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Tough week for Hollywood and the world:sad_smile
The Gulag of Reason 3684 reads
posted

Warren Zevon, John Ritter, Johnny Cash.  Adios muchachos! Thanks for everything.

VonRyan3197 reads

I didn't know he passed on...One of my ATF party songs:

AAAAHOOOO Werewolf of London....

and one of my favorite lines ...saw em drinkin a pina collada at Trader Vics(or something to that effect).....Priceless!


Cheers!

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golfnut513552 reads

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caharmon3753 reads

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jacksonlips3629 reads

For those rock and roll fanatics among you, with a bit of sensitivity to your soul, I highly recommend looking into VH1s documentary on Warren Zevon's last months alive.  They cronicled, in journal entry format, Warren's thoughts and actions during the final months of his life.  It's repeated often right now on VH1.

If it doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you might want to check your blood pressure.

Jacksonlips

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tripNatl3590 reads

I bought his new album today after previewing it in the store.  Knockin' On Heaven's Door was eerie, but I almost broke down in tears in the middle of Tower when I listened to Keep Me In Your Heart.  His first doctor's visit (other than his dentist who insisted he see someone) in 25 years resulted in a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.  He was told he had less than a year, so in typical Warren Zevon fashion he decided to record an album.  Keep Me In Your Heart was his final farewell to family, friends, and fans.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to listen to it without a tear.

Related Link: http://warrenzevon.com/

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singleton2790 reads


and that is Edward Teller, the brilliant physicist and father of the H-bomb, who single-handedly pushed this planet to the brink of nuclear ("nucular") holocaust -- from the deadly grips of which we're still not free

he deemed Hiroshima/Nagasaki to be "failed experiments" then ratted out Oppenheimer (who stood in his way) and went on to work on even more horrific thermonuclear weapons, eventually became Reagan's nuclear weapons expert and chief architect of the technological farce that became "Star Wars" -- the bogus ABM missile "shield" designed to keep lunatics like himself in power and defense contractors in the black

what the world doesn't know about this man is a travesty and is at times tragically comic! like his plans to create artificial atolls in the pacific with his favourite toy, the H-bomb!  

few years ago, he was asked if there was anything he regretted about his "illustrious" career as a scientist and a policy maker (with specific references to Oppenheimer and other pacifist he had "destroyed") ... and he said characteristically, "I regret nothing!" (in that thick central-European/German accent of his)

to me, he will always be the living (dying) embodiment of the "mad scientist" as immortalized by Kubric in his masterpiece of tragicomedy, DR. STRANGELOVE (whose title character was directly based on Teller himself)

now if we could only erase his legacy ...


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MrSelfDestruct3988 reads

Singey, you have restored my faith in you as my presidential front runner.

Give 'em hell, bud!

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caharmon2456 reads

Singleton, I respect your opinion, but I must disagree with you on this issue.

One of the reasons, if not the main reason these guys created this monstrosity was to beat the germans to it.

While it is a fact that the germans were light years behind us in development, they were trying to build a bomb as well. We had no choice but to beat them to it. Otherwise, had they been successful Hitler would have bombed us into submission, the Jews and Gypsies would have been eradicated, and we would all be speaking german.

Just my opinion.

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singleton3036 reads


speaking as a military historian and a defense analyst(*)  i think i know what i'm talking about when i say, that us dropping the A-bomb on Japan had nothing to do with Nazi Germany, who had already surrendered at the time. granted their physicists were further ahead in devloping fissionable material in 1939-1940 but that all became quickly irrelevant when Germany surrendered

what's not so well-known to the public is the fact that us dropping the bomb had ultimately little to do with Japan even! we were already winning the war in the Pacific, it was just a matter of time and personnel, precious personnel granted. but in military terms it was a predestined albeit costly victory  

the first ever and only use of a nuclear bomb in human warfare was not designed or intended to beat an already weak and crippled Japanese military into submission (as it so obviously appears to be the case to the masses and fortuitously so for policy makers)  it was to scare off the Soviets from implementing their plans for carving up the globe into two halves, one American and the other Soviet dominated and ruled (a perfect balance of power in which the Soviets hoped to thrive)

what Teller and his retinue of "scientists" and advisors did throughout the cold-war was to lie, exaggerate and scare several US administrations (Republican and Democrat) into thinking that the Soviet threat was greater than it really was. this allowed the military industrial complext (MIC) to thrive in this country and nearly brought us to the very brink of extinction (Korea, the Cuban missile crisis, the U2 incident, etc)

anyway, i digress. my point is/was/willbe (i guess) that if anything we'd all now be speaking Russian and not German!  (*) and if anyone has bothered to read this far into my post, i might as well come clean and fess up that i'm most assuredly NOT a military historian or a defense analyst! LOL ... i mean if i was, do y'all think i would blurt it out so casually and in such an inconsequential post for that matter?  nevertheless, everything i said above *is* geo-politically true, just ask any REAL historian!  ;-)


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AssBndt3221 reads

"REAL" Historian, or just another guilt ridden liberal, I got mine, commie sympathizer?

