02.05.12
Posted in Book Reviews, Church Issues and Bible Interpretations, History at 10:47 am by Administrator
Plutonium: a History of the World’s Most Dangerous Element by Jeremy Bernstein is another informative book for anyone interested in nuclear issues. This book is rather short (only 171 pages), but still full of interesting information. It primarily deals with the discovery of plutonium and the many key scientists involved in its discovery. Often times we read about scientists like Oppenheimer, Curie, Rongent, Becquerel, Fermi, Szilard, Seaborg, Teller, and Ulam, etc when discussing the discovery of radiation and the development of the A-bomb. But Bernsteins’s book reveals many more scientists who’s paths crossed and thus contributed to the discovery of plutonium. While the book is short, at times it’s a bit challenging to read for lay people like me because Bernstein is a physicist, so along with explaining the history of plutonium’s discovery, he gets a little more detailed about the properties and behavior of atoms and elements than the average non-scientific author. It does make the history much more interesting, though, because it helps to explain the quandaries and dilemmas the scientists were faced with and had to overcome. Bernstein also briefly describes the climate of the time and why some felt the urgency to develop the bomb first. I was particularly surprised to learn of the several other women involved that we don’t commonly hear about when discussing the invention or development of the atomic bomb. Women like Ida Noddack and Lise Meitner, while they weren’t involved with the development of the atom bomb, were involved with the discovery of fission.
Another notable aspect of Berstein’s book deals with the millions and billions of dollars spent on developing nuclear bombs along with the millions and billions of dollars needed to “clean up” the mess that’s left behind, which unfortunately, much of the mess left behind is still not cleaned up, and the price tag for cleaning those sites up is still increasing each year. For example, Bernstein writes about the Hanford site in Washington State that was the facility used to make the plutonium for the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. That site cost about $350 million to build and operate. After WWII and the cold war the site was supposed to be decommissioned. In 1989, about 45 years after it’s construction, discussion and debate raged as to how to clean up the site which stored 54 million gallons of radioactive waste in 177 underground tanks, some of which were leaking. This is not to mention the concern of contamination to the Columbia River where the plant was built alongside, or the downwind contamination from the venting of the reactors. In 1991, the plan to vitrify the waste tanks into glass were abandoned because it wouldn’t be fast enough. In 1995, the DOE decided to privatize the project by contracting British Nuclear Fuels to do it. That contract was canceled five years later, and a $4.3 billion contract was awarded to Bechtel to complete the project, which increased to $5.8 billion in 2002 as an incentive to complete the project by 2011. Then it was decided that it would not be completed by 2015, and the plans were delayed further due to concerns of earthquake safety, etc. Bernstein wrote that the present estimate to clean up the site is $9.65 billion and will require the further man-hour equivalent of 2,300 engineers working full-time for a year. His book was copyrighted in 2007, more than 60 years since the construction of the Hanford site. Some progress has been made, but there’s still a lot of clean up to do. Now consider that Hanford is only one site. The U.S. has about 100 other nuclear plants in operation, and a few other sites that have been decommissioned. How many billions of dollars and contaminated soil will all this amount to? Who will pay this price for both environmental clean up and medical expenses due to the deleterious health effects of radiation? The above mentioned clean up price tag doesn’t include medical expenses or pain and suffering.
It’s staggering to me to think of how many billions of dollars is invested in the nuclear industry, which is not as clean as many tout it to be. Nuclear energy still uses much non-nuclear energy to operate because for example, the mining of the uranium requires the use of a large amount of fossil fuels. Consider uranium 238 only contains about seven tenths of a percent of natural uranium 235, one would have to mine a ton of U238 to get a pound of U235, the grade commonly used for nuclear fuel. I still haven’t read of any calculation of how much fossil fuel energy that amounts to in comparison to the calculation that nuclear plants in the U.S. provides 20% of our energy needs. If they subtract the amount of fossil fuel consumed to provide the fuel for nuclear plants, I wonder if that 20% would go down? My primary peeve is the contamination issues of nuclear energy. The monetary costs alone are daunting, but the contamination cost is what really blows me away. I think of the miles of contaminated lands that are no longer habitable by people, and I think of the thousands of people who have been displaced due to nuclear contamination, and I wonder what God thinks of us. He originally put us here to tend the land, to be fruitful and multiply. I think of when God came to Cain after Cain murdered Able and asked him, “What have you done?” When God comes back as He said He would, there will be no hiding what we have done.
