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Edward Teller Passes Away At 95
Lord Prox writes "Edward Teller, one of the 20th Century's greats in physics, died Tuesday afternoon at his home in Stanford. He was 95." Newsforge.com also has one of the final interviews with Teller, who was "a principal architect of the hydrogen bomb, [and] passionate advocate of nuclear power and antimissile defense."
In the salad days of nuclear-weapons testing, the United States detonated 331atomic, hydrogen, and thermonuclear bombs. Many of those explosions appear in Trinity and Beyond, which utilizes a lot of declassified footage, most of it in color. Standouts include the United States' South Pacific detonation of an atom bomb 90 feet below the water to study the effects on a fleet of ships. Surprise, surprise, they sink! If that wasn't enough, the navy also loaded the decks with sheep to study the effects of the blast on life forms. Surprise, surprise, they die! Glowing leg of lamb anyone? This film will alternately amuse and horrify you at the rampant irresponsibility of the Soviets and Americans in their quest for nuclear domination. The Russians have the honor of having detonated the largest nuclear bomb ever at a whopping 58 megatons. The Hiroshima bomb was barely a kiloton. Of course, after the U.S.and Russia ceased their activities, the Chinese decided to get in on the act. But that's a different story for a different documentary.
how is Penn taking the news? He'll never be the same without Teller.
The world needs missiles. Eventually every nation, even the ones in Africa, will have nukes. A good anti-ICBM system is necessary. So let's not cut funding now.
That's sad to hear. Though some might strongly disagree, as a military guy myself, anyone who advances the capability for the USA to protect and defend itself is held in high regard by me.
Thank you Mr Teller.
...destructive nuclear tipped missles, of course you'll be damned passionate about anti-missle defense!
Teller: Godfey, we did it! Nuclear missles, it's been attained!
Godfrey: Uh sir, if we can do it, I'm sure the Russians will be able to also.
Teller: SHIT!
I have no objections to a healthy debate about nuclear weapons, but you have to think that their main task is wholesale destruction.
95 is an impressively long time for a human being to live. I would bet that all the nuclear materials Teller worked with somehow mutated him into having extraordinary longevity. Let's hope they do a comprehensive autopsy on Teller to see if radiation was indeed the cause of his long life.
By Richard Rhoads.
It's a fantastic book about the creation of the Atomic Bomb -- from when scientists first realized the possibility, through the manhatten project. It's set against the backdrop of political events of the first half of the century and provides a fascinating account of the entire experience, including the actions of Edward Teller.
I'd highly recommend it.
Truly an American icon
Sorry, couldn't resist.
"Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world!?"
-=-This sig brought to you by The Cheat; and by Viewers Like You.-=-
Some will mourn the loss of a man who vocally advocated the a strong national defense and who made great contributions to the development of the hydrogen bomb. I'm sure as well that others will castigate the man for those very same achievements.
However, I remember myself as a geeky kid in Malaysia interested in science and technology, writing a letter to one of the 'great names'. I was quite amazed to receive a personal reply to my letter, typewritten but signed by hand. His reply was humble (he never put down any of what must have seemed to him to be naive and silly observations), encouraging (the words "I am pleased that there are children from all over the world like you who are interested in science." aren't much to an adult, but they sure meant a lot to me as a kid!) and inspiring.
That sums up the man in my mind, and I mourn the loss of that man.
Edward Teller: advocated the use of nuclear weapons for everything from digging holes to brushing teeth.
Charles Simonyi: primarily responsible for the creation of Microsoft Office and Hungarian notation. *shudder*
Coincidence or evil Hungarian conspiracy?
Here a link to an interesting interview with Teller along with some video clips: Teller Interview
You must be new around here...
i thought you meant Teller of Pen & Teller...
:(
i thought he was somehow 95 and that he died. i need sleep
Walter Sullivan, a science writer and editor for The New York Times, died in 1996.
Spooky.
Damn. If I died at 95 I'd be pretty pissed off about it. I bet he was shooting for the three digits.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
... now that Teller is dead?
Rest in peace, o ye father of the cold war. And may lessons be learned from your mistakes, your regrets, and your insights.
Kip Hawley is an idiot.
A few years ago, he and colleagues submitted a paper to Nature that suggested dispersing sulfur dioxide or other submicron particles in the stratosphere to block sunlight and thus halt global warming.
Easing the effects of one kind of pollutant by adding a whole bunch of other pollutants to the atmosphere. Goodbye, global warming; hello, acid rain! Between that, and the whole hydrogen bomb thing, I'm guessing he wasn't up for Greenpeace's Man of the Year award.
It should also be said that he unfairly denounced another scientist, Robert Oppenheimer, as a comunist. Because Oppenheimer didn't think we should go for the H-bomb.
Not exactly a nice guy, glowing obituaries asside.
Gentoo Sucks
The H-Bomb and SDI.
And getting Oppenheimer's clearance revoked by casting doubts on his patriotism.
If you want to read about a genuinely interesting and curious bomb-physicist, check this out.
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
Their main task is to never be used, to just sit there and look evil.
That we have them to use discourages their use.
Edward Teller did more to bring this world to the brink of destruction than any other human that has ever lived.
His ego drove him to push the hydrogen bomb on the world, and his ego prevented him from both admitting his mistake and from doing his best (like many of the other scientists who aided him) to make amends.
For those of who you insist the hydrogen bomb is necessary for national security, you're both ignorant and foolish. The hydrogen bomb has basically no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
A non-hydrogen based atomic bomb has more than enough bang to destroy our enemies. The ONLY use for a hydrogen bomb is planetary destruction.
I, for one, will not miss Teller in the least. He represents the worst of humanity. He was willing to put his ego ahead of, quite literally, ALL else.
Compared with the real luminaries of physics, Teller was a technician or at best an engineer.
"And during the funeral, a reckless prank is being..."
Oh wait a sec... listen to his coffin...
*tick tick tick tick....*
"Derp de derp."
This guy was working on developing weapons of mass destruction. Someone please tell Bush that California (a known rogue state) was harboring a known terrorist operative. California has flouted the will of the United States for too long; a regime change is long overdue.
Trying to censor me, eh?
Surprised anyone who works with nuclear or radio-active material would actually live so long. Many of these physicists often die somewhat early.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Probably just a coincidence, maybe...
It seems like so many unique and truly gifted folks have left us this year...
I use to work for a company that is ran by Edward Teller's grandson (BodyMedia)... The positive influences of Edward's stay here on planet E was evident in his grandson.
Undoubtedly, Edward was about more than bombs and military. A great scientist and contributing mind that loved academia all his life and contributed to both the darkness of man as well our collective hope.
-p
Beyond a few well-worn platitudes, it's obvious that the interviewer is almost completely ignorant of the history surrounding Edward Teller's life - essentially, the key events of the 20th Century.
If it were not for Dr. Teller, there likely wouldn't be an Internet nor a Slashdot, because we'd all be too afraid of arrest by the KGB to do anything other than quote Marxist platitudes at one another at our jobs in Red October Tractor Factory #5 or whatever. And for this callow young woman to speculate that the world would've been better off without this man - the least technical of whose works she obviously has no concept of understanding, given her total ignorance of science and mathematics (it shows in the article) - and then to brand him as the incarnation of evil on this planet, ruminating on how the world would be a better place had he never lived, is boundlessly hypocritical.
Even if she had enough historical and/or scientific knowledge to be entitled to opinions on these matters, the fact remains that she demonstrates no appreciation of the fact that she met someone who was truly a great man. Not necessarily a good man (though I certainly believe him to be so), but one of those who has truly made a mark on the history of the human race.
Hell, Teller obtained his PhD under the tutelage of no less a personage than Heisenberg, himself. That alone ought to bring out a note of respect for the man.
It's truly sad that such a brainless nitwit wasted some of the ever-dwindling store of hours Dr. Teller had left to him.
I posted this a few years ago for a related story, but it seems worth repeating now:
;)
So, I met him in an pseudo-interview with about 6 other students. I asked him if it ever bothered him to be the "Father of the H-Bomb" since his "baby" could be used for such evil and/or immoral purposes.
I thought he was going to jump out of his chair at me.
He got very upset and angrily announced that a scientist's only responsibility is to science. The possible uses of a discovery should not even be considered by the researchers -- that is someone elses business. And because of this, he did not feel even the slightest bit of remorse for his work on the bomb.
And then he upbraided _me_ (since I was on my way to grad school to become a scientist at the time) for thinking that a scientist _should_ worry about the moral implications of his/her work.
Needless to say, I didn't ask any more questions.
Since someone already made the obligatory Dr Strangelove comment (since we all know that Dr Strangelove was based on Teller), I'll make the equally obvious comment regarding a song by the American band "Bad Religion", where Teller is presumably being referred to as the "greatest killer in American history." ( http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stage/9411/no substance.html )
(I would post as my regular user account, but what kind of karma hit do you get for making reference to a punk rock song in an obit?)
Great pic of the sausage can be found here:
The Sausage
It doesn't look too impressive until you see the guy sitting in front of it, which puts it into perspective. This was the United State's first thermonuclear device. Yield: 10.4 megatons. Made a big boom. =)
Is this accurate or not?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Teller, I do not know if I'm qualified to judge you.
