Spontaneous Musings

1. Difficult work week - which has made me more irritable than I've been of late. Every time I think I have some semblance of control over my job? My crazy organization rips it out from under me.

I'd scheduled my week perfectly - with one major thing every other day. Site Tour (Tuesday Morning)/Consultant Ethics Training Tuesday Afternoon, Power Point Presentation on Teams (Wed), More meetings on Teams (Thursday), Site Tour (Friday). But alas, my boss changed it all last Friday. Instead it was Site Tour(morning)/Powerpoint Presentation (afternoon), Cancel Ethic Training - reschedule for later date, Boss covers for meetings on Teams, Site Tour all day Thursday.

Then to add to all this - they changed the dates and information on me for the presentation, prior to it. So I had to kind of wing it.

I'm doing three projects simultaneously, and one of them feels like I'm wrangling an alligator (as one colleague put it).

We all procure government services contracts for a living.

Anyhow, here's a photo from my Site Tour - or rather photos taken from the roof of Atlantic Terminal Train Station - I actually got to tour the interior of my train station. I got to visit the roof of Atlantic Terminal Station. (It was a site tour to replace an air conditioning system for the station.)
( photos taken from the top of the train station )

2. Now a few photos from my niece who is busy being a park ranger in Sequoia National Park. She's loving it out there. She did take a break to visit her Mom for her birthday. Also her friends. She flew out to Martha's Vineyard - where her parents were staying and stayed with them for about two days, then came back with them to New York, to see her friends. She drove into the city on Monday, stayed the night with her Mom, then flew back to California on Tuesday morning. She loves the area so much - that she's thinking of applying to schools in California. Apparently she missed her mountains.

( Misty Mountains, Sunsets and Trees )

3. Discussing Oppenheimer flick with folks.

* Co-worker informed me that she had an opportunity to take a job out at Los Alamos National Laboratory. It still studies and researches nuclear weapons and their effects. As a federally funded research and development center, Los Alamos National Laboratory aligns our strategic plan with priorities set by the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE NNSA) and key national strategy guidance documents. We execute work across all of DOE’s missions: national security, science, energy, and environmental management. Scientific and engineering capabilities developed through LANL’s stockpile research are part of what makes DOE and NNSA a science, technology, and engineering powerhouse for the nation. More than one co-worker has visited the facility and interviewed there.

* Mother asked me an interesting question last night, that continues to haunt me today..."What if Japan had surrendered but Germany hadn't? Would we have dropped the bomb on Germany - and would have been the consequences of that?"

I think it's worth contemplating. Because if that had happened...
( Read more... )
Oppenheimer brings up a lot of unsettling questions. The more I think about WWII, the more I want to cry. It was such a horrible war - it brought out the absolute worst in so many people. Light won in the end, but at such a high cost.

Did a little looking about, and found this regarding the actual death toll for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There's been a lot of discrepancies and miscalculations over the years, so no one is certain. Same is true of the death toll of the Holocaust.

But the devastation was so bad, Truman announced after Hiroshima, that they would never do it again. Counting the Dead at Hiroshima and Nagaskai - from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

"On August 8, news reports from Japan, plus a damage report created by the United States, began to paint a picture of the destruction. Aerial surveys revealed at least 60% of the city’s “built-up areas” were destroyed, leading to the conclusion that perhaps “as many as 200,000 of Hiroshima’s 340,000 residents perished or were injured,” as one United Press story put it. The same story quoted “unofficial American sources” that estimated that the “dead and wounded” might exceed 100,000.

Such numbers were large, and appear to have had a sobering effect on President Harry S. Truman. After the August 9 Nagasaki raid (which he had no apparent foreknowledge of), he would put a stop to further bombing, telling his cabinet that “the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible,” according to an August 10, 1945, diary entry by then-Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace.( Read more... )

And here is a chart showing the number of dead via the Holocaust.

Counting the Deaths in the Holocaust by Germany? ( this is sobering folks )

The Bombing of Dresden (which is also the topic in Kurt Vonnegurt's classic Anti-War Novel - Slaughter-House 5. Slaughter-House 5 refers to Dresden.

( Read more... )

So, maybe we already know what would have happened if we dropped an atomic bomb on Germany?

Here are the number of deaths in WWII:

Worldwide Casualties in WWII per Research Starters
( number of deaths per battle, wounded and civilian - guess who had the most? )
The following countries have the highest estimated World War II casualties: ( it's not the one's you'd expect or I was surprised )

[The US had the least.]

The critics appear to be in agreement that the film, Oppenheimer is ultimately about how ego can drive people to do the unthinkable, and justify it. And ultimately destroy them. And it's amazingly accurate to its source material.

Today, I asked my co-worker, whose family hails from Haiti, so she's Haitian-American, how she enjoyed Gettysburg, PA. She'd visited Gettysburg over the Memorial Day Weekend with her fiancee. And she told me that she felt...unsafe, and anxious the whole trip. How surprised and somewhat shocked she was to see the number of confederate flags in the souvenir shop. Across one wall was huge Confederate Flag -- stating it's not about the War or Racism, but about Heritage, and how the South will come back to what it once was -- eventually. The town that they visited was all white. It was the first time she'd been in a place in which she was the only person who wasn't white.

