Takaisin Ajatusvarikolle - Back to the Thought Deposit
HAASTE - CHALLENGE
Dinoglyyfit
- Dinoglyfs - Esihistorialliset eläimet historiankirjoissa - Prehistoric Creatures Documented by the Ancient Man

 

Acknowledgements (full Monty)

I take the whole responsibility for the substance, content and style of my thesis. One studies details with a pipet and chessboard – but the wider picture has to be explored by books and go-board. When I quote experts, I do not pretend that they share my conclusions drawn from their area of expertise. Jonathan Wells was attacked for hiding his motivation in criticizing the indoctrination of the biology textbooks. I have been forced to show my inclinations openly to avoid the accusation for dishonesty. By this I wish to stop the whispering that has damaged my career already. Regarding the preparation of my manuscript, I'm a solitary figure, don't shoot the piano players.


I almost had the opportunity to ask the etymology behind the bird'n reptilian "tinshemet" from Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) after his Yrjö Reenpää lecture 24th of September 1999. The historian invited me to a closed meeting after the happening, and I hope he got my question at least in that piece of paper when a case from the countryside didn't dare to struggle the way in for the initiated. "Encyclopedia" came from the root of "circle", and I strongly defend its reference to the substance itself, not the persons behind. Gould was a historian of science and the death of the last scientist with a typewriter and no proofreading was a great loss - mostly due to his courage.

 

The scanning of Finnish textbooks of biology left me a lasting impression and an uneasy perspective on human knowledge. The personnel of the library of the Blood Service, Helsinki city-library in Pasila and Viikki and the science-library of Viikki gave me professional help, for which I'm grateful. They are the treasurers of pain, if knowledge obliges.

 

The cross-scientific debates with my trusted friends in our Evoluutio-klubi, founded by Pekka Reinikainen and Kimmo Pälikkö, has been a crucial brainstorm. I thank the friends at sfnet, other google-groups, MSN-groups, duuni.net, yle.fi, Skepsis ry, Vapaa-ajattelijat, Tiede.fi, Kansalaiskeskustelu etc. for constructive discussion and detailed debate, as well as the talk.origins with its concerns. You have provided me with the fastest and cheapest way to learn. I will publish a link in my homepages to correct the mistakes in my thesis, when confronted with something later on.

 

Yes, Professor Matti Leisola is a cousin of my father, indeed. But it all started with his evolutionary conviction and argumentation against my father's newfound hope. (Besides, Asperger’s syndrome is probably the best syndrome in the world). Matti is forgiven for introducing dad to my mum but you don't thank godfathers, do you? Teuvo Kanerva tried to teach me discipline in the lab. Päiviö Latvus tried to teach me discipline with the books.

 

I want to thank all of my old teachers in Forssa. I'm especially grateful for Jari Heikkilä for his encouraging words after the higher school examination, when he raised my grade just like that, on sending me to university to study some chemistry. I also remember the hospitality of Matti & Riitta Ilmén, who warmly invited me to continue our debate on biology at their home.
...
One of my first vocations to do research came from the fact that the ex nihilo founder of the hometown of both my wife and myself, Axel Wahren (1814-1885), was a chemist before chemistry as a discipline existed. After the bankruptcy of his father, the young dyer and journeyman had come to the remote Jokioinen-Forssa region possessing only his skills, and did not dare to speak openly about his Jewish heritage. He established an old Hi-Tec phenomenon among common farmers at a time when nobody had done such a thing in our country before. I acknowledge the Father of Forssa as a symbol of the independence of Finland. Although we didn't open the doors for Jewish refugees from Russia, the pogroms never reached here. There's no railway in Forssa anymore, but in 1878 even the first longer telephone cable was drawn from the cotton industries to what is now in the middle of nothing in the forest. Rarely is the Jewish Emile Berliner mentioned along with the race-breeding Alexander Graham Bell, though he made numerous inventions that made esoteric curiosities applicable and cheap to the wider public: telephone, microphone, gramophone etc. Finland is Nokia country now and I suggest a monument should be erected to him in the reforesting Matku station. Wahren was the first one to launch an industrial resale network in Finland with its local dealers and traveling salesmen. Wahren continuously borrowed money from the peasants and had to burgle his own fabric magazines embargoed by the government. Wahren employed fugitive farm-hands and kept them from the reach of the police in the autonomy of Finland at the time of Russian serfdom. Wahren founded a school for his child laborers, from which the first female minister of Finland (Miina Sillanpää) later on strove forward. Wahren founded a library, a fund for the handicapped, a sick-fund, a bank, and a parish for his laborers. Wahren had the role of a father in the establishment of Suomen Yhdyspankki a year after the birth of the late Finnish currency, Markka (1862-2001). (Though he couldn't mark much of the stocks of this first Finnish commercial bank.) Wahren co-founded Oy Kymi-Kymmene Ab in 1872.  Wahren's favorite hobby was the breeding of sheep, pigs and cattle. Wahren also pioneered developments in agronomy and forestry in Finland by introducing subsurface drainage and the rotation of crops. In 1876 Wahren donated the funds to launch the homecrafts-school of Tammela. While JW Snellman (1806-81) fought against russianization by the power of culture, he ordered Wahren to design national home industries, adapted to the whole country. Wahren was not given a license to trade abroad like the staple towns, but in 1875 he was nominated as the leading commissary for the first industrial exhibition of the autonomy of Finland, and in 1879-81 he served as the chairman of Finnish Economical Society. Finally, after his death, the manifesto of the Social Democratic Party of Finland was written in Forssa upon the foundation of the party at the close of the 19th Century. And so "J.A.P.", the greatest donator of the Finnish biology, ended up dying in Forssa, at the factory run by the other one of the Palmén brothers, at the time. Maybe I was told about that and just slept through it at school, and I ended up in ridiculing my dad concerning the Jewish story, but not anymore. We do not need share options in our companies. We need fathers. Today I'm proud of my father who was involved in the trial of putting forward an initiative for a Forssa-Beersheba friendship correspondence for the remembrance of Wahren during his short term at the town council. Among the Helsingforsses and Tammerforsses, "Vorssan tehras on puhras".

