More Dots Connecting

Yes, I literally get my history from bars sometimes.

I was at Mulligan's tonight, with Patrick.  The beautiful and uber-competent Diana was behind the bar (someone I know through Steve) and poured my Guinness. 

Patrick was smoking outside, despite the 90F degree weather, and we were joined by a young woman, training to be a public interest lawyer, who wanted to share about the USS Indianapolis.

I listened with fascination as she and Patrick compared notes.

This ship was somewhat in the black ops category on that particular mission, delivering components of the atomic bomb intended for detonation over Hiroshima.

August Sixth is coming right up, and this morning at Bread and Ink I was yakking with mom about upcoming ceremonies.  We think of August Sixth as Disarmament Day.  That may seem parochial to some readers.

Coming back from its mission, said ship was torpedoed and sunk quickly.  You can read about the worst shark attack in recorded history on-line.

I'd left my camera at Patrick's, where I'd visited for a company all-hands (video patch in to Sebastopol).  We went back for it from Mulligans, then hopped a bus to Lucky Lab.  Another co-worker, Paul, expectantly waiting for us, learned of our recent adventures and conversations over a pitcher of Super Dog IPA (one of my favorites, right up there with Hawthorne Best Bitter).

Thursday is game night at Lucky Lab, meaning board games are in evidence everywhere.  As a World Game player, I'd cop to being into gaming (game playing).  We just didn't happen to have a board.

Earlier I was outlining a role playing game in computer circles for mom, using the analogy of Pragmatic versus Evangelical Friends (Quakers) the latter being more into Theology as a discipline, which should stand for "any orthodoxy".

We also talked about Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.  Mom sees Noam is a good role model for a long haul activist, which she is too.  They're actually both 86.  Zinn lived a pretty long time too, 87 years.

The more orthodox computer scientists treasure the theoretical purity of Functional Programming languages, of which the LISP family is a model.  When MIT switched to Python for pragmatic reasons, some theologians felt that as a betrayal and sell-out to the Object Oriented camp, where state is more mutable and the code arguably more pragmatic.

Speaking of mutable states, when we got to Lucky Lab, board games all around us, I said one way of telling history is that in using an atom bomb over two cities, the US actually lost WW2.  Only losers use nukes.  The Nazis had wanted to be an uber-power (Third Reich).  Was a superpower all that different?  Einstein later said had he anticipated what the monkey-brains would do with the new physics, he'd have become a watchmaker.  The real USA fights back, is anti-nuke weapon, same as Iran.

Of course that's not the accepted narrative, and I footnoted that my world view was influenced by what we might call a "post-nationalist memeplex" citing Grunch of Giants (by a US Medal of Freedom winner), meaning I had an easier time with "bent" history (another form of science fiction).

Our public interest lawyer in training, at Mulligan's, was not one of those "motivated by money" as many want ads say they want on Wall Street (still true?).  Financial analysts (aka "quants") can get religious too, about their craft.

We talked about age a lot with the young woman (Patrick and I are both in our fifties) and a Louis C.K. segment on that.  Then our discussion veered off into cannibalism and the original true story behind Moby Dick.

:: patrick @ work / all-hands July 30 ::

Never Again

Hiroshima Day (August 6)

Also known as Disarmament Day in this neck of the woods.

Except this year we're having our commemoration ceremony, organized by Oregon PSR, on August 9th.

Nagasaki Day.

Apropos as the Hanford site, still the site of a reactor, was where that second bomb was assembled

We learned that only recently, my generation never having been consulted about any of these decisions.

Odds & Ends

Plans for an upcoming gathering of Willamette Quarterly Friends are coming together, with a lively lineup of talk show hosts. We might get more history of Beanites worked in, depending on interest level.

I'd told the barista I'd buy some of the art in this coffee shop if netting a windfall, wanting a witness, told Trevor too, exactly which one.

I may not have time to post much on August 6th itself, given plans to wolf sushi, but check out these pix of contemporary Hiroshima, emailed by an old buckynaut.


Also, I'm pleased the blogosphere is keeping the Britney Spears meme alive in a science-minded context. She's right up there with Madonna as a cultural icon, blocking public high schooler access to either warranting criminal charges one would hope.

On the calendar: a casino we know will be hosting an open house with all the slots free (no money down, just testing new equipment): a family-friendly event we're hoping to attend.

Contra Insanity

Disarmament Degree Program?

Having toured the Linus and Ava Helen Pauling Special Collection, then regrouped to discuss strategy towards creating a less morbid culture, our grand finale for the evening was to hear Hideko Tamura Snider talking about what it takes to overcome being atom bombed.  She was ten years old, in Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945.

OSU has no special track for Disarmament Specialists that I know about, however the auditorium at La Salle, was filled to capacity (this was the smaller auditorium, seating 200-250).  Some of us stood around the edges or sat on the floor (that's what I did, having gotten there a bit late with Carol -- who got close to the front row, but sans hearing device).

Hideko's slant was to encourage her fellow humans with assurances that each one of us is endowed with the capacity to overcome extreme discouragement and disappointment of the type she endured.  She's concerned that postmortems of atomic warfare neglect the psychological aspects in favor of the easier to understand physical aspects.

Witnessing the intense suffering of others without being able to assist is one of those traumatizing experiences.  Her own sense of abandonment was intense, as an only child who had lost her mother as the world turned nightmarish.

Her father, also a survivor, and in the Japanese military at the time, was placed on cleanup duty (she found out later).  Whereas they piled the bodies high along the river for cremation, her dad was sensitive to Western culture, specifically impressionist painting (soldiering was never his preference, only his duty), so he insisted the charred remains of US POWs killed by the bomb be buried instead.

