Month: June 2024

“Slide Rule : The Autobiography of an Engineer”

The novelist Nevil Shute was once known as NS Norway, pilot, aeronautical engineer, and for a while a principal of the company that made the fastest aeroplanes in the world, known ironically as Airspeed Limited. His autobiography is well written and interests me a great deal, and the section on his work on the R.100 continues the airship theme from My Zeppelins and My Polar Flights.

Recordings

  • 2024–06–25 The first chapter starts south of Melbourne, Victoria, in the early 1950s, and then flashes back to the author’s youth in London, where he skipped school to visit the South Kensington Science Museum.

ASFO 2024–06–22

Must nuclear projects always take longer and cost more? Ontario’s Darlington refurbishment says “no”, and I venture to suggest that this should be the expected result. Also, a listener comment elicits a digression into the problem (if it is one) of weapons proliferation and the plutonium economy ; a reminder that Famine is the harshest of teachers, and the lessons of ecology have been learnt primarily at her hand ; and I address a misconception about grid frequency control, and wonder about on–line enlightenment.

Sounds of Synergy – 2024/06/19

Listen in the archives

Tracklist:

  • Kill The Noise feat. AWOLNATION – All In My Head (Darren Styles & Gammer Remix)
  • Eliminate, Flux Pavilion, Meesh – Dawn
  • nanobii – Twilight
  • aran – GRiDGALAXY (Nhato Remix)
  • t+pazolite, RoughSketch – A Showcage
  • IMANU – Haunt My Mind
  • Macky Gee – Tour
  • L Nix – Hot Sh!t
  • False Noise – Collapse Theme
  • G Jones, Eprom – Daemon Veil
  • Frums – dimensionalize nervous breakdown
  • Amethys & Arzest – Till The Sunrise
  • Noizenecio feat. MC Dahl Headland – Overload

ASFO 2024–06–15

Despite delays in the mails, we have Mail call! Also, progress with one of my many “Man and Atom” information efforts — remembering Anita Gale of the National Space Society and Ed Stone of JPL (yes, Voyager has now outlived its Chief Scientist) — Islets of Langerhans! — and a meditation on what we are as human beings, and the value of considering that very question, prompted by another instance of Big Business resembling a mental illness.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2024–06–18 After some reading of bits I am composing for a second issue of blast, I begin reading A Second Nuclear Era : Prospects and Perspectives by Alvin Weinberg, from The Nuclear Chain Reaction — Forty Years Later (RG Sachs, ed), the Proceedings of a University of Chicago symposium commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the first controlled, self–sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
  • 2024–06–21 Despite interspersing my copious commentary, I succeed in finishing A Second Nuclear Era just short of the end of the hour.

Intergalactic Wasabi Mix – Ep 1067 – 2024/06/09

Tracklist:

Intergalactic Wasabi Mix – Ep 1066 – 2024/06/08

Tracklist:

Intergalactic Wasabi Mix – Ep 1065 – 2024/06/02

Tracklist:

Objects In Mirrors Episode 17 (2024-06-14)

Archive Download

  • Françoise Hardy – Voilà
  • Camera Obscura – French Navy
  • Juan Garcia Esquivel – Mucha Muchacha
  • Brigitte Bardot – Tu veux ou tu veux pas
  • Chicano Batman – Cycles of Existential Rhyme
  • Add N to (X) – Plug Me In
  • Antibalas – Dirty Money
  • Thievery Corporation – Un Simple Histoire
  • Broken Social Scene – Looks Just Like the Sun
  • Stereolab – Ping Pong
  • Lykke Li – I Follow Rivers
  • Amadou & Mariam – Sénégal Fast Food
  • Astrud Gilberto – Água de Beber
  • Broadcast – Come On Let’s Go
  • Rosalía – Malamente
  • Saint Etienne – Nothing Can Stop Us