How Stubbing One's Toe Can Change One's Life Forever

So, there I am visiting my doctor’s office after having (yet again) stubbed my toe on a stone planter in the hall of my apartment. After flipping through copies of People and Golf Digest, I finally come upon the July 2006 edition of Smithsonian magazine. It will be a longer wait than I anticipated, and I am sent off to another building to get the toe X-rayed, and thus I have the kind of time with a magazine that leads one down literary paths one does not ordinarily take. After reading every word of the articles on Egyptian artifacts and the like, I find myself reading a piece titled “What’s Eating America”. At first, it seems like yet another expose on how our techno-food is killing us, but, as I read on, my eyes widen and my pulse quickens as I learn one shocking fact after another about the life and work of one Fritz Haber. The revelations about this man’s life and work have an impact upon me comparable only to the impact of having learned where babies really come from when I was a little boy. Now, I consider myself (or did up until reading that article) a fairly well-educated man. The gaps left in my knowledge of how the world works, (left by hard-working Catholic nuns, public school teachers and the professors at a college for the working classes), I believed I had largely filled through my own, independent inquiries and through serendipitous encounters with a few key individuals. Then, born yesterday, I find this article in a doctor's waiting room. There, seen in the above photograph standing next to Einstein, (up until now the leading 20th century candidate for ill-starred sorcerer’s apprentice [unless, of course, one believes the rumors that he plagiarized his relativity theory from his talented shiksa girlfriend]), is Fritz Haber, inventor of ammonium nitrate and a variety of poison gases, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1918, collaborator with the Nazis, left a widower when his first wife takes his service revolver and kills herself out of despair over his work. Fritz, the inventor of Zyklon B, was Jewish. His work has brought the world closer to the brink of human extinction than any mere nuclear device ever could. Why hadn't I known of this man before? Why doesn't everyone know about this guy? Run, do not walk to this link, and stay tuned to this blog for more: www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/july/presence.php?page=2