Author: publius

Fools! I will destroy you all!!

ASFO 2025–06–14

Once more with feeling — the people on this planet are crazy! And in that context, I discuss possible next steps, mine (which definitely involve one of which will be Archipelacon, and may involve turning blast into a newspaper, but I also can’t rule out a panicked trans–Atlantic flight) and other people’s. Also some very welcome news from Great Britain, ridiculously beyond any reasonable time–frame for it, but welcome.

ASFO 2025–06–07

Brighton is in Britain (Blighty if you’re feeling mean), and this weekend, so am I. In this pre–recorded message, I invite you to consider the question of whether, from the viewpoint of Sir Thomas More, we may not already be living in the post–Singularity, trans–human future. Certainly the conditions of human life have been fundamentally altered since his day!

Supplementary Show

2025–06–13 I finish up A Snapshot in Time with a brief but interesting section entitled Future, a series of questions and answers about nuclear power safety (meant to educate the public into acceptance, which may not actually work all that well), and some brief biographies of senior Westinghouse personnel. There is a glitch halfway through, owing entirely to my error and ill–preparedness.

ASFO 2025–05–31

No matter how many times I say it, it remains true : international air travel is for the birds! But at least the 6 line of the Munich subway is back in operation. Also I once again criticize the mindset that “nobody ever changed the world working 40 hours a week” — design and engineering decisions made by overworked people in understaffed offices are likely to be bad, or at best, less than good.

Supplementary Show

2025–06–03 More from A Snapshot in Time, mostly an extended description of the corporate structure of Westinghouse PWRSD. Next time we will get to some more interesting material!

ASFO 2025–05–24

Looking realistically at the present world situation may not be good for one’s health. It certainly isn’t popular. I give a bit of an after–action report from last week, and try to contrast the Canadian (CNSC) and US (NRC) systems of nuclear–energy regulation. Neither is as good as it could be, but the CNSC model probably works better in practice. And I interrogate the possibility that the Law of Unintended Consequences may be expected, occasionally, to produce unintended benefits.

Supplementary Show

2025–05–30 More of A Snapshot in Time, largely a description of the Pressurized Water Reactor Nuclear Steam Supply System, interlarded with extensive explanations from me.

ASFO 2025–05–17

Weather determined what I was doing in the time slot this week — ironically enough, considering that a key advantage of atomic power over other zero–emissions energy sources is that it is not much influenced by the weather. The skies are clear, and I was in Haltom City, as I said last week. And I missed my chance to pre–record a show.

Supplementary Show

  • 2025–05–20 PWRSD 1976 : A Snapshot in Time is a kind of yearbook from the nuclear power operation at Westinghouse. There is some fascinating material in it, including a description of an absolutely hair–raising bit of messing around with uranium in a metallurgical laboratory (not the Metallurgical Laboratory). Unfortunately, although the printing job is professional–looking, something awful seems to have happened in the galley stage, as more than once entire lines of text have disappeared.
  • 2025–05–23 Something of a mess, as I continue to read from A Snapshot in Time, but much of what I’m trying to read is tabular material.

ASFO 2025–05–10

More public outreach — the Friends of the Haltom City Public Library annual Book Sale and Flea–for–All may seem an odd place to talk to people about atomic power, but you have to go where the people are. Also a quick calculation that Comanche Peak 1&2 have generated as much power since they came into service as 3700 large wind turbines in their whole working lives ; the new Pope and his priorities, with a quote from the famous encyclical letter of Leo XIII, On the Condition of the Working Classes ; and a scathing editorial from a Spanish grid executive and renewables proponent, explaining that the big blackout should not have come to a surprise, because integrating wind and solar into the grid is more expensive and difficult than the Spanish Government has been willing to face, and also pointing out that shutting down nuclear power is not compatible with reducing CO₂ emissions.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2025–05–13 “So ignorantly, myopically, and statically conceived and so obsolete is the whole housing art that its death led the Crash of 1929, since when its ghost script has been kept in rehearsal by US government subsidy at a total underwriting cost to date of $200 billion.” Finishing up Design Strategy, and moving on to the epilogue of Utopia or Oblivion. (Minor glitch at the beginning.)
  • 2025–05–16 “In this way we discover that the buildings, which controlled energy conditions of heat, cold, dry, and wet, were in effect machines because machines process and control energy. Because we are conditioned to think of the house as static, we fail to realize that the automobile is as much a part of the house as is the addition of a woodshed.” And with that, we complete our reading of Utopia or Oblivion : The Prospects for Humanity (1969) by R Buckminster Fuller.

ASFO 2025–05–03

Power outrage! in Iberia, and the Spanish Prime Minister runs his mouth off in a fashion which shows a disturbing degree of ignorance — and another in Pittsburgh, where the cause is a great deal more obvious. Also, more work on blast, and my advice for Mark Carney.

Supplementary Show

  • 2025–05–06 “Minmaxfamfax” is a clue that we are continuing with Design Strategy from Utopia or Oblivion. Also there is a thunderstorm going on in the background.
  • 2025–05–09 “California is the center of the outermost jumpoff pad of humanity’s springboard.” Concept 14, World Community and Subcommunities of World Man, means we have almost reached the end of Design Strategy, and with it, of Utopia or Oblivion. We will probably finish the book Tuesday.

ASFO 2025–04–26

You can’t apply technological solutions to social problems — has there ever been a statement so widely and sententiously repeated, and so blatantly false? Also, the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster ; the world mourns a high–school teacher from Argentina ; progress toward blast №3 ; more on “nuclear batteries” ; and I talk a little about currency reforms.

Supplementary Show

2025–04–29 “Because man’s legs are so short and the planet Earth so big and because the few areas around it where he could find immediate vital support in his early days on the planet amounted locally to less than 5% of the earth’s surface, man has mistakenly identified himself during the past eight millenniums with the rooted vegetation rather than with the mobile vertebrates of which type he is a member.” Continuing with Utopia or Oblivion, we have the whole of Curricula and the Design Initiative, and a first part of Design Strategy.

ASFO 2025–04–19

Stardrive! When will we get it, and how? Perspectives on a “nuclear battery” and an “all–woman spaceflight” ; a little more about tariff and non–tariff trade barriers and their utility, the adage “de minimis non curat lex”, and the straw–man of the “US–made iPhone” ; and likely–final remarks on the gold standard.

Supplementary Show

  • 2025–04–22 “Evolution is not confined to the organic man, but consists of the combined man and his environment.” The title piece from Utopia or Oblivion (1969) by R Buckminster Fuller. Also a recommendation for another book, Carry On, Mister Bowditch (1955) by Jean Lee Latham.
  • 2025–04–25 “Either war is obsolete, or Man is.” Conclusion of Utopia or Oblivion, but not of Utopia or Oblivion. Fuller discusses the reasons for failure of past forms of utopianism, and the radical differences in circumstances today.

ASFO 2025–04–12

Yuri’s Night! Find your local party. Mail Call! The significance of the prospective new power reactor at the University of Illinois. And more thoughts about industrial policy, world trade, and the old adage “it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end”.

Supplementary Show

  • 2025–04–15 “Anyone can use the telephone. Any two can have any kind of telephone conversation they want. They can call themselves communist, capitalist, or any other kind of name. The telephone works for either. But the telephone shrinks the world for both, and disasters can be averted by means of it, and when disasters occur it brings swift help from great distances.” More from Utopia or Oblivion, continuing with How to Maintain Man as a Success in Universe.
  • 2025–04–18 “The men and women who work on television get and hold their jobs through their diction, good vocabularies, confident tone, and pleasing personalities.” The conclusion of How to Maintain Man as a Success in Universe.