In Hideko's case, her resilience traces to deep curiosity, a desire to fit the puzzle pieces together and figure out what happened.  She would read incessantly, including existentialist authors, i.e. those who deal with the human condition in some profound way.  This ability to deeply process is, in Hideko's view, part of the human design, which is both flawed and wonderful.

The mostly college age audience was quite engaged.  Her delivery, though going over stories she'd told in public a thousand times (figuratively), was full of spontaneity and wisdom.  She alluded to drugs and drug taking, suicidal ideation, the importance of friends.  These were themes to which many in her audience could easily relate.

Freeman Dyson in Portland

Freeman Dyson came across as both relaxed and sagacious tonight. He shared a lot of history, making important points about how to make the world safer and stronger. I found it refreshing to hear such non-apocalyptic thinking for a change.

Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr. received quite a bit of appreciation for their accomplishments in this regard.

Nixon, persuaded by Kissinger who knew this guy from Harvard whose name I now forget, got biological weapons decommissioned and off the table.

Reagan and Gorbachev got very close to agreeing to eliminate nukes, even though their advisors misguidedly talked them out of it.

Bush Sr. cut the number of theater nukes dramatically by removing them from surface ships and from the army.

That one story people tell, about nukes having been effective in ending WWII, is really not how it went, according to Dyson's best guess based on a good look at the scholarship.

The emperor was following his venerated grandfather's response in 1895, to a Euro-Russian demand to quit China. Now the Russians were invading again and it was time to surrender. The nukings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not in themselves trigger any high level meetings.

Dyson thinks nukes are both morally indefensible and militarily nothing more than a headache, a liability, regardless of who has them or why.

The real challenge and focus should be dropping their numbers among the haves, who have tens of thousands of such beasts, not on Iran so much, or North Korea.

These latter foci are more sideshow distractions, ways of deliberately diverting attention from the real dangers, postponing any real reforms.

Having Kissinger, Nunn and others taking an anti-nuke position today (the current reality), could signal it's time to get it done.

This Portland audience seemed quite on board with that analysis. This Freeman guy makes plenty of sense to us.

The balance of his talk was about bio-tech, somewhat distinct from nano-tech. He thinks bio-tech might go the way of computing, in starting out expensive and restrictive, then becoming more accessible and ubiquitous. Disruptive maybe, but on balance an OK development?

I was glad to have my mother Carol with us tonight. At the dinner, she asked if it were true that pouring molasses on nukes was a fast way to decommission them. Freeman agreed there might be something to this way of thinking. Mom also enjoyed talking to Bruce Adams.

My thanks to Terry, Don, Glenn. Leslie, missed seeing you. Aldona, good talking. Good seeing Joe Arnold, hearing his question about quantum mechanics. Lots of chuckles about string theory, which might yet end up important someday.

:: Glenn and Carol (click for Photostream) ::

Hiroshima Day

Portlanders traditionally gather on August 6th (mas o men0) to renew their commitment to fight against those who'd bring nuclear weapons into reality. Whether used or not, it's the intent behind them that exudes low living standards and foments mental squalor.

Soulless zombie wombat corporations (only fictitiously human) feed on those still living, sapping their strength and intelligence, perpetuating obsolete and irrelevant reflex-conditioning (jerky puppets, "Pinocchio syndrome").

I was doing BBQ this evening, on Kim & Jimmy's new rig (I helped them assemble it), but first drove Carol (Mom) to the event, at Waterfront Park, and got a full report afterwards (from Maureen as well).

Apparently Bucky Fuller's idea of "final exam time" was used to frame the main speaker's speech (Maureen: "he's a medical doctor"). Several hundred people turned out. The City forgot to turn off its sprinkler system, which came on towards the end of the event, but spirits were not dampened thereby, thanks to taiko drummers and company.

I've been on the phone with brother Sam this morning. Apparently Bud is willing to help back our bizmo concept from his HQS in Florida. Also, friend Kathleen sent this helpful picture. We're definitely cookin' with gas.

Also in celebration of our livingry-based global culture, I bought a used 60 gig iPod complete with iDog and extra speakers on eBay (shipper in Indiana). August 6 is a time to think ahead to a promising future, as well as to celebrate our escape from the wrong thinking of the past.

We also watched the pilot of The 4400 (on loan from Elizabeth) and some Popeye cartoons from the mid 1950s, including Parlez Vous Woo (speaking of wrong thinking see pg. 111 of Todd Schorr's Dreamland, Last Gasp Press, ISBN 0-86719-589-4).

Blaming Castro

I wonder if anyone else'll pick up on this remark by CBS News National Correspondent Byron Pitts last night: "and by shipping Russian missiles to Cuba in 1962, Castro took the world closer to nuclear war than it's ever been."

So it's not a nuclear war if only other countries get it in the neck? This close to the anniversary of the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think we should cop to the fact that WWII went nuclear.

I'm not surprised Israeli military spokesmen keep sounding these little brother notes, trying to act so shockingly and awesomely brutal, just like their big brother king of the kill.

It's human nature to seek the admiration of role models.

Later that same night, I caught part of 48 Hours (which I don't usually): was Marilyn Monroe murdered because of her intimate and politically sensitive relationships with the Kennedy brothers?

That would seem far-fetched. I don't believe it. Neither did the principal journalist.

"Murder Inc." had much more on its mind than maid Marilyn back then (Fidel Castro for example -- and Diem). The Kennedys could be protected in other, more benign ways (until it became their turn -- and here I do believe in a cover up, per Prouty).