Tag: weekly post

ASFO 2022–11–26

Two quotations form the theme of this episode, which starts a little late, because I had to duck out of a Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, I set a timer, but when it went off there was still food on my plate! The meat of the episode is a consideration of the confluence of social and material conditions which define our modern world. Also I muse about aspects of immigration to space settlements, the generic problems of assimilation and diversity, and the great question of escape from the patron–client model of society, which could reasonably be cast as the central social problem of our time. (It all sounds very elevated until I name–check “Professor Steamhead” from Ninja High School.) And at the very end I mention a technological idea I had, which I might explain some more next week.

A sort of drawing of a flower, which is also a schematic atomic nucleus. Around in a circle, the text "Split Atoms Not Wood".
I’m thinking about making some buttons and stickers with this sort of design and motto.

Supplementary Show

2022–11–29 I begin reading a biography of Count Rumford, that eminent patron of the sciences and useful arts. This came to me in the form of a little pamphlet reprinted from The Contemporary Review, volume XLIV, which appears to date it to 1883, over the name of J Tyndall. This appears to denote John Tyndall FRS, who was at the time Professor of Physics in the Royal Institution, founded by Rumford. Tyndall was very much interested (as Rumford had been) in the subjects of light and heat, and made a lecture tour of America in 1872, which corresponds to a reference at the beginning of the article.

ASFO 2022–11–19

Normally I strive to avoid a–rantin’ and a–ravin’ and a–frothin’ at the mouth. I won’t say I consistently succeed, but this at least isn’t meant to be that kind of a show! So what has me all worked up this time? Just a little booklet sent around by the Statdwerke München, or city utility company, which reads like a brain aneurysm. Also the USA sends a rocket to the Moon (you can see me talking about it thirteen years ago), climate negotiators in Egypt continue to piddle, twiddle, and resolve, and I muse about constructive responses to the present world situation.

Supplementary Show

  • 2022–11–22 Addresses to the Twelfth American Assembly (17―20 October 1957) : Nuclear Power in the United Kingdom by Sir John Cockcroft FRS ; and (almost all of) Europe and Atoms for Power by Max Kohnstamm.
  • 2022–11–25 Completion of the Kohnstamm piece, and the Final Report of the Twelfth American Assembly on Atoms for Power : United States Policy in Atomic Energy Development.

ASFO 2022–11–12

Wednesday saw me in Berlin, demonstrating in front of the Bundestag with the fine folks from Nuklearia eV over the “Stuttgarter Erklärung”, a petition for the continued use of atomic power in Germany. I discuss this experience, as well as the ghastly architecture of the Federal Government complex, before getting into the substantive part of the broadcast. And what, you might ask, is all that about? Well, in response to some comments a week or two ago, I talk about world population. It’s nothing I haven’t said before, but hopefully it’s put into a clearer form here. Simply put, no, I don’t think there are “too many people” ― but there certainly are too many people who deserve a better world than the one they have. We have the tools we need, and we know how to apply them ― as Sir John Hill said about the fast breeder reactor (itself not the least of those tools), all that is left now is to get on with the work. Will the warmongers and dictators allow us to do it?

A man (publius) in an overcoat and fedora, showing off a circular slide rule. Pro-nuclear-energy protesters and signs in the background.
At the demonstration, showing off my circular slide rule to dj tyn, whose nose and scarf can be seen at extreme right

Supplementary Shows

  • 2022–11–15 Continuing with the Knorr paper from last time. I have some strong words to say about certain parts of it.
  • 2022–11–18 I finish the Knorr piece, and read the introductory sections of A Target for Euratom (1957 May, also known as “The Report of the Three Wise Men”)