Your contribution lights homes across the world but you also created something that decimated entire cities with such horrible effects that footage of these atrocities is too politically sensitive to show to a wide audience in the US (How many Americans have seen melting Japanese children crying in hospitals?)
To this day people suffer with the side effects of the 2 bombs dropped in Japan and are discriminated because of their genetic defects.
Now that you're dead I'll just let the lord deliver his judgement.
he's with satan now.
--Nick
Edward Teller, who played a key role in U.S. defense and energy policies for more than half a century and was dubbed the "father of the H-bomb" for his enthusiastic pursuit of the powerful weapon, died Tuesday, a spokesman for Lawrence Livermore Laboratory said. He was 95.
... a possibility to demonstrate" the bomb, Teller said at a 50th anniversary forum. "Now in retrospect I have a regret."
Teller died in Stanford, California, near the Hoover Institute where he served as a senior research fellow.
Teller exerted a profound influence on America's defense and energy policies, championing the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, nuclear power and the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Among honors he received were the Albert Einstein Award, the Enrico Fermi Award and the National Medal of Science.
Yet Teller also will be remembered for his role in destroying the career of his one-time boss, Robert Oppenheimer -- which alienated Teller from many of his colleagues -- and for pushing the H-bomb and the Strategic Defense Initiative on grounds that, in the opinion of critics, were sketchy or dubious.
Teller's staunch support for defense stemmed in part from two events that shaped his dark, distrustful view of world affairs -- the 1919 communist revolution in his native Hungary and the rise of Nazism while he lived in Germany in the early 1930s.
Even the end of the Cold War did not change Teller's view that the United States needed a strong defense.
"The danger for ballistic missiles in the hands of 18 different nations has increased, and will increase, unless we have a defense," he said. "If we want to have stable, peaceful conditions, defense against sudden attack by rockets is more needed than ever."
Witty and personable, with a passion for playing the piano, Teller nevertheless was a persuasive Cold Warrior who influenced presidents of both parties.
In 1939, he was one of three scientists who encouraged Einstein to alert President Franklin Roosevelt that the power of nuclear fission -- the splitting of an atom's nucleus -- could be tapped to create a devastating new weapon.
Two years later, even before the first atom bomb was completed, fellow scientist Fermi suggested that nuclear fusion -- fusing rather than splitting nuclei -- might be used for an even more destructive explosive, the hydrogen bomb. Teller quickly took to the idea.
Teller's enthusiasm and pursuit of such a bomb -- he called it the "Super" -- won him the title "father of the H-bomb," a term he said he hated. The first megaton H-bomb was exploded in 1952.
The H-bomb was never used in war, but atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945, quickly leading to Japan's surrender. They followed by less than one month the first major atomic explosion on July 16, 1945, at Trinity Site in New Mexico.
In 1995, Teller looked back a half-century and wondered if the United States could have showed Japan the tremendous power of the bombs without destroying the cities. Some scientists had suggested at the time that a bomb be exploded in the sky miles over Tokyo harbor in hopes of scaring Japan into surrendering with a minimum of casualties.
"I think we shared the opportunity and the duty, which we did not pursue, to find
Still, he defended the existence of atomic weapons, saying, "The second half of the century has been incomparably more peaceful than the first, simply by putting power into the hands of those people who wanted peace."
In his memoirs, published several years ago, Teller added: "I deeply regret the deaths and injuries that resulted from the atomic bombings, but my best explanation of why I do not regret working on weapons is a question: What if we hadn't?"
He continued to lecture and conduct research into his 90s, although ill health had slowed him some by then.
Edward Teller was born Jan. 15, 1908, in Budapest. He received his university education in Germany, earning
that is, untill every muslim nation in the world declares jihaad on the states, and because of america commiting crimes against humanity, they're left with no other countries helping to defend itself, the country falls to it's knees (biggest military in the world doesn't do a damn bit of good when fighting against people posed as cabbies, but with north korean nuclear bombs strapped to their chests). Not to mention the fact that mecca's in Saudi Arabia, which is not an enemy of the states. Hell, even if you discount guerrilla tactics... Machines of warfare run on petroleum (propane, petrol, diesel... doesn't matter), and when you've got the entire middle east and then some (the supply of oil) against the US alone, on US soil, pretty quick you'll be marching soldiers in to a line of fueled up Iranian tanks, sitting underneath the Pakistani airforce.
Not that *I* have a problem with that, I just think that it'd have the opposite of the desired effect.
We have plenty of hydrogen bombs. =)
Edward Teller (original Hungarian name Teller Ede) (January 15, 1908 - September 9, 2003) was an Hungarian-born American nuclear physicist of Jewish descent. He was known as the father of the hydrogen bomb.
Teller was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary. He left Hungary in 1926 (partly due to the rule of Miklos Horthy) and received his higher education in Germany, completing his Ph.D. in physics under Werner Heisenberg in 1930 at the University of Leipzig.
He spent two years at the University of Gottingen and left Germany in 1934 through the aid of the Jewish Rescue Committee. He went briefly to England and moved for a year to Copenhagen, where Niels Bohr was teaching.
In 1935, Teller emigrated to the United States. Until 1941 he lectured at George Washington University, where he met George Gamow.
In 1942, having worked with the Briggs committee, Teller joined the Manhattan Project. He was part of the Theoretical Physics division at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory during World War II and pushed hard for the additional development of nuclear weapons into a fusion based super bomb (hydrogen bomb) rather than using just the fission only atomic bomb. In 1946 he left Los Alamos to become a professor at the University of Chicago.
Following the Soviet test detonation of an atomic device in 1949 he returned to Los Alamos in 1950 to join the hydrogen bomb program. When he and Stanislaw Ulam came up with a working H-bomb design, Teller was not chosen to head the project. He left Los Alamos and joined the newly established Lawrence Livermore branch of the University of California Radiation Laboratory in 1952. The differences between Teller and many of his colleagues were widened in 1954 when he spoke against Robert Oppenheimer at his security clearance hearings.
Teller was Director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1958-1960) and then a Associate Director as he also taught at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a tireless advocate of a strong nuclear program and argued for continued testing and development: when the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative was cancelled, Teller was one of its strongest supporters.
In 1975 he retired, and was named Director Emeritus of the Livermore Laboratory and was also appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Teller died on 9 September 2003 in Stanford, California.
His books include Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics (1991), Better a Shield Than a Sword (1987), Pursuit of Simplicity (1980), and Energy from Heaven and Earth (1979), Memoirs (2002).
An old, but good poem, originally published in the New Yorker, that makes mention of Dr Teller. RIP.
--
Perils of Modern Living - Harold P. Furth
Well up above the tropostrata
There is a region stark and stellar
Where, on a streak of anti-matter
Lived Dr. Edward Anti-Teller.
Remote from Fusion's origin,
He lived unguessed and unawares
With all his antikith and kin,
And kept macassars[1] on his chairs.
One morning, idling by the sea,
He spied a tin of monstrous girth
That bore three letters: A. E. C.[2]
Out stepped a visitor from Earth.
Then, shouting gladly o'er the sands,
Met two who in their alien ways
Were like as gentils. Their right hands
Clasped, and the rest was gamma rays.
--
[1]. Macassar oil was a popular hair dressing in the 19th century, named after the Indonesian port where the oil purportedly came from. An "antimacassar" is the decorative fabric used on chairs or sofas to protect the upholstery.
[2]. AEC=Atomic Energy Commission, now replaced by DOE=Department of Energy. The AEC (like the DOE today) funded most of the National Laboratories, including Teller's Livermore Laboratory.
... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.
is it just me or does the click here button look like a a-hole
An accomplice to murder has past. I'll sleep well with a smile on my face.
Reviews of Teller's book "Memoirs":
"Panoramic and beautifully written recollections of one of the great scientific, if controversial, figures of all time."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[A]n illuminating, personable portrayal of arguably one of the greatest physicists of modern times."
San Diego Union-Tribune
"An important, informative, and interesting...book that fully lives up to expectations and can be wholeheartedly recommended."
Washington Post
"Curiosity will impel even [Teller's] harshest critics into these memoirs, where both his powerful intellect and his imperious ego are on full display."
Booklist (starred review)
"Fascinating...Edward has captured the joys and the sorrows of [his life journey] in beautiful detail."
Physics Today
Description
Edward Teller is perhaps best known for his belief in freedom through strong defense. But this extraordinary memoir at last reveals the man behind the headlines--passionate and humorous, devoted and loyal. Never before has Teller told his story as fully as he does here. We learn his true position on everything from the bombing of Japan to the pursuit of weapons research in the post-war years. In clear and compelling prose, Teller chronicles the people and events that shaped him as a scientist, beginning with his early love of music and math, and continuing with his study of quantum physics under Werner Heisenberg. He also describes his relationships with some of the century's greatest minds--Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, Szilard, von Neumann--and offers an honest assessment of the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, the founding of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and his complicated relationship with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Rich and humanizing, this candid memoir describes the events that led Edward Teller to be honored or abhorred, and provides a fascinating perspective on the ability of a single individual to affect the course of history.