 

To be honest, there was a croft in Jokioinen, 1 km from the church and 1,5 km from the largest estate-mansion of the country. The history of the "Kartano" is fascinating because of its owners who included the brother of CGE Mannerheim and Alfred Kordelin. When my 92-year old great-grandfather died, he was the older of the two remaining crofters of Jokioinen, who had a contract of their own. (Currently the old tenant farm is being planted by the state Agrifood Research Finland or MTT.) I am 1) Relieved that my non-militant yet literate great-grandfather escaped from the white "court" in the summer 1918. 2) Wondering why our family name was changed to Ojala according to the ditches just behind the spruce hedge to the church-yard, where the executions took place. 3) Having nostalgic feelings every time I apply for a grant from the Kordelin fund. My working hypothesis for 2) is a benevolent warning from the parson to the offspring of the last surviving Malmberg. The amount of property testamented to science was greater in the case of Alfred Kordelin than in the case of Alfred Nobel. The Finnish government established a "Sotasurma" research project in 1998 for the study of the victims of the civil war in 1918. The total number of the deceased "Reds" (or "mongolian" a'la Haeckel and Gobineau) civilians in my home area was around 600 souls (~3% of the population), only 150 of which died carrying the gun. It is interesting that the practising commandant of the Swedish-speaking hunters was Jarl Serlachius, the brother-in-law and regional trustee of Risto Ryti. Ryti, again, was the lawyer of the murdered Kordelin and later the Prime Minister during the Winter War, then the President during the Continuation War, - and the signer of the Finnish brotherhood-in-arms treaty with the Nazi-Germany. By the frank admission of President Ryti in his defence plea in 1945, the world fire had a biological reason to it.

 

My grandfather was called "Kusiais-Kalle" in the nail factory of Jokioinen, where he and his brothers worked for 45 years, because of his untypical and keen observations of nature. Weather forecasting was the only science through centuries in the countryside. I think also my determination and stubborness was solified already at the time when my 15-year old grandfather had to dug the frozen solid and fullpacked graveyard during the Winter War for the young heroes killed in action. Pecunia non olet? Let the experience of the melt smell of the spring and the lifelong nightmares symbolize the persistance of the motivation. Besides, the father of my father volunteered in the group of 30 men following the departure of the last German troops out of the country in the landmark of three nations at the end of the Lapland War. They replied to the last "Heil Hitler" of the last German officer accross the border. The platoon also had to go far to find a tree tall enough to carry the Finnish flag, as the official photo is staged. My grandfather was also another of the two men who delivered the message to the commander after skiing down the no-man's-land. And so the country was emptied from the grasp of the Third Reich and the wars ended. Also the generation serving in arms had to to excape executions. http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Lapin_sota_valokuvia.htm

I'm concerned in working in the field ranging from Asimov and Weissman to the golden domes of Oparin. (The promised city of the evolutionary Tarzan-books from the era of white man's burden.) We are at the culmination points to our postmodern society in the origins-studies of biochemistry. It is difficult to meet the challenge of Richard Dawkins and choose from the four options. If I have to be ignorant, stupid, insane, or wicked, I think I'll take sincere stupidity, please. I'm grateful for the provocation of the Oxford Professor of Public Understanding of Science. Let us measure the official gap between the micro- and macro- by this PhD thesis.

