• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Come on, man.

In after Baud. Damn.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

I really should read my own blog.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

A consequence of cucumbers

Second rate reporter says what?

“Look, it’s not against the rules anywhere, but a black woman with power was dating and there has to be something wrong with that.”

When we show up, we win.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Mobile Menu

  • Four Directions Montana
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2024 Elections
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Popular Culture / KULCHA! / Programming Note, Naomi Oreskes edition

Programming Note, Naomi Oreskes edition

by Tom Levenson|  October 19, 20111:18 pm| 58 Comments

This post is in: KULCHA!, Open Threads, Science & Technology

FacebookTweetEmail

Shuffling my feet a bit at the self-promotion involved, I’d like to invite anyone interested to tune in to a conversation I’m going to have with Naomi Oreskes tonight.

Oreskes, for those of you who may not know, is a professor of history and science studies at UC San Diego.  Our chat will center on her recent book, Merchants of Doubt co-authored with Erik Conway.

I think I’ve mentioned that book more than once here.  IMHO, it’s one of the most important works published in America in the last several years.  In it, Oreskes and Conway document how a clutch of cold-war scientists, many of them physicists, transformed the truth of scientific uncertainty and incompleteness into hugely damaging lies, first about the (lack of) risk associated with cigarettes, and then on just about every other major science/policy issue of the last several decades.

We’re going to talk about how these ego-ideology-and-money driven figures did that, and how their actions shaped the specific stories of tobacco, acid rain, climate change and the like.

But to me the larger story — and here’s where I think our exchange will go over the course of the hour — is the way that these self-styled iconoclasts have managed to undermine the whole idea of science as a way to gain real insight into critical policy issues.  If you want to know why the GOP candidates can get away with denying climate change, it is at least in part because staged controversies about scientific “doubt” have undercut the whole idea of technical expertise or knowledge gained through specialized skills and methods.

To me that sets up an enormous personal and professional question:  as a science writer and teacher of incredibly idealistic and hopeful aspiring science writers one of the goals has always been to tell stories that help to inform our civic conversation.  But on the evidence that Oreskes and Conway bring to bear, we’ve lost ground on that hope over every year of my career.  So one question I’ll have tonight is what can be done that will take public engagement with science beyond the cool story and into some usable appreciation of scientific habits of thought.

I do have some notions of my own on that  — but these are matters Oreskes knows well and has considered deeply.  So check out what she has to say.

Which means, I suppose, I should link to the venue!

That would be Virtually Speaking Science, and new weekly feature of/spin off from Jay Ackroyd’s Virtually Speaking empire. (Jay comments here, and FP’s over at Eschaton.)  I’m in the rota of hosts for the show, taking on the third Wednesday of every month.  You can listen to tonight’s program here Update:  at 9 p.m. EDT.   It’s also going to run live in Second Life, for those of you tired of your first one.  You can take part in live chat through the IRC servicee.  (Instructions below the fold.)

Image: George de la Tours, Cheater with the Ace of Diamonds, 1635

1. Connect to http://webchat.freenode.net/
2. Create a log-in name
3. Enter #vspeak into the channel field.
4. NOTE: ‘Relay Rinq’ is not a person but a bridge to IRC chat.
5. Type into the text field along the bottom of the screen.
6. Begin your question with ‘QUESTION’ so it’s easy to spot.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « More 4-1-1 On 9-9-9
Next Post: Apparently it’s my day for the Open Threads…. »

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  1. 1.

    FlipYrWhig

    October 19, 2011 at 1:26 pm

    I had a survey course in Earth Science with Prof. Oreskes at Dartmouth in 1989 or 1990. She was very young and very nervous! It was a thankless teaching gig. So, please tell her thanks…

  2. 2.

    aimai

    October 19, 2011 at 1:38 pm

    Congratulations Tom. This sounds hugely exciting. Will it be available as a podcast? I’ve become addicted to listening to podcasts of radio lab and this american life while walking around fresh pond. I’m too impatient for radio if I’m not moving around! Great topic. I’ve been meaning to read the book for some time.

    aimai

  3. 3.

    M31

    October 19, 2011 at 1:39 pm

    A great topic! It’s interesting that she starts with the Cold War period. Could you ask her (sorry I won’t be able to participate live; wish I could) if she’s covered the history of lead poisoning? I read an excellent book a few years ago (I can’t remember the title), though I actually couldn’t finish it it was so depressing, that detailed the resistance by the lead mining industry to restrictions on lead paint, and then lead in gasoline, going back to the early 1900’s. All the elements seem to be there back in the 20’s–stonewalling, buying Congress, lobbying for weak regulation, bogus studies, creepy advertising campaigns, etc.

