Author: A. G. Moore

Slayer of Serpents Book Review

The Slayer of Serpents

By George Mathew Muthoot

This is a charming volume. The author’s tone is mature and reflective, the adventures he describes inherently interesting.  Through his sensitive descriptions, Dr. reveals the child who experiences the adventures.  As he does so, he gives insight into the adult who is recalling these events.

Dr. Muthoot’s family was part of a community of Christians in southern India. This community traces its roots to St. Thomas, one of the original Apostles. In India he found followers and established a church.

I recommend this book. It offers insight into a particular culture and permits the reader to spend time with an author who has a generous and gentle spirit. That’s always a good thing.

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North Korea and the Hydrogen Bomb

 

By A. G. Moore    July, 2016

As North Korea continues to refine its ballistic missile technology (http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/north-korea-test-fires-musudan-ballistic-missiles-160622042047390.html), it warns that the missiles will be armed with nuclear weapons. Until last January those weapons would have been atomic bombs.

In January, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced that his country had tested a hydrogen bomb (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35240012) .  This was alarming news to the international community. While most people vaguely refer to “nuclear weapons” they draw little distinction between atom and hydrogen bombs. In fact, there is a significant difference, such a great difference that many scientists who worked on the Manhattan project (to create an atom bomb in WWII) refused to have anything to do with hydrogen development.

A look back at those early days of atomic weapons development will help to explain why North Korea’s hydrogen bomb is such a big deal. What follows is an except adapted from What is Radioactivity? The Basics, one of several books offered by Rhythm Prism that help to make complex ideas accessible to all readers.  

Edward Teller and the Hydrogen Bomb

When Henri Becquerel and the Curies experimented with radioactivity in the late 19th century, they didn’t have government or institutional support. Interest in radioactivity grew quickly, however, as its potential uses, particularly its military uses, became clear.

By the 1930s, a race to build an atomic bomb was on. The race culminated in nuclear blasts over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The display of power stoked the desire in some for an even more destructive device. A chief advocate for the new bomb was Edward Teller, one of the physicists who had worked on the Manhattan Project. The device he envisioned was the hydrogen bomb.

Teller’s nuclear device would gain its power from fusion, rather than fission. Fission involves breaking up atoms. Fusion involves combining them. Both processes release a tremendous amount of energy, but fusion releases much more.

Fusion diagram: Two isotopes of hydrogen are forced to combine and become a new element, helium. An extra neutron is freed in the reaction.

fusion diagram scaled 3

Many of Teller’s colleagues, including Enrico Fermi and J. Robert Oppenheimer, did not believe the hydrogen bomb should be developed.

“Now I am become Death…” Oppenheimer had said, when the atomic bomb was first tested on July 16, 1945. This sense of Promethean overreach did not affect Teller, however. He thought the U.S. needed bigger, and more powerful bombs.

The disagreement between Teller and Oppenheimer grew so fierce that Teller left to work on the hydrogen bomb and Oppenheimer eventually (after WWII) became an activist in the anti-proliferation movement.

Teller persuaded Harry Truman, who had approved the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, to go ahead with development of the hydrogen bomb. That first bomb, the Teller-Ulam hydrogen bomb, was tested on November 1, 1952.

Fusion Bomb Diagram: Fission reaction (Primary) triggers fusion (Secondary).

fusion bomb diagram 2

The hydrogen bomb actually uses both fission and fusion. Detonation is a two-stage process. The first is a fission trigger. The tremendous heat generated by fission causes the second part of the bomb to activate. In this second part, deuterium and tritium are fused. In building a hydrogen bomb, Teller, in fact, mimicked the power of the sun, where hydrogen atoms fuse together to make helium.

Ultimately, the United States entered into an arms race with the Soviet Union. Both nations worked feverishly to amass thousands of the most powerful weapons on earth. Of course, many believe the irony of the weapons race and the nuclear age is this: if atomic warfare ever broke out the result would likely be catastrophic for everyone. With the hydrogen bomb, the path to Armageddon would just be a little shorter.

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A Burial

swamp website 2018 children fixed2
Swamp: an illustration from my upcoming memoir, Arrows Axes and Scythes

By A. G. Moore

This selection is adapted from my upcoming memoir, Arrows Axes and Scythes.

Burial

The move from Krumer’s to Lockwood’s necessitated many adjustments, some positive and some less so. The increased privacy and space were balanced by a cessation of food deliveries. The problem of decreased food supply was exacerbated by an increase in the number of mouths to feed: We began to accumulate pets. Eventually, the number grew to nine. Our pet/food imbalance became a crisis as the animals starved.

I can state with certainty that my mother asked for none of the animals. She didn’t particularly enjoy having pets, but was a compassionate person. Once a pet had been remitted to her custody, she cared for it. The animals sensed this, and they loved her.

Our pets were a hodgepodge of pedigree and mutt. Some were strays and some were delivered to our door in a misguided attempt to give the pets a home. One of these charges was contributed by my father. He found a huge animal, a St. Bernard/Great Dane mix, rummaging in the garbage behind a restaurant. This “rescued” animal, Boots, became a beloved member of the family.

Another dog was brought to the home by my mother’s brother, Jimmy. Uncle Jimmy was important to the family because he owned three dry cleaning stores in Brooklyn. He regularly gave us abandoned clothes, in excellent condition. These were the core of our school wardrobe. Uncle Jimmy’s Chihuahua, Chico, was no longer welcome in his home. That’s how we got Chico.

With nine dogs in the home, and no regular food supply, my mother tried to manage. Potatoes, delivered by my uncles, were cooked and mashed for human consumption. Peels were for the dogs.

Because hunger was their perpetual companion, the dogs took measures. They foraged in neighbors’ trash. Complaints poured in, but my mother couldn’t control the animals and she couldn’t feed them. So the neighbors, or at least one of them, took their own measures. They poisoned the dogs.

Dogs began to turn up dead. They came home to die. We discovered them in various stages of decay. It was Clinton’s job to bury the deceased, but since this was a family tragedy, everybody pitched in.

With the earth frozen, burial was a particular challenge. Clinton’s solution? A bog, a quicksand pool, he found in the forest. In the picture below, the scene of a burial is depicted, as I recall it. This memory is clear.

We dragged our dog, Hortense, up to the bog. Clinton threw her, as respectfully as he could, onto the mud and we waited for her to disappear. In a very little while the surface was smooth again and Hortense was no more.

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