Tag: supplementary shows

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.

Supplementary Show

2024–12–17 The tail end of The Music of the New Life, and beginning of Prevailing Conditions in the Arts, from Utopia or Oblivion (1969) by R Buckminster Fuller.

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 2024–11–09

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 2024–09–07

The triumphant (?) return to Earth of the Boeing CST–100 “Starliner” ; a long discussion of British energy policy and the implications of the “Contract for Difference” mechanism ; and benefits afforded to my Patreon supporters, in the form of postcards from unusual and even unique post offices. All while I eat an ice–cream cone!

Supplementary Show

2024–09–10 After occupying the first quarter of the hour with something else, we hear from the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, and a recently published report on “Technology Monitoring of Nuclear Energy”. This is officially part of the “Energy Strategy 2050”, which calls for Switzerland to decarbonize its whole energy supply while withdrawing from nuclear power, which currently supplies more than a third of Swiss electricity. Recent decisions by the Federal Council will hopefully lead to a reconsideration of this “Strategy”.

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.

ASFO 2024–06–08

Nico–Clean? What in the world? Also, the engineered physical systems which make life in the modern world possible (often prosaically called infrastructure) and the obligation to keep them up ; the value of immigrants and refugees, and the stupidity (quite separate from any moral or human–rights arguments) of refusing them ; and a lesson, in the context of Internet social media, in cause and reasonably–foreseeable effect.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2024–06–11 Probably the last I will read from The Fast–Neutron Fission Breeder Reactor, Energy for 1000 Years by TN Marsham FRS, the succeeding general discussion, and concluding remarks by JG Collier.
  • 2024–06–14 From ATOM 134 (1967 December), a eulogy for nuclear pioneer Sir John Cockcroft, and Electricity from the Atom — Britain’s Second Decade by ES Booth.

A "Nico-Clean" card in its original packaging. Price 1000 yen.
If you want one of these things — or ten of them! — do let me know.