Marlakins
P.S. Two thumbs up to Jeremy Bernstein’s Plutonium: A History of the World’s Most Dangerous Element.
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01.23.12
Posted in Book Reviews, Church Issues and Bible Interpretations, History, quotes at 12:23 pm by Administrator
For anyone interested in nuclear issues and the history of it’s discovery, I recommend reading The Plutonium Files by Eileen Welsome. I actually finished reading this book back in November, but was too busy to sit down and give it a proper review. Now that I’m currently reading another book called, Plutonium by Jeremy Bernstein, I figured I’d better pound out my comments on Welsome’s book before I forget about it. That would be a shame because her book is very informative and an excellent commentary on how our government has operated. It also exposes the blatant disregard of peoples’ lives for the sake of science. Another reason I’ve held off on commenting on Welsome’s book is because it is so full of information, I didn’t know where to start. What particularly struck me was that her book tied in a lot of information that I had read in previous books, so The Plutonium Files helped to put many things in order in my mind.
The Plutonium Files is a 489-page book dealing with America’s secret medical experiments in the cold war. Welsome explains how plutonium was once so rare that the largest stock of plutonium in our laboratories was too small to be seen by the naked eye. As more plutonium was produced, it was held in a beaker the size of a sewing needle. Now we have hundreds of tons of the stuff that we don’t know what to do with. According to Bernstein, author of Plutonium, “aside from making nuclear weapons, plutonium is good for nothing else.” Basically, it’s a deadly poison that is now here with us for the rest of lives.
While I have read about secret programs such as Operation Paperclip where after WWII German scientists were brought to the U.S. and allowed to continue their work here like Von Braun on the V2 rocket and others that helped with mind control experiments later revealed as MKUltra, and even other medical experiments such as those described in Acres of Skin on prisoners, I had not realized the extent to which secret medical experiments were carried out. Sure I had read about G.I. guinea pigs, which I actually read a book years ago by that same name, which described how our military was exposed to harmful chemicals such as Agent Orange and also purposely exposed to radiation in the many nuclear bomb tests such as Operation Crossroads and the others that followed. But Welsome reveals experiments that were performed on unsuspecting and uninformed U.S. citizens, including children and pregnant women. Sure I realize it was a time when medical ethics codes were not strongly enforced (think the Tuskegee experiments), but just the fact that they did these experiments in secret shows that they knew it was not right. Yet it was done at the hands of professional scientists and medical personnel using government funding. Experiments such as feeding plutonium to young boys in their oatmeal and having pregnant women drink radioactive “cocktails,” on the pretense that they were having a nutritional drink were among these secret experiments that lasted for decades.
As I type this, I realize again why I have put off writing my comments on this book–it’s very disturbing to me and really wears me out emotionally. It saddens me to think how people treat each other. I find it ironic that these discoveries and inventions (i.e. nuclear bombs) were said to have been necessary for our safety, but yet, the safety of our soldiers and civilians is compromised by those very forces behind trying to protect us with these nuclear devices. The same forces that have developed bombs to protect us has endangered all of us from the threat of nuclear war to the contamination of our environment–soil and water. We are left today with highly contaminated areas and tons of radioactive wastes that they “still” don’t know what to do with. With the Chernobyl accident and now the Fukushima accidents, which is still not contained, our world is being blanketed with radioactive particles contaminating our food and water. And yet, they continue to march on creating more and more radioactive waste every day, every minute. The silence in our media reflects the U.S.’s disregard for our true safety and well-being because less information to it’s public translate into less opposition to nuclear technology. The more sane countries such as Austria, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Belguim, and Spain have at least acknowledged the dangers of nuclear power and are phasing them out.
