Colm

Paintings Made by Hiroshima Survivors

Masahiko Nakata - Bloated Bodies in the River Over Yokogawa Bridge. 1973-4.

Satoshi Yoshimoto - Black Rain: Something Slimy Covered My Body. 1973-4.

The BBC wrote a very short article on an upcoming show in Manchester that will be featuring several pieces made by Hiroshima survivors. These were created about thirty years after the day the bomb was dropped (August 6th, 1945), in the mid 1970's. I think it's really interesting that the artists made them at a much later date- I wonder how having more time to process what happened may have influenced their depiction.

Full article:
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-29235538

-Ava Threlkel

Colm

Colm

Japan Restarting Nuclear Reactors

A man shouts in protest September 10, 2014 as Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) unanimously approves the restart of two nuclear reactors in the Sendai plant in southern Japan. Although this is a huge step towards boosting Japan's nuclear industry after the Fukushima disaster of 2011, nuclear power advocate Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces an uphill battle as the operator, Kyushu Electric Power, still needs the approval of local authorities and the surrounding communities.

Check out this article for details on how the two reactors are the first to restart under the tighter safety regulations. For in depth details on community concerns check out this article.


-Connie C.

NATO summit starts today

This is a good time to remind ourselves about what NATO is, because there's a summit underway in Wales starting today.  One of the big topics under discussion is the crisis in Ukraine.  There's a lot of history and complexity to these issues, but the conflict with Russia that's taking place right now definitely relates to the history and current dynamic between nuclear powers.  I'm still absorbing it, but I found this analysis and opinion piece from Salon interesting. 

Nuking the moon?

In class last week, someone asked a question about whether there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the moon.  For comparison of size, here is a NASA image (distances not to scale obviously):
 

In class we talked about how there are not enough nuclear weapons to destroy the earth, and similarly there are not enough to "destroy" the moon (certainly not enough to blow it up, and probably also not enough to make a mess of the whole surface either).  Are there enough to knock the moon out of orbit?  No, not that either (here's an article on that idea).  

In the 1950s there was apparently a project within the U.S. military to consider the idea of detonating one nuclear weapon on the moon.  This would have been an experiment to test out the idea of space-based warfare, as well as a demonstration project to show our military capabilities to the Soviet enemy.  But thankfully the project was dropped.  Here's a CNN blog posting on the top-secret plan.