Anyone going to see it. I'm conflicted.
Anyone going to see it. I'm conflicted.
If the freedom of speech is taken away
then dumb and silent we may be led,
like sheep to the slaughter.
George Washington (1732-1799) First President of the USA.
I'll likely wait for it to come to streaming. I'm fascinated with that period and decisions reached by individuals involved. If you ever get a chance read the C.P. Snow series: Strangers And Brothers. Library may have, I think some is out of print, but 6 books if memory serves. I especially liked, The New Men. Basically about those working at U of Chicago in development and success. Feelings of accomplishment, heavy dose of regret.
"The government is a child that has found their parents credit card, and spends knowing that they never have to reconcile the bill with their own money"-Shannon Churchill
If the freedom of speech is taken away
then dumb and silent we may be led,
like sheep to the slaughter.
George Washington (1732-1799) First President of the USA.
SL, just came upon this:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/j-rober...hare_permalink
J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Defense of Humanity
After helping invent the atomic bomb, the physicist spent decades thinking about how to preserve civilization from technological dangers, offering crucial lessons for the age of AI
From the moment the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945 until his death in 1967, J. Robert Oppenheimer was perhaps the most recognizable physicist on the planet. During World War II, Oppenheimer directed Los Alamos Laboratory, “Site Y” of the Manhattan Project, the successful American effort to build an atomic bomb. He went on to serve for almost 20 years as director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., home to some of the world’s leading scientists, including Albert Einstein.
In the popular imagination, Einstein came to represent unalloyed optimism about the capacity of human genius to uncover the secrets of the cosmos. Oppenheimer played a grimmer role, standing for the dangers of advancing science. After the successful test of the “Gadget,” as the first atomic bomb was called, he is said to have quoted the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Much of his subsequent career would be spent advising humanity how not to be annihilated by the powers of the atom he had conquered. The advice was not always well received: The Atomic Energy Commission stripped him of his security clearance in 1954, in part because of his advocacy for arms control. (The Department of Energy posthumously reversed that decision last year.)
In July, director Christopher Nolan’s biopic “Oppenheimer” will bring his story to theaters at a timely moment, when the world is once again worried that a new technology threatens the future of humanity. Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, including the explosive success of ChatGPT, have provoked attention to questions that were once the province of science fiction. Might artificial intelligence programs go rogue and enslave or eliminate humanity? Less apocalyptically, will AI take over our jobs, our decision making, our economies, our governments? How can we ensure that the new technologies work for rather than against the values and interests of humanity?
Oppenheimer sensed that humanity was at a technological turning point that might bring about its destruction.
To answer these questions, the most important part of Oppenheimer’s life isn’t his work on the atomic bomb but his less dramatic tenure running the Institute for Advanced Study. When Oppenheimer arrived as director in 1947, Life magazine published “The Thinkers,” a story about the Institute calling it “the most important building on earth.” That was hyperbole, but it is true that Oppenheimer joined a community of giants, many of whom shared the sense that humanity was at a technological turning point that might bring about its destruction.
Einstein, a professor at the Institute from 1933 until his death in 1955, dedicated much of his final decade to the political and ethical questions raised by the new physics of fission and fusion. Another faculty member who merits a biopic is the Hungarian immigrant John von Neumann, who worked on both the atomic bomb and its more powerful successor, the hydrogen bomb. After the war, he built the world’s first stored-program computer—work that started in the basement under Oppenheimer’s office.
Von Neumann, too, was deeply concerned about the inability of humanity to keep up with its own inventions. “What we are creating now,” he said to his wife Klári in 1945, “is a monster whose influence is going to change history, provided there is any history left.” Moving to the subject of future computing machines he became even more agitated, foreseeing disaster if “people” could not “keep pace with what they create.”
...
"The government is a child that has found their parents credit card, and spends knowing that they never have to reconcile the bill with their own money"-Shannon Churchill
Ill probably wait until it streams somewhere as well.
the stuff like this... new weapons creations, the spying, the secrecy, the politics, the business, the mafia, mindsets & the holocaust tend to interest me more than the battles of the WW2 era.
And this topic reminds me of 2 items that flesh out some things about the Manhattan Project .
History Channel: lost worlds secret cities of the a-bomb
talks about how they built complete cities that were secret and where the people who lived there & worked there had no clue what they were working on.
(BTW it's a point of reference when people say stuff like "somebody would have talked!")
--Many of the episodes from the "Lost Worlds" series it comes from are free on youtube but this one isn't.
---It's on amazon & apple TV though.
https://www.yidio.com/show/lost-worl...e-5/links.html
EDIT: it is on youtube but they've changed the name
This other i suspect some folks here will have a problem with, but the presenters make a very solid case for it.