    So was there anything particularly Cold-War era specific that led to the explosion of this, or was it just moneyed interests getting better at it?

    (Seriously, the lead industry resisted calls to restrict lead paint used in candy wrappers. The workplace ‘safety’ stories will fucking curl your hair.)

  4. 4.

    MikeJ

    October 19, 2011 at 1:45 pm

    And of course you don’t have to go through some weird irc->web gateway. Just fire up your favorite irc client.

  5. 5.

    Brachiator

    October 19, 2011 at 1:52 pm

    That would be Virtually Speaking Science, and new weekly feature of/spin off from Jay Ackroyd’s Virtually Speaking empire. (Jay comments here, and FP’s over at Eschaton.) I’m in the rota of hosts for the show, taking on the third Wednesday of every month.

    You can listen to tonight’s program here. This sounds immensely fascinating. Can this be accessed later or downloaded anywhere? I can’t listen at the scheduled time.

  6. 6.

    S. cerevisiae

    October 19, 2011 at 2:03 pm

    Sounds great! The book is excellent, but it raises my blood pressure seeing how the public is manipulated. The wingnuts have even demonized Rachel Carson now, they think DDT is da BOMB!

  7. 7.

    M-pop

    October 19, 2011 at 2:10 pm

    What a great topic and I love Virtually Speaking! I’ll try to attend :)

  8. 8.

    jayackroyd

    October 19, 2011 at 2:16 pm

    Here’s the itunes link: http://bit.ly/k3Ekl9

    Past shows you might be interested in include Tom talking about his book Newton and the Counterfeiter, James Fallows and Bruce Schneier, Glenn Greenwald and Daniel Ellsberg, Fallows and Jay Rosen and Digby with Greenwald.

    Many thanks to Tom for doing this, and I apologize for cluttering up the moderator’s thread. I don’t know what I did, but this is the information I meant to post, so no need to release them.

  9. 9.

    jayackroyd

    October 19, 2011 at 2:19 pm

    @MikeJ: What’s your favorite IRC client?

  10. 10.

    jayackroyd

    October 19, 2011 at 2:19 pm

    ARGH! My apologies.

  11. 11.

    Sarah Proud and Tall

    October 19, 2011 at 2:23 pm

    @jayackroyd:

    Sorry, that was me being overeager with the moderation queue. I’ve deleted the duplicates and, i hope, left the right comment up. That’s what i get for drinking absinthe for breakfast.

  12. 12.

    schrodinger's cat

    October 19, 2011 at 2:26 pm

    Why the hating on physicists? Are physicists particularly egregious in this regard? Can you give a few examples? I know about Freeman Dyson being a climate skeptic.

  13. 13.

    barath

    October 19, 2011 at 2:31 pm

    Tom – I’m curious what she and others think is going on with peak oil. Specifically, why isn’t it discussed by anyone. It seems in the last few weeks there’s be a merchants-of-doubt like push to discredit the notion (witness major pushes by Daniel Yergin and the Wall Street Journal to say “there is no such thing as peak oil”, etc.) while the evidence mounts day after day, year after year that oil production has flatlined and is likely to head downwards soon.

    It’s puzzling to me that something with such major near-term consequences, just as climate change, is ignored to such an extent.

  14. 14.

    barath

    October 19, 2011 at 2:34 pm

    I guess I should add – addressing your question of how to engage the public – is that it seems that since economics dominate all political and social discussions, maybe including discussion of peak oil along with climate change will make our job easier, since peak oil will have major economic impacts in the short term, and most of the sane responses to it will help mitigate climate change too.

  15. 15.

    Marc

    October 19, 2011 at 2:42 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Sort of, but he’s more difficult to pigeonhole than that. Dyson has always been a techno-optimist, so I’d think it’s fairer to characterize his views as “we can geo-engineer away any problems.” His resistance to climate change has to do with increasing costs for fossil fuels impacting the third world poor, rather than being aimed at first world oil companies, etc. I disagree with him, but he’s coming from a very different place than the typical industry-funded skeptics.

  16. 16.

    S. cerevisiae

    October 19, 2011 at 2:43 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: Fred Singer for one. I loaned the book to a friend so I can’t look up any other names right now but the main people behind the muddying of science were mostly old physicists left over from the cold war and fiercely anti-communist.