The nuclear issue is so complicated that I don’t even want to start into that subject right now. However, I do find it upsetting that many of us have no say in what happens or if nuclear projects get funded. The secrecy is astounding. An example is that even the Manhattan Project, which cost billions of taxpayers’ dollars, was so secret that even Truman, the vice president at the time, wasn’t even aware of the project until Roosevelt died. It appears this is the way our government operates, with many highly secret plans and operations. For a supposedly Christian society, this culture of secrecy is contrary to the Bible–John 3:20 states that,
“For everyone who doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”
So many government operations are secret, and for the most part, the public is completely kept in the dark. This secrecy ensures no outcry or opposition to these projects. Strangely enough, this secrecy creates the “in” groups vs. the “out groups.” Those who are “in” (who know of these secret projects) feel privileged and possibly superior to the “out groups,” who don’t know of these projects. So they convince themselves that they have a right to “experiment” on others for their “higher cause” (commonly patriotism is the name of that higher cause). This is again contrary to the Bible regarding treating others as you would like to be treated. Or even contrary to the biblical concept of caring for those who are poor or needy (many secret experiments are carried out on the underprivileged like prisoners or lower income groups). It’s contrary to the biblical concept of not participating in evil so that good will come from it. But light will eventually shine as the bible does tell us in Luke 12:2-3 that,
“For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.
“Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoke in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”
This post is turning out to be a book in itself, so I’ll wrap it up here. But first, one last point I want to bring up is Welsome’s title of chapter 20–Shields Warren: ”Patriotic Enough to Lie.” This chapter documented how some of the scientists were being questioned by ethics groups regarding their participation in some plutonium experiments. Many of these scientists covered their butts with lies or acted like they didn’t know about these projects. One such scientist was Shields Warren of who fellow scientist Merril Eisenbud once wrote, “some people are patriotic enough to lie.” Again, another contradiction to the bible wherein we are told not to lie, patriotism is not an exception.
Welsome’s book is excellent, and especially insightful as it ties in so many other books I’ve read such as the Radium Girls and Yellow Dirt and others. Definitely two thumbs up!
Marlakins
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01.20.12
Posted in Anything goes, cooking, family stuff, felt projects, hobbies, knitting and crocheting at 1:33 am by Administrator
This post is going to be a mixed bag of things. The first item is actually a mixed bag of yarn. Around Christmas time I was doing a search online for sock yarn and came across a link to the Supersock Store. They were advertising a 50% off sale on Cherry Tree Hill yarns. However, there were “rules” to follow to participate in the sale. First of all, the sale would start on New Year’s Eve at 11:30PM eastern standard time. The first 200 customers to place their orders would get a free “goodie bag.” Within one of those 200 goodie bags would be a card that had a saying that would have the initials DBNY. If you got that card then your whole order would be free! Well, just the 50% off sale was an incentive for me. The goodie bag was yet another lure that was reeling me in. And finally the thought that my whole order “might” be free was the clincher. On New Year’s Eve I planted my butt in front of the computer shopping for sock yarn like a looney looking at sock porn. Ha ha! I then chose the skeins I wanted to sample, placed my credit card at the ready, and waited for 11:30PM. . . errr, that is 8:30PM Pacific Standard time (the east coast is three hours ahead of us). Okay, so I didn’t just sit there really, I joined the family feasting on our New Year’s meal. It wasn’t long when 8:30PM arrived, and I ran upstairs to start dumping my order in the “cart”. One of the rules was that you couldn’t add anything to the cart until 11:30PM when the carts would open. In ten minutes I had my order placed and confirmed. Was I one of the first 200 customers? I wondered. . . The next morning I got a confirmation letter from the Supersock Store with the added info that they ran out of goodie bags just before the ball dropped in Times Square. Ah! I must have been one of the 200! Yes! A week later my order arrived. . .