Biography
Edward Teller was born in Hungary in 1908 and educated in Germany. He came to the United States in 1935. A theoretical physicist, he worked on nuclear weapons during and after World War II, and was instrumental in the development of the hydrogen bomb. A staunch advocate of national military preparedness, Teller has been involved in several controversies, most recently the debate regarding national missile defense. He helped found Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he is now Director Emeritus, and continues as a Senior Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Number of pages: 672
No, Teller wasnt't the mad one, Curtis LeMay was the crazy one.
He scared the Congress and President so much as both the head of SAC and as a loon that they instituted the Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons so that he couldn't use them as much as he wanted to.
Isten aldjon jo ember!
Mi nem felejtunk el, nyugodjal bekeben.
Koszonet mindenert - Isten veled!
P.L.U.R.
Egy haza!
kapjad be, hulye fasz!
:P idiota kocsog buzi fasz allat! huzz a budos picsaba, kurva anyad!
ha kersz atomot akkor megkaphatod!
Looks like he's here maybe a bit longer than you.
Set his coffin on top of a hundred kiloton fusion device out in the middle of the desert somewhere and give him the world's best cremation.
"It's not a test, it's a ceremony!"
I can't call you peaceniks, because you don't grasp human nature. Man's nature is to counter punch until someone falls.
Teller realized this --- he had to move Oppenhiemer away from the state of the art to proceed with a fusion weapon, otherwise, there was the possibility that Russia would have developed and used it first.
It seems as though most posters here don't mind dying as long as they aren't called evil. But for me, life is more than dying peacefully like a sheep to the slaughter. If I can save my nation by developing the most horrible weapon the planet has ever witnessed to balance world power and prevent a horrible attack on friends and neighbors, I'd sign up in a minute, no second thoughts or regrets. Stop being pansies, give up this old stupid game of fatalism and contrived self innocence, and do something to save your neighbors -- or at least recognize those who did exactly that.
Teller knew that someone else would eventually build the weapon, and it may as well have been the United States of America. There was much less chance of the u.s. using it as aggressor than Russia using it as an aggressor. Even as many here people claim that he has a special place in hell reserved for his evil soul, I would argue that would not be the case. Had it not been for Teller, Russia would have pinned the United States under communist rule after debilitating fusion weapon attacks for which we would have had no equal answer too. Millions of Americans in that era could have died, and the United States, the last democratic superpower of that age, would have fell, throwing the entire world under communist rule. Teller saved them.
Furthermore, I have never understood why people cannot grasp the concept of mutually assured destruction, and the enforced (if cold) peace it brought to a unrestful world order after WW2. The SD Initiative (whether or not we have operating hardware) bankrupted the soviet empire. If funding had not been cut, the project would have succeeded, but letting it run for a few years was plenty good to allow the Soviet Empire to spend itself into democratic oblivion (which has benefited the u.s. for the most part).
So folks, get real. You start typing on your keyboards, and a vacuum of clues form. Please reverse the trend. Cluelessness about things this important is unacceptable. Your fatalism and contrived self innocence could very well plunge the world into the nuclear war you believe Teller created the possibility of, when all Teller did was balance the scales.
One last point --- I'm sure replies will roll in declaring "well, the U.S. built the bomb first". Well, if you could actually devote your attention from the simplicities of computer gaming to the real world for a moment, it was pretty clear that the Germans were getting close to cracking the science behind the abomb, and they may not have stopped at a mere abomb, and possibly would have moved on to the H-Bomb. They were developing the bomber capability to drop such a weapon on NY even as Allied troops marched into Berlin. The cat was already out the bag, just that the U.S. trained it to do tricks first.
TurboD
Ever heard of Project Chariot? Dr. Teller and his pals wanted to try atomic excavation by detonating 4 devices at Cape Thompson near Point Hope on the Chukchi Sea in Northwest Alaska, creating an artifical harbor.
It was the Eskimo's against the AEC, and the Eskimo's won, Thank God.
Teller had the support of the Alaskan business community and the University of Alaska.
As it happens, Project Chariot ended up being subject to the very first environmental review of any federal project, and eventually they (AEC) gave up.
Teller didn't and shot off SEDAN, one of the dirtiest shots ever and the largest cratering experiment done at NTS.
Dan O'Neil's book The Firecracker Boys tells the whole story in fine fashion.
Many Japanese still believe that Kyoto was never bombed out of respect for that city's cultural importance. One version of the story has it that there was that there was a tacit agreement between the U.S. and Japanese militaries that bombers would ignore Kyoto as long as there was no antiaircraft artillery there. The reality is that Kyoto was the very first city on the list of atomic targets, and was only spared by bad weather, which caused the attack to be diverted to Nagasaki.
Pretty cold, I know. I think you before you get all self righteous either way ("day of infamy" versus "atomic genocide"), you have to remember that millions of people had already died on both sides. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as bad as they were, were distinctive only for the means by which they were destroyed. In terms of people killed and human suffering, they were minor affairs.
On the other hand, the whole "was it justified" debate is rather pointless. The bombs didn't end the war (that was done by a coup in Tokyo that was already underway), nor did they raise the level of atrocity more than a notch (previous firebomb raids had killed hundreds of thousands without any atomic stuff). I find it rather ironic that Teller himself went over to the "we should have demoed the bomb first" camp just before he died. That's a cop-out. If you invent nasty weapons, they will be used.
Was he really mute or was that part of the whole magic act?
Unless you recognize the name, you'd have no way to tell [Hiroshima] apart from any other gleaming Japanese city.
Except for the Genbaku (Atomic Bomb) Dome sitting right squat in the middle of the city. That is still as it was 58 years ago, and is probably what the original poster was referring to. Seeing that symbol of destruction really makes you think (and if not, then with all due respect you've got problems).
Note that 100% of Japanese cities were bombed flat in WWII, so all buildings are less than 50 years old (even without the bombing, earthquakes would keep destroying them).
Wrong on all counts. Plenty of Japanese cities (though granted mostly smaller ones) escaped being bombed, and even the ones that were bombed were not "bombed flat"--even Tokyo has a fair number of buildings lasting from before the war. Besides, Japanese buildings are built to withstand earthquakes; one wooden temple building in Kyoto (Sanjusangendo) has been standing for over 700 years.
Come on guys. Ever think about this: MAYBE if it weren't for the agressive "yeah-let-make-war" position of the US (with its missiles all over the place) nothing like 9/11 would have happened. (Not that I say the this Bin Laden Ass-hole did the right thing, don't misunderstand me). I say: Ban the missiles! If no-one has them, no one needs them!
Typical American geographical ignorance, so you would make 30% of the known oil reserves unusable. Jeez, great way of shooting yourself in the foot...
"There is no obvious good utility for an atomic weapon of any kind."
Yes, they stopped the two great powers of the last half of the 1900's from killing each other.
So with that we can say blowing the shit out 2 Japanese cities speaks louders then blowing one up at high altitude and showing what we might do maybe.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
I met Dr. Teller when he came into the Physics laboratory where I was working. The laboratory head described the work we were doing. We said a few inconsequential words to each other and shook hands. I think this was in 1972, or somewhere near that year.
Dr. Teller was the most frightening person I have ever met in my life. He certainly did nothing that was threatening; he was somewhat bored with the lab tour; he was very polite.
But, there was something about the lines on his face and his manner that was extremely unpleasant. Judging from his appearance, his inner conflict was fierce. When angry people act out their inner conflict, that makes them angrier. Unknowingly, I am sure, Dr. Teller had found a way to act out his anger, and, apparently, the destruction and unhappiness he brought to the world caused him unbelievable pain.
My reaction to Dr. Teller was completely spontaneous. No one had told me that Dr. Teller would be coming into my laboratory, although I knew he would be visiting some labs. It was obviously him, I had seen photos, but the photos showed very little of the true intensity of his existence. I had been working on resolving my own inner conflict, and I was very aware of how inner conflict twists people's bodies. Immediately when I saw him my consciousness was flooded with information that indicated a man was in pain.
Dr. Teller helped make the U.S. government what it is today. The U.S. government is, by some measures, the most violent government that has ever existed. The U.S. government has bombed more countries than any other, 24 since the end of the Second World War. The U.S. government has imprisoned a percentage of its citizens six times higher than other European nations or other nations of European background. The U.S. government maintains prisons of an extremely inhumane design, called SuperMax. (By other measures, other governments have been far more violent.)
The U.S. government killed about 2,000,000 Vietnamese in the Vietnam war; I was in the Air Force in Thailand; even pilots bombing Hanoi questioned why the U.S. government was there. Even pilots who believed that killing was a way to end violence questioned the Vietnam war. Colonel Broughton, if you are reading this, help me out here.
I know there are many people who read Slashdot for whom violence is entertainment. It is obvious that it is not pleasant to be told that when someone enjoys violence it means that person has an anger problem. But that is what I'm saying. Violence is motivated by inner conflict; inner conflict is always sickness.
Violence is never the answer to violence, it only increases violence. Someone named Jesus Christ said something like that 2,000 years ago; you may have heard of him. I'm not a religious person; I came to that understanding by investigating human inner conflict. I became interested in studying inner conflict because I wanted to resolve my own.
The terrorists were 100% wrong to bomb the United States. However, for years, the U.S. government has been giving more than $900 per person per year for every man, woman, and child in Israel to be used to kill Arabs. The 9/11 bombing killed 3,016 people. I don't have the figures for how many Arabs and Muslims have been killed by U.S. government policy toward Israel and Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, but I'm guessing the total was a lot more than 3,016 before 9/11/2001, maybe even far more than 10 times 3,016.
