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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Form input - by Günter Born

Monday, March 14, 2022

Why hasn't the Doomsday Clock been set forward?

I have a serious complaint to make here against the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and their "Doomsday Clock", about the probability of a world nuclear holocaust. Now, it's true that for some three years now the Doomsday Clock has been set at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it's ever been. But, really, in the light of the current World War Three situation between Russia and the West in Ukraine, I hardly think that's fully adequate. Here we have hundreds of thousands of troops fighting it out just on NATO's doorstep, heavily armed with NATO weapons, and threats of nuclear retaliation flying fast and furious. Surely, one second to midnight would be much more appropriate. Or, perhaps even a millisecond to midnight, maybe even a nanosecond to midnight? Is this the problem then? Maybe a conventional clock isn't quite up to our current circumstances. Perhaps the old style Doomsday Clock is just getting behind the times, and what we really need now is a Doomsday Stopwatch, or perhaps a computer clock. Maybe an "atomic clock" has to be employed. Now, wouldn't that be appropriate?

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