I strongly considered stopping reading at "Uranium is the heaviest element on earth"...
It is the heaviest naturally occurring element (source:http://chemistry.about.com/od/elementfacts/f/heaviest-elemen...)
How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)
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Re: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)
#12"Hiroshima was destroyed in a flash by a bomb dropped from a propeller-driven B-29 of the U.S. Army Air Force, on the warm morning of Monday, August 6, 1945." Nice use of subtle patriotism here. Wouldn't it have been a little more impartial to write it as below? "Hiroshima was destroyed in a flash by the U.S. Army with a bomb which was dropped from a propeller-driven B-29, on the warm morning of Monday, August 6, 194…
And Hiroshima bloody well deserved it too, as everyone knows.
Re: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)
#13Nuclear is not as scary as bioterror. I'm a college senior, and last spring I and two class teammates were able to re-engineer virus Phi X 174 in only 10 weeks, starting from zero knowledge of genetic engineering. Then we payed DNA 2.0 (a DNA synthesis contractor) to build us the custom virus for only $2k. Also: on the third day of class, the prof showed us the complete genome of Ebola, and that based on DNA 2.0's pr…
I'll paste from my last post on this topic. There was an article that went over exactly this in Discover magazine a month or two ago. Summary is that it's harder than you might think.
"You would need more than a garage; you would need a great
garage and a lot of money. And it's not trivial. You need
the oligonucleotides to stitch genes together, and as far
as I know, most companies will check the order if the
sequence represents that of a dangerous virus."
Re: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)
#14Nuclear is not as scary as bioterror. I'm a college senior, and last spring I and two class teammates were able to re-engineer virus Phi X 174 in only 10 weeks, starting from zero knowledge of genetic engineering. Then we payed DNA 2.0 (a DNA synthesis contractor) to build us the custom virus for only $2k. Also: on the third day of class, the prof showed us the complete genome of Ebola, and that based on DNA 2.0's pr…
Not a great comfort, but companies like DNA 2.0, Invitrogen, etc. have pretty intensive safety checking of what they're synthesizing. No sending off for smallpox.
Re: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)
#15I strongly considered stopping reading at "Uranium is the heaviest element on earth"...
I strongly considered stopping reading at "Uranium is the heaviest element on earth"
Do you prefer "uranium is almost twice as dense as lead" as I do, for that sentence? That transitions well enough to the idea next mentioned by the author, that a small volume of uranium can nonetheless explode with the force of tons of TNT (which would be much bulkier, besides much heavier, to carry to the target). Yes, it also bothers me when writers don't use the word "dense" when the physical concept of density is what they are writing about.
Of course, I had to look up a specific gravity table to check my recollection of the specific gravity of uranium, something I don't experience every day.
Re: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)
#16>and the use of even a single fission device could pose an existential threat to the West.
Hardly. There was some "let's drop a bomb and see what the effect roughly is" emulator online that I used about a year ago -- and I was shocked how tiny the effect of neuclear weapons was. A Chinese 15 Kiloton weapon dropped in the middle of the city I was in wouldn't even result in elevated radiation were I lived unless the wind was in the wrong direction.
The tiny suitcase bombs they are shitting themselves that the terroists might get their hands on?
Yeah, those do so little damage that you would be better of with a large van conventional explosives.
Re: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)
#17Nuclear is not as scary as bioterror. I'm a college senior, and last spring I and two class teammates were able to re-engineer virus Phi X 174 in only 10 weeks, starting from zero knowledge of genetic engineering. Then we payed DNA 2.0 (a DNA synthesis contractor) to build us the custom virus for only $2k. Also: on the third day of class, the prof showed us the complete genome of Ebola, and that based on DNA 2.0's pr…
Not a great comfort, but companies like DNA 2.0, Invitrogen, etc. have pretty intensive safety checking of what they're synthesizing. No sending off for smallpox.
So all a terrorist would have to do is get a job there and smuggle an order past the checklist?
Re: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)
#18While they busy groping millions of people each year in security theater, the next attack would likely come from one of the hundreds of thousands of shipping containers that have zero security and plenty of storage and mobility.
Re: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is a really small nitpick which does not change the partiality of the sentence. Both phrases attribute the ultimate responsibility to the US Army Air Force (not 'US Army', which is incorrect) and it could be argued that as it was the bomb itself which did the actual destroying it should be the primary subject.
Oops, right about the US Army Air Force mistake. My bad. Also, agree it might be nitpicking but for me the dropping of the A-bombs and associated killing of a crap load of civillians is one of last centuries most conveniently forgotten topics. So treatment of the subject has a tendency to get me riled up! One last question though...Can inanimate objects really be responsible of anything?
I agree that the topic is worthy of discussion, it's just that I disagree that the phrase you highlighted was more biased in favour of the US than your suggested edit. In both it is clear that the USAAF dropped the bomb.
The answer to your question is yes, inanimate objects can be responsible for outcomes. On a philosophical level, a rock that comes loose from a cliff face and kills someone driving on the road below is responsible for his death even though there was clearly no intention involved.
In terms of language, it's also common for an inanimate object to be the subject even if it was not the responsible party, i.e. 'the car hit the boy', 'the plane crashed into the tower', 'the house was destroyed by a bomb', etc. In none of those cases was the primary subject the entity which decided to cause the action.
Re: How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is a really small nitpick which does not change the partiality of the sentence. Both phrases attribute the ultimate responsibility to the US Army Air Force (not 'US Army', which is incorrect) and it could be argued that as it was the bomb itself which did the actual destroying it should be the primary subject.
it's a small nitpick, sure, but he(?) is right - it does change the partiality of the sentence. i didn't notice when i read the text; now that it has been pointed out to me, i find it interesting. thanks, iftn.
I would argue that while I believe his correction did not change the partiality, a change to the active voice would have been more effective in highlighting the responsibility of the USAAF in destroying Hiroshima.
With that said, there is no contention that the US did not bomb Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon. Would anybody reading any of these suggested phrases really be more or less likely to view the US as being responsible for it?