Finally, and most embarrassingly, at the first lectures of biochemistry we were told by a professor emeritus of a saying that the subject was not practiced outside Germany before the Jews were cast out. Although this was found out as a piece of humour by my unimaginative mind, the discovery of www.dorledor.org, www.science.co.il/Nobel.asp, and Encyclopaedia Judaica left me an enduring question. In the 20th century fog, about 700 persons got the noble prize. Nearly 150 of these had an ethnically Jewish heritage, which means over 20% coverage by a 0,25% population numbering less than 20 million people. In the medicine, the portion of laureates is 25%, and often the deal has been either the money or the Nobel.

Von  Wasserman tested vaccines or antitoxins against cholera, tuberculosis, syfilis, tetanus, typhoid, and diphteria. Marmorek made discoveries for multiple epidemics. Haffkine succesfully vaccinated against cholera. Schick developed diphteria-diagnostics and vaccines, Ehrlich salvarsan for syphilis. Neisser & Co. found gonococks causing gonorrhea. Digitalis found by Traube used to be the most used medicine at the time, and also Levine alleviated heart attacks. Typhoid fever was treated by the methods of Vidal and Weil, Woronan and Waksman found streptomysin, the most used chemotherapeutics of its day. Waksman introduced the phrase ‘antibiotic’, and found also neomysin. Chain was one of the three awarded and knighted for penicillin. Funk invented the concept of vitamins and made research until D, whereas Hess concentrated on the C-letter and scurvy. Reichstein extracted cortison, cocaine used to be one of the first painkillers and tested by Koller to his friend Sigmund Freud (who, consequently, had to go through 33 face surgeries in his lifetime). Minkowski was involved in the story behind diabetes and insulin, Landsteiner developed two different blood categories, whence working transfusion began. Contributors to DNA techniques include Lederberg, Kornberg, Nirenberg etc. Salk institute, the unofficial headquarters of the actin biochemistry, recalls the heritage of Sabin and Salk. Jonas Salk granted an inactivated polio vaccine to the mankind although he became neither a Nobel laureate, nor a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. No patent - no patient: in the countries that have adopted it to systematic use, the infantile paralysis has been almost eracidated.

What’s the point? The ex-president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, got the ex-president of the international Red Cross, Cornelio Sammaruga, as his colleague for the Jenin commission. Under Sammaruga's leadership and in the tradition of the Red Cross president Francois Poncet who provided fugitive Nazis with Red Cross passports, the Israeli MDA (Magen David Amon) was not accepted as a member to the International Red Cross, although the Red Cross is politically and religiously neutral, officially. Sammaruga's words ’If we're going to have the Shield of David, why would we not have to accept the swastika?’ gave 49,100 hits with Google in august 2002.

I can't resist thinking that even the humanitarian endeavours with the most high profile are being bought into a new, sophisticated, round of "Judenfrage". The UN Commission on Human Rights judged Israel 40-5 for the ’massacre’ of Jenin although the UN report later on in the 1st august 2002 concluded that there was no such thing. The report referred to the military operation Defensive Shield 1.3.-7.5. 2002. During this period and according to my measurements, I acknowledge Helsingin Sanomat (with a print of ~500,000 in a country of 5,000,000 people) for spending on the details of the fightings claiming a total of ~500 casualities at least the following space: 0,8 m2 of premiar page, 4,2 m2 in C1-C5 pages (of which 8 times the whole C1 was dedicated), 18 leader columns, and 5 quotes from other newspapers in the premiar. (Best wishes to the Great Pumpkin and his class-mates! Sincere acknowledgements for opening the net-archives of HS, the statistics are easier without the need for a pencil ruler.)

In the april 2002 there were five foreign reporters in Finland, whereas the number was 8000 in Israel. Israel can get more attention in a week than the African continent in a year - which is the fuel of extreme groups. I’m reminded of the fact, that during the 12 years of reign by Hitler, the annihilation of Jews made a leader even in the most open New York Times only 9 times. A sample of 400,000 Hungarian Jews were dismissed in 13 lanes in obscure pages (Gould’s Papa Joe notwithstanding).

