28 March. In 1979 there was a serious accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, and although no meltdown occurred, public opinion began to turn against the whole American nuclear industry. In the film The China Syndrome, made before the incident, a character remarks that a cloud of waste could wreak death and destruction over 'an area the size of Pennsylvania.' Earlier in the year, a local magazine had run a fictional story called Meltdown at Three Mile Island, and they even got the date right, 28 March.
Category Archives: Historical
The Banality of Evil vs The Inevitability of the Acceptance of Evil
re-posted from the old blog, but well worth looking over again.
Excerpted from Vanity Fair, March 1991
The Years of Living Dangerously
a profile of Ryszard Kapuscinski by Stephen Schiff
"I want to tell you now something," he says quietly. "You know, like
every Polish writer I was censored, for forty years. The most
difficult result of censorship is self-censorship, because it changes
your way of thinking, and it's completely unconscious after a time.
All of us after the Communists, we all have to fight this, and I am
fighting all the time. But the reason I am saying this here, in this
place [the former Warsaw Ghetto]: you know, Hannah Arendt in her book
about Eichmann trial, Eichmann in Jerusalem, she was unable to
understand why the Jews were going so passively to their death – why
the Holocaust was possible, why there was no resistance. But I
understand it, because I was there and I saw the thing. And I have an
answer that I would say to Hannah Arendt."There was nothing strange in the behaviour of those people. It was
natural. Because if you don't see any hope, you are very passive. I'm
not speaking of individuals. You always find a hero willing to fight
against everybody. But the masses, if you put them in a situation of
extreme hardship, they beome very passive. Lack of hope paralyzes
their will, paralyzes their brain, paralyzes their movement. That's
why people who are really in a famine, who have real hunger, do
nothing. They are waiting for death, unable to move. If you went to
the market in Ethiopia during the famine, you would see that the
market is full of food. And around the market, you have people dying
of hunger. So your first reaction is to ask yourself why these people
don't just attack the market dealers – the food is right there. Plenty
of food. Their lives are at stake. But if you ask that, you are like
Hannah Arendt and you don't understand what it means to be in a
situation of complete desperation with no way out. It makes you
paralyzed."But wait a minute, I say. You of all people have witnessed the
opposite. You've been there when a change, a revolution, becomes
possible. He smiles. "Yes, you're right," he says. "When a revolution
comes, it is at the very moment when there is some improvement. But
improvement is too slow, too limited – that's when people revolt. But
first they have to be set in some motion. If you are in a motionless
situation, you will never revolt."He seems to be formulating a kind of Newtonian physics of revolution.
Laws of political inertia, political velocity. The very thing that
happened in Eastern Europe in 1989, that happened in South Africa in
1990, that continues in the Soviet Union even now. A body at rest will
remain at rest. And a body in motion…"It's true," he says. "I was not in Pinsk at the time, but I know
people who witnessed the liquidation of the ghetto in Pinsk. At that
time there were some 30,000 people in the ghetto of Pinsk. And when
the moment of the Final Solution came, they were sent through the
town, in columns. Rabbis marched at the head of each column. And in
columns – one huge, huge column – they walked to the place which is
about ten kilometers outside of town, in a small forest. There were
mass graves dug there, long graves, and on the opposite side of every
grave was a Nazi soldier with a machine gun. And the Jewish people of
Pinsk were taken to the verge of the grave and were shot. One row fell
in the grave, and the next row came, was shot, fell down, and the next
row, shot, fell down – in silence. All in silence."The machine gun in World War II was still a very heavy instrument,
and those soldiers became, after some minutes, very tired. So they
asked the Jews to stop so the soldiers could rest and smoke a
cigarette. Then the soldiers would be sitting on the dirt piles of the
gave, smoking cigarettes and taking a rest. After resting for some
time, they picked up their machine guns, and they asked the rabbis to
walk again, and again they continued to shoot. There were eyewitnesses
to this, because some people survived. So Hannah Arendt couldn't
understand it, but it is understandable. If you are in Pinsk, and you
are already so desperately run-down – no food, sick, hopeless, no way
to escape – you will just follow the orders of your religious leaders.
You will march in columns. You will wait while they smoke. You will go
to your death."
Oh! Canada!
There’s a reason they call them Mounties.
Welcome to the Blogroll: Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog
Very much in the spirit of yesterday’s advice column, we present Geoffrey Chaucer’s Friendster Blog, including the fabulous Aske Chaucere section.
Q: My betrothed, a most wicked man, betrayed me near as bad as Tereus
did Procne. His woman of choice commited, though, that villainy which women do best, and tempted him away. Presently it is not legal, where I live, to have either of them killed for this treachery — what shall I do to avenge the wrong they both have done to me, and to my virtue? Their joy at my grief does pain me so.
Cor Fracta Est
A: Ma Cher Coeur Brisee
Thoughe y love a goode revenge tragedie as much as the nexte guye, y muste counsel yow to a bettre path. Yow sholde maken pece and kepe faithe, not wyth thyne betrothede nor wyth this womanlie Diomede, but rathir with yowrselfe. For vengence aperteneth and longeth al oonly to juges. Remembre yow that pacience is a greet vertu of perfeccioun, and remembre that ther are tymes ordained unto al thynges by the first moevere — of the ookes, and of the hard stones, and of man and womman seen we also, in youthe as well as age, alle shal be dumped , a kyng as shall a page – som dumped on dates, som dumped by telephone, some dumped in compaignie, som dumped allone – ther helpeth noght, al goth that ilke weye.
And thus, take two pintes of hagen dasz dulce de leche, a ful seson of buffie the vampyre slayre, and calle me in the morninge.
Le Vostre G
The Nameless, Named!
Cower in fear, for the end of the world is nigh: the unnameable has been named!
Behold, mortals, the nameless dweller in the accurst city named “The Nameless City.”
Well, actually he’s from New Mexico.
And from Columbia University:
Two Columbia scientists have discovered the fossil of a toothless crocodile relative that looks like a six-foot-long, two-legged dinosaur, but is actually a distant cousin of today’s alligators and crocodiles. Adjunct professor of earth and environmental sciences Mark Norell and his graduate student Sterling Nesbitt, both of whom also work as paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History, have named the fossil Effigia okeeffeae.
Effigia means “ghost,” referring to the decades that the fossil remained hidden from science [and also the fact that it was found on the Ghost Ranch Dig; like, synchronicity, dude]. The species name, okeeffeae, honors the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived near the site in northern New Mexico where the fossil was found.
According to Wikipedia, the fossil was discovered back in 1947-1948 by Edwin H. Colbert, but was lying unclassified in the basement of the American Museum of Natural History when Norell and Nesbitt were looking for something else and the one of them went, “I say, that’s odd. Never seen anything like it. What do you say, old chap?” or something like that, and the other fellow said,
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons death may die.I should have known that the
Arabsother department heads had good reason for shunning the namelesscityfossil, thecityfossil told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, yet I defied them and went into the untroddendesertbasement with mycamelgrad student. I alone have seen it, and that is why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear as mine; why no other man shivers so horribly when thenight windair conditioning rattles thewindowsspecimen cases. When I came upon it in the ghastly stillness of unending sleep it looked at me, chilly from the rays ofa cold moonthe fluorescents amidstthe desert’sNew York’s heat. And as I returned its look I forgot my triumph at finding it, and stopped still with mycamelgrad student to wait for the dawn.
Or words to that effect.
(nb Cthulhu references get the squid tag. Makes total sense, right? Aw, shut up)
raincoaster 