopher of science Nancy Cartwright,  of looking again at all of Humanity's machines , mental as well as physical.

Cartwright's central insight is to realize that the real beauty of a machine is literally 'only skin deep'.

This is in very sharp contrast to received opinion on machines up until now.

Civilization can fire Guns OR eat Butter, but not both....

The Cold War is always pointed-to-with-pride as a time when Civilization had guns and butter.

Had guns, yes, but never fired them.

Its all quite different from actual war,( shout out to WWII) , when guns get fired and their shells destroy the butter factories and people are left too hungry to build another shell or churn more butter.

Civilizations like Germany, Japan and Russia then quickly end up with their citizens turning to cannibalism to survive : true they don't eat their guns, but they do definitely eat their leather gun straps before turning on each other as a food source.....

WWII : Science finds, Man applies, Nature confounds ...

Yes indeed, the Universe is just like some giant man-made clockworks, albeit one taken out of its 'shielding' case and left out in Nature's harsh elements, exposed years in years out to blazing sun, wind, rain, snow, dust and mould.

How much our vaunted Civilization rests upon the thin security provided by the shielding roofs over our man-made "Cartwright Machines" is made particularly clear during war.