Out of all the cases handled by the UN Commission on Human Rights, 26% of the judgments have been focused against the single democracy of Israel. One third of the cases brought up to the Security Counsil have been to do with the same nation.

Let us remember, that during 1967-1993 six universities were laid for the tragical Palestinian people who - according to the article 14 of the PLO Covenant - are commanded as a “vanguard” between the fronts in a bigger struggle. Under the Israeli government, infrastructure was build in the West Bank in the form of water conduits, wiring, streets, sewerage, and establishment of welfare services, despite the ongoing wars. In 1970-1986 the amount of Palestinian women having not gone to school decreased from 67 to 32%. In 1967-1988 the number of comprehensive- and secondary schools for Palestinian youth increased by one third.

William Shakespeare wrote his Merchant of Venice near the end of the expulsion of Jews from England (1290-1650 -  his knowledge were second hand stereotypes. I’m afraid we are descending to a modern syndrome of Shylock-stereotypology with the selectivity and short memory of the current and global media war. The tragedy of the heritage of the German Monist League was not the mania of a corporal and a postcard artist, but indifference of the large public. To my knowledge, the winter 2001-2 meant the rise of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (allegedly the most famous forgery of the last century, and a Durban racism conference succé) to the top-ten list of bestsellers in the surroundings of Middle East.

A Gallup poll released on 2/26/02 (www.gallup.com/poll/) covering 10 000 respondents and 9 countries showed the following statistics regarding the belief that the al-Qaida people were not responsible for the attack on the WTC twin towers: Kuwait 89%; Pakistan 86%; Indonesia 74%; Iran 59%; Lebanon 58%; Turkey 43%. When antisemitic rhetorics and conspiracy theories run this wild, there is little doubt that they will result in an action, sooner or later. One thing for sure: Israel would be blamed for the escalation.

I think, that as bioscientists we are in a place of responsibility regarding the indifference towards the injust scapegoat role pushed on this minority in the "War of the Worlds". The media war has a painful nature of lowering the tresshold away from impartiality for countries and people alike. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it – and there is still culture beneath our own feet to be digged out.

As a biochemist, I acknowledge standing upon the shoulders of giants and upon boxes of extraction kits, the surviving half (100) Israeli Nasdaq-companies being acknowledged at the stock-bazaar. As a plain citizen, I acknowledge the contribution of the Via Dolorosa of the Jews for the fact, that both me and my family have been healthy during this thesis.

 Uncle Albert once said, that "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant… It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education… Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18… you look what everyone has always looked and try to see what nobody has seen before". This makes the attempt a re-view.

At the lab the method is to reduce parameters to a single one and then to titrate. Despite the frustration, one learns most from the experiments that fail, in the tradition of Albert Michelson and ether. This makes the attempt re-search - and the days long.

At the end uncle Albert sighed: "If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances."

I owe one to my father and mother. Many fine alleles went recessive in me, but the environment compensated. Possession goes in two directions. I'm glad Antti was not sent off because of the measles I transmitted, as was taken for granted by the medical authorities in 1981. The boy is from the countryside, too, but Pro life - and Pro forgiveness.

 

I thank my father-in-law Pentti Niinimäki and mother-in-law AN for the better part of mine. I try to take heed of PN’s advice regarding the sphere of investigative journalism, and Anneli’s advice regarding the cultural expression of grass roots & anonymous concerns in the tradition of Lauri Viita and Väinö Linna. (The fictional Koskelas lived near a parsonage, too.) I’m grateful we went through it together, Pentti, and we cherish your memory. When it comes to the motives, I said this is also an eulogia.

 

Add here the fact that I've been priviledged to discuss with and befriend teenagers both by counselling on the phone, and face-to-face in camps and night-cafés - and you end up with my motivation. I know my indirect responsibility for tragedies of self-violation and ideological drug misuse. There's a postmodern chorus singing "we don't need no e-du-ca-tion", and its volume is increasing. There's also a lack of resources, but no help of me if I don't dare to manage even a moderate conflict on a factual basis with academics not physically addicted to their habits.

Hard days nights necessitate perseverance, and what has been flexible has often been the schedule of my wife Mirkka and not the time resolved experiments. In the real biological enquiry our n is now 2 by the results 100199-XX8X and 281000AXX7X. These variables have one of the highest amplitudes in the life - hardly predictable, precious and gifts. Autism means to be a happy person. And asperger - Probably the best synrome in the world. I hope Yours are the dominant ones - agapee with all the flavours.
 

Pauli Ojala