Basically in the series of interviews below a university Scholar researching the "Ship munitions explosion" at Port Chicago California
(that happened during WW2 which killed hundreds of sailors loading munitions.) talks about running across Letters, Papers and FILM that point to the likelihood that Port Chicago California may have been the actual 1st test run of a small nuke.
Don't go and do your own research or start critical thinking though, that'd be bad.
FTR #605 Interview with Dean McLeod and Peter Vogel about Port Chicago
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-rec...-port-chicago/(Two 30-minute segments)
Conducted in August of 1999, this broadcast updates the investigation of the Port Chicago explosion. The bulk of the discussion is very similar to the topical content of FTR-129. This broadcast does contain several points of analysis not contained in FTR-129.
In this program, Mr. Vogel highlights the issue of residual radiation at the Port Chicago site. (Port Chicago is now part of the Concord Naval Weapons station.) Critics have maintained that Port Chicago could not have been a nuclear explosion, because there would be detectable radiation at the explosion site. Peter points out that this is incorrect. Within 10 years of a British test of a much larger weapon (also detonated in a marine environment), the background radiation levels had returned to normal. The British test was of a 25 kiloton weapon and Port Chicago yielded the equivalent of 600 tons of TNT.
Peter also discusses eyewitness testimony of injuries to sailors who survived the Port Chicago blast. Medical personnel who subsequently became acquainted with radiation burns voiced the opinion that the burns to Port Chicago survivors were, in fact, radiation burns. In this program, Peter includes two new elements in his research. Declassified documents indicate that the principals involved with the development of the Mark II (an early atomic bomb) forecast that it would be available by the fall of 1944. (Peter’s research indicates that the Port Chicago explosion, in July of ’44, was the test of the Mark II.) Recently, Peter filed a Freedom of Information Act request for access to the seven linear feet of documents about the Port Chicago explosion at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His request was denied and those documents are now classified. Bear in mind that these documents supposedly pertain to the explosion of a World War II ammunition ship. Why have they now been denied to the public? (Please note that, due to an interruption of the recording process due to technical difficulties, Mr. Emory neglected to include discussion of the Wilson condensation cloud that was apparently present at Port Chicago. One of the evidentiary points in Peter’s article, the presence of the cloud is discussed in FTR-129.) (See also FTR-129, as well as Miscellaneous Archive Show M‑23.) (Recorded on 8/1/99.)
Audio links
Part 1
https://emory.kfjc.org/archive/ftr/600_699/f-605a.mp3
Part 2
https://emory.kfjc.org/archive/ftr/600_699/f-605b.mp3
....
Similar info... the 1st time it aired.
XXIII. What Really Happened at Port Chicago?
Audio links
Part 1
https://emory.kfjc.org/archive/misc/m_23a.mp3
Part 2
http://emory.kfjc.org/archive/misc/m_23b.mp3
Part 3
http://emory.kfjc.org/archive/misc/m_23c.mp3
Last edited by revelarts; 07-20-2023 at 06:43 PM.
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. James Madison
Live as free people, yet without employing your freedom as a pretext for wickedness; but live at all times as servants of God. 1 Peter 2:16
"when socialism fails, blame capitalism and demand more socialism." - A friend
"You know the difference between libs and right-wingers? Libs STFU when evidence refutes their false beliefs." - Another friend
“Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.” - Paulo Coelho
That's a great question.
Why would they do the Tuskegee experiment and track men's illness and deaths from syphilis for decades while telling them they are being treated?
Why would they do MKUltra where the gov't used LSD and other mind altering drugs and experiments on soldiers, citizens & children?
Why would they in 1956 releases mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Ga and Avon Park, Fl. then Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials test victims for effects.
Why would three veterans groups seek class-action status for a lawsuit they filed in 2009 against the Defense Department, the CIA and the Army on behalf of thousands of soldiers who participated in research programs and left to suffer at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick?
Why would they do.... etc etc etc
It's a great question.
But it in no way implies that they didn't do it.
Last edited by revelarts; 07-21-2023 at 09:22 AM.
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. James Madison
Live as free people, yet without employing your freedom as a pretext for wickedness; but live at all times as servants of God. 1 Peter 2:16
"when socialism fails, blame capitalism and demand more socialism." - A friend
"You know the difference between libs and right-wingers? Libs STFU when evidence refutes their false beliefs." - Another friend
“Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.” - Paulo Coelho
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. James Madison
Live as free people, yet without employing your freedom as a pretext for wickedness; but live at all times as servants of God. 1 Peter 2:16
"when socialism fails, blame capitalism and demand more socialism." - A friend
"You know the difference between libs and right-wingers? Libs STFU when evidence refutes their false beliefs." - Another friend
“Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.” - Paulo Coelho