Sunday, August 06, 2006
TWO NAMES AFTER THE FALL
One is Dr. Robert Oppenheimer; the other is Dr. Michihiko Hachiya. The fall took place 61 years ago to this day.
As for Dr. Oppenheimer, his early education was at the Ethical Culture Society School in New York. Besides the usual math and science classes, he studied Greek, Latin, French, and German with much enthusiasm. He was a natural with languages that he once learned Dutch in six weeks in order to give a technical talk in the Netherlands. The classics and eastern philosophy also held his interest throughout his life.
He obtained his PhD at the age of 22 in Germany’s University of Göttingen after graduating summa cum laude from Harvard in 1925. He returned to the United States in 1929 and taught at Berkeley and Cal Tech. He was an extraordinary teacher and an excellent theoretician. His analyses predicted many later discoveries, such as the neutron, positron, meson, and neutron stars.
His passion for his studies and the theoretical world of physics would subsequently lead him to a job in 1941 as Director of The Manhattan Project. In his research station at Los Alamos, New Mexico, he brought the best minds in physics and at one point he had about three thousand people reporting to him. Their job was to create the atomic bomb.
On July 16, 1945, Dr. Oppenheimer and his team witnessed the first explosion of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert.
On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Dr. Michihiko Hachiya worked as Director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital and lived near the hospital approximately a mile from the explosion's epicenter. He lived through that day and kept a diary of his experience, which was published in English in 1955.
On that fateful day, Dr. Hachiya wrote on his diary:
Clad in drawers and undershirt, I was sprawled on the living room floor exhausted because I had just spent a sleepless night on duty as an air warden in my hospital.
Suddenly, a strong flash of light startled me - and then another. So well does one recall little things that I remember vividly how a stone lantern in the garden became brilliantly lit and I debated whether this light was caused by a magnesium flare or sparks from a passing trolley.
Garden shadows disappeared. The view where a moment before had been so bright and sunny was now dark and hazy. Through swirling dust I could barely discern a wooden column that had supported one comer of my house. It was leaning crazily and the roof sagged dangerously.
Moving instinctively, I tried to escape, but rubble and fallen timbers barred the way. By picking my way cautiously I managed to reach the roka [an outside hallway] and stepped down into my garden. A profound weakness overcame me, so I stopped to regain my strength. To my surprise I discovered that I was completely naked How odd! Where were my drawers and undershirt?
What had happened?
All over the right side of my body I was cut and bleeding. A large splinter was protruding from a mangled wound in my thigh, and something warm trickled into my mouth. My check was torn, I discovered as I felt it gingerly, with the lower lip lay wide open. Embedded in my neck was a sizable fragment of glass which I matter-of-factly dislodged, and with the detachment of one stunned and shocked I studied it and my blood-stained hand.
Where was my wife?
(Continue reading “Surviving the Atomic Attack on Hiroshima, 1945”)
Discovery Channel will air a two-part series, “Remembering Hiroshima,” beginning tonight at 9 p.m. here in the Philippines. Please check your local listing if living abroad.
Today, I should stop by Espiritu Santo Church to light a candle and wish that we never experience yet another gross annihilation of humanity and other forms of terrestrial life.
Labels: personalities, wartime history
posted by Señor Enrique at 6:37 AM
| 2 comments
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
MIRA, ZULEYKA, BENG AQUI!
According to a Los Angeles Times’ report, the audience at Sunday’s Miss Universe pageant held at Shrine Auditorium — although all glammed up in slinky halter dresses and suits — treated the event like a World Cup final. There were lots of boisterous cheering and vigorous waving of national flags. Supposedly, they had to be admonished at the beginning of the evening to not blow their air horns.
An 18-year-old Puerto Rican — Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza, a 5-foot, 9-inch dark-haired aspiring actress — was crowned Miss Universe before a crowd of thousands, including a few hundred partisans of her country, screaming and waving Puerto Rican flags.
Besides the allure of Filipina women, I think Puerto Rican women are among the most beautiful, though they can be feisty at a fault. A word of caution: they tend to involve their family against a lover during quarrels, which means not only will you explain yourself to her, but also to her father, uncles, aunts and at times, close friends of the family. But Puerto Rican moms are the best provided you eat their home-cooked meals (always served with rice and beans) with gusto.
Following the brief Spanish-American War, the United States acquired Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and other colonial possessions from Spain under the Treaty of Paris.
Photo credit: LA Times
Labels: personalities
posted by Señor Enrique at 9:21 AM
| 12 comments
Thursday, March 16, 2006
DOCTOR K
It saddens me to read about former baseball star Dwight Gooden having another brush with the law. According to a New York Times article, he was ordered held without bond the other day and faces up to five years in prison for violating the terms of his probation. He pleaded guilty in November to speeding away from police after a DUI traffic stop in August 2005 for which he was sentenced to three years probation. On Tuesday, he went to a regular meeting with a probation officer where he admitted to once again using cocaine.
Dwight Gooden was once the toast of New York City. He set a major league rookie record with 276 strikeouts in only 218 innings. The strikeouts earned him the nickname Doctor K. He tied the major league mark for strikeouts and instantly became the New York Mets' ace and made them overnight contenders. He was the youngest All-Star ever in the history of major league baseball. He was voted Rookie of the Year in 1984 and won the Cy Young award in 1985 with the "pitcher's Triple Crown," leading the National League in wins and strikeouts.
And then as if suddenly, his troubles with cocaine started making headline news.
I met him once — at the backstage party of Patti LaBelle’s concert at Madison Square — right after his release from rehab. I didn’t really have much to say to him, so after shaking his hand and wishing him luck, I moved on to join my friends. I was surprised at how shy he was.
To this day, Dwight Gooden is one of those troubled stars who would make me wonder what sort of inner turmoil could be so overwhelming that would make gifted people like him resort to illicit drugs just to alleviate it. And in the process, jeopardize everything they had worked so hard for in life.
*
Labels: personalities, Sports
posted by Señor Enrique at 11:34 AM
| 4 comments
Saturday, January 14, 2006
THE INCORRIGIBLE RUSSIAN
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Russia's Liberal and Democratic Party leader, has always been up front with his in-your-face fascistic political agenda, which oftentimes borders on insanity. He has no qualms for glorifying Adolph Hitler and supporting the aggressive use of nuclear weaponry. He has also vigorously advocated Russia's invasion and "reacquisition" of Alaska. As a means to fight bird flu, instead of vaccines, he suggested supplying every Russian citizen with appropriate armament to blow away everything with feathers.
Most recently he has fixed his ire on the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. During an interview with Pravda, Zhirinovsky chastised Rice for calling on Russia to "act responsibly" in supplying natural gas to Ukraine; attributing, as he claimed it, the secretary of state’s "coarse anti-Russian statement" to her being "a single woman who has no children.
He went on with his tirade. "If she has no man by her side at her age, he will never appear. Condoleezza Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she would be satisfied.”
Like a runaway train, Zhirinovsky ranted on. "Condoleezza Rice is a very cruel, offended woman who lacks men's attention. Such women are very rough. … They can be happy only when they are talked and written about everywhere: 'Oh, Condoleezza, what a remarkable woman, what a charming Afro-American lady! How well she can play the piano and speak Russian!'
"Complex-prone women are especially dangerous. They are like malicious mothers-in-law, women that evoke hatred and irritation with everyone. Everybody tries to part with such women as soon as possible. A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though."
A State Department spokesman issued a statement to the press that Rice would not "dignify the article with a response."
Photo credit: MosNews.com
Labels: personalities
posted by Señor Enrique at 11:07 AM
| 4 comments
