End of the Semester Links Spring 2014

It’s been a busy end of the semester and I haven’t been able to post anything for a bit. So, now that I have a bit of time before the semester wraps up, here’s a bunch of stuff that has been happening the last few weeks. My apologies if I’m a bit late on some of these things.

Nuclear and Disaster

Laura Miller reviews Craig Nelson’s The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and the Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Age.

John Metcalfe, “What Famous Old Paintings Can Tell Us About Climate Change.”

Only .02% of published research rejects global warming.

Adam Weinstein, “Arrest Climate Change Deniers.”

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Big News in Science and Other Links

Science

The first evidence for cosmic inflation–i.e., the Big Bang–was discovered this week.

Megan Garber at The Atlantic, “What It’s Like to be Right About the Big Bang?”

The search for Flight MH370 is revealing one thing: the ocean is filled with garbage.

Kim Stanley Robinson alert: Paul Rosenfeld, “Would You Take a One-Way Ticket to Mars?”

And as part of his forthcoming 3 million page novel, Breeze Avenue (2015), Richard Grossman has buried a crystal ball deep inside of Princeton Mountain in Colorado. The ball, “made of synthetic sapphire, which is almost as indestructible as diamond,” has the Ten Commandments inscribed on it in Hebrew, and in “20 million years, as a result of natural forces carefully calculated by the geologists, the Torah Ball will emerge from its eroded resting place and bear the Ten Commandments down the mountain.” Hyperarchivalists of the deep future rejoice!

Richard Grossman, The Torah Ball (Synthetic Sapphire, Princeton Mountain, 20 Million Years of Erosion, 2011).

Richard Grossman, The Torah Ball (Synthetic Sapphire, Princeton Mountain, 20 Million Years of Erosion, 2011).

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Ukraine, US Nuclear Policy, Etc.

With the incursion of Russia into the Ukraine, a lot of stuff is going on.

Peter Baker in The New York Times, “Pressure Rising as Obama Works to Rein in Russia.”

“Ukraine, Putin, and the West” at n+1.

Peter Beinart for The Atlantic: “The Ukraine: Is This How the War on Terror Ends?”

Dominic Tierney for The Atlantic: “Putin’s Improv Act.”

David Rhode for The Atlantic: “Crimea: The Greatest Challenge to Geopolitics Since the Cold War.”

“Kerry Condemns Russia’s ‘Incredible Act of Aggression’ in the Ukraine.”

And a critique of The New York Times‘ coverage of Kerry.

 

Nuclear

“Aim Points in the US Nuclear Arsenal.”

Hans M. Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project, has authored an article for the Federation of American Scientists, “Obama and the Nuclear War Plan.”

 

Other

Noam Chomsky, “America’s Apocalyptic Imperial Strategy.”

Noam Chomsky, “The Death of American Universities.”

On Fredric Jameson.

boundary 2‘s latest entry into its Great American Author Series, “A Political Companion to Walt Whitman” by Kerry Larson.

Ezra Klein, “The Real Reason Nobody Reads Academics.”

And Ian Bogost on Flappy Bird.