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Arsenals of Folly, Richard Rhodes (ISBN 978-0-375-71394-1, Vintage Books)
The third book in the series on atomic weapons after ‘The making of the atomic bomb’ and ‘Dark Sun’. Chronologically it also covers the period after these 2 books and covers the nuclear arms race and the negotiations between Gorbatchev and Reagan that finally lead to several treaties that finally lead to a reduction in nuclear weapons. Compared to ‘Dark Sun’ this book had a more engaging story arc in my opinion and because it partly deals with more recent history after I was born it has a more direct link to personal experience. The book begins with the Chernobyl…
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The noble lie
‘God has created three kinds of men, made respectively of gold: the rulers, silver: the soldiers, and base metals: the common man .‘― Plato
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Platonic Misogeny
‘Those of the men first created who led a life of cowardice and injustice were suitably reborn as women in the second generation, and this is why it was at this particular juncture that the gods contrived the lust for copulation.‘― Plato
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The Mystique of Mathematical Formulae
‘One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulae have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than was originally put into them.‘― Heinrich Herz
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Tribute to Talk Talk Concert
This week we went to a Talk Talk tribute concert called ‘In the SPIRIT of TALK TALK‘ by a few Belgian musicians in 30cc in Leuven. Stefanie Callebaut, Lennert Coorevits, Ruben Block, Isolde Lasoen, Ewen Vernal, Geoffrey Burton, Joachim Badenhorst and David Poltrock played the iconic Talk Talk album Spirit of Eden, followed by a number of the greatest Talk Talk hits like Life’s what you make it and It’s my life. I had not listened to Spirit of Eden before and only knew the Talk Talk hits so this concert was a surprise for me. I knew most of the musicians and this was the…
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Snobbery
‘That Plato’s republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history.‘― Bertrand Russell
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Powershell or Nickel & Dimed
‘Your choice is Learn Powershell, or Would you like fries with that ?‘― Don Gannon-Jones
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A House of Dynamite
Watched this movie on Netflix after having read about it in the paper. In the movie a single unattributed nuclear missile is launched at the US. The whole movie tells the story what happens in the 20 minutes between launch detection and impact. It is a good thriller for the first 40 minutes at least. After that the same events are repeated from a different perspective so you know what is coming. Although this structure removes the suspense after the first 40 minutes it helps to paint the complexity of the situation. I give it a 7.5, mainly because of…
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The Road From Los Alamos, Hans Bethe (ISBN 978-0883187074, American Institute of Physics)
I bought this book after reading the making of the atomic bomb. And then, as usual it ended up sitting on a shelf for a long time. After recently having read Dark Sun I decided it was time to get this book from Hans Bethe behind me. It was actually better than I expected and I found out a few things about the involvement of Hans Bethe in nuclear weapons research after Los Alamos. Despite coming back to work on the hydrogen bomb ‘because it had to be done’, Bethe also wrote numerous essays in advocating nuclear arms control. These…
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The Auk adventure continues
A few weeks ago the first cherry tomatoes started to appear. Now there are more and bigger ones on the plant but all are still very green. Also, my other 2 plants are starting to bear fruit although it is too early to tell with certainty which one is the pepper plant and which one the chilli pepper plant. We are all eager to finally be able to tast the tomatoes, peppers and chillis but likely it will take another month at least before we reach that point. The tomato plant is a bit of a giant relative to the…
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