Although it is a matter for debate and speculation through the rather myopic lens of the Cold War and the policy of deterrence what the grounding motivations for the speech and the project were, US president Eisenhower’s 1953 address to the United Nations’ General Assembly on “Atoms for Peace” was a bold and defining departure.
This message, most likely worded to bring the antiseptic of daylight, more transparency and less secrecy that characterized how research and maintenance of stockpiles was conducted prior, to that “bucket of sunshine,” as Khrushchev called the bomb, aimed to promulgate nuclear power for peaceful purposes—energy, medical research, etc., and to assuage public fear that such destruction would not be visited on the Earth again, with the irreconcilable horrors of Japan still very raw and tensions escalating between the two superpowers. No longer state secrets because of this move for peaceful proliferation, the US knew better that state of players on the periphery and developing and nascent powers, with newly-acquired know-how under special tutelage, were able to develop generators, reactors and laboratories.
Until recently, this openness has helped mean that the founding members of the nuclear club have kept their munitions but very few have applied for membership, perhaps content with pursuing their own goals in regard to transitional power supplies and perhaps with the assurance that, in a pinch, they too could weaponize their stocks. Some argue that the underlying stratagem was to persuade NATO allies to shift their focus to developing and maintaining a nuclear arsenal, rather than more costly traditional armaments and standing armies and regard the policy of sharing technologies as having gravely backfired. I believe, rather, that this approach figuratively built in fail-safes and backdoors that was a greater instrument of restraint than mutually assured destruction. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle but well-crafted diplomacy and confidence seem much more enduring than dictates and fighting wars by proxy.
Sunday 14 October 2012
household atomics
catagories: ⚕️, ⚛️, ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐ท๐บ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, foreign policy, philosophy
Saturday 13 October 2012
verรฐlaun, iad duais, the prize, o prรฉmio, el premio, el premi, ar priz, le prix, de prijs, den prรคis, der prisen, premija, den prisen, i priset, palkinto, auhind, der preis, il premio, prรฆmium, il premju, lu premiu, w nagroda, a dรญj, cena, รงmimi, premiul, ฯฮฑ ฮฒฯฮฑฮฒฮตฮฏฮฑ, ะฟััะผัั
It is a great honour to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, along with 502 million fellow Europeans, and I believe in the congratulatory and admonishing spirit of the committee’s unanimous decision. Individuals surely take on the burden and potential of promoting harmony, too, and there are worthy and magnanimous individuals out there working in the public and struggling in the shadows to those ends, but awards en masse, neither slights for the other nominees nor anodyne and over-cautious, are not without precedent, like when the prize was given to Doctors without Borders (Mรฉdecins sans Frontiรจrs, รrzte ohne Grenzen) or Great Britain conferring the George Cross collectively to the people of Malta for gallantry during World War II.
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, foreign policy, language
Friday 12 October 2012
logograph or measuring box and hollyhocks
I don’t pretend to know anything about the subject, the distinct traditions of the Japanese ideas of heraldry and vexology are quite something to survey. Here is a collection of family crests, akin to coats-of-arms, which fall into geometric categories, like variations on hawks’ feathers, oaks, measuring boxes, plums, peonies, cranes, etc. Mouse over the image for a description. One can see that a few of these arms have found their way into the blazoning of the Western corporate world, used as logos by a certain banking enterprise, political party brands and monograms, a hardware manufacturer, and a few other as yet undiscovered ones. I like to think that the necessarily large and diverse marketing department that spearheaded these advertizing campaigns had some insight into their inspirations and there’s some allegory and symbolism behind the decisions. I’d like to think so anyway, although I often run up against a curiosity barrier when the matter of things gets too dense.
t9 or sui generis
Although not quite in contention as laureate material for its sometimes frustrating poetry, the chain of developments—from Pennsylvania 6-5000 to telephony for the hearing impaired to text-messaging—that led to predictive text, T9 technology, I think, deserves acknowledgement.
At first, I didn’t care to have my lines stepped on or my sentences completed when tapping out a little telegram, plus the fact that nimbleness of digits come with practice on any keyboard, but once I got more accustomed to the interface and being able to switch languages, I started to enjoy it, even appreciate it. Another interesting aspect is the strange word puzzles, poems by substitution that come out of the sequence of numbers, at first as broad suggestions and then narrowed down, like from gone, hone, home, hoof, goof, hood, to good. This transforming vocabulary do not quite make anagrams (Anagramme) but have a similar feel and I think the hidden relationships of neighbouring words that pop up are surprising and probably reveals something about the spacing and arrangement of the alphabet and the dimensions of language, as both disambiguations adapt.
catagories: language, technology and innovation
Thursday 11 October 2012
powerhouse or conundrum
There is political and business consensus that the Energie-Wende, Germany’s planned transition away from nuclear dependency and towards more ecologically sustainable energy sources, will demand sacrifice and see a dearer cost placed on utilities, probably a truer reflection of the impact our accustomed lifestyles have on the environment. The recently passed bundle of regulations championing renewables, das Erneuerbare Energie Gesetz (EEG), is expected to propagate an increase in electricity costs of up to two fold in the coming year, which will of course having ripples through out the marketplace, and not ending with the average 50 € annual increase per household. That does not seem like too great of a price to pay but it may continue to climb by the same percent or higher in the following years, and does not take into account other fuels and knock-on prices.
catagories: ⚛️, ๐ฉ๐ช, environment, labour, transportation
Wednesday 10 October 2012
tabula rasa oder pen and ink
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐, networking and blogging
swimlanes
catagories: America, graphic design, language, philosophy, technology and innovation
grammar of ornament
There are several colour plates of patchwork patterns typifying Turkish, Egyptian, Far Eastern and Mediterranean designs, as well as European work from different periods, all collected and projected through the lens of that era. Both the European site and its contributing resources are definitely worth a visit, and are sure to leave one inspired and searching for more.