Many U.S. citizens act as though they think that the violence of the U.S. government is acceptable because the U.S. is somehow superior. Does it surprise anyone that the Arabs and Muslims don't like being killed? Does it surprise anyone that Arabs and Muslims don't always think they are inferior? Does it surprise anyone that, when Arabs see that the U.S. government thinks that violence is "justified", that reinforces in some of them their long history of belief in violence as a way to solve social problems?
Those relatively rich people wh
The woman who was the infamous "Lady in Red" pointed Dillinger out to the Feds.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
I hope he is serving his master well in hell.
Finally an American talking sense. Read the above statement carefully over and over again, and then go and vote George W. Bush out of office dammit!
Anon
Read the Bible dude...It's not wise to mess with them! Every leader that has murdered them for 5000 years has met a very ugly death..quite often by his own hand or family. Also, many of the other Arab natives share the same blessing of Abraham [thru Ishmael or Easu] to be as many as the stars in the sky or sand on the beach ...It's not an accident that they have oil, or terrorists-they will always have something that gives them power over world events. Realize that Israel/Palistine is a 4000 year old turf war! David and Goliath...same races, same turf. It's ordered not to end [David didn't finish it when told to]...there's no point in the US even trying...just get out of the way.
..."and on this sad day, America also mourns the nucleus of creative genius..." He then made the producers of 'The Hollywood Squares' an open offer to replace Teller in the scheduled October lineup. The producers refused, citing Bush as 'not exactly the brightest light on the tree'.
Teller? So he must be the guy who invented teller machines!
Legyen neki konnyu a fold.
> There is no obvious good utility for an atomic weapon of
> any kind.
Look up something called Project Orion.
That Orion never got off the ground (pun unintended) for stupid political reasons is truely a crime against science and the human spirit.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
A lot of left-wing scientists hated Teller for his ambiguous testimony about Oppenheimer, but Oppenheimer really was a security risk.
If the power of the H-bomb can eventually be harnessed and used for commercial electricity generation, Teller will be remembered more fondly, I think. I hope I see it in my lifetime.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Leo Szilard was the other side of the Force.
Today I will celebrate the death of a man that actively participated in the slaughtering of hundreds of thousands.
Developing the nuclear bomb was right. Advocating it's use on civillians as a deterrence, was not.
Neither was his branding of colleuges that disagreed with him as communists and traitors. The only reason Einstein wasn't one of them, was that he was already too famous.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
frist pots
For good or bad, Teller wasn't the only father of the hydrogen bomb.s /giants/teller .html
From:
http://www.phy.bg.ac.yu/web_project
----
Teller and his colleagues at Los Alamos made little actual progress in designing a workable thermonuclear device until early in 1951, when the physicist Stanislaw M. Ulam proposed to use the mechanical shock of an atomic bomb to compress a second fissile core and make it explode; the resulting high density would make the burning of the second core's thermonuclear fuel much more efficient. Teller in response suggested that radiation, rather than mechanical shock, from the atomic bomb's explosion be used to compress and ignite the thermonuclear second core. Together these new ideas provided a firm basis for a fusion weapon, and a device using the Teller-Ulam configuration, as it is now known, was successfully tested at Enewetak atoll in the Pacific on Nov. 1, 1952; it yielded an explosion equivalent to 10 million tons (10 megatons) of TNT.
----
Teller and his [AEC[2]] entourage falsely propogandized that Project Chariot[3] which would have "Chernobylized our northwest Alaskan wilderness"[2] could have a controlled detonation with minimal environmental impact.
A small group of concerned scientists, teachers, and other locals (some of which lost their jobs for resisting) fought against the popular political/civic/administrative support for the project and finally succeeded in stopping an environmental catastrophe.
Dan O'Neill's The_Firecracker_Boys covers these subjects as well as disturbing findings that AEC claims that fish would be wholesome and edible despite evidence of fallout contamination and bioamplifcation from the Bikini[3] bomb experiments (1994).
___________
[1] Atomic Energy Comission
[2] _Kirkus_Reviews_ quote on The_Firecracker_Boys.
[3] Atomic bomb test site which is incidentally the nominal origin of bikini swimwear.
I met him once, also. Your description sounds like the person I met.
Typical slashdoters.
Teller was a Jew. To the left it's ok to be an anti-semite. So we se him called all sorts of evil suff. Statements made that have no basis in facts. Political axes ground. Nothing of substance form the leftist jew haters. Same old the US is always evil and wrong shit with a huzza! Teller is dead garnish.
Fuck you bastards are ignorant and sick.
Apparently nobody studies history anymore, but Mr. Teller should be recognized as a national hero of science.
.25 million Nipponese saved the lives of at least 15 million. If you can coherently argue otherwise, I agree to disagree, but would encourage an indepth study of Japan circa 1920-45 rather than trade meaningless barbs. The study of radiation effects is impossible to understand humanely, but asking a million Marines to kill millions is hardly an adequate answer.
Oppenheimer had been closely associated with communists from his earliest relationships, had latter vigorously attempted to stop H bomb development, and the secrets of the atomic bomb were stolen from under his management. To fault Teller for bearing true witness is lunacy, nearly as crazy as it was to fault Robert for his friendships and point of view, (which he had forthrightly admitted prior to becoming admin of Los Alamos).
Moreover, Teller had a legitimate reason to fear and despise Stalin, along with any group to which he was associated, having witnessed the terror of the Red army spilling familial blood in the streets of Hungary. He had first hand knowledge of the depths of its depravity, and was prescient in his understanding that only inexplicable horror would sate the whims of communist dictators.
That he should love this country enough to devote the greater part of his life and mental energies to protecting US dominance and expanding our sphere of influence to cover the globe demonstrates an uncanny foresight coupled with what must have been a deeply held love for the whole of humanity. Admittedly he hid it well with gruff mannerisms, but any other conclusions are based on illogical, often hysterical premises.
Consider the historical context: Both the Germans AND Japanese were developing nuclear weapons. Stalin killed 25 million Russians, Poles, Jews, etc. Germans killed untold millions after working them to death, and experimented on living 'subjects'. The Japanese were guilty of the Bataan death march, and countless atrocities not limited even to hacking off prisoners penises and sewing them to their lips while still alive, and easily raping and killing millions of innocent civilians. You have to be strictly ignorant of the 20th century not to realize that our obtaining first mastery of atomic structure is the only thing that stopped terrorism on a continental scale. If any of these parties had gained an unanswerable first strike nuclear capability, the untold misery of billions would have hung in the balance.
Teller, Szilard, Oppenheimer, Rabi, Bohr, Rutherford, Einstein, and the other scientists involved in atom & H bomb development are owed a HUGE debt of gratitude by the world, by civilization itself.
The world is a shade darker with the loss of Edward's brilliance.
Kommando Chris
PS: It's sad to realize the unknowing sacrifice of
Hirohito was powerless and mute without the shock and terror delivered to the populous, and if the destruction of Tokyo by bombardment had not produced the desired surrender (civilians were ordered to stay in their homes and try to put out the fires until dead), how many more millions should we have blown up to bring the war to an end?
Simply put, it was the most horrible and humane way to bring a merciful end to the insanity of that war.
PSS: Pacifists (Einstein, Szilard & Fermi(?)) hatched the idea of atomic bombs, the liberal Democrats (FDR) in government secretly commited to and funded these 'horrible' and 'inhumane' weapons, a 'communist' (Oppie) developed them, and another Democrat (Truman) dropped them. Please explain to me why I'm more intelligent, compassionate and humane as a pacifist Democratic voter again? Oh yeah, our party blew up 250,000 innocent civilians. And we freed the slaves, er... wait a minute... and we directly increased taxes to consumers by increasing taxes on the evil corporations, who only add that cost directly to their goods and services...ummmm, shit. Harakiri anyone?
Well, we all go that way, don't we? Some after having lived a life in abundance, but most after a short and miserable one.
..., or Israel in Palestine - it creates more enemies. Just think about it; if I were to smack your face in front of a crowd of people, I would certainly turn you against me, but I would probably also generate resentment amongst the people who saw it. So, if I start with just one enemy and deal harshly with him/her, I end up with many more. It's simple, really.
f ight,battle,conflict&page=8)
I am shocked and deeply disturbed every time I see just how many people still have the delusion that big weapons = invincible power. Haven't you learned from the long long list of failures - just to mention a few: Vietnam, Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq all show that even though you can roll all your weapons and killing machines over a nation, it doesn't mean that you have won.
What would happen if USA turned a place into a glazed desert? Well, first of all the world would have lost whatever that area held in the form of natural riches; you might go prospecting for rarae and strange minerals there after a while if you wear a protective suit, but there would be no living things. And, believe it or not, the greatest potential value in this world lies in the living ecosystems, not in the minerals - just think of eg. new medicines.
Secondly, every time a nation is seen to be grossly unjust - as is the case with eg. USA in Iraq, Vietnam
So we should all have more 'nukes' or 'nukuler atomic bombs'? Or, I assume, USA should have more. I don't think so. That kind of 'thinking' will only speed us on the way to WWIII, and I for one am not eager to get there - I can't decide whether I would rather survive that one or not. As Einstein said: 'I don't know what will be used in the next world war, but the 4th will be fought with stones.' (according to http://www.quoteworld.org/browse.php?thetext=war,
Another nice one by the way: 'He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.'