Aren’t they lovely? Ummmmm.
And what’s this? My “goodie bag?”
I got seven balls of novelty yarns, a needle gauge, some sample corn yarn, a few buttons, and several knitting patterns. Ah, I love it! Nothing like a goodie bag!
So what I found out was that the Supersock Store has these sales twice a year. So I decided I’m gonna test out these yarns to see if my boys like the quality. I’ve started to knit up some of the yarn to see if I’ll be participating in the next 50% off sale with goodie bag. This is the first pair of socks in the works.
Not sure how the boys are going to like the colors, but there she be. I’m curious to see how well they hold up.
Now while I’m at it, here’s something else I worked on for Christmas gifts for my crafting buddies.
Here they are completed with the scissors paired up.
I actually didn’t know what I was doing when I was making them and just winged it as I went along. Overall, I’m satisfied with how they came out. Most of all, my crafting buddies seemed to enjoy them. Here’s another view of the completed scissor cases.
Then my sister asked if I would help her out by making cookies for her staff. She wanted me to make some ornaments to tie onto each bag of cookies. Here’s what I came up with.
By this time my camera was starting to die on me. I had to try a million shots to get something that wasn’t over-exposed looking. This was the best I could get. The tie cords I made were done on my spinning wheel.
Here’s what the cookies looked like all bagged up.
There were 20 bags all together of oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies.
My camera was acting up again, so this picture has a weird coloring. But at least it captures the gist of what the completed cookie bags turned out like. Oh! While I’m sharing goodies, my friends from the Isle of Man sent me a really nice gift basket of fruit cake, pudding, and chocolates. I thought these boxes of chocolates were so cute shaped into their IoM emblem–the three legs, which I was told meant that no matter which way they are thrown, they will stand.
Now those were yummy! This picture is all that’s left of them. . .
Toodles for now!
Marlakins
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01.18.12
Posted in Anything goes, Playing the Tourist, family stuff, gardening at 1:09 am by Administrator
Apparently, my previous post of the rice terraces was a bit confusing as to how rice grows. To clear the confusion, I thought I’d post a few more rice pictures. Here’s a picture of rice at the terraces before harvesting.
Here’s a closer picture with Brian reaching out to touch the rice.
This woman was harvesting the rice and tying them into bundles for drying.
After bundling, the rice is laid out all over the place–along side the roads, the walls, etc. This is what the bundles looked like while they are laid out to dry.
These bundles were all over the place. Here’s another example.
I believe each family did their own harvesting, so these piles would be all over. They don’t sell this rice commercially. It’s only grown for the community and sold in small quantities to visitors. We were able to taste some of this rice in the local restaurants and also by purchasing a small amount that we were able to take back to Manila with us and cook at the condo. This is the type of bundle Brian was holding in the picture in my previous post on the rice terraces.
While I’m sharing this pictures, I thought I’d throw in a couple more that I liked. Here’s pic of some cute little girls passing through the terraces. These kids are used to walking up and down the terraces to go to school. They must be in great shape because boy, I was pooped walking only a short distance of steep steps.
Brian just loved this closeup.
Isn’t she cute?
Hope this clears up the rice thing!