    Read the book – it’s an eye opening experience.

  17. 17.

    gene108

    October 19, 2011 at 2:46 pm

    Ha!

    550 years ago all you science types convinced us the world was flat!

    Why should we trust you now?

  18. 18.

    schrodinger's cat

    October 19, 2011 at 2:48 pm

    @Marc: I agree, he is also an engaging writer and a first class intellect. My question was for Tom Levenson and his blanket assertion about physicists being the opportunistic skeptics. Besides Dyson being a climate skeptic (and as you explained, even he doesn’t fit the profile of someone bartering his integrity for profit) I haven’t heard of anyone else. May be I just don’t know. Hence my original question.

  19. 19.

    schrodinger's cat

    October 19, 2011 at 2:53 pm

    @S. cerevisiae:I will look up the book. I have no idea who Fred Singer is. He is not a very well known physicist.

  20. 20.

    Lysana

    October 19, 2011 at 3:04 pm

    You do realize that you managed to completely omit the time of this conversation from your post? It’s findable, to be sure, but that’s an interesting goof.

  21. 21.

    schrodinger's cat

    October 19, 2011 at 3:05 pm

    OK I read Fred Singer’s Wikipedia entry, he seems like a free-market libertarian with a Physics PhD, he may be known for his controversial stances but he is hardly well known as a physicist, unlike Dyson. Also his opposition to global warming etc seems to be based more on ideology and less on science.
    I am sure just like any other field physics has its fair share of cranks.

  22. 22.

    Barry

    October 19, 2011 at 3:05 pm

    I don’t have a copy of the book handy, but the physicists she lists were prominent, from work in the 1940’s-60’s or 70’s. They weren’t Nobel Prize winners, but not third-rate hacks at Cow College U.

  23. 23.

    Tom Return of the Pretentious Art Douche Levenson

    October 19, 2011 at 3:11 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: Not singling out physicists in the sense I think you mean.

    First — I dont’ see a blanket assertion in the phrase “many of them physicists.”

    Second — in the context of the Cold War, the physicist reference was to remind folks of the atomic warfare connnection; physicists were extremely high status folks when it was thought that they could blow you up; this was a shorthand way of signalling why this small splinter group of folks had such influences.

    Third — I must confess I did have in the back of my mind the occupational hazard that afflicts some, especially older physicists (and other scientists too, to be sure…but onwards). That would be the belief that training in and especially success in physics imparts the ability to grasp any “lesser” subject easily enough to be able to judge ideas and results in fields far removed from one’s own.

    There’s even some truth in that belief: think of your namesake, whose What is Life is a bravura example of what the rigor gained from a life in physics can do when applied to a new problem.

    But then there are the Shockleys of the world — and the Singers and Fred Seitz (a major player in the tobacco story, a physicist and former head of the National Academy) and so on.

    So: no blanket indictment. For everyone of these folks there were dozens of physicists whose skepticism was the usual (and necessary) reservoir of suspicion needed to do science. But among the relatively small group of those who show up again and again in Oreskes’ and Conway’s account, many were in fact physicists.

  24. 24.

    Tom Return of the Pretentious Art Douche Levenson

    October 19, 2011 at 3:12 pm

    @Lysana: Well. Oops. 9 p.m. EDT, for those of you keeping score at home. (I’ll insert above.

    Oh and to Aimai et al — yes this will be stored and available for later listening.

  25. 25.

    schrodinger's cat

    October 19, 2011 at 3:20 pm

    @Tom Return of the Pretentious Art Douche Levenson: Thanks for answering, sorry if I sounded a tad defensive.
    Physicists do think of themselves as superior, better than other scientists. I think it was Rutherford who said that,
    In science there is physics, everything else is stamp collecting.

    Most of the physicists she lists seem to have been more prominent in policy circles than in physics proper.
    Their motivations seems to be grounded in their politics rather than in physics or science.

  26. 26.

    catclub

    October 19, 2011 at 3:44 pm

    There is a bit of poor-mouthing going on here. On all the issues mentioned, except for climate change, there is now wide agreement that the doubters have not reversed.
    Smoking, asbestos, ozone, second-hand smoke, water pollution of rivers, have all been long term struggles, but the scientific consensus has prevailed.
    What am I missing?

    Two cases I can think of that are counter-examples are vaccination and fear of radiation.