Jol van, most maGYarul folytathatjuk. ;)
Mad scientists and evil overlords everywhere mourn your passing!
It's wonderful for you to put how you justify you pussyhood in writing for us.
So we just let the isalmists kill all the Jews in Isreal. (They have been trying since the UN established the state) after they are done there they can come after the rest of western civilization since it pretty much conflicts with their mideval belief system and we really shold die for that. As well we should never defend our countries or their interests. Finally even better yet to make you feel OK we will just mass sucide for you. Will that make your pacifist, appeasing, surender monkey ass happy?
Spanish news site Barrapunto has a post about Teller. (Spanish)
You have just excellently described why the missile shield is a primarily offensive invention.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya, MD. He was the chef medical doctor at the Hiroshima hospital.
..' before the 'diary'. Both are excellant books. But I think the latter puts the former into perspective.
I read 'the making of
As a Muslim coming to grips with world events and Jewish influence, I've determined one important thing. The Jewish people value education, and they are a close-knit community. It isn't surprising that they succeed to the top of any field they pursue, whether it be the sciences, the arts, peace activism, or war-mongering.
...Ofcourse, together with our Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, etc brothers.
It was said that during Islamic-rule of Spain (couple of hundred years ago), there were Jews in numerous positions of government, science, medicine, and literature, sometimes at the top of their respective fields. I think the period was from 855AD to 1146AD. After 1146AD, a more fanatical "Muslim" dynasty ruled the land and made hell for the non-Muslims.
I truly believe that if we [Muslims and Jews] settled our differences in the Middle East, that together, we could embark on a new age of peace, prosperity and higher learning.
This was flamebait, HOW? It goes a bit off track of Dr. Teller's story, but it is NOT flamebait, and it's comming from someone who (supposedly) actually met the man 30 years ago, when he was most likely a lot more active than a 95 year old man.
Thousands of cancer victims can finally rest in peace. May they see you burn in hell.
The site of that test is now a mecca for diving enthusiasts, but the person who owns the dive rights only opens the waters for very limited usage. Hence divers dream about being able to dive in the waters which now has an immensely rich biodiversity. But they know they are unlikely to ever get there. FWIW's the test was an astonishing attempt to try and see what effect the bomb would have on a real fleet. There is at least one aircraft carrier down there.
Ya those damn Africans and their nukes! They're dangerous!
You can only trust white people to have nukes!
Nukes don't kill people, people do! Nukes for everyone! Stick it in the constitution! I want my own tactical nuclear deterrent!
There are a lot of threads here, some of them old and ugly.
1. With regard to the Middle Eastern Mess; it's, well, a mess. None of the Ugly anti-semitic, anti-jewish/anti-arab arguments, slurs, conspiracy theories--ancient and modern-- and what have you are anything like necesary.
Really, save yourself the energy; borrow a page from Witgenstein and, instead of making meaningless statements, why not just say that sickening generalizations aren't worth your time? Really, they aren't and can't be when playing with a yo-yo for the time it took to think up the biggot-stuff would at least have the fact that it built motor coordination to recommend it.
2. Concerning the star wars/anti star wars arguments, it's a nasty can of worms to have opened. Now that that it's in the world, the people who like it seem to hold it in a similar light to that which is usually reserve for questions of religious faith. Star wars just won't die and that's too bad, considering how short life is. I obviously fall on the 'anti' side when it comes to the issue and I think my reasons are good.
Long thoughtful books have been written on just what crap the whole notion of missle defense is. Missile screens are vastly expensive and, like the Maginot Line, limited by their specialization. Worse still, If nothing else, the September 11 attacks clearly and unequivocally demonstrate that the traditional 'nuclear deterrent' enjoyed by the great powers is itself ineffective and is rapidly becoming less so because every small nation that gets nuclear arms and aims them at anything important get to thumb its nose at the great powers that have them. Current affairs in North Korea, suggest that if Saddam Hussein had had them, he'd be smoking a cigar in Baghdad right now.
Real, effective, missile defense is decades and tens, if not hundreds of billions away and even if it had been up and running, running perfectly, from some spotless control center two years ago, it would have been meaningless against 20 guys in the right place armed with ten bucks worth of boxcutters.
In the world of fantasy and need, a simple, single solution like star wars is a magic bullet. Magic bullets aren't like the real world's compromises and partial successes; magic bullets solve all known old problems and create no new ones. When people imagine a magic bullet, hope blows away common sense, in this case, at an unimaginable cost.
Star wars is expensive. Boxcutters are cheap, but real, sustainable peace is cheaper still.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
Only because this man clearly stated he did not care about the moral consequences of his endaevours, was willing to sacrifice anything (like Alaskan wilderness or poor Pacific islanders homes) in the pursuit of his deadly devices or because for 50 years humanity was held hostage of these paranoids (and their soviet counterparts)?
Why should anybody disagree with your praise, specially you being a military man (which clearly in your mind makes you something different or even better than the rest of poor uncamouflaged us).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If Nortk Korea takes out California, would that end the RIAA bullshit?? (And the MPAA!)
And just think, no recall election!
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
First I thought, "Oh no that guy who doesn't talk is dead!"
Then I thought, "Oh no, this is like that time I read S King was dead here told everyone and then everyone called me a doody-head for lying to them."
Now I think, "Who?"
This
He was a kook. Make no mistake.
It seems that some people who read Slashdot don't like the parent story, since it was immediately modded as flamebait, when it is clearly not that. For those who think Dr. Teller should be respected, consider this:
TELLER MEMORIES
Letters of condolence: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is accepting letters of condolence on behalf of Teller's family. Letters may be sent to Teller Family, c/o Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, L-1, Livermore, CA 94551. Faxes can be sent to 925-422-8554 or e-mail to houghton3@llnl.gov
Memorial gifts: Edward Teller's family has asked that in lieu of flowers, tax-deductible donations be made to the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. Further information on the foundation is available by contacting Barbara Nichols at 925-373-1642 or barb@hertzfoundation.org or John Holzrichter at jfh@hertzfoundation.org.
Memorial services: Plans are not yet finalized.
For more information: visit Edward Teller Memorial Information.
>Their main task is to never be used, to just sit there and look evil.
Then you won't mind if everyone else has them too.
Didn't Teller lead the crusade to strip Oppenheimer of his security credentials by insinuating that Oppenheimer was a pinko commie for opposing nuclear proliferation? And that this effectively destroyed Oppenheimer's career?
Just because they were not called Israelis and Palestinians doesnt mean the conflict hasnt been going on, moron.
Ever hear of the Philistines?
He was definitely more than a kook, as the parent post says. Two more views of Edward Teller:
Passion, patriotism marked Teller
(He was important, but single-minded about nuclear weapons.)
Quote: "He had these sort of blinders where he couldn't see the costs, he could only see the benefits of nuclear weapons," Gusterson said. "He was sort of a one-eyed genius in that way."
My own opinion: I met Dr. Teller...
(He influenced the world to be more violent.)
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
I don't know. It could have been von Neumann. I don't even know if the story is true. I've heard it several times, but it might by apocryphal.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Here is a summary of the arguments made whenever the subject of Hiroshima comes up:
Repeat until bored
an ill wind that blows no good
This tells us how design can be reliable even if it is not tested and crude.
I heard NPR cover this story yesterday and they had stated that he was very careful about what he said, and did not want to be taken out of context; so much so, that he would time his response to questions with a stopwatch!
[[ the only 15 letter word that is spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable: it may soon be, however. ]]
I just saw the the standard "some sad news, $name died" troll yesterday while metamoding... and it was Edward Teller's name. So you mean, for once this troll was true?! Now I have to question the vitality of Stephen King, BSD, and our own Wil Wheaton!
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
One by one the monsters of the 20th century are leaving us for their own little special place in hell.
This guy was directly and primarily responsible for creating hydrogen bomb.
The world is a better place now that he's dead.
Thank you,
Simonetta
Because of this: The U.S. government is, by some measures, the most violent government that has ever existed.
It's just brainless US bashing. His "evidence" for that statement is a joke. Anyone who even glances at 20th century history in an unbiased way can see that that statement is clearly not true. I don't agree that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, but I think any other country in that position would have done the same and more. If you think Germany or Japan *wouldn't* have done even more with such an invention you are an idiot.
With the exception of the Arabs, who would do a lot worse to us if they could, we don't particularly like going to war. The US has always stood for capitalism and business, not war, even in the 19th century. The US is now in a sort of cold war with the arab/islamic world for obvious reasons.
Yesterday my grandmother sold her autograph collection, gathered over a lifetime of meeting famous people. She saved two for me - Teller and Oppenheimer. She had met Teller in Dallas, via some Hungarian friends, and drove him to the airport. She was planning on giving me the two physicists' autographs (because I am a physicist), and it was just coincidence that she gave them to me the day he died.