ASFO 2022–11–05

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, unmute your dang microphone, guy! Well, once I got over that little bobble, this show from Munich, capitol of the Free State of Bavaria in Southern Europe, mostly wound up being a response to a question from the audience (in SDF’s com chat) : “what is the safest type of civil nuclear power reactor?” It’s an inherently difficult question to answer, because only one type, the RBMK–1000, has ever killed anybody. But I give it a fair shot.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2022–11–08 Further readings from Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, vol 1, are interspersed with my editorial commentary. Somehow I manage to get through Estimate of Energy Requirements by P Ailleret of Electricité de France. And I do math live on the air!
  • 2022–11–11 I tarried too long at the grocery, so this show actually started about 15 minutes late. Everything up to that point in the archive is a repeat. As you have perhaps come to expect from me, I began by commemorating the date with Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. Then I started reading American foreign policy and the peaceful uses of atomic energy by Klaus Knorr, out of the volume Atoms for Power : United States Policy in Atomic Energy Development, the report of the Twelfth American Assembly, 17―20 October 1957. I have quite a bit to say in response to Knorr’s analysis.

ASFO 2022–10–29

Next week I will be coming to you from Munich, and that fact causes me to reflect on the dangers which arise when politicians ignore expert advice about what effects policies will have, and consistently lie to the public. Social pressure (such as arises when people are losing their livelihoods or seeing their heat and light bills exceed their rent) tends to drive people toward radical political movements, and that tendency is only reinforced when the political main stream has been insisting there is no problem. Also I talk for a while about the badge press which I have acquired with the gratefully–acknowledged assistance of Generation Atomic, and in general my efforts to disseminate pro–nuclear propaganda. And I explain some important facts about the latest saber–rattling from Russia.

Badge parts, finished badges, badge press, and paper cutter, laid out on a worktable. Two designs promoting civil atomic energy are in evidence, with slogans "Atomic Power to the People!" and "No Blood for Oil ― Atoms for Peace".
Yes, you too can receive some of these badges!

Supplementary Show

2022–11–04 Testing the audio setup in Munich. I read a letter I have been draughting to the head of Ontario Power Generation, relating to the planned life extension of the Pickering nuclear station near Toronto, and then The Outlook for Nuclear Power in Puerto Rico by Alvin Mayne and Philip Mullenbach, from Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (the proceedings of the 1955 Geneva Conference), volume 1. Puerto Rico is definitely a place that could use atomic power, relying as it does on fuel oil for its electricity, but the only power reactor that has ever been built there was the experimental (and largely unsuccessful) BONUS superheating BWR.

ASFO 2022–10–22

You may never have heard someone called a “dirtsucker” in anger before, but the news of the death of Jim McDivitt leads me to do just that. (Unfortunately, the archiver didn’t capture the whole show, so it’s less coherent than the actual broadcast was.) Also I spend a little more time talking about immigration, emigration, social policies, and the concept of “vampire states” ; and I make an impassioned plea for curiosity and play, specifically in the natural sciences.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2022–10–25 As a counterpoint to the description from the Leonard book, last week, I read about a rocket launch at White Sands from the perspective of that eminent rocketeer, G Harry Stine : chapter 7, “Missile Away!”, from his 1957 book Rocket Power and Space Flight. Then, to round out the time, I read chapter 11, Space Travel and Our Lives.
  • 2022–10–28 From Analog magazine, 1992 April, a resounding plea for the science fiction illustrator from Frank Kelly Freas (whom we have heard from before, also from Stine and Freas here), entitled The Story Between the Words, and an Alternate View column from G Harry Stine about “Intermittents”. Then, from the 1990 November number, the first part of Forging Planet–Stuff, an article about nucleosynthesis and its implications for planetary formation (and thus the kinds of stories one can credibly write), by Stephen L Gillett, PhD. He mentions another article, from 1983, which we may also want to read here.

