The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.
Hanford: … You some kind of a pacifist, Driscoll?
Paul Driscoll: No, just some sick idiot who’s seen too many boys die because of too many men who fight their battles at dining room tables… and who probably wouldn’t last so long as twenty-five seconds in a REAL skirmish if they WERE thrust into it.
Hanford: …I take offense at that remark, Mr. Driscoll!
Paul Driscoll: And I take offense at “armchair warriors” like yourself – who clearly don’t know what a shrapnel, or a bullet, or a saber wound feels like… or what death smells like after three days on an empty, sun-drenched battlefield… who’ve never seen the look on a man’s face when he realizes he’s lost a limb, and his blood is seeping out. Mr. Hanford, you have a great enthusiasm for “planting the American flag deep, high, and proud.” But you don’t have a nodding acquaintance with what it’s like for American families to bury their sons in the same soil!
*********************
Paul Driscoll: We live in a cesspool, a septic tank, a gigantic sewage complex in which runs the dregs, the filth, the misery-laden slop of the race of men: his hatred, prejudices, passions, and violence. And the keeper of this sewer: man. He is a scientifically advanced monkey who walks upright, with eyes wide open into an abyss of his own making. His bombs, fallout, poisons, radioactivity everything he designs as an art for dying is his excuse for living. We live in an exquisite bedlam an insanity. Maybe all the more grotesque by the fact that we don’t recognize it as insanity.
Narrator: [Opening Narration] Exit one Paul Driscoll, a creature of the twentieth century. He puts to a test a complicated theorem of space-time continuum, but he goes a step further – or tries to. Shortly, he will seek out three moments of the past in a desperate attempt to alter the present – one of the odd and fanciful functions in a shadowland known as the Twilight Zone.
The Twilight Zone No Time Like the Past (1963)
I Sometimes wonder how Rod Serling would write the story of today’s political environment. People dying at horrendous rates because they listened to a handful of politicians and preachers who say that the worst worldwide Pandemic in over a century is a hoax; despite the urgings of epidemiologists for people to simply get vaccinated against the virus. But, no, a corrupt politician has more clout among the religious and political leaders of today, and as a result, over two thousand new cases presented themselves to Oregon hospitals, over this last weekend. Not last month or last week; simply last weekend. Florida has set a new national record for COVID cases.
I have given up on politics as a means of rescue. My ‘Give a Damn’ is broken, ever since January 6th of this year when members of various police forces attempted to protect The United States Capitol in its first invasion since the War of 1812. A large portion of our elected officials are saying that the deaths of police officers in their attempt to protect the safety of said politicians was similar to a visit by a regular tour group…
Consequently, I have returned to Science Fiction to find sanity
I enjoyed Netflix’s “Lost in Space” and am waiting for Season 3 to appear. What I find strange is that Maureen Robinson, as the main engineer/science person in the show, apparently has never read Science Fiction. She, and everyone except Will Robinson apparently can’t comprehend the idea of a sentient artificial intelligence. She cannot comprehend that Robot can make a vow regarding behavior; and cannot comprehend that Robot feels grief at the death of four-legged friend.
Sentient artificial intelligence is a concept that has run through Science Fiction since the 1940’s. She also hasn’t watched any OLD television episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which must be in some future historic database.
In the episode entitled, “The Measure of a Man“, the future of the android officer Lt. Commander Data is argued in a courtroom. The rights of Lt. Commander Data are threatened by a scientist who wishes to dismantle him in order to produce replicas of him. Captain Jean-Luc Picard argues in a Starfleet court for Data’s right of self-determination, rather than being declared mere property of Starfleet. Picard turns the discussion to metaphysical matters of Data’s sentience. Picard points out that Data meets two of the three criteria that the scientist uses to define sentient life. Data is intelligent and self-aware, and Picard asks anyone in the court to show a means of measuring consciousness…
The measuring of consciousness is getting closer…
As a result of neuroimaging of the human brain scientists have established that a network of interconnected brain regions known as the default mode network disintegrates in anesthesia and after brain damage, causing disorders of consciousness.
They found that across pharmacological (sedation) and pathological (disorders of consciousness) consciousness changes, the source of dopamine in the brain, called “ventral tegmental area”, disconnects from the main hubs of the default mode network.
They also found that the severity of this disconnection was associated with default mode network disintegration, highlighting the relevance of dopamine for consciousness. They therefore propose that dopaminergic modulation may be a central mechanism for consciousness maintenance.
Exploring the neural bases of consciousness
Humans make decisions based on supposition when they can’t find facts, or when they simply don’t want to make the effort to learn. Learning takes effort; humans don’t particularly like effort. Consequently, humans do stupid things and then try to cover them up.
Seventy-six years ago, this week as I write, The United States of America, having firebombed Tokyo to dust in March of 1945…
The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9–10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. Of central Tokyo 16 square miles were destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.
…and then preceded to wipe the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the face of the earth.
The United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict.
Wikipedia
The ‘shadows’ of humans in the images below, aren’t conventional shadows. They are all that remains of human beings blasted by the atomic blasts; permanently etched into adjacent structures.
Many Americans believe that this destruction was justified because these actions kept the number of American combatants from becoming a horrid number.
The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians
a.k.a. the elderly, the infirm, women and children
Waging War against the elderly, the infirm, women and children is shameful. Where are the admissions of guilt?
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Tags: faith, hope, material poverty, mental-health, Neuropathy, persistence, personal excellence, Polyneuropathy, self-employment, surviving
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 