Wednesday is my sci-tech day.  With the recent passage of   Richard Garwin,   I'll assess where we are today on the Hydrogen Bomb, for he was the individual who was in charge of building the first one in 1951, at the age of 23.  Yes, he lived to be 97. My only link to nuclear energy is that I twice worked under Edward Teller at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  But this was in the 1970's, and for half a century I haven't done much in this field.  In any case, at LLNL I was with the laser fusion program.  Teller was not only the father of the Hydrogen Bomb, he also was director of this lab, where  John Nuckols  had developed a process to use a laser to produce fusion for power. Teller came to Hawaii in the 70's, proposing a bank of wind turbines at the top of the Koolaus.  This was so long ago that Google can't find that photo, which was on the front page of one of the local newspapers.  While there, I joined him and Momok...

The Russian War in Ukraine has re-aroused the fear of a nuclear holocaust.  The closest humanity has been to extinction was the prospect of a similar horror through much of the Cold War.  Two J. Robert Oppenheimer productions will shake you out of your comfort zone.  It's actually worse because he is only the Father of the Atomic Bomb.  He had a feud with Edward Teller, Father of the Hydrogen Bomb. MSNBC had a documentary last night:   To End All War:  Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb , featuring a number of comments by Christopher Nolan, whose film,  Oppenheimer , will be released on July 21.  This movie is rated R and will be 3 hours long, with a glowing cast:  Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Emily Blunt as his wife, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves, who ran the Manhattan Project, Robert Downey, who eventually became Oppie's nemesis, Kenneth Branagh, Florence Puch, as O's girlfriend/mistress, Gary Oldman, Josh Hartnett, Rami...

The 7th hearing yesterday of the House January 6 Committee evoked visions of a Netflix series.  Everything seems to be following a script to convict Donald Trump of planning, following through and failing to overturn democracy and the United States government.  No reason to believe otherwise, for the proofs shown so far have been convincing involving sort of average officials.  No top level government personage has yet been summoned to become a public witness.  Will the future include Mike Pence, or even maybe the Donald himself?  Hearing #8 will occur next week Thursday in prime time.  Some say this will the final one so the Department of Justice can keep Trump busy for the next half a year. Heroines/heroes are blossoming.   Certainly Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who at this moment only has an 8% chance of returning to her seat from Wyoming .  Challenger Harriet Hageman is a lawyer and essentially a nobody, but Cheney's role on the Committee ha...

We've all met famous people in our life.  For many, a movie or rock star is memorable.  I'm not into that, but the closest for me was when Nancy Sinatra and Tommy Sands swam in our backyard in Kilauea, Kauai.  Princess Diana and her entourage sat right above our box for a stage show in the West End.  Looked like the crowd below was waving, in that British way, to us, so we waved back.  The electricity of the moment when she got into her limousine is unforgettable. My famous people are scientists.  I worked for Edward Teller at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and saw him twice in Honolulu.  He had come over to tout the potential of placing wind energy conversion devices at the top of the Koolau mountain range, for which which he was disparaged, and met a group of us at the Manoa Campus of the University of Hawaii.  He worked on the Manhattan Project, which led to him later building a Hydrogen Bomb. The second encounter was for breakfast ...