That'll buff out

The USS Saratoga sinks due to damage from the 21 kiloton nuclear bomb test at Bikini Atoll

See, my Dad has this really great set of tools...

time to do the tell about sky captain

Sydney dust storm.

It turns out, this is the first thing to disappear from store shelves after a nuclear attack

Nuclear Duct Tape. Check out the reviews.

Speaking of bets

In a recent post about John P. Holdren's confirmation as Obama's science adviser, John Tierney links to this article about Julian Simon and Paul Erlich's famous bet about the future scarcity of natural resources. This topic keeps coming up with political arguments I've been having, so there it is for future reference. Here's a brief excerpt:

Betting on the Planet
By JOHN TIERNEY;
Published: December 2, 1990

In 1980 an ecologist and an economist chose a refreshingly unacademic way to resolve their differences. They bet $1,000. Specifically, the bet was over the future price of five metals, but at stake was much more -- a view of the planet's ultimate limits, a vision of humanity's destiny. It was a bet between the Cassandra and the Dr. Pangloss of our era.

They lead two intellectual schools -- sometimes called the Malthusians and the Cornucopians, sometimes simply the doomsters and the boomsters -- that use the latest in computer-generated graphs and foundation-generated funds to debate whether the world is getting better or going to the dogs. The argument has generally been as fruitless as it is old, since the two sides never seem to be looking at the same part of the world at the same time. Dr. Pangloss sees farm silos brimming with record harvests; Cassandra sees topsoil eroding and pesticide seeping into ground water. Dr. Pangloss sees people living longer; Cassandra sees rain forests being decimated. But in 1980 these opponents managed to agree on one way to chart and test the global future. They promised to abide by the results exactly 10 years later -- in October 1990 -- and to pay up out of their own pockets.

Long story short, Simon won the bet in 1990, and if it had been made again, he would have won again in 2000. And, for what it's worth, John Holdren was one of the scientists consulted by Ehrlich to pick out the scare resources.

Anyway, just about everyone else finds Erlich's Malthusian arguments convincing, and yet they are somehow always wrong. (YET, my political opponents are shouting) Ironically, Simon is a positive, happy-go-lucky Cassandra.

The apocalyptic impulse is deep rooted, probably because it is so egocentric. Our society is shallow and decadent, and so of course the arctic ice-caps will melt and send tidal waves roaring through Manhattan, where they'll chase Jake Gyllenhaal around. And it's not just the greens and the cults with funny hair cuts - consider the Terminator movies, where demonic robot gods throw us into an everlasting nuclear fire to punish us for our sins (of making them, I guess), or The Matrix, or The Lord of the Ring series - same deal, really.

The egocentric part is to think that my time, right now, must be the last age, as I am the pinnacle (or nadir, which is a lot cooler, a la that twit Oscar Wilde) of human existence. I think the universe is more sanguine.

Nucular

Nucular:

Nucular is an ad hoc spelling of an incorrect pronunciation of the word nuclear, representing the IPA: /ˈnjuːkjələr/ (NEW-cue-lurr) pronunciation of that word instead of the correct /ˈnjuːkliːɚ/ (NEW-klee-urr).

[...]


Steven Pinker has proposed a phonotactic explanation for the conversion of nuclear to nucular: the unusual and disfavored sequence [kli.ər] is gradually transformed to a more acceptable configuration via metathesis. However, Arnold Zwicky notes that [kli.ər] presents no difficulty for English speakers in words such as pricklier. He also regards the proposition of metathesis as unnecessary. Zwicky suggests a morphological origin, combining the slang nuke with the common sequence -cular (molecular, particular, etc.).[9] Supporting Zwicky's hypothesis, Geoffrey Nunberg quotes a government weapons specialist: "Oh, I only say 'nucular' when I'm talking about nukes."[10]

Terminator 2.1

Terminator 2 Sweded: Low Budgment Day

The Bomb, part 2

Gay Bomb? [def]

The Bomb

You can forget worrying about whether Iran or North Korea will get nuclear weapons, the real problem is that the British already have them: British Nukes Armed with a Key*. (h/t)

*They say bicycle lock key, but then report that it's only like a bicycle lock key, and I won't go along with that bit of sensationalism. Probably this is even more semantic, because a launch code is a key too, it's just that it's a key design that makes the Dr. Strangelove scenario less likely. But how reassuring is that when the half the people with the launch codes are probably drinking gin out of tea cups, and the other half are jumping up and down about another 1-1 tie football game?

Missle Alert

Fun with Google Maps: Cruise Missile Flying over Utah.

The EPA Didn't Exist Then

Disposal of Sodium in a lake (hint: Kablamo!). Ah yes, it was a different time then. On the other hand, we have new things to raise (and singe) our eyebrows: If programmers built planes...