    There may be an expectation that with rapidly progrssing science, public acceptance of scientific consensus would accelerate as well, but it has not, due to the malign influence of corporate sponsored doubters. It may be that a 30 year ( 1 -2 generation) time scale is required for changing wider public opinion. (Similar to scientific revolutions which do not actually convince the senior scientists to change, the old ones just die out.) Cigarettes were already called cancer sticks well before 1963, but actual change of attitudes takes time.

    I always am nervous making a posting like this on Tom’s threads, maybe that is good thing.

  27. 27.

    Anarchaeologist

    October 19, 2011 at 3:47 pm

    I have a modest proposal: as many of you have no doubt noted, those souls who remain unconvinced by the evidence that human activities are changing the planet’s climate disdain the label “deniers” in favor of “sceptics” (I use the British spelling, which wordpress doesn’t apparently like, for a reason). However, scepticism is much more than simple disagreement or contrarianism. To be a sceptic, one must be willing to change one’s conclusion to accommodate the evidence. However, climate-change sceptics do not have a constant position: they refuse to believe that climate change is happening. Or that it is happening, but it’s natural. Or that it’s not catastrophic. Or that it’s going to benefit humanity. They also tend to hype any single study, no matter how tangential or preliminary (see CERN CLOUD experiment) or poorly conducted, if it seems to support their preferred conclusion. In short, the sceptics lack constancy in their positions.

    Now the symbol for a constant in mathematics is “c”. “Sceptic” has two c’s. However, as we have seen, sceptics in general only have one constant, and that is: “No matter what mainstream climatology says about human-caused climate change, it is wrong.” So therefore they only deserve one c; I propose therefore that the people now known as deniers, or to themselves as sceptics, suffer the loss of one c and hereafter be known as Septics. It’s only fitting and fair.

  28. 28.

    S. cerevisiae

    October 19, 2011 at 3:50 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Most of the physicists she lists seem to have been more prominent in policy circles than in physics proper.
    Their motivations seems to be grounded in their politics rather than in physics or science.

    That was the problem, the politicians would listen to them just because they were atomic scientists and they used big words. They had influence on policy far beyond what they should have.

  29. 29.

    kdaug

    October 19, 2011 at 3:56 pm

    1. Go. If it helps, get angry. If not, keep pushing anyway.
    2. Keep the eyes on the laces of the shoes.

  30. 30.

    Martin

    October 19, 2011 at 4:01 pm

    @Tom Return of the Pretentious Art Douche Levenson:

    For everyone of these folks there were dozens of physicists whose skepticism was the usual (and necessary) reservoir of suspicion needed to do science. But among the relatively small group of those who show up again and again in Oreskes’ and Conway’s account, many were in fact physicists.

    Speaking with such a degree in hand, and having been immersed among them, physics brings with it a sense of certainty that other fields don’t have – not even mathematics. Physics (particularly the theoretical side of the house) has a certain purity to it that if you can calculate something – the charge of an electron or the speed of light or whatever – you can then turn around and measure it to as many decimal places as you dare.

    Chemists can do their stoichiometry but when you put shit in a beaker, there’s always some impurity that you can’t avoid, some molecules that stubbornly refuse to bump into and therefore react with other molecules and so on. Biology and other sciences get even fuzzier. You can get close enough to be quite certain you did the math right, but not like physics. Physics brings with it ‘fuck you I’m right’ certainty where the only way to refute it is to raise a couple hundred billion dollars for a bigger space telescope or a bigger supercollider to tack on one more decimal place that might differ from the calculation.

    It’s a field that doesn’t exactly breed humility. It’s hard to step out of that kind of black and white world and into any other space and operate effectively. You never get that kind of certainty in other fields, which is why physicists can easily be climate deniers (because you’re fourth decimal place is wrong – you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about) and why they can botch policy issues so badly.

    But my observation is that they’re virtually always of the denier class. It’s not that they lack a reservoir of suspicion, they overflow with it. Nobody can ever provide them with sufficient evidence to satisfy them because they’re demanding physics-level certainty, which simply isn’t feasible in chaotic, meatsack infested fields of study.

  31. 31.

    jeffreyw

    October 19, 2011 at 4:03 pm

    @Anarchaeologist: Get them all together for a study and we can call it a Septic Tank.

  32. 32.

    Martin

    October 19, 2011 at 4:09 pm

    Since we’re on a science/tech theme, any thoughts on Lytro’s new camera?

    Newcomer Lytro has unveiled a new camera technology that promised to revolutionize how cameras capture shots. Its new sensor captures light fields independent of the direction of the camera and avoids the need to focus the shot at the time it’s taken. Instead, photographers would just have to pick the focal point in software, either on the camera or on another device.

