Comments on On An Overgrown Path: The Winter's Tale

Good to see the US's Department of Defence Iraq ce...

2006-01-10T11:14:00.000Z

Good to see the US's Department of Defence Iraq centre for military communications arriving at this article this morning from a Google search for Missing bomb in Thule, Greenland, hope On An Overgrown Path helps them find it.

Here is the search string ...

host199-114.iraq.centcom.mil (Dod Network Information Center)
Virginia, Mechanicsville, United States, 0 returning visits
Date Time WebPage
10th January 2006 10:24:14 theovergrownpath.blogspot.com/2006/01/winters-tale.html
www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=THE MISSING BOMB AT THULE GREENLAND&btnG=Search

Thx again Alex. I've contacted the publishers of 1...

2006-01-08T15:53:00.000Z

Thx again Alex. I've contacted the publishers of 109 East Palace, Simon & Schuster NY, to tell them that some of the facts in the book are being queried.

I'll post any reply I receive.

According to Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, authors ...

2006-01-06T03:51:00.000Z

According to Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, authors of the big recent Oppenheimer biography, the "destroyer of worlds" quotation didn't appear in any eyewitness accounts of the test. It began to crop up in interviews with Oppenheimer starting in 1948; he delivered the definitive version on a 1965 NBC documentary. There he didn't claim to have uttered the words, only thought them. I'm not sure where Jennet Conant derived her version, but Priscilla Greene wasn't present at the test; no women were allowed on the site. I think it's important to emphasize that at the time of the test Oppenheimer had no critical distance on what he had helped unleash. That came later.

... and of course the media is currently full of I...

2006-01-05T16:44:00.000Z

... and of course the media is currently full of Iran's nuclear ambitions.

It is good to start the new year in remembrance of...

2006-01-05T15:45:00.000Z

It is good to start the new year in remembrance of the forthcoming 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophy - just now when politicians and businessmen start to promote the "Renaissance" of Nuclear Power Plants.
Who remembers the days of the beginning of May 1986 when the radioactive cloud approached all European countries and we all became from one day to another more or less radioactive? Only if you read newspapers of theses days you can feel how deep the shock was. Childrens playgrounds were closed, it was forbidden to drink fresh milk, garden vegatable had to be seperated, pregnant women were full of fear, not knowing what will happen with their baby - and TV-news showed us pictures from the borders where travelers and cars coming from eastern Europe had to be decontaminated.

And who is thinking about the hundreds of thousands people who had to leave their homes, houses and gardens for ever - and the app. 800.000 young men and women who where involved as life-saving helpers. How many of them are suffering of low- or highdose radiation?
How many of them are still alive?

Thanks Alex, appreciated. I based my account on th...

2006-01-04T20:27:00.000Z

Thanks Alex, appreciated.

I based my account on the following section (P308) from Jennet Conant's recently published book 109 East Palace which I reviewed in my article The radiance of a thousand suns.

Oppenheimer walked out of the shelter and stood on the sand. Gazing out at the twisted column of smoke, he solemnly quoted a line from sacred Hindu writings that his assistant, Priscilla Greene, had no doubt he had prepared in advance for the occasion.

Excellent post, Pliable. But note that there is no...

2006-01-04T19:40:00.000Z

Excellent post, Pliable. But note that there is no record of Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita at the Trinity Test. Several years after the event he claimed to have thought of those lines after the bomb went off, but not to have spoken them aloud. Jack Hubbard's diary entry about the test has him saying, “My faith in the human mind is somewhat restored.”

If you wish to understand more about how American ...

2006-01-04T18:36:00.000Z

If you wish to understand more about how American nuclear plants operate, and what went wrong at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, see "Rad Decision", the first insider novel of nuclear power. This new techno-thriller, written by a longtime nuclear engineer, is available at no cost on the web at RadDecision.blogspot.com.

"I'd like to see Rad Decision widely read." - Stewart Brand, founder, The Whole Earth Catalog.