Spontaneous Musings

I finally had a decent night's rest - got a total of 9 hours, with not a lot of waking up between. ( sleep issues and how to fix them )

The weekend has been a quiet one, in which I've done alarmingly little. I took out the trash. And the recycling. Straightened up the clutter a bit. And finished a watercolor. Also did a bit of reading, and way too much time surfing the internet and watching television as one often does. The internet is kind of addictive?

Memorial Day is a US holiday traditionally utilized for memorializing the dead, specifically those who died during our many and seemingly endless number of armed conflicts and wars. I think it was meant to remind us of the consequences of WAR and not to keep having them? If so, I'm not sure it succeeded.

Per Google AI:

"Memorial Day, a national holiday in the United States, honors those who have died while serving in the country's armed forces. Its origins lie in the years following the Civil War, when communities began decorating the graves of fallen soldiers. The holiday, initially known as "Decoration Day," was officially established as a national holiday in 1868. After World War I, the name was changed to Memorial Day, and it became a federal holiday in 1971."

When I was much younger and still residing in the suburbs of Kansas City, I'd visit my Grandmother in Liberty, Missouri - to decorate the graves.

( a seemingly long personal essay on Memorial Day )

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.