I had always hoped to meet Dr. Teller. Firstly, because meeting famous scientists can often be interesting, and secondly, because I wanted to tell him about "The Question". "The Question" is a sci-fi novel written by Dana Barbour. The villian in the novel is a fictional character named Edward Teller, who happened to have a dominant role in the creation of the Hydrogen Bomb. The disclaimer at the front of the book declares that all characters are fictional, and any resemblance to people living or dead is completely coincidental. In the book, Edward Teller tries to destroy the world by getting people to launch H-bombs at each other. I don't remember the exact plot, but it involved an underground secret lair. I always wondered what Dr. Teller would have made of it.
Prof. I.I.Rabi worked with Niels Bohr, Wolgang Pauli at Hamburg and Zurich, and Werner Heisenberg. He won the 1944 Nobel Prize for work on the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei. It was Rabi who declared
"He's a danger to all that is important. I really do think it would have been a better world without Teller".
is a univeristy not a city.
Well, there's at least one other possibility.
Mind you, an Orion launched from orbit, outside the Van Allen belts, would pose essentially no risk to the inhabitants of Earth, and is fairly cheap and well-studied. The best description of it is in Project Orion by George Dyson, Freeman Dyson's son. A fascinating read.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
When I first heard of his death, I thought that he was the guy who invented the 'F-bomb'.
The man, who without, we would never have had Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Eminem, MTV Celebrity Cribs, etc....
RIP Teller
... and you'll see that the two of them were responsible for the core design of the H-bomb. H-bombs are a lot more complicated than just setting off an A-bomb in a barrel of deuterium. He wasn't called the "Father of the H-bomb" for his political clout alone.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Oppie was a great man. Please stop trashing him more than what Eddie "The Asshole" Teller did.
DARK AND LIGHT IN NEW MEXICO
by House of Freaks
Dark and Light in New Mexico and everyone was there
To watch the great experiment of Robert and his heirs
The city and the desert, the dirt and the stone
Turn humans into ashes and cattle into bone
A ball of tape and metal was lifted into place
And Fat Boy dug a hole in the ground
Big enough for the whole human race
The radiance of a thousand suns in one cataclysmic blast
Shattered every dreamers hopes from the first down to the last
Well I wish we were sorry now
I wish we were sorry...
I wish we were sorry now
Poor Robert
Showed up like a government man: the bowties and white shirts
But Acheson and Strauss were there to put his face down in the dirt
Strung him up and left him while everybody slept
And laid a bloody sacrifice on the White House's front steps
Well I wish we were sorry now
I wish we were sorry...
I wish we were sorry now
Poor Robert
It's Dark and Light in New Mexico
You'll hear these words til the day you die
Point a gun to the head of a drum and everyone takes aim
To shoot you off your pedestal and make you live in shame
Well I wish we were sorry now
I wish we were sorry...
I wish we were sorry now
Poor Robert
If nothing else, Edward succeeded in teaching the human race that it could destroy itself. Our eyes were opened. Do you think that humanity would have realized that pollution, global warming, etc. could destroy our planet if we didn't have the bomb first? Personally, I don't think so.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Well, certainly the events of 9/11 have confirmed the effectiveness of large-scale attacks directed at innocent civilian populations. Or was that what you had in mind?
I think Hiroshima and Nagasaki (along with similar, if non-nuclear attacks on Dresden and Tokyo) forever impaired our moral standing to oppose terrorism. It was worse than embarrassing watching our leaders trying to come up with a definition of terrorism that would not include Hiroshima ("Well, it's not terrorism if it's done in the context of a decleared war by a legitimate government authority." Uh, yeah. That sounds like a moral imperative to me).
Perhaps a demonstration wouldn't have worked. But it wasn't even tried (we would still have had a city-buster in reserve). We didn't even give them much time to absorb the lesson of Hiroshima before hitting Nagasaki.
The phrases in the "interview" on newsforge are eerily similar to, in fact exactly copied from earlier story dated 1999 in Sci Am.
-- Don't call me "Sir," I increase entropy for a living!
Rather than just reading about them, view actual footage of many nuclear tests as well as extensive interviews with Teller in Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie
It is a very moving documentary chronicling the development of atomic weaponry.
LIke Jeff Raskin's.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
His response:
"So, Tellers dead, eh? Finally..."
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
My complete disgust at the avalance of positive news stories regarding Teller's life cannot begin to erode my absolute GLEE at his demise.
Teller was, to quote former Lawrence Livermore, Sandia and Los Alamos collegues of his, "a very, very bad/evil man."
I heard first-hand Teller explain at a small dinner party when I was but a child, his life mission:
"I was put here on Earth", Teller explained, "to bring about Armageddon and the second coming of Christ." He went on, and on, and on, to the horror of the other weapons engineers and the living nightmare of their present children ( self included ). He wanted to bring about THE END, it was his life mission. He was not talking like the Nazis did at Wansee about plans to exterminate an entire people, Teller wanted to exterminate ALL people, ALL species. He dreamed of the destruction of Earth to fulfill his demented fanatical religious fantasy.
If you, dear reader, happen to agree with his sick dream, I must also state that beyond this black hole in his soul, Teller was also a vicious boss and a scientific tyrant. He also destroyed a wide array of very succcessful alternative energy programs in order to sweep up the engineers for his non-viable SDI/StarWars program that he sold Reagan on.
Many years later, when I saw Dr. Strangelove, it was obvious who the title character was modeled after. Unfortunately, even Peter Sellers brilliant acting didn't come close to the horror of the man that was Teller.
Teller was extremely intelligent and probably even a genius. The fact that he won the genetic brain lottery does not in any way excuse what he did and, worse, what he wanted to do.
Teller was a deeply evil soul. I cannot begin to describe my relief that he is finally dead.
Long live planet Earth,
Schmedley
Rare to see a single person raise the feathers of so many here, seemingly equal numbers of supporters and detractors. Says a lot about a man that died at 95 that so many people still hold opinions about him, good or bad. So many people die nearly forgotten at such an old age...
The other point that I think is valid is to address people who think he was a monster for creating the H bomb. I want to know, do you really think someone else would not have created the H bomb if Teller had not worked on it? Stop thinking of him as the man who let the genie out of the bottle, and realize the genie was coming out of the bottle anyway, it was just a matter of time.
pot.kettle(black);
You are right. Sustainable peace my ass.
I just saw a bunch of muslims dancing in the street with knives shouting death to america in arabic on TV. Exactly how do you suggest we make peace with these people? Last time I looked US citizens are not out in the streets with gun/knives waved in the air screaming in hate death to islam or for the down fall of any nation. It seems to be the other way around. They want me dead. They want to destroy my nation. It seems that the media in the middle east and the imams there have the people they reach convinced I and my country am their oppressor. I want to know how this is? I would love to be at peace with these folks but they blame the US for every ill in their societies.
Please tell me how to have peace with these people?
I don't respond to ACs
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
Don't listen to the fools who claim you were a monster; they're just short sighted. One day, all of humanity may have you to thank for our survival.
Corr: The anti-nuclear lobby will never let it be used though. Sad, really.
McCarthy didn't know about the Venona Project, and did well with what he had. He did a great job exposing govt tolerance for disloyal commies.
Before you start spouting off about who was developing nuclear weapons, please try louding the man as a scientist. You sound like Bush, putting loosely related facts together into a great speech for the glory of the United States. Was Edward great? Sure, fine whatever, but 3/4th of your article justifies why Japan should have been bombed and blasts democrats. Stay on topic for crissake!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Ignoring the purported 'good intentions' (e.g. "we tried!") of the Nipponese was a highly effective method of stoking political response in the US. Pearl Harbor ended up being a sneak attack, and the US profitted from the propaganda (as well they should have).
I believe it's the oil wealth that is a corrupting influence. The theocracies and tyrannies of the Middle East countries are propped up by oil money. The same thing happened with Catholicism in Spain when they were exploiting all the unearned wealth of the New World.
That said, Oppie really was a commie. Letters were released last year that prove that he was a member of the Communist Party.
Quite honestly, as soon as they run out of oil, I can't see any reason anyone in the developed world would give a rat's ass about the Middle East.
I work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the laboratory that Teller and E. O. Lawrence founded back in the 50s. Teller still came into the lab every few days or so up the point of his death. Periodically, he would give Q/A sessions with summer students and other interested parties.
On July 24 of this year, I attended one of these. I can write a lot about what he had to say, but what has come to the fore of my mind since the news of his death was one question in particular. Someone asked him what he most wanted to be remembered for. He responded that his discovery of the "Jahn-Teller effect" was the work that he was most proud of. It involes crystal symmetry arising from interactions between elecrons and nuclei, and turned out to be very important for material science.
This was work that he did to help unravel certain energy configurations of the benzene molecule. I'm not a chemist, so I only have the vaguest notion of what the Jahn-Teller effect entails. But it involves calculating the electron distribution of a molecule, coupled with its vibrational energy. If I am understanding it correctly, Jahn and Teller first demonstrated that the two energy states can be coupled, allowing for a lower, most stable energy state than if each were considered separately. It's still studied to this day.
Teller got very animated while he was talking about his work on this. I find it a shame that none of the writeups and obituaries I've read have mentioned this work. This is my small contribution.
Funny thing. I submitted this story TUESDAY when Teller died, and it was REJECTED. Guess I just dont give GOOD HEAD.
Probably because you USED ALL CAPS and included some sort of OVERTLY POLITICAL sentiment, and besides, your GIRLFRIEND says you're not worth CRAP IN THE SACK anyway.
