ASFO 2023–04–15

The sleep of reason (it has been said) brings forth monsters. Whether that is the shutting down of nuclear power in Germany, or of public lending libraries in the United States of America, it is clear that those monsters are loose in our world. To oppose and overcome them requires being intellectually awake and alive.

A clipping from “Physics World”, 1989 January number, with the headline “50 Years of Fission : Exhibition destroyed”. Corresponded Richard Sietmann, in Berlin, describes how masked intruders broke into the Technical University on 2 December 1988, less than an hour before the official opening of an exhibit to commemorate the discovery of fission by Hahn and Strassman in 1938, and destroyed it, causing thens of thousands of marks in damage. The University cancelled the exhibition.
The item from “Physics World”, 1989 January, which I read during the show. The Institute of Physics (publishers of the magazine) were kind enough to furnish a copy of the opinion piece referred to, and it can be found under “Supplementary Shows” for 2023–04–29.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2023–04–18 Continuing Vignettes in Nuclear Medicine by Marshall Brucer, MD. №5, The Modes of Radioisotope Decay, An Explanation of a Language, which is quite difficult to read aloud owing to the extensive use of diagrams ; and a good bit of №6, The Modes of Radioisotope Decay, How Many Isotopes Are There?
  • 2023–04–21 Beginning with the “scientist’s prayer” from the novel Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, I finish Vignette №6, and almost all of №7, Lowell Erf and the New Cure for Leukaemia. As I so often do, I had to stop one paragraph short of the end.

Author: publius

Fools! I will destroy you all!!