Marlakins 
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01.12.12
Posted in Historical Trivia, Playing the Tourist, family stuff, food and restaurants, gardening at 4:23 pm by Administrator
Last week I got an email from my sister asking if I would forward her a copy of some family pictures with some Ifugao and/or pictures of the rice terraces. Being the compliant sister that I am, I dutifully forwarded her a few pictures no questions asked (after all we took a ton of them during our visit last August). She gave me no explanation why she wanted them, just a “thank you” when she received it. So I asked her what that was all about. It turns out some good friends of hers had given her an old book that was published in the 50’s. It was a Hardy Boy type of book called The Skull. Apparently, it was a sort of joke as they weren’t familiar with the Rice Terraces or the Ifugao. The story is of some guys who leave from Manila to the Philippine Rice Terraces in search of treasure. My sister’s friends thought it was all made up, but my sister informed them that there are real Ifugao and real Philippine rice terraces. She had forwarded my family pictures to back up her claim, heheh.
My sister’s request got me rummaging through my pictures, so I figured while I was at it, I might as well share some of those pictures on my blog. I know we’ve already started the new year, but there’s still a lot of things left over from last year. Here’s one of the pictures we took last August with my family and mom at the rice terraces with some Ifugao.
Okay so we’re blocking the view of the rice terraces, so here’s a better picture of one of the spectacular views there.
Looks like a postcard, huh? There were so many scenic shots like this. It reminded me of pictures we took while in the Yucatan Peninsula years ago where many of our photographs looked like postcards.
These terraces are in the Banaue area. When we visited, we stayed at the Banaue Hotel, which was actually commissioned by Imelda Marcos from what we were told. When we arrived, we found that they had a welcome sign with all the guests’ names arriving that day.
I guess they listed the guests in alphabetical order, so our name was on top. Gosh we saw so many things there and took so many pictures, it’s hard to know which ones to share as there is only a small space on the blog. I’ll just share a few more that I liked like this one of Brian walking through the rice terrace. He really wanted to walk right in there and touch the rice. . .
The man behind him was our tour guide. He was very nice and accommodating. Luckily for us, there was still a lot of rice to harvest. Other times during the time we visited, the rice would have been harvested already and we would have only seen brown terraces. But fortunately, it was still quite green.
We visited a few museums, and also a small village called Taam Village, IIRC. It’s customary for them to keep the bones of their ancestors in their home, so here’s a pic of a young gal showing us the bones of her grandfather.
The structure we were in was actually one of the homes, which is basically a hut. I don’t think they all had wood floors like this one.
As we were winding up our tour of the village, my boys got ambushed by a bunch of Filipino gals taking a tour there, too. It’s interesting how they can spot outsiders easily and asked if they could take some pictures with my boys. Since they were all taking pictures, I joined in and grabbed a snap. Ah, to be young again. . .
And finally, before we left Banaue, we had lunch at the People’s Inn, which had another nice view of the terraces. There’s actually many, many views as the terraces are very extensive in size. While we felt surrounded by terraces, we actually only saw a small portion of it’s entirety.
You wouldn’t know if from looking at the above picture, but not more than two minutes passed after this shot that it got cloudy and started to rain. The sudden change of climate reminded me of Kauai. It would rain for a short while and clear up quickly as well.
Well, that’s it for now. This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for my first post of the year, but I’m already behind, ha! I’ll likely post a few more stuffs from last year before I get on with this year.
Marlakins
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12.31.11
Posted in family stuff at 5:45 pm by Administrator
It’s the last day of 2011. We’re here at mom’s. I’m expecting a quiet night as we don’t really have anything planned aside from eating, heheheh. Now that all the craziness of the holidays has passed, there’s more time for me to reflect on this past year. Sure seems like lots has happened. I think it feels doubly busy because I’ve been trying to keep mom company as much as I can, so my time is often split between my family and mom time. As I spend more time with mom, I’m also getting to know her friends better, and I feel like they are now becoming my friends as well! That is, I’m celebrating special events with them like their Christmas parties and Thanksgiving parties, monthly gatherings, and now even funerals. Just this last week, I took mom to two funerals.