Adolph Hitler, one of the 20th Century's greats in ethnically-centered tourism and transportation, died today at his suite in Berlin of projectile trauma to the head. He was 56.
Osama Bin Laden, one of the 21st Century's greats in aviational planning, died today in his cave in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was 46.
Pol Pot, one of the 20th century's greats in pro-illiterate advocacy, died today near Anlong Veng. He was either 70 or 73.
We can go on, of course. This criminal makes something that kills hundreds of thousands of people and we're supposed to mourn that he died comfortably at the ripe age of 95?
First of all, David and Goliath were *completely* different races. There were no closer blood ties between Philistines and Hebrews than Inca and Filipinos.
The Arabs themselves never considered themselves to be descendents of Abraham (through Ishmael or Esau) until Christian missionaries started teaching them that in the 19th century. Actually, there's no historical basis for it, since the western Europeans (the only people who kept a written history outside of China between about 400 A.D. - 800 A.D.) left the scene for several centuries until a bunch of Bedouins (who are not Arabs) were subjugated by Mohammed (who wan't a Bedouin) and attacked Jerusalem. In pre-Christian times, some of the people living on the *East* side of the Jordan were descendants of Ishmael, Esau, Moab, etc., but they were dispersed, same as the Israelites by the series of invasions that scattered most of Israel (Hittite, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babalonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, European, Mongol, etc.
The "Jews" by Christ's time were a small remnant of Israel that came back after Babylon and Persia took their turns at conquest. Many were converted or assimilated from other people in the region. And shortly afterwards, they were kicked out. The area was largely populated by Asian Greeks, Hellenized Hittites and others, and Caucasians (from the Caucauses) such as Parthians.
The majority of non-Jewish natives in Palestine at Christ's time were Samaritans, or Israelitish people who had mixed with the other local peoples (including Philistines) after splitting off from Judea after Solomon's reign. Many other ethnic groups occupied the region as well, due to the many conquests.
There were other Hebrew peoples in the Middle East as well. Abraham did come from Ur, which is in Iraq, and there was much migration to the north (into Turkey) by his people, but by the rise of Babylon the people in Iraq were significantly different from the Hebrews in Israel.
After the Israelites had been in Egypt, many other Hebrew people (not descended from Abraham) were in the region, but were forcefully removed by the Israelites. There was some mixing of course, and other groups that may have been descended from Israel (such as the Midianites in Sinai) who were not in Egypt populated the area.
The point is, if you read the Bible (or any other history book) that you'll realize there wasn't ever a "turf war" between the two groups you describe. The closest thing to it is when Jacob (Israel) came back home after working in Anatolia (Turkey) for a while, that his brother "almost" didn't welcome him back.
There were always minor conflicts with other minor kingdoms such as Moab (descendents of Esau) who lived east and south of Dead Sea, but the same sort of thing happened *everywhere* else in the world throughout history.
If nuclear weapons do indeed destroy life on earth, then earth would have been better off not only without science, but without homo sapiens. Teller is a clear illustration of the dialectic of Enlightenment. See chapter 18 of The Tangled Wing by Melvin Konner.
What a fanatical idiot. Probably most of the "communists' are more intelligent than you.
They knew it was a nuke that hit Hiroshima. A well respected general went there, looked around, and came back and gave an accurate report to the Emperor and the military leaders. They didn't care. They didn't think we had more of them. The military was raring to keep fighting even after Nagasaki; only when the Emperor told them to surrender, and explicitly gave the bomb as the reason for surrendering, did the military leaders order the surrender. And Truman knew exactly what they were doing and thinking, because we had all their codes broken.
The Emperor was completely OK with the Japanese strategy of trying to kill enough Americans in an invasion to force a negotiated peace; he changed his mind only after Nagasaki. If it weren't for the fact that he came in handy to make the occupation run smoothly, he'd have been hung for war crimes.
Initial reactions aren't particularly relevant. Three days simply is not enough time to absorb or respond to an enormity like the mass slaughter of a civilian population by a nuclear attack.
I met him in a similar situation to yours, and asked a similar question (though not in quite such an accusatory tone), but I got a quite a different response. I met him in 1995, and I wonder if, perhaps he had simply refined his views since he met you, but he said something that always will stick with me and for which I have not yet found a good rebuttal:
"Knowledge is always preferable to ignorance" - Edward Teller, 1995
Most of the people I see everyday on the street and in their homes, at the beach, in the overstuffed grocery store, at the baseball games, climbing mountains, buying houses, praying to God, praying to any god, and giving generously of their time and money don't appear crushed.
Selfish, many may be, self-righteous narcissistic brats, perhaps. But I doubt their character was affected by economics and corporations. It was probably formed by beliefs regarding their soul, the existense or not of deity, the nature of such a deity (personal god, impersonal god like technology, nothingness, etc) and what it means to live well in light of that. Which of course is informed by close people in community such as parents, friends, benefactors, teachers, religous leaders, etc. Hardly a faceless corporation.
Corporations can't change your mind, only beliefs can.
Hydrogen bombs like ALL inanimate objects are morally neutral
North Korea and terrorist states could develop ICBM capabilities
Um, North Korea is developing ICBMs.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Only time will tell (no pun intended) what he intends to do about it, if anything.
It's entirely possible that the Creator has started all of us on our fantastic journey, and gone off somewhere else in the Universe to stir up something else,not bothering to look back. You know, the Dinosaur experiment of 100 million years might have provided God with enough data to come up with other creatures that have become modern man. Sorry about that Asteroid busting up the entire Dino world, and leaving only an occasional gecko or gator to remember them by.
I recommend two books that detail the wartime and postwar efforts to build the bomb. Teller's roles, both in the technology and the politics, are covered. So are the roles of many other players, including Germans and Russians.
The making of the atomic bomb and Dark Sun - The making of the hydrogen bomb, by Richard Rhodes.
Rhodes won a Pulitzer for the first volume and I daresay it is the better. Both are not without fault (in particular the second was not universally acclaimed in the physics community), but I found them intriguing.
His name wasn't Edward Teller. Don't you read the media? It was Edward Tellerfatherofthehydrogenbomb.
rj
Sure, fine whatever, but 3/4th of your article justifies why Japan should have been bombed and blasts democrats. Stay on topic for crissake!
Once you've said mega ton blast yield, I don't think it's necessary to go into the minutae of Dr. Teller's astounding achievements, especially with this audience. But they're shoved under a rock that only scientists and engineers crawl under, and that's the sad result of the wildly innacurate claims of my political party, and are entirely baseless. See all the posts titled 'burn in hell'. When was the last time you saw a post about Einstein with that kind of subject line?
This is my insignificant attempt to begin to rectify the man's deserved place in history. I'm sorry you find it inappropriate.
Excellent sig, is that true or did you make that up?
It's true--screenshot here.
When a tax on a good is increased, it is rarely the case that the full cost of that tax is passed on to the consumer.
Apparently your economics prof., and perhaps yourself don't operate businesses. In my admittedly subjective experience it gets passed to consumers, though you are correct if your inference is that business men have to find creative ways to pass it on, because we sure as hell don't operate at a loss for long. But this process is never a virtuous cycle. Here's why:
Immediately I have to cut down on areas that don't directly contribute to product manufacture, like research and devolpment, or better yet, move it off shore where I can do it for less.
Then I have to analyze the cost of moving manufacturing off shore while increasing employee output so I can lay more people off while producing the same #'s.
Then I have to look at using cheaper components, whereby I can speed up my TTF, or Time To Failure on each unit, above warranty but well below where it used to be.
Finally, once I've maximized my business 'efficiency', I get drunk and try to forget that I'm supporting foreign governments with policies I abhor, turning out crap for my customers, and generally get ready to declare bankruptcy the next time some idiot listens to his favorite economist.
Conversely, if the government assists in increasing my efficiency through better educated employees, helps me sell more products and/or lowers my taxes, I can expand R&D, hire more employees, more products and employees equates to more taxes to government coffers for needed infrastructure and social programs, and production dollars stay within the country for at least one more generation of spending, which enriches the country and my employees paychecks. It's certainly not instant or perfect, but it's far more effecient and virtuous than directly raising taxes on my corporation.
He backstabbed Robert Oppenheimer for one, and was a nasty man who was largely responsible for Star Wars under Reagan. Morally reprehensible, and with seemingly no concern for anyone on the planet except for himself. I state my opinions as one who met him in the early 80's.
-a.e.mossberg
If your argument were true, no investors would ever be effected by financial policy change. No stock price would ever change in response to changes in financial policy. But the market very vividly illustrates the opposite.
I would love to explain the mathematics to you myself, but for that I need graphics, so try checking out this page: Indirect Taxes and Subsidies If you don't understand basic economics 101 principles, then you have room to improve your business practices to greater benefit yourself *and* your customers. So I suggest you look into it.
We could use clean bombs. And, United States has to break its dependency on foreign oil anyway, right?
Right.
Or you could build the whole bomb back home and send it over via personal boat, mexican fruit truck, magnet stuck to the bottom of a cruise liner, etc. Using a missile is a distant 10th place at best.
The yield of the largest Soviet Thermonuclear test was 50 Megatons. However, the US, which was estimating Soviet bomb yield via analysis of fallout particles, estimated the yield at 57 Megatons. Since the Cold War was on, the Soviets weren't about to tell the Americans that they overestimated.
