Sunday, August 25, 2013

Daily Frost Bite


From Iron 
TOOLS AND WEAPONS 
To Ahmed S. Bokhari 
Nature within her inmost self divides
To trouble men with having to take sides. 
~Robert Frost (1956)



Ahmed S. Bokhari has no useful biographic information on Wikipedia. Part of the Frost/Bokhari back story is here, including the context for Frost's original couplet. Bokhari was a UN Security Council President in the 1950's and was a professor of something in Pakistan. I'll leave to the chance reader who might know the rest of the back story regarding Bokhari and nuclear fission to help fill in more detail. I decided instead to bring up Werner Heisenberg.

Heisenberg had been a favorite student of Niels Bohr. Their relationship has been explored in the play and filmed version of Copenhagen, a favorite of mine (Daniel Craig plays Heisenberg in case anyone thinks the man is forever typecast as James Bond).

I bring up Heisenberg for two reasons: (1) Icepick keeps bringing him up and (2) Heisenberg's place in moral history is still uncertain.  For some, Heisenberg will forever just be the German scientist who stayed behind in Germany, include a brief tenure in Berlin during the Nazi era. Not only that, he led Germany's nuclear research program -- the program that famously didn't build a bomb. Copenhagen is the story of those very questions and answers and I have nothing to add. Moreover, the players are all long dead.

There were many other possible uses for nuclear energy as disclosed by Heisenberg in Copenhagen: transmutation of elements -- the possibility of making gold from lead. Nowadays we know that all such endeavors lead down to lead and that's why we hear no more of that old alchemist's dream. But there was also simple power generation, and Germany was one of the first nations to adopt (and drop) that use under Heisenberg's guidance.

15 comments:

betamax3001 said...

Re: "Nature within her inmost self divides
To trouble men with having to take sides."

So Does This make Nature Bradley or Chelsea?

chickelit said...

Nothing about Manning says cleavage, so there hasn't been a split yet.

Nature is still both.

ricpic said...

Nature is all in all, a unity --
This, paltry verklempt man canna' see
And taking sides neglects the main course
Which, overcooked, comes to table a total loss.

--Robbie "Scotch Jew" Burns

Chip Ahoy said...

Oh, Robert Frost, your typewriter did not have an acute "a" so you provided its acuity by hand.

Your typewriter, all typewriters, have a button, a latch, on the side of the platen.

Platen. That's typewriter-vocabulary for black roller that you crank the paper around. It releases from its locked position by a small latch on the side. Sometimes both sides. This allows the operator to slide the platen manually half a notch to tap the apostrophe and whack an acute above any letter. Most of them lean that way.

But then you must put it back.

You can also release the paper, if you are sufficiently deft to position it properly then reposition it back where you started, nearly impossible, but you can try, and both these ways would be less clumsy than your hand-drawn acute.

))) WHAP (((

I meant to say, that is an impressive letter, and touching too, I mean it. Wow. the guy asks you tacitly to write his epitaph and you obey that odd unspoken request.

You know, Bob, I have a similar situation, but one that does not rely on my talents nor show them as your letter does. The thing is, this guy I know has the shakes. And I don't know what that's from. He never spoke about it, never mentioned it, but there it is, shaking all over the place. So the thing is, on GIzmodo they ran a post about a new electronic spoon that cancels out the shakes so shaky people can feed themselves. And I already know the guy feeds himself, it's not that bad, shaky, but not bad, but do you think it's a good idea if I bought him one of these spoons? Same problem. The guy didn't actually ask. You could have made a mistake there, just because your head is vibrating until you died, oops, sorry you're dead, doesn't mean he'll actually appreciate you writing his epitaph, all that hinting around, he might have been joking. The joke could be on you.

So what's your epitaph?

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

Is that it? You wrote your own too?

Yes.

They used the last line. Eighty-nine yrs.

chickelit said...

Titus: I can imagine you had a rope around your own neck (David Carradine) while you were "linking" to that photo over 100 times.

Phil 314 said...

Heisenberg's place in moral history is still uncertain

He does have a thing with uncertainty.

Chip Ahoy said...

JA!

Ihm und Schrödinger.

Always, where should we go for lunch. How about the Japanese place? I don't know, that's near the wet burrito place too. But then we have to park and the hotdogs are just as good. Ya, if you want the mustard and the pork but for a good sandwich just a another block and there's the lunch counter. I was there already. Okay then, let's get some cotton candy instead. No way, that's unhealthy, you know that. But I wanted to see if you would be dead and anyway the 7-11 is right there. So it's concluded then, cupcakes and daiquiris. No, that won't do we need a proper diet, so sauerkraut and icicles BLT sandwiches. Well I don't know about the sandwiches part.

You see? Always uncertain about every little thing.

But my favorite part was making bites of Robert Frost into frostbites because it reminded me of my always to be remembered and reminded of betta fish that fight so much but are lovely independently and were always so interesting, but only one at a time, Nick and Chip and Doug, and Mark and Divot and Scar and Slice and Chunk and Rip.

Titus said...

I can imagine you had a rope around your own neck (David Carradine) while you were "linking" to that photo over 100 times.

I thought the same of you Chick, but you couldn't get it up....sad.

Titus said...

Sullivanist...gay....West Hollywood...gay....noose...gay....sarah palin.....gay....gay, gay, gay obsession.

Extremist!

Anger!

Limp dick....

Gays!!!!!

Hate/chirbits/boring/chick.

chickelit said...

Those sound like angry rap lyrics, Titus. Should I set them to Hip-Hop on a chirbit?

yashu said...

Titus, that just makes me sad. And I say that as someone who's very gay-friendly (I know the "some of my best friends..." phrase is taken as a joke, but seriously, some of my best friends, and some of my favorite people, and some of my favorite parts of the culture are gay). And I'm not a Palin super-fan (though I still find much to appreciate about her).

Why Sarah Palin? I can understand gay hostility toward Bachmann and Santorum. But Palin's never done or said anything to deserve that (on the contrary).

But then, of course, the figure of "Palin" in the lib/ prog/ Dem imagination is something so remote from the actual Palin. And it makes sense, I suppose, as an indirect aggressive move. (Kinda what you're doing here.) Not directed at Palin per se, but to piss off people who appreciate Palin.

The analogical move would be, Prop 8 supporters hanging, I don't know, Judy Garland in effigy?

Funny thing is, I think Palin should get more love from the gays, as a female icon. Don't you love Palin yourself? Seems to me she'd be a great subject for drag queen imitation. And I mean that with affection (toward drag queens and Palin).

yashu said...

Thank you for the Frost bites, Pollo; I'd love to see more.

You've inspired me to go back and read more Frost. I've always considered him one of the greats, but for some reason he's a poet that I personally (in my own choice of poets to read) tend to overlook or neglect.

The great surprise is how very much there is, there, for me (very idiosyncratically and subjectively) to love, really love. I think you've referred to his "perfection" elsewhere; and yes, that sense/ appearance of perfection and related simplicity might have set me off the track. Because if you really go into the dark forest of his poems (descend into the flesh of them)... wow.

ndspinelli said...

Titus is sad and angry that everyone finally tired of his one act, one man, passion play.

rcocean said...

Good fences, make good neighbors.

AND

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

chickelit said...

Thanks, yashu!

More Frost is forecast in the coming days.