The dawn of a new age

July 16, 2008 in Science and Society | 8 comments

Today is the sixty-third anniversary of the start of the nuclear age on a tiny blue planet called Earth. On this date in 1945, the United States detonated the first atomic weapon, in a place called Trinity, New Mexico.

As Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer watched the demonstration, he later said that a line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita came to mind:

I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

According to Oppenheimer’s brother, Frank, Oppenheimer simply said, “It worked.” Test director Kenneth Bainbridge replied to Oppenheimer, “Now we are all sons of bitches.”

Trinity explosion

Sadly, there are still those in this world who believe that using nuclear weapons to wipe out an entire people is a justifiable act. We have a long way to go before we can call ourselves truly civilized.

  1. Protest Warrior on July 18, 2008 at 11:10 am

    You want a civilized nation?

    Won’t get it when you have headlines such as “Gribbit’s back! And he’s lying his ass off!” And calling people names

    Yep, your a true leader in the civility department, and you show us every day just how civilized you are

    Wonder why your a joke?

  2. meatbrain on July 18, 2008 at 11:57 am

    What I wonder, actually, is why PW insists on repeatedly advertising the fact that he has nothing whatever to say.

  3. Orion on July 18, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    Hey, you gotta give him some points for trying. This is one of his best posts.

    I do find it interesting that he finds it more relevant to point to Kit Jarrell’s post rather than Ahmadinejad’s statements about wiping the Jews off the face of the Earth. Or those made by innumerable other leading Arabs, Persians, et. al…

    But you need to focus on which ones are actually TRYING to wipe out an entire people, I suppose, not those who are just using rhetoric.

    Orion

  4. meatbrain on July 18, 2008 at 11:36 pm

    I do find it interesting that he finds it more relevant to point to Kit Jarrell’s post rather than Ahmadinejad’s statements about wiping the Jews off the face of the Earth.

    I can’t quote a statement that Ahmadinejad never made.

    Jeff “Orion” Burhans, like most wingnuts, is incapable of making an argument that does not depend upon a lie. One can only wonder if he will lie to his fellow soldiers when he is deployed to Iraq.

  5. Orion on July 19, 2008 at 6:12 am

    “cut the Zionist root from it’s stem.”

    “As the Imam says; Israel should be wiped off the map,”

    “Perhaps one can quibble over how to render a translation. Here, the Islamic Republic provides its own clarification. In its official translations, it headlined Ahmadinejad’s call to “wipe Israel off the map.”“

    Seems close enough to me…but why quibble…No doubt you’ll just accuse me of hiding behind a dictionary again, or perhaps, you will complain that I am forcing you to click on links rather than providing the original Persian text with annotated translations myself…

    And of course, you still haven’t addressed why you think Jarrell’s comments are somehow more odious than the rhetoric of the Iranians, Palestinians, Indonesians, et. al….

    Orion

  6. meatbrain on July 19, 2008 at 7:01 am

    The Israel Herald story refers to a different speech. Wrong speech, wrong phrase, Irrelevant.

    The ‘Today’s Zaman’ article provides no original text.

    The link to iribnews.ir in the Natgional Review column does not resolve.

    Perhaps Burhans can provide the original text of Ahmadinejad’s speech. Then, competent speakers of Farsi can judge the accuracy of the translation for themselves.

    Or perhaps he will simply continue to lie. As he prefers to take the easy way out in his “discussions”, the latter is far more likely.

  7. Orion on July 19, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    laughs I was close…Ahhh…THERE’S the Meatbrain we all know and love.

    Orion

  8. meatbrain on July 19, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    In other word, Burhans can provide no evidence that Ahmadinejad actually said that Israel should be “wiped from the map”, and flees the discussion. Perfectly typical for a cowardly liar of his sort.