The yield of the largest US test was 15 Megatons, this was the Castle Bravo shot, detonating the first "dry Hydrogen" bomb on the Southern end of Bikini in 1954. Previous thermonuclear bombs needed to be filled, and topped off during the bomber flight, with liquid deuterium. The bomb used in Castle Bravo, named Shrimp, used Lithium Deuteride, a dry powder, instead of liquid deuterium. This made it much easier to store, transport and arm than earlier thermonuclear bombs.
To email me,subtract my nick from my email address, starting with the second character. (hint: adto.uiuc.edu is wrong)
They don't mess around in Texas. Antidote to hero worship
Again, we were decrypting all their military and diplomatic traffic. They knew it was a nuke. They thought it unlikely we'd have more than one. They were going to continue fighting. And the US leaders knew it.
Mass slaughter of civilians by firebomb attack didn't sway them, why would a nuclear attack? The only reason the Emperor surrendered was because he was afraid the Japanese people would rise up against him if it became obvious to them that cities could be destroyed on a regular basis by one bomb. The deaths of innocents didn't bother him; fear of them revolting terrified him.
If we'd waited a few weeks before dropping the second bomb, they'd have been *less* likely to surrender; they wouldn't mind losing a city every few weeks. That had already been going on for months. But losing one every few days, they would fear the people would revolt.
The "Big Eight" leaders of Japan (one of which was the Emperor) learned about Nagasaki at about noon, the Emperor told the military leaders to surrender about 12 hours later. Hell of a lot less than three days. Didn't take them long to absorb *that* impact.
WTF does bin Laden have to do with anything? Is there now a 21st century equivalent to Godwin's Law? You *do* know that the Japanese had caused the deaths of about 17 million people, right? They needed to be put down like the mad dogs they were. If the only way to do that was to make the Emperor shit his pants, so be it.
And as far as risking prolonging the war, by early August it had become obvious to the US military leaders in the Pacific that an invasion would cost too much in blood, and that firebombing and blockade would utterly destroy Japan, even without atomic bombs. King and Nimitz had already agreed to counsel Truman against invasion. Just bombing Japan's railways would have caused millions of deaths from famine that winter (as it was, with an early end to the war and massive food aid from the US, several hundred thousand Japanese died from famine that winter). BTW, that would have been unintentional; the US military didn't know the Japanese were that bad off for food; they just wanted to keep the Japanese from moving troops and weapons around.
Of course, I never fail to notice how the people on your side of the argument never mention the 200,000 to 300,000 Asians dying at the hands of the Japanese military each month towards the end of the war. Or over a hundred thousand POWs starving to death or being used as test subjects for biological and chemical weapons. 40,000 Japanese died in Nagasaki. That many people died from Japanese atrocities in Asia every four or five days.
BET isotherm has no connection with nukes or nuclear physics. It is used everyday in thousands of labs all over the world to measure the specific surface of porous media. For example, oil companies use it to monitor the activity of heterogeneous catalysts. No quality gas for you without BET! Thanks Teller!
'von'? As far as I know the Jews were not knighted in Germany or Hungary.
Only in the UK a few Jews became 'Sir', but this started to happen in the late 19th Century, not before.
So, according to you, the only moral way to deal with tyranny is to only attack the tyrants. I'm sure that there are millions of dead that are soooo impressed with your moral values. Maybe you can tell me how the Allies could have defeated the Axis nations without killing innocents?
Even in a tyranny, the people are responsible for their nation's actions. They could have overthrown their leaders. They could have abandoned the cities and the factories. "I was just following orders" is not a morally acceptable excuse for participating in atrocity. Or is it your belief that it is?
Allied troops forced German civilians to go through the death camps and bury the dead, because they thought those civilians bore some responsibility. Would you have absolved those civilians of all responsibilty?
If the US hadn't dropped the bombs, millions more would have died. What reason do you have to think otherwise? You think the Japanese military leaders would all of a sudden go "me bad" and surrender?
And if you think it's worth noting that bin Laden cited Hiroshima as precedent for the 9/11 attacks, and you can follow and agree with his chain of reasoning, you're fucking insane.
That's ridiculous. You base your entire argument on the erroneous idea that you are already selling everything at cost and not making a profit.
That's curious, I never show a profit if it can be avoided! I own the business, as CEO my 'paycheck' and payment for production seems to be greatly affected by taxes, not so much my profit margin. I'm drawing a basic 101 picture so anyone can follow along, which is obviously my mistake here.
With fewer than 200 employees and no public debt, it's clear my particular situation doesn't apply to a model which takes the entire product supply as a model. I will concede your assertion may well be correct for scales of economy I have no experience with, and thank you for the link and constructive criticism.
Kommando Chris
PS: It's all infinitely more complicated than I've presented. From the linked example it should be obvious that as taxes are raised, and consumers buy less if the price per unit increases, my relative amount of taxes per unit increases as unit sales decrease. So now I have to expend more on accountant and lawyer hours to try to defray higher taxation (something that doesn't seem to be included in the economy scale model), which is a calculated risk and siphons more of the 'profit' to non productive areas, away from base unit production, advertising, etc.
The model would be completely correct if I had a pile of extra 'profit' laying around or sales were increasing enough to compensate for the increase. Particularly in a difficult market, my increased taxation is wholly unwelcomed.
Yes, if you forego terrorism, it is much harder to achieve your political and military ends. That is why Hamas is unwilling to make such a pledge. And given that we were unwilling to do so when it was our military goals at stake--and unwilling, even decades later, to acknowledge that our actions were morally wrong--we are in a poor position to tell them that they should.
You and I may not agree--after all, his goals are not ours. But much of the Muslim world clearly does. And they can point to us, and say--when it was your military and political goals at stake, you too did not hesitate to slaughter civilians.Navy Minister Mitsumasa Yonai, one of the four military leaders of Japan, later called the atomic bombs "a gift from heaven" because it led to the surrender. Army Minister Korechika Anami obviously didn't agree, he disemboweled himself and slashed his own throat on August 15th.
We didn't try? We offered them the Potsdam Declaration (which is the terms they eventually accepted). It required Japan be occupied by Allied troops until a new Japanese government was established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people. According to these terms, they could have easily kept their emperor. They rejected the offer outright, and mocked it in the Japanese press.
We never formally asked for unconditional surrender. The Potsdam Declaration was the formal terms. There was no doubt in their minds that they could have kept their Emperor. Or are you arguing that an acceptable conclusion to the war would have been a cease fire, with the Japanese military leaders still in power? Like North Korea after the Korean War or Iraq after the first Gulf War?
And blockade would have definitely killed millions of Japanese, and probably tens of millions, from starvation. Even if they'd have surrendered in late August, millions would have starved. It was that close. Hundreds of thousands starved as it was.
BTW, Hiroshima was an army city The entire NE and E sidtes of the city were miiitary zones, including an Army division headquarters. About 43,000 soldiers were in the city; giving Hiroshima about the highest density of servicemen to civilians among Japan's large urban areas. Nagasaki was also a major military city; the Mitsubishi factory there is where they designed and built the torpedoes capable of running in shallow water that were necessary to attack the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Maybe the Japanese should have put their military facilities away from civilians. Or I guess we could have just blockaded them for forty years until we got GPS guided bombs perfected.
Achieving *our* military and political goals in WWII saved vastly more innocent lives than they cost, in fact, ending Japanese aggression was our goal in the Pacific. Why do you think Japan attacked Pearl Harbor? Because we embargoed them and they could no longer get the resources they needed to continue their war. Why did we embargo them? Because we didn't like the fact they were killing millions of Chinese. Even in your most fevered dreams Hamas and Al-Quada can't make the same claim. They kill innocents for the same reasons the Japanese did. They *like* it. Their goal *is* the death of innocents. Hamas' goal isn't a Palestinian state, unless it's a state that used to be called Israel and is built on the graves of millions of Jews.
The notion that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were targetted at military facilities and that the civilians just happened to be in the way is absurd rationalization. While modern precision-guided weapons did not exist at the time, existing, nuclear bombs were hardly the state of the art when it came to minimizing collateral damage. The US had tested the nuclear bomb, and knew that it was a city buster, not a muntion suitable for attacks on factories.
It is comforting to believe that it is OK for us to kill innocents because we are the good guys and are doing it for noble reasons, but wrong for others to do the same because they are evil and kill because "they like it." Unfortunately, this does not provide a persuasive basis for convincing others to forego terrorism, because, oddly enough, almost everybody believes themselves to be the good guys. A recent Pew survey of international attitudes found that in Palestine, bin Laden is the world figure most trusted "to do the right thing" (71% approval rating). He is the 2nd most trusted in Pakistan, Kuwait, and Jordan, and the 3rd most trusted in Indonesia.
I truly believe that if we [Muslims and Jews] settled our differences in the Middle East, that together, we could embark on a new age of peace, prosperity and higher learning
Ha! The only peaceful Muslim is a dead Muslim.
This reminds me of the old joke about the random middle east ambassador that comes to the U.S., watches some TV and wonders why there are no Muslims on the Enterprise. The President's reply was that Star Trek is about life in the future, implying that sometime between now and the 23rd century we'll rid the world of all sand-nigger humanoid cockroaches.