It’s really only after Dad passed, that I understand funerals more. I was usually one of the youngest in our gang, so often times I was excluded from going to funerals and even only learned of family friends and relatives passing after the funerals. So I learned a lot from Dad’s funeral, and now I can appreciate other people’s funerals much better. It’s interesting how different people send off their loved ones in different ways according to their religions. But regardless of religion, I can see the grief and sorrow is still the same. I especially liked to hear the stories friends and families of the deceased shared regarding how their lives were affected by the deceased. I am touched with how much kindness there is out there. I feel like knowing their stories helps to make me a better person. If not in deed, then at least in understanding. Also regardless of religions, it’s common for many to believe they will eventually be reunited. So I think really it’s just the temporary separation that makes it so sad, not being able to see them or hear their voices.
Another thing I’ve been able to enjoy this year hanging out with mom is learning more about her and her generation. As I hang out with her friends, I hear their stories and get to see some of their pictures in their younger days. So many of them were so cute, and full of life. I realize, though, from talking to them that they grew up in a very different time. They grew up in a time when the U.S. was the symbol of freedom and opportunity. They formed their opinions of the U.S. at a time before the Korean War, the Vietnam war, the first and second Gulf Wars, etc. It was a different time when no one knew about top secret programs that worked to undermine the stability of other countries or experiments performed on unsuspecting U.S. and foreign citizens. It was a time when everyone believed that the U.S. would do no wrong. And so these senior citizens continue to live with such beliefs. They worked hard all their lives to live the American dream. My dad did that, and to the day he died, he was still very patriotic. He was actually on a vacation to see Mount Rushmore, a symbol of the America he so loved. Dad always bought American cars, never Japanese cars to the day he died. It took a long time before he would eat at Japanese restaurants, and eventually buy Japanese electronics. After all, so many electronics are from Japan, it’s become the American thing to do to buy Japanese electronics and eat sushi! As this year comes to a close, I think of these senior citizens, and how one by one they are passing. Soon their generation will be gone leaving us with only photographs and written letters. For some more fortunate, there will be audio recordings, and possibly video footage preserving a very brief moment in time.
Well, it seems like the gang is getting hungry, so I’m gonna leave it here for now. I was hoping to write of more “happy” reflections, but I guess I’ll start the new year with those instead. Oh, yeah, I also took some pictures of some of the Christmas things I worked on that I would like to share on my blog, heheh. It was hectic, but it was fun, so I’m already thinking of getting ideas for next Christmas! :D I’ll try to get a head start so that the close of the year won’t be as crazy. So goodbye 2011!!!! Hello 2012!!!!
Happy New Year to everyone!
Marlakins
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12.03.11
Posted in family stuff at 10:57 pm by Administrator
Boy, I leave my blog for a short while and come back to find it full of spam! Grrrr. I’ve recently run into a little bump in the road because my house got burglarized last Monday. . . among other things, they took my laptop. Yeah, the one I use to keep all my uploaded pictures. . . Yeah, I know. I should back them up, but I didn’t. I know I should have learned my lesson already when my previous computer crashed and I lost everything. But I’m hopelessly stubborn, spurred on by a touch of laziness, sigh. The good thing is I found that my middle son, Matty, has been backing up some of my pictures. That was a pleasant surprise. So when I get a chance, I’ll pop in on his computer to find out what pictures he’s saved for me. I hope most of them because I really had a lot. Thousands, literally. The ones with my dad are irreplaceable, so that really hurt. BUT hopefully Matty still has those. What I don’t think he’ll be able to replace are all the patterns I’ve saved up on my computer, wah. Now that’s a real bummer for me.
