soviet union

If you are interested, check out my peak oil review commentary for this week, which explores what collapse really is - and what we might do about it. The main issue is that it is a heck of a lot more normal than most folks imagine. The piece is a shortened excerpt taken from my forthcoming book _Making Home_. Looking at the history of collapse is really important for us to gauge from history how likely it is - and what we find is that collapse - in the sense of a radical, long term and consequential step down in complexity and comfort - is part of the background of a lot of human lives. I…
Japanese artists' depiction of the horrors at Hiroshima.Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped "Little Boy," the first of only two nuclear bombs ever used in warfare, on the Japanese civilians at Hiroshima. In an instant flash of light an estimated 140,000 people were either incinerated or suffered an agonizing death that lasted several days. The standard mythology is that President Truman dropped the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (three days later on August 9) in order to avoid having to send half a million American soliders to their deaths in a…
Fascinating video from the PBS special, Dogs that Changed the World, on the changes that took place when foxes were bred for tameness in the former Soviet Union. This was originally posted on Greg Laden's Blog but I had to repost it here.