The cafe they ate it -- they were the only non-white patrons. The other patrons were starring at them like they didn't belong. In fact at one point she asked her fiancee if there was something on her face -- because she didn't understand why the people in the table near them were staring at them for so long. When she got back to their room at the hotel, all she could think about is how badly she wanted to go home. The whole weekend she felt anxious and uncomfortable.

Afterwards, she told her fiancee that they were going to research a trip thoroughly before going. And he would have to do his historical war visits with friends, she'd prefer to go to a beach or somewhere that she could relax and chill.


[I deleted the rest of this post, because I decided what I said was not important.]

Been listening to the cast album of Hamilton and it's really frigging good, which is coming from someone who doesn't like Hip Hop or Rap.

Here's a link to the 60 Minutes special on IT

Some of the lyrics haunt you....

Hamilton: "I'm not throwing away my shot, I'm young, scrappy, and hungry, just like my country, and I'm not throwing away my shot."

Thomas Jefferson: "When Britain taxed our tea we got frisky, imagine what we'll do when you tax our Whisky."

Hamilton: "Thomas that was a real nice declaration, welcome to the present, we're trying to run a nation, would you like to join us, or run back to whatever it is you do in Montecello?"

See below - as done in the White House - which basically explains why we ended up with a Civil War 100 years later. After my mother read the book upon which this was adapted from, she stated, well it's not at all surprising we ended up in the Civil War.



And...King George who sings a hilarious British style invasion love song from the 1960s..

"You'll be back, like before, I will fight the fight, and win the war for your love, for your praise and I'll love you till my dying days, when you're gone I'll go mad, so don't throw away this thing we had...cause when push comes to shove, I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love."

Highly impressed by the Cast Album. And I can see why people have gone nuts over it. It's not just Hip-Hop, he blends various Broadway and other musical forms and redefines them.

I'm also intrigued by the book by Chernow, which my brother told my mother he'd read in the space of a week and found to be a page-turner. Took her a bit longer.

Read an interesting survey on the Iraq War in the Metro - a free paper that is handed to me whenever I enter the subway in the morning on the way to work. It's an actual newspaper, with articles from AP sources and is actually more objective than most of the other newspapers in NYC.

The survey asked people in NYC what they thought of the war and certain questions regarding how much the US spent, how many people died, how much it was and would cost us, and whether it would end anytime soon. The survey also checked Associated Press facts and research - comparing the Iraq War with previous Wars fought by the US.

1. The human cost of war:

3,988 members of the US Military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,421 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

In Vietnam - the US lost on average about 4,850 troops a year from 1963-1975.

In Korea - the US lost about 12,300 soliders a year from 1950-1953.

The number of death in Iraq of coalition forces not including US troops - 302.

Total number of coalition forces deaths to date in Iraq - 4,290.

2. The cost of war:

The original Bush administration projection of the war's cost - 50-60 billion

Cost to the treasury so far of the war in Iraq according to the AP - 500-600 billion

Projected cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan until 2017, by the Congressional Budget Office - 1.2 -1.7 trillion.

The amount Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says the war will cost the US by 2017 - 3 trillion.

Monthly cost to the treasury of the war in Iraq - 12 billion

3. Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion to date - 1,189,173 - source: justforeignpolicy.org

(Most common answer in the survey? 100,000)

4. How many US military personnel have served in Iraq in the last five years?

Most common answer - 500,000.

Correct answer: 1.2 million

5. How many countries are in the US-led coalition?

Most common answer - 5

Correct answer - 30 sent troops


6. President Bush claims that the expenditure for the Iraq war has kept us safe from terrorism at home. Has this amount been necessary to keep us safe?

80% of those surveyed said no.
8% said yes
and 12% have no idea

7. Should the President communicate directly with al-Quaida?

43% said yes, 57% said no.

8. Do you believe the US will attack Iran before the general election in November?

30% said yes, 70% said no.

9. Would you like to have more ways to personally sacrifice for the war effort?

27% said yes, 73% said no.

10. Have you personally known anyone who served in Iraq?

46% said yes, 54% said no.

Finally - here's the length of US involvement in all the major wars it has fought.

Gulf War - 7 months
Mexican-American War - 1 year, 5 months
World War I- 1 year, 6 months
War of 1812 - 2 years, 6 months
Woorld War II- 3 years, 8 months
Civil War - 4 years
Iraq War- 5 years (and counting)
Vietnam War - 8 years
Revolutionary War - 8 years, 5 months

Korean War isn't counted because it was not considered a war so much as a police action.

Source: The Metro - the world's largest global newspaper - with more than 18.5 million daily readers in 93 major cities in 21 countries. Go to www.metrolifepanel.com for online information.