So with the holiday season upon us and the added urgency to get a new front door with all the fixin’s, heheh, I’ll likely put off getting another computer until everything is all settled down. In the meantime, I feel like a vagabond in terms of using a computer. So, not sure how often I’ll be able to blog until then. Maybe when it’s done I’ll share some pictures. I mean our front door looks pretty crazy right now all patched up with planks of wood to hold the middle panel in place. The crazy burglars just kicked the door in. Can you believe it? They kicked our front door in! It’s evident they tried to pry the lock, but were unsuccessful, so they just kicked the whole door. The lock held (luckily we have a good lock), as did the door stile, but the center of the door didn’t. And what a Merry Christmas they had. . . well, not really as we really don’t have much valuable stuff to take that’s small enough to tuck in to a pillowcase. Well, my yarn, fabrics, and craft supplies are valuable to me, but not too exciting for burglars, ha, ha! They just primarily made off some some cash and the wrong jewelry box (the one with my old costume jewelry that I never wear anymore, hee, hee, hee, hee). Oh well, I’ve been thinking we needed a new front door anyway. We’ll just get it sooner. And my laptop was going on three years, so probably getting ready to be replaced, too.
So, just in case I don’t get a chance to update my blog much, it’s not because I’ve given up on it, it’s just that I’m a tad busy and laptop-less. And while I have the chance right now, here’s to a Happy Holidays to everyone! Merry Christmas!
Marlakins
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11.24.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:26 pm by Administrator
Finished cooking the cookies, and now have the turkey and the broth for the gravy started. Will wait a couple hours before starting up the pork stew. I already baked the pork that I’m going to use in the stew this morning, so have time to check my email and wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!!!! Enjoy the gatherings and the eats! Yum yum!
Marlakins
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11.21.11
Posted in Anything goes, Historical Trivia, History, Playing the Tourist, museums at 11:59 pm by Administrator
Before I get too lazy, I thought I’d start to share some of the pictures we took while at Mexico City. Here’s a pic near our hotel on the Avenue Reforma.
Brian and I were taking a walk to look for a place to exchange currency. The rate we found was 12.15 Mexican pesos to 1 U.S. dollar. The exchange rate was better at the currency exchange along the street than at the hotel or the LAX airport. Oh, one other thing, I found that it could actually get a bit chilly in Mexico City. I never really thought of Mexico being cold.
After exchanging a little cash, Brian and I headed over to the Anthropological Museum. Here’s a pic of the front of the museum.
This museum cost about $5 U.S. or $51 Mexican pesos per person. It was a very good museum, full of artifacts that were well laid out and separated by groups like the Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs,etc. Here’s an example of part of the Aztec exhibit.
The round stone mounted against the back wall is an Aztec calendar. The cylindrical stone laying between me and the Aztec calendar is believed to be a sort of alter for human sacrifices. The center hole is believed to be where the heart was placed during or after the sacrifice. Yikes! The carvings along the sides of the stone seem to depict the sacrificial ceremony that takes place on that alter.
Here’s Brian next to another carving. If memory serves me correctly, this is part of the exhibit for Teotihuacan. At least I’m pretty sure that right outside to the left of Brian was the miniature layout of the Teotihuacan pyramids.
We took loads of pictures so that we could continue to enjoy them at home. They were also good for art inspiration. I’ve known that colors were used back in those times, but like the Italian villas, I didn’t realize how colorful the original structures were. For instance, here’s a replica of what some of the outer walls looked like. Along the side was a sort of freeze made of ceramic, and the colorful paintings looked like a sort of fresco.
Unfortunately we were only able to spend the last half of the day at the museum. You could easily spend the whole day or more there because it was really loaded with so many artifacts. But the museum closed at 6PM, so we had to get moving. There were lots of vendors just outside of the museum, and also some flying pole men dancers. Here’s a pic of them as they were slowly repelling down.
I believe this dance has something to do with Mayan mythology of the creation of the world. They’re supposed to be birdmen (the diety associated with this dance is a bird), and one of the men plays a flute as they gradually spin around and around until they slowly reach the ground.
That evening Brian and I hopped on a local bus to get back to the hotel. That was much cheaper than taking a taxi. The bus ride only cost $4.5 pesos each compared to us paying about $20 U.S. dollars taking a taxi from the airport to the hotel. Granted that was farther, but still, a taxi would have cost us much more. $4.5 pesos is just under $0.50 U.S.
