Ideas That Don’t Quite Work

One of the things I love about science is that it proceeds not just by learning what is true, or what works – but by learning what is not true or what does not work. Naturally, we’d all rather make great leaps of understanding, but sometimes we can learn a bit, and push things in a good direction if we can handle a bit of failure.

Today, I advanced the art of blade-smithing a tiny bit by discovering another thing that does not quite work.

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The NPT

The US talks a lot about non-proliferation, and regularly joins with the world community to levy sanctions on nations that are not complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran and North Korea being prime examples of countries that have had a great deal of pressure (in the case of North Korea, the population has been starved) against their nuclear ambitions.

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A Warm Welcome

Coming home and finding your house a smouldering wreckage, burned down to the foundation – that’s not what happened to me. For some reason, though, I dread it; it’s why I have a whole mental check-list I run through before I depart and arrive, walking down the list of systems that need to be turned off (or on) when I am home or away.

I landed at Washington, Dulles around 8:00pm last night and hit the road for the 3hr drive back up to the farm. So (allowing for bathroom and drink breaks) I got home around midnight, roared into the dark and dust called “my driveway” and up to the house, to be greeted by this:

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Some Good Signs

Meanwhile, there are occasionally signs that the effort is paying off. Security hasn’t been too bad but it’s had its