Peter wrote:
The Manhattan Project.
Still off-topic, but I remember reading Germany was reeeaaaally close to developing the understanding of the key principles of the atom bomb when they collapsed; that one of their top scientists understood the error they had been making up to then and got to the “correct value” (IIRC the value of the critical mass of uranium, which they had up to then severely misevaluated) within a few weeks just sitting at a desk with pen & paper in captivity.
Whether they could have developed it into an industrial process and delivered a functioning bomb is another question; their economy was deeply trashed and they were losing the war already. True. But, one can argue, their economy was trashed and they were losing the war in part thanks to / because of the cracking of Enigma. I can’t remove from my mind the possibility that without the Enigma crack, maybe combined with some other changed factors such as the USSR switching from German ally to enemy a few months later, wouldn’t have led to both sides having nuclear weapons, and using them in Europe. Or, weaker but still “I’m glad this didn’t happen”, that the USA would have used atom bombs on Germany, with some of the fallout going where we now live.
Jacko wrote:
That society as a whole will accept that lifestyle choices like obesity
Obesity is a “lifestyle choice”?
Obesity may not bema lifestyle choice but overeating of highly fat saturated food and drinking too many sugary drinks is.
I’m beginning to wonder if this whole thing simply will fizzle out. Live is practically back to normal here (at least my life, with a few exceptions that has no effect on my everyday life. Not that it had that much effect to start with). The number of hospitalized is going down steadily, the number of tested positive is going down steadily. With the current rate it will be all gone sometime during the summer. hmm.
Silvaire wrote:
My relatives in Germany are using a current building contractors license to get across the border to and from their house in Austria, otherwise they’d be out of luck, and it would not be very credible on a motorcycle.
I think the border is open now.
Thanks for that – wish I were there on two wheels.
COVID originated in China, so did SARS, so did MERS, so did the rabbit virus that is desimating rabbit populations world wide with a mortality rate and a level of transmission that makes COVID look like a pussy cat.
MERS originated in Middle East.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Obesity is a “lifestyle choice”?
Yes, absolutely with the exception of a tiny minority.
172driver wrote:
Yes, absolutely with the exception of a tiny minority.
Maybe in the US…