    Sounds like a game-changer.

  33. 33.

    schrodinger's cat

    October 19, 2011 at 4:21 pm

    @jeffreyw: Thread needs kitteh! We can has Bitsy?

  34. 34.

    eemom

    October 19, 2011 at 4:24 pm

    Thank you for reminding me of that painting. I saw it many many years ago at the Louvre and I used to have a little postcard of it over my desk. The facial expressions are a masterpiece.

  35. 35.

    Loneoak

    October 19, 2011 at 4:28 pm

    w00t for Science Studies!

  36. 36.

    Sock Puppet of the Great Satan

    October 19, 2011 at 4:51 pm

    “You never get that kind of certainty in other fields, which is why physicists can easily be climate deniers (because you’re fourth decimal place is wrong – you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about) and why they can botch policy issues so badly.”

    I don’t think there’s that many climate deniers out there who are scientists, even physicists. There are a lot of engineers out there denying climate science. (And petroleum geologists, but they’re not exactly objective observers on the point.)

    But, from my experience, you don’t actually find many climate change denying staff-level engineers or scientists in the oil & energy companies. Not even in ExxonMobil.

    Now, their lobbyists and executives are a different issue. But every technical person I’ve dealt with in the oil, gas & energy field for the last five years accepts AGW as real.

  37. 37.

    Sock Puppet of the Great Satan

    October 19, 2011 at 4:57 pm

    “w00t for Science Studies!”

    There’s an obscure journal in the UK called Science as Culture founded by former Maoists that was part of the Science Studies field and too aim, I guess as vestigal Maoism, at the notion of scientific expertise and the way it was misused in society to e.g. get those poor people living next to [name your big industrial polluting facility] to shut up.

    And they had some fair points. Environmental Toxicology and Epidemiology are fields where the data is so squishy and sparse that they make sociology departments look like the NIST.

    But now the same po-mo arguments they developed against scientific expertise are being unearthed against AGW by the Leninist-Maoist wing of the GOP.

  38. 38.

    Tom Return of the Pretentious Art Douche Levenson

    October 19, 2011 at 4:57 pm

    @Sock Puppet of the Great Satan: Almost everyone with the capacity to read the papers does. The US military is making plans to confront the risks of climate change; insurance companies are starting to model AGW risk and so on. It’s the public debate that’s poisoned; the real money and power knows better.

  39. 39.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    October 19, 2011 at 5:06 pm

    @S. cerevisiae: Not exactly. Many physicists were opposed to the continued development and use of atomic weapons. This started during the Manhattan Project and continued after the war. A number of Los Alamos physicists petitioned for a public demonstration of the bomb before dropping it on Japanese cities, but they were rebuffed by Grove and Oppenheimer. After the war, scientists who followed the anti-communist war-mongering script were rewarded with jobs, publicity, and research money. Scientists who advocated disarmament, or entrusting nuclear stockpiles to international bodies, were rebuffed, isolated, and harried.

    Scientists who advocated development of atomic and nuclear bombs (think Teller) didn’t have an policy voice that was out of proportion, they reinforced the policy line of the MIC and were part of the machine.

  40. 40.

    catclub

    October 19, 2011 at 5:09 pm

    @Sock Puppet of the Great Satan: @Tom Return of the Pretentious Art Douche Levenson:

    Oil companies’ imitation of Wizard of Oz:
    Yes, there is no climate change! It is a complete coincidence that we are planning to drill for oil in Arctic waters that are free of ice. Pay no attention to that.

  41. 41.

    gulo

    October 19, 2011 at 5:12 pm

    @martin, @jayackroyd – thank you for the thinking and the linking.

  42. 42.

    WereBear

    October 19, 2011 at 5:12 pm

    @catclub: Of course; they don’t fall for their own propaganda.

    But keeping the public confused and divided lets them handle it the way they want to.

  43. 43.

    schrodinger's cat

    October 19, 2011 at 5:23 pm

    @Comrade Scrutinizer: I remember a panel talk on nuclear disarmament at the 100th APS meeting in 1999. Hans Bethe (Nobel for explaining how nuclear fusion powered stars) who had also worked on Manhattan project was on the panel. The characterization that physicists are war mongers and apologists for polluters is I think painting with too broad a brush.

  44. 44.

    jeffreyw

    October 19, 2011 at 5:31 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    How about Bitsy the Killa Kitteh?

