How many nuclear bombs have been detonated on Earth, and for what purpose? Only the first question will be answered by the following video by Isao Hashimoto, which logs all of the nuclear blasts until 1998 (this video was created in 2003). Via Discover Magazine.
Israel is one of the countries most fervently criticizing Iran in Iran's quest for nuclear research (see here and here). Al Jazeera English notes, however, that Israel hasn’t even signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Amidst new reports that Iran has not been forthcoming about its nuclear program, Glenn Greenwald urges that we do what the Chinese are doing, as reported by the NYT:
The Chinese, one administration official said, were more skeptical [of recent reports], and said they wanted to look at the intelligence, and to see what international inspectors said when they investigated.
What Greenwald is suggesting is common sense. He might need to repeat his advice endlessly, though, because we live in a country where the gold standard for the news media is hyped up conflict and because we are a country that doesn't seem to "get" common sense anymore.Stewart Brand was the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog. He's been doing a lot of thinking over the years, and gave an update at TED. He discussed the 1 Billion people living in squatter cities, soon to be 2 billion. There's a lot of desperation and a lot of crime, but it's not all bad news. There is a scale of efficiency about these cities. Talk about compactness! Go to the 6 minute mark of this video within a video and watch what happens immediately after the train goes by. Brand suggests that coming to the city gives people hope that they will be better off financially, which inexorably brings down the birth rate. He has nothing good to say about coal--it is the cause of the climate change we see. He has nothing bad to say about nuclear power; it is a "green" fuel. According to Brand, we can't get rid of coal fast enough. We are going to be facing massive climate change, faster than we can imagine. This will cause many millions of "climate refugees" and ongoing "resource wars" such as the one in Darfur.
The U.S. spent $52 billion on nukes last year, according to the The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States. The United States spent over $52 billion on nuclear weapons and related programs…