New Desktop

Peacekeeper.

Current events

Because of its small yield, I suspect that the Norks purported nuclear explosion wasn't nuclear. I mean, its kinda hard to fake a 20 megaton explosion, but you can think about putting a kiloton of tnt in hole. It would make for a much cheaper negotiating chip. I've been told, though, that you can tell the difference between nuclear and conventional explosions from the seismic data, which is how they separate massive explosions from mining operations from underground tests. For what it's worth, I still think the US should get out of South Korea asap.

"HEAVY-METAL NUCLEAR POWER"

By leaps and bounds, that's been the best seminar title this year. Is your curiosity peeked? Read on:

Could an unconventional coolant enable reactors to burn radioactive waste while producing electric power? An overview of the collaborative research on lead-cooled reactors between Idaho National Laboratory and MIT over the past five years will explore this concept.

But what I want to know is if there is any chance that Stonehenge will make an appearence, and if so, whether it will be in danger of being trampled by a dwarf. Also, this week's runner up seminar title: "On the Ignition of Fuel Beds by Firebrands."

link link link, and, uh, link.

Pointer via Dr Frank, Anatacia bt#'s, with, as he points out, extra-hillarious comments (hypothetical note to commentors - stop proving people's points for them by existing).

Traditionalism vs modernism, aka, the comfy chair strikes back (no one was suspecting), by Ginny on Chicago Boyz.

Also via Chicago Boyz, comes this link to a post arguing that, awful as it was, dropping nuclear bombs on Japan to end WW2 was the right thing to do because of the extensive defensive preparations they had made to draw out the war and develop leverage for surrender negotiations. Often times there are choices between bad and worse, and when they are made, the revisionists pretend there were consequence free choices.

For the curious, Charles Krauthammer seems to be responding to Christopher Hitchens, or vice versa or something. I can't be bothered with chronology. Also, somewhat inappropriately, Kraut,uh,Hammer just struck me as an ammusing name (ignore Beversluis for the moment, please). Yo, you set the Bavarians up and he knocks them down! Somewhere there should be an Yanksmasher or Frogpounder for parity purposes. (Britkicker?) (Etc)

Also, Drawn! is pretty good, but if you need me to point you towards Instapundit links, you're what? Old? Normal?

ah hrmm smartness

It's all about the contrasts - sweet and sour meets dumb and clever.

Browsing Arts and Letters:

Continental Drift by D.D. GUTTENPLAN

If you're gonna have political opponents, they may as well be smart and articulate, and they should leaven their writing with humor and introspection. How often can you say that about The Nation? Hardly ever, but this is pretty good; even if I think the conclusions are wrong. However, as long as the left refuses to consider that the motivations of Republicans and Neo-Conservatives may possibly just might in some tiny way it could perhaps be true in rare instances where they circumstantially extend beyond greed/wrath/lust/avarice/pride/sloth/envy and in fact have a moral underpinning based on many things considered classically libearal, well, they are gonna wonder in the wilderness. 40 years ain't got nothing on where they are going, cause you don't come back from that.

Do you ever wonder if there was another tribe that got led out in the desert and messed up so bad that they never came back? That would make for an interesting old testament.

Item the Second: The three or four newspapers articles I read when Bobby Fischer was released from Japan and flew to Iceland were fawningly concillatory and never mentioned any of this. Rot in hell you fucking bastard - and you will. [pretend I sound really erudite when I say that - cause human learning is always vulgar] Anyway, their coverage of this is yet another reason to shit on the MSM.

Ahem, Happy Easter.

Btw, we're going nuclear. [nue-kle-er]

There's more there, but you can dig it out yourself.

100 Suns

My friend Nathaniel first showed me Michael Light's 100 Suns, a collection of one hundred archival photos of nuclear test explosions. To say I'm a fan of nuclear explosions understates things, by, oh... a hundred kilotons?

So, I immediately ordered my own copy. There's a variety of shots, including fetching wide angle photographs of the mushroom clouds. I'm more of an intimate close-up sort of guy, and two images in particular stand out; The first is an ultrafast shot taken by Edgerton of the expanding fireball a very short time after detonation. The fireball is frozen in place at a diameter of 10 m or so, and the aluminum tower is still visible beneath the fireball. The protruding tower struts glowing white hot for a few feet as thermal conductance beats the tortoise like explosion. The fireball itself resembles a jellyfish at this point and is simply fascinating. The second picture that made an impression is a radiation damaged picture of troops sitting in a trench several kilometers from the explosion. At that point the predictions for the yield were imprecise, and this explosion was several times larger than they anticipated. The soldiers were much too close, as the film damage hauntingly records.

In short, highly recommended, especially for ~$20 on the gray market.