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MrSelfDestruct2705 reads

The terms "guilt ridden" and "I got mine" are mutually exclusive...although at least liberals are capable of feeling guilt.

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spacelurker2161 reads

Teller's role in the development of the Atomic bomb during WWII was not what you might think.  What happened was the following.  In 1939, just as the war in Europe was getting started, word reached scientists in the US, that a German chemist, Otto Hahn, had done the first experimental demonstration of unranium fission.  Many scientists paniced because they thought Germany was pursuing an attomic bomb.  To refugee scientists, particularly refugee Jewish scientists, the idea of Hitler with the bomb is very, very scarey.   Two them, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner wrote a letter to Pres. Roosevelt advising that the US start a bomb project.  However, they  realized that nobody in the White House would know who they were and might ignore the letter.  So they drove to Princeton to see Einstein.  Neither Szilard or Wigner had a car, so Edward Teller drove them.  Einstein signed the letter, the White House did read it and started the Manhattan project to build the bomb.  In 1945, when it was clear that the bomb would not be used on Germany, Szilard started a campaign to NOT use the bomb against Japan.  He even went to the White House, but of course was ignored.

Teller's contribution to the Manhattan project was secondary.  From the beginning he was obseseed with building the "super" (the H bomb) and would only work on that.   Work on the H bomb, which needs a fission device as a trigger, didm't really start till well after the war.  Teller's original ideas were flawed, which is one of the reasons that Oppenheimer originally opposed developing the H bomb.  The real father of the H bomb was probably Stan Ulam, who corrected Teller's concept.

Dropping the bomb on Japan has always been a controvsial decision.  In defense of Truman it is argued that if we would have not dropped the A bomb, we would have had to invade.  Based on experiences in Okinawa, there were crediable estimates that American casulties from such an invasion would have been in the 10's or 100's of thousands.  Japanese casulties were estimated to be upwards of 1 million.   From that perspective, dropping the bomb on Japan saved many more American and Japanese lives.

Teller's legacy is complex.  We would have had the Manhattan project and a successful A bomb program without him.  He was famously hand waving in his arguments, and frequently jumped to conclusions.   Star Wars is (was?) a flawed attempt at something that is incredibly difficult to do that Teller (wrongly) thought was possible.   However, he was right about at least one thing: the need for America to develop the H bomb.  After Hiroshima, the genie was out of the bottle.  The whole world knew that nuclear weapons were possible.  Can you imagine anyone talking Stalin out of building a nuclear arsenal?  We did need to maintain a deterance against the Soviets, as dangerous as it was.




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singleton2733 reads


we find ourselves at a critical juncture in human history where "MAD" (Mutual Assured Destruction) is the "right" and the only operative policy!

and while i agree with you, the argument that if Teller had not done it, someone else (even a Ruskie!) WOULD have, bears a strong resemblance to some other "arguments" that pop up when it comes to human folly!

maybe Teller and his legacy were an accident of history, not entirely due to his own doing (being in the wrong place at the wrong time) ... but would it have KILLED him to offer some kind of explanation/apology in his last years on this earth?  he who brought us to the verge of extinction more so than any ONE man in the history of mankind? his persistant arrogance is that of an ideologue war-monger ... frankly, Dr. Strangelove couldn't have been any better and lasting tribute to Teller! LOL






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caharmon3239 reads

I suddenly realised that this is one time(among many) that I will not be able to sway the current opinion. As a general rule I enjoy reading what you write. However, this is one time that I disagree with your post.

Having said that I will respectfully say that we are just not going to see eye to eye on this issue, so lets just agree to disagree.
Have a great Sunday, and lets get on to the next issue.

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singleton3352 reads


i'm not infallible you know!  and as i (hopefully) clarified i'm NOT a military historian or defense analyst.  just another fool who's read enough books, articles and commentary on this topic to think his layman opinion matters  

as with most of us, our opinions on any subject are a complex end-product of the (sometimes) grab-bag assortment of books and news sources we have digested. case in point, my view of Edward Teller, which liberal or not, happens to be the view of many scientists (especially those that worked alongside him in the post Manhattan era)

btw, that gobbledy-gook header in my reply was meant to be Russian for "Caharmon my friend, do you speak Russian?"

;-)

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caharmon3390 reads

Nyet, Singleton, Dosvedanya.

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