  45. 45.

    schrodinger's cat

    October 19, 2011 at 5:36 pm

    @jeffreyw: Eeks jumps up on her desk
    Is that a real mouse?

  46. 46.

    jeffreyw

    October 19, 2011 at 5:42 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: Yup, just a baby though. Toby had it first.

  47. 47.

    Tom Return of the Pretentious Art Douche Levenson

    October 19, 2011 at 5:43 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat: Yup. See also Szilard, Leo; Einstein, Albert; Oppenheimer, Frank;and so on.

    Again: in each of the controversies Oreskes and Conway examine, almost all scientists line up on the side of doing science and seeing where the data lead. A small handful don’t. Several of that handful were physicists, among whom were a number who had a direct connection to either Cold War research or politics. That doesn’t mean that they are representative even of that subset of physical scientists. See, e.g. Dick Garwin.

    For the reasons cited above I don’t think it’s entirely coincidental that certain types of scientists show up in the merchant of doubt column. But there are a lot of factors that go into that, including the calculation by those that benefit from false controversy as to who will give them the most bang for their bucks. One can predict that some number of doubters will be physicists; one cannot predict that a given physicist will fall into that trap.

  48. 48.

    burnspbesq

    October 19, 2011 at 6:09 pm

    Downloaded the introduction and first chapter to my iPad to read over lunch, and ended up buying the book before I got to my second taco. If I get enough work done today and tomorrow morning before heading for the airport, will start reading on the plane.

  49. 49.

    David in NY

    October 19, 2011 at 6:42 pm

    @eemom: Love de la Tour also. There’s a very nice one at the National Gallery in DC.

  50. 50.

    lovable liberal

    October 19, 2011 at 7:02 pm

    Not to rag on physicists…

    Ah, hell, to rag on physicists, even though the one in my little anecdote is a dear friend…

    MIT physics Ph.D.: “Why mess with chemistry? It’s all derivable from physics anyway.”

    LL: “Go ahead, derive it. Win a Nobel.”

    crickets…

  51. 51.

    Sock Puppet of the Great Satan

    October 19, 2011 at 7:35 pm

    “Many physicists were opposed to the continued development and use of atomic weapons.”

    Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Pugwash organization came out of the Manhattan Project scientists.

  52. 52.

    Sock Puppet of the Great Satan

    October 19, 2011 at 7:38 pm

    “@schrodinger’s cat: Yup. See also Szilard, Leo; Einstein, Albert; Oppenheimer, Frank;and so on.”

    And unfortunately, Fuchs, Karl.

  53. 53.

    bystander

    October 19, 2011 at 10:53 pm

    45 minutes in… This is simply an outstanding discussion. Thanks for flagging it and having it. Cannot recommend it strongly enough.

  54. 54.

    bystander

    October 19, 2011 at 11:12 pm

    implicatory denial

    I’m keeping that one.

  55. 55.

    Tom Levenson

    October 19, 2011 at 11:45 pm

    @bystander: Many thanks. You made my night.

  56. 56.

    Porlock Junior

    October 20, 2011 at 1:54 am

    @lovable liberal:
    Wins the thread, and the grand prize, which of course will be a fine stamp collection.

  57. 57.

    Batocchio

    October 20, 2011 at 2:54 am

    Great stuff, Tom, thanks.

  58. 58.

    Sock Puppet of the Great Satan

    October 20, 2011 at 11:13 am

    I mean Fuchs, Klaus. As Bethe said, a physicist who really changed history.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Comments

  • sab on Wednesday News Roundup, A Little Late (Apr 18, 2024 @ 5:33am)
  • Jay on Wednesday News Roundup, A Little Late (Apr 18, 2024 @ 5:29am)
  • Jay on Wednesday News Roundup, A Little Late (Apr 18, 2024 @ 5:28am)
  • sab on Wednesday News Roundup, A Little Late (Apr 18, 2024 @ 5:25am)
  • sab on Wednesday News Roundup, A Little Late (Apr 18, 2024 @ 5:18am)

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Balloon Juice Meetups!

All Meetups
Talk of Meetups – Meetup Planning
Proposed BJ meetups list from frosty

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8
Virginia House Races
Four Directions – Montana
Worker Power AZ
Four Directions – Arizona
Four Directions – Nevada

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
Positive Climate News
War in Ukraine
Cole’s “Stories from the Road”
Classified Documents Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Political Action 2024

Postcard Writing Information

Balloon Juice for Four Directions AZ

Donate

Balloon Juice for Four Directions NV

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2024 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!