ASFO 2022–10–15

What do Leopold and Loeb have to do with space settlement? Perhaps more than I am at all comfortable with. Most of this show has to do with immigration and emigration, and the concept of space settlements as Petri dishes for testing new ideas in human societies. I also take the opportunity to remind everyone that coal kills, and firms investing in fossil–fuel infrastructure are counting on “renewables” to not interfere with their business. But at least I have a new office chair.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2022–10–18 The central place of biodynamic research in space activities is explored, with an extract from a 1961 paperback entitled Man Into Space, penned by journalist, novelist, and aviator Martin Caidin. In addition to attempting to explain weightlessness and orbital mechanics in simplified terms for the interested layman, our author gives us extended quotations from John Paul Stapp and Joseph Kittinger, two pioneers in the field, who put their own lives at risk for the sake of science.
  • 2022–10–21 I read from another ephemeral journalistic book about space travel, Flight Into Space (1953) by JN Leonard, science editor of Time magazine. There is a vivid description of a rocket launch at White Sands, framed as some kind of sacrificial ritual conducted by witch–doctors or barbaric priests masquerading as scientists and technicians, and a chapter in which Milton Rosen of the Naval Research Laboratory (head of the closest thing America had at the time to a civilian space program, Project Viking, which became Project Vanguard) explains how any attempt to realize proposals of the sort put forward by Wernher von Braun would lead, not only to inevitable failure, but also to the collapse of the US economy, and Soviet victory in the Cold War. Unfortunately, the archive bot glitched, and only recorded parts of it, which you can get here and here. (Ultimately, I re–read it.)

ASFO 2022–10–08

You too can receive propaganda by mail! Whatever else I originally meant to talk about, I got distracted by Green hypocrisy and disingenuousness, in Ireland (where ten people were killed in the accidental explosion of a petrol station), in British Columbia (where the government recently announced ambitious “climate targets”, in conjunction with the Pacific Coast states of the USA, despite its continued pursuit of an immense and economically questionable gas scheme), and elsewhere. Also I mention how my uncompromising committment to whatever–this–is attracted the attention of some very serious law enforcement types. And in the last couple of minutes I start talking about emigration to space settlements, which may be the theme of next week’s show.

Supplementary Show

2022–10–14 Some selections from the 1967 Winter number (“Vol 3 No 25”) of Canute, house magazine of “The Nuclear Power Group Limited”, from Knutsford, England. Tidal Power in Tomorrow’s World by TL Shaw, Lecturer in Civil Engineering, University of Bristol, discusses the possible development of the Severn Estuary for power and transportation. Then Doing the Easy Bit… in which an architect identified only as “EJB” discusses the troubles of his job ; and a description of the Hunterston B power station, for which the contract was placed on Friday, October the 13th of that year ― which is to say, 55 years before the date of reading, almost exactly to the day. Hunterston B, a two reactor–station of the AGR type, went into operation in 1976 and was shut down at the beginning of 2022, after a lifetime generation of 287 terawatt–hours. Although it was the third AGR station to be ordered, it entered commercial operation years before the first (Dungeness B) and some months before the second (Hinkley Point B, also built by TNPG).

ASFO 2022–10–01

Cheers for the Double Asteroid Redirection Test and the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University! Also, I test the Watermelon Hypothesis (“Green on the outside, Red on the inside”) and find it wanting. In particular, personal experience leads me to believe that life in a solar–powered city would be far more socially unequal, and far less pleasant, than in a nuclear–powered one.

2 Supplementary Shows

ASFO 2022–09–24

In which I step outside my usual track and talk about Computers and “AI” for a bit. This is, if anything, a propos of the misguided efforts to tame inflation by depressing wages, when labour productivity has grown much more rapidly than wages since the 1970s, with the result that direct labour costs are a less proportion of the cost of providing goods and services than they ever have been. Also something about a video game and what it implies for our efforts towards space settlement. Maybe next week we’ll have a Double Asteroid Redirect Test or SLS launch to talk about.

A page with the text A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION (as discussed on the show)
This appears to be from 1970s IBM training materials
View of a "claw machine" with a bin of plushies. On the mechanism is the text "MACHINE'S DECISION IS FINAL".
The opposing viewpoint
A desktop with a mailing envelope on which the recipient address has been obfuscated ; some pro-nuclear stickers and pamphlets ; and an accompanying letter
Sample parcel of stickers as mailed to a Reddit user
Supplementary Show