November 2012
8 posts
Giles Fraser on capitalism, sustainability and resources →
guardian.co.uk
The focus Giles Fraser has on talking about society and the environment is admirable. Just imagine if the Church establishment was raising these issues as much as it does gay marriage.
Today's going through my head song →
youtube.com
Neil Young - Rockin’ in the Free World.
Which might be related to yesterday’s news.
September 2012
3 posts
“Our response [so far] has not been alarm, or panic, or a sense of emergency. It has been: ‘Let’s go up there and drill for oil’. There is no more perfect indictment of our failure to get to grips with the greatest problem we’ve ever faced.”
—
Bill McKibben, quoted by The Guardian on the dramatic reduction in Arctic ice.
August 2012
4 posts
“
What Van Allen had discovered were the bands of high-energy particles that were held in place by strong magnetic fields, and soon known as the Van Allen Belts. A year later, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine as he opened an entirely new field of research—magnetospheric physics—and catapulted the United States into the race to space with the Soviet Union.
On the same day Van Allen held his press conference in May 1958, he agreed to cooperate with the U.S. military on a top-secret project. The plan: to send atomic bombs into space in an attempt to blow up the Van Allen Belts, or to at least disrupt them with a massive blast of nuclear energy.
At the height of the Cold War, the thinking may have been, as the science historian James Fleming said recently, that “if we don’t do it, the Russians will.” In fact, over the next few years, both the United States and the Soviet Union tested atomic bombs in space, with little or no disruption in the Van Allen Belts. Fleming suspects that the U.S. military may have theorized that the Van Allen belts could be used to attack the enemy. But in July 1962, the United States was ready to test a far more powerful nuclear bomb in space
” —Past Imperfect - Smithsonian.com
I think it’s important for my generation not to forget the number of nuclear tests and the threat of the Cold War. This description of a single nuclear test is scary enough. Hindsight, especially in science, is a convenient analytical tool when scoffing at past attempts and pursuits: all the same, this scientist was planning to ‘blow up the Van Allen Belts’ which surround the earth. Extraordinary.