The next day we joined a tour that took us to The Guadalupe Shrine and the ruins of Teotihuacan. I’ll try to sort through some of those pics and share those later. Aside from being wiped out from traveling and the slight time change (Mexico is two hours ahead of California time), our trip to Mexico was quite nice. Definitely a nice quick get away.
Marlakins
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11.18.11
Posted in Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, History at 6:03 pm by Administrator
Back in 1999 when I was first diagnosed with aplastic anemia, I was frantically looking for ways to naturally treat myself. Amongst some of the known causes of aplastic anemia was radiation exposure. From that time on, I was fascinated with the history and discovery of radiation and how it has shaped the medical establishment and the military establishment and subsequently global politics. As a matter of fact, I even wrote a short primer series of blog entries pertaining to radiation back in 2006. The first post I titled “Radiation” and can be viewed here. I have since learned that the history of radiation is long and convoluted. While its discovery is fairly well-known, the processes of its acquisition and its subsequent uses and experiments are less known. More importantly, it’s dangers are also shrouded in confusion to this day.
Today in 2011, I’m still drawn to the subject of radiation (granted I have many distractions, thus the snail-paced rate by which I learn, heheh). After the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the nuclear movement fell in the background. With the recent promotion of global warming, nuclear power was starting to re-emerge on the stage as a clean energy source. But with the advent of the Fukushima nuclear accident on March 2011, the dangers of radiation has been revitalized in some circles. I say “some” circles because there are still a lot of people who ignore and/or are just plain indifferent about it. That amazes me, but such is life. I guess it would be something like a football fanatic wondering why I couldn’t care less for the sport, heh.
Anyway, what I wanted to share today is a video I stumbled across called, “Lost Worlds – Secret Cities of the A-bomb”.
The secret cities referred to in the video were the cities created for the Manhattan Project–the United States’ secret nuclear weapons project that culminated in the creation of the atom bombs, Fat Man and Little Boy. For anyone who might not remember what Fat Man and Little Boy were, they were the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The project was enormous and cost U.S. taxpayers about $2 billion.
Despite the thousands of people who worked for the Manhattan Project, and despite its exorbitant cost, relatively few people really knew what the project was all about. Many jobs were compartmentalized and secrecy was highly enforced. According to Robert J. Lifton and Greg Mitchell, authors of Hiroshima in America, even Truman as Vice President of the United States, didn’t know about the Manhattan Project until Roosevelt died. The enormous cost and effort to create the A-bombs, according to Lifton and Mitchell, was likely a significant factor regarding the pressure/need to use the bombs before WWII ended. How could they explain using all that money and effort for nothing? It was also a political move to place the U.S. as the world leader over the defeated countries and its allies, including Russia. As such, those factors may have been the true motivating factors to drop the bombs in Japan, than ending the war. Historical accounts clearly shows that Japan had already been trying to negotiate a surrender back in April, about three and a half months before the first successful atom bomb test at Trinity, and about four months before the a- bombs obliterated two of Japan’s cities. It is also a known historical fact that only five Japanese cities had not been fire bombed by that time as well. Japan was already at its knees.
After reading Yellow Dirt by Judy Pasternak, I checked out one of the books she referenced called, The Plutonium Files by Eileen Welsome. My! Another fascinating book! Welsome’s book was copyrighted in 1999, the same year I was diagnosed with aplastic anemia and just beginning to learn about radiation. Welsome’s book brought to light 50-year-old secret radiation experiments on humans as part of the Manhattan Project. Evidently, unsuspecting people were secretly exposed to plutonium for research purposes. I am just beginning to read the book, so may comment about it later when I’m finished. For now, hope the video, “Lost Worlds–the Secret Cities of the A-bomb” is enlightening. To properly understand current world policies and how it is intertwined with the civilian world, especially those pertaining to nuclear proliferation, mining, and safety, this piece of history is indispensable.
Marlakins
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