Leó Szilárd, an important member of the Manhattan Project, was quite an interesting character. While he was politically active and had a tendency to be extremely blunt with such dealings, those aspects of him are not what I’d like to share. First, from the Wikipedia article (emphasis mine):
In 1960, Szilárd was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He underwent radiation therapy at New York’s Memorial Hospital using a treatment regimen that he designed himself. A second round of treatment followed in 1962; Szilárd’s cancer remained in remission thereafter.
Those were certainly the days of the super scientists, when physicists could cure their own cancer. But seriously, by “super scientists,” I refer to the likes of Szilárd and Feynman, who possessed an extraordinarily broad range of knowledge and experience. To me, they are the modern equivalents to the Renaissance man.
Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?
But, again, don’t misunderstand me. The only conclusion we can draw is that governments acting in a crisis are guided by questions of expediency, and moral considerations are given very little weight, and that America is no different from any other nation in this respect.
Remember, this is coming from one of the key physicists who worked to develop the first nuclear bomb; I would think the bomb development work kept those scientists up nights and the results kept them up again years after.
The idea behind this seven picture series is to confront the sometimes harsh reality of fall using the bright, stark imagery that on-camera flash photography is known for. Instead of softening the colors by shooting wide shots of forests and sunsets, we take a close, unblinking (mildly depressing) look at the season.
Highly dissimilar viewpoints don’t bother me — in fact, I love a good intellectually interesting debate. What does bother me, however, is those who passionately latch on to worldviews with which they are only superficially familiar. In arguments, these people’s only defense consists of sputtering emotionally charged strings of words whose meaning they haven’t investigated and logical fallacies of begging the question, burden of proof, irrelevant conclusion, and verbosity.
Show some respect for your viewpoint; take some time to formalize your arguments.
Lost my watch from Mykala a couple days ago. Kept thinking it would pop up some place I hadn’t looked or hadn’t thought of. I checked my gym bag 15 times, and went through my backpack at least that many. The bizarre thing was, the links on the watch make a very distinct sound when you move them — much like a muffled version of the “tink” produced when a bead falls down a rain stick. What I mean is, it’s a difficult sound to mistake for something else.
So, every time I moved my backpack, I’d hear something I could swear was the watch. I’d checked all the pockets, though! It simply wasn’t in them. At the end of work today, however, I found out the deep fold between the two parts of the bag had trapped the watch and hid it from view for days. Hurrah! It could have fallen out at any time, but it hadn’t. Now, I had a watch, and (most importantly), I didn’t have to tell Mykala I’d lost her gift to me.
In my mind (dull from 8 hours of work) the vague beginnings of a simile attempted to coalesce into a coherent comparison. However, the binary joys of completing another day of work and finding the timepiece overshadowed the effort. So, dear reader, I leave it to you to compare some moments in life with “something you can sometimes hear (and think is there) but can’t quite find.”
I’d like to visit Fraser Island someday. You see, it has these super ultra blue lakes that are kept free of just about any growing things as a result of their high pH level. (I learned that on The Savvy Traveller). Wikipedia continues about the lakes:
A popular tourist area is Lake McKenzie which is located inland from the small town of Eurong. It is a “perched” lake sitting on top of compact sand and vegetable matter 100 metres above sea level. Lake McKenzie has an area of 150 hectares and is just over five metres in depth. The beach sand of Lake McKenzie is nearly pure silica and it is possible to wash hair, teeth, jewelry, and exfoliate one’s skin. The lakes have very few nutrients and pH varies, though Sunscreen and soaps are a problem as a form of pollution.
Apparently, the Queensland area food can be darn good too - a mix of native meats/tastes and modern culinary techniques.
