Thursday, August 09, 2007

Calculating the cost of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

In an effort to bring some perspective to the nuclear debate, Sun Bin takes a look at some numbers in The net effect of Little Boy and Fat Man.

Sun gets a little of the history wrong: Tōjō Hideki had stepped down from the position of prime minister in July 1944. The prime minister at the time of the Hiroshima atomic bombing was Suzuki Kantarō. So it was not really "Tojo and Hirohito" who did the waiting.

However, the rest of the presentation is a very interesting and seemingly solid attempt try to quantify the possible significance of the events of August 6 and 9, in terms of lives lost.

Read also his brief travelogue of a rail trip through Shanxi (a work in progress, he says) for an enticing glimpse into the economic and environmental situation in China's backcountry.

3 comments:

Christopher said...

This is completely off topic but I just wanted to say that your new theme photo is fantastic.
Thanks!

MTC said...

Christopher -

Thank you for the compliment.

My favorite elements are 1) the incongruous bottle of green tea and 2) the positions of all their hands.

Though it was rude of me to target strangers, it was a moment I felt compelled to capture.

Anonymous said...

The firmly held half full bottle of green tea is far from being incongruent. It is what the picture is all about!

Thus it is a fantastic picture of today's Japan.