It's 1984...

On Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:04:41 +0200, Phil Launchbury

[...]

Yebbut... without a mobile signal, how do you download new books when
the crate runs out?

Required holiday amenities include: hot running water, electricity,
mobile coverage. (In that order )

 

Carry them on an SD card of course! Does require some forethought
though..

And just occasionally I like reading dead-tree rater than e-ink.

Two out of three ain't bad - although I'd put electricity first (hard
to power my Macbook (where all my music is) on thin air!)

Phil

 

It was more pleading than insisting.

I can eat and read at the same time you know.

Well yes, but it's still a damn good book.

 

aaarrrgghhh - now that, I thought was awful.

 

Dresden, I'd agree that plain and simple it was a War Crime.

Hiroshima was a technology demo.

Nagasaki was taking the piss.

 

it's sort of an intellectual reverse-Borat.

 

hahahahah

 

hey, like GEB then ;-)

 

What a load of bollocks

Nah, simple refining job

Now *that* was a technology demo! Physics and chemistry.
For the Yanks to be able to drop that in Aug '45 when Fermi only
demonstrated Chain Reaction in '42 is astonishing

 

Yes, IIRC without google, Hiroshima was a Uranium weapon and Nagasaki
Plutonium.

 

I think the prequel was maybe worse, I borrowed both and I'd sooner
read Harry Potter given the choice again.

 

Hiroshima was a Uranium bomb. Refine enough yellow cake and you will
eventually have enough U-235. Diffusion enrichment in this case.

Nagasaki was a Pu-239 bomb. Requiring a Breeder Reactor and subsequent
chemical processing to remove the Pu from the Uranium fuel. Something of
a technological Tour de force in the day. Also a lot more complex to
detonate

Which is not to decry the development of the diffusion enrichment
process!

The Hiroshima bomb was dropped without even testing the design first!
The Pu device was tested in the Alamagordo explosion, just a month
before.

 

yes.

 

why was it necessary, at that stage of the war, to demonstrate "shock
and awe" (to use the modern parlance) by killing so many civilians?

 

But you said it was a War Crime. That's something quite specific and
would have to be judged by the legal framework *of the day*
Even the Hague Convention against "launching of projectiles and
explosives from balloons, or by other new methods of a similar nature"
had expired by 1905 ;o)

I'd agree it was quite naughty though.

 

"as per usual"

I don't comment on fringe literature or music after all.

 

darsy posted:

The Japanese wartime mentality was worlds apart from ours (some might
say it still is). Practically the entire civilian population was, both
through propaganda and culture, ready and willing to fight to the
death against an Allied invasion (until the A-bombs, thought to be the
only way to achieve surrender) by any means necessary; use of the
Bombs was decided upon as a quick, decisive action endangering as few
Allied (i.e. American) personnel as possible. If the Third Reich
hadn't fallen when it did I believe Berlin was considered as a
possible target. I'm not attempting to excuse it, merely repeating
what I learned at school.