Author: publius

Fools! I will destroy you all!!

ASFO 2026–04–25

Britain! The British Museum, and why I can’t get in even though it’s just outside my window… Also a report on my visit to Thurso, at the northern extremity of Britain ; and (continuing from last week’s Pannonian Ethanol) a brief thought about the perhaps–reasonable justifications for the use of biofuels, as opposed to the environmental ones, which are delusory.

ASFO 2026–04–18

Anything would be a let–down after last week. This show ended up being mostly about my upcoming travel plans in Britain, and some of the interesting industrial museums there, with a mention of something described as a “Luxury Dreadnought”. Also a discussion of the economics of the Eurail Pass, water damage on printed materials, the continuing policy failures of the Bundes Ministerium, and congratulations to the Japanese for getting one of the reactors at the Kashiwazaki–Kariwa power plant back in operation. If all of them were working, it would be the largest nuclear power site in the world, but that never has happened.

ASFO 2026–04–11

ARTEMIS II grabbed the imagination of the world, but left us with two thoughts. First, that we somehow have all this to do over again ; and second, it sets before us once more the stark choice of what to do with our scientific–technological mastery over the inanimate world.

ASFO 2026–03–28

South Australia — not just for sea chanties anymore? Related, petrol rationing in New Zealand, and the difficulty of getting and maintaining political support for slow–maturing measures against problems which appear as occasional crises of moderate duration. Also, Artemis II, supply–chain attacks very literally, re–stranded whales, computer–related (but not –generated this time!) idiocy, and more generally, thinking like an Ayatollah.

ASFO 2026–03–21

Justus Freiherr von Liebig — why does it always come back to him? Oil refineries burning — who could possibly have foreseen this? A Canadian spaceport… in Nova Scotia? Also, meter–gage railways of provincial Spain, and possible consequences of helium supply constraints.

Supplementary Show

2026–03–24 From the 1955 book Atoms for Peace by Donald O Woodbury, the Foreword, and from Part I Atomic Power is on the Way, chapters 23 “How Safe is Atomic Power?” and 24 “Skill Beats the Atom”, describing the December 1952 accident at NRX, Chalk River, Ontario, and the ensuing cleanup and recovery operations ; and chapters 1 “Dawn at Midnight” and 2 “Approach to Peace”.

ASFO 2026–03–07

Money museum reviews : Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago — from railroad to whale–road — challenges inherent in using cryogenic methane as a ship fuel — idiocy masquerading as science, with an anti–nuclear payload — more unconscionable, blatantly unlawful, and above all stupid acts of aggression by the present US government…

ASFO 2026–02–28

Congratulations to Électricité de France on reaching 1600 MW of output at Flamanville 3, their first new power reactor in over 20 years, which had an unsurprisingly troubled gestation — condolences to NASA on having to move its Artemis 2 stack back from the pad to the VAB, due to problems with the “interim” cryogenic upper stage (with a brief meditation on just what interim may mean in this context), and having to rush an ISS crew change — more anti–nuclear terrorism, of a sort particularly difficult to understand — a really lovely gift from tob — one thing more convenient than a railroad station hotel — a discussion of my further travel plans — an expression of confidence that my printer woes are at last over, and of gratitude to an angel of mercy who helped make that happen.

ASFO 2026–02–21

Margaret “Tina” Thatcher, FenCon XXI and their Science Guest of Honor, the difficulties of fitting display materials into a very small borrowed car, and my continuing printer woes take up most of the time this week.

Supplementary Show

2026–02–27 (second part) Audio from four new film transfers : Atomic Power Comes of Age, a trailer for an article in the 1965 December Reader’s Digest ; Inside the Atom, an Encyclopædia Brittannica film ; Everyday Radioactivity, an introduction to gamma ray spectroscopy ; and How Much is Enough?, an introduction to the concept of statistical uncertainty in measurements, using radioactive counting rates.