Author: publius

Fools! I will destroy you all!!

ASFO 2024–12–14

Pressure vessels occupy a great deal of my attention today, but gosh darn it! They’re important. Also postage stamps. Lots and lots of postage stamps. Give me an excuse to use them, won’t you? And a couple of comments about politics and current affairs, which I can’t totally ignore.

ASFO 2024–12–07

The last third of this broadcast is a jeremiad against the schooling system in the United States, including a recommendation of a book with which I do not necessarily wholly agree, but which I find usefully thought–provoking : How to Survive in Your Native Land, James Herndon, 1971. We get there by way of some updates on my activities, reflections on democracy in various countries, and a consideration of the “precautionary principle”. (More discussion of the gold standard will have to wait.)

Supplementary Shows

  • 2024–12–10 “We can say that world society through overspecialization has reached the brink of extinction.” More of The Music of the New Life from Utopia or Oblivion : the Prospects for Humanity by R Buckminster Fuller.
  • 2024–12–13 “What we mean by understanding is : apprehending and comprehending all the interrelationships of experiences.” Yet more of The Music of the New Life from Utopia or Oblivion : the Prospects for Humanity by R Buckminster Fuller.

ASFO 2024–11–30

Heraclitus tells us that we can never step in the same river twice, so although you are surrounded by voices proclaiming that that the world is coming to an end, do not be deceived. The inevitability of change means that it is every bit as just, or unjust, to speak of beginnings as of endings. It is, perhaps, only natural to be afraid of the colossal opportunities that are even now opening out before us, but if we seek to shun them, we will only get changes we like less. Also, a bit more about the gold standard (hopefully I will finish with that next week) and erroneous ideas about “intrinsic value”.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2024–12–03 “Man is the great antientropy of universe” — Utopia or Oblivion : the Prospects for Humanity by R Buckminster Fuller (who else?), Introduction (Robert W Marks), A Citizen of the 21st Century Looks Back, and the beginning of The Music of the New Life.
  • 2024–12–06 “In is individually unique as a direction toward the center of any one system — but out is common to them all.” More of Utopia or Oblivion : the Prospects for Humanity by R Buckminster Fuller, continuing with The Music of the New Life, and a discussion of the importance of flush toilets over any other educational facility.

ASFO 2024–11–23

Mail call! Did Russia actually launch an ICBM with no warhead against Ukraine? The Steppenwolf Plan for disarmament. And, more of the story of the gold standard : Isaac Newton enters the picture.

Supplementary Show

  • 2024–11–26 The Treaty of Peace between the United States and Germany, and a list of other treaties arising from the Paris Conference of 1919.
  • 2024–11–29 “German Observations on the Conditions of Peace” (with a liberal helping of well–deserved sarcasm) and the Allied reply.

ASFO 2024–11–16

In which my motivations for reading selections from an annotated version of the Treaty of Versailles are, perhaps, revealed, and the vexed question of German War Guilt is examined ; along with an attempt to introduce some of the basic concepts of banking and currency, with the intention of eventually explaining the various things that might be meant by a person referring to “the gold standard”, and the contexts in which these meanings arise.

Supplementary Show

  • 2024–11–19 More from the annotated Treaty of Versailles, and specifically the Covenant of the League of Nations.
  • 2024–11–22 After a bit of a glitch at the start, mostly the Preface and first section, “The Paris Peace Conference, 1919”, of The Treaty of Versailles and After.

ASFO 2024–11–09

What is good in life? (wrong answers only) — oaths of fealty, and the question of how far self–interest actually predicts human motivations — immigration, and what it has to do with Don Quixote. And the Preamble and Chapter I of the Charter of the United Nations, for those requiring a refresher.

Supplementary Show

  • 2024–11–12 Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen ; the Preamble and Chapter I of the Charter of the United Nations ; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ; and some material from a US Government publication entitled The Treaty of Versailles and After, including the resolution of 18 April 1946 for the dissolution of the League of Nations.
  • 2024–11–15 More from the annotated Treaty of Versailles, specifically the Covenant of the League of Nations.

ASFO 2024–11–02

Mail Call! A plea to my fellow Americans — “Iowasolation” — a reassurance for those who hope to escape to the last place uncontaminated by capitalism — and the problem of argot and specialized symbology.

Supplementary Show

  • 2024–11–05 Three editorials from Analog magazine — from Ben Bova, who strove to carry on the provoking and insightful tradition of John W Campbell. “The Mystic West” on the supposed conflict between the empirical sciences and the humanities, and the role and character of mythology in the modern world (1972 June) ; “Life Cycles” on astrobiology and urban renewal (1972 May) ; and “Man in Space”, 1972 December, which I did not quite get to the end of.
  • 2024–11–08 What Supports Apollo? by Ben Bova and photographer J Russel Seitz, from the 1970 January Analog magazine ; most of a John W Campbell editorial from the same issue, on “Racial” Tensions ; and at the beginning, some poetry to express my frustration with the state of the world and reaffirm my belief in the inherent nobility of mankind, which is sorely tested at the moment.

ASFO 2024–10–26

Too much of my attention lately is on mundane politics. Alas, it is a topic which has a direct effect on how I live and what I am able to do, and on the shape of the future that it is feasible to build. Also, Mail Call! leads me to speculate on the resemblance between Chinese Hell Money and the securities markets.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2024–10–29 Skylab (part 1 of 2) by Joseph Green, science–fact article from the 1972 March Analog magazine. Did not archive properly.
  • 2024–11–01 Skylab (part 2 of 2), Analog magazine, 1972 April.

ASFO 2024–10–19

Chicago! Stacker of wheat, butcher of hogs, et cetera, and also one of the most nuclear–powered places in the USA. Incidentally it is also the place where I arrived in the USA from Iceland after my sea voyage, and where I will board my train home to Texas. This show was phoned in from a hotel room.

ASFO 2024–10–05

An abbreviated show as I set out on my travels back to the USA. Listen for an effusion on the joys of tourist visits to power plants, and alas, a long list of nuclear power plants I had hoped to visit but did not get to. I also missed out on the Swedish one, in the event, because I spent most of my time in Gothenburg resting. Listen for a discussion of the successor currencies of the Scandinavian Monetary Union, gripes about the Euro coinage, and aspersions on the idea of border controls.