Since we’re coming up on the Fourth of July, and towns everywhere are preparing their better-than-ever fireworks spectaculars, we would like to offer this humbling bit of history. Back in the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space, some 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean. It was a weapons test, but one that created a man-made light show that has never been equaled — and hopefully never will.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128170775&ft=1
"The Invader" is a simple science fiction tale from 1953, but it still holds up as one of Escape’s best episodes. It shares some strong similarities to The Twilight Zone’s 1961 episode "The Invaders" and to an X Minus One episode from 1956 called "Pictures Don’t Lie" but neither has the wit of Escape’s story.
"The Invader" begins with an atomic bomb test in the Nevada desert. The explosion is observed by a space ship on its way to visit the Earth carrying the advance guard of a more evolved race.
"The Invader" was directed by Antony Ellis and written by Michael Gray. It starred Howard McNear as Albert Tanner, Fay Baker as Martha, and Edgar Barrier as the Commander. Also appearing were Paul Frees, Peter Leeds, Bill Bissell and LeRoy Leonard.
Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is no longer an option for long-term storage of nuclear waste. But construction of a similar project is under way in Finland. In his film Into Eternity, director Michael Madsen questions the feasibility of safely storing waste for hundreds of thousands of years.
"The Invader" is a simple science fiction tale from 1953, but it still holds up as one of Escape’s best episodes. It shares some strong similarities to The Twilight Zone’s 1961 episode "The Invaders" and to an X Minus One episode from 1956 called "Pictures Don’t Lie" but neither has the wit of Escape’s story.
"The Invader" begins with an atomic bomb test in the Nevada desert. The explosion is observed by a space ship on its way to visit the Earth carrying the advance guard of a more evolved race.
"The Invader" was directed by Antony Ellis and written by Michael Gray. It starred Howard McNear as Albert Tanner, Fay Baker as Martha, and Edgar Barrier as the Commander. Also appearing were Paul Frees, Peter Leeds, Bill Bissell and LeRoy Leonard.
"This story [of This American Life] includes excerpts from a radio documentary called "The Human Button", which originally aired on BBC Radio 4 in December, 2008. For more information visit www.bbc.co.uk/radio4."
Via This American Life 399: Contents Unknown, http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=399
Following on from his newspaper column in the New York Post, Orson Welles offered a weekly political radio broadcast. Here, he talks about Operation Crossroads. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads
From http://www.archive.org/details/1946OrsonWellesCommentaries
Tagged with orson welles radio broadcast bikini atoll nuclear test
This talk was given at Cowell Theatre in Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California on Friday October 9, 02009.
Brand built his case for rethinking environmental goals and methods on two major changes going on in the world. The one that most people still don’t take into consideration is that power is shifting to the developing world, where 5 out of 6 people live, where the bulk of humanity is getting out of poverty by moving to cities and creating their own jobs and communities (slums, for now).
The second dominant global fact is climate change. Brand emphasized that climate is a severely nonlinear system packed with tipping points and positive feedbacks such as the unpredicted rapid melting of Arctic ice.
Global warming has to be slowed by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases from combustion, but cities require dependable baseload electricity, and so far the only carbon-free sources are hydroelectric dams and nuclear power. Brand contrasted nuclear with coal-burning by comparing what happens with their waste products.
Moving to genetically engineered food crops, Brand noted that they are a tremendous success story in agriculture, with Green benefits such as no-till farming, lowered pesticide use, and more land freed up to be wild. The developing world is taking the lead with the technology, designing crops to deal with the specialized problems of tropical agriculture. Meanwhile the new field of synthetic biology is bringing a generation of Green biotech hackers into existence.
Quentin Cooper presents a special edition from Cardiff University - including the latest thoughts on the ecological impact of the proposed Severn Barrage; the UK’s energy future - nuclear all systems go? and an update from the Herschel Space Observatory.
In the 1960s, Stewart Brand became one of the country’s first and most famous champions of a new ecological awareness. His Whole Earth Catalog spoke to a generation of hippies and back-to-nature commune dwellers.
Now, at 70, Stewart Brand is calling on environmentalists to reframe their understanding of the problem — and solutions. It’s too late for back-to-nature, he says. Global warming is beyond that.
To survive now, Brand says, we need nuclear power, genetic engineering, giant cities. We must manage nature or lose civilization.
This hour, On Point: In the face of global warming, Stewart Brand redefines green.
http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/10/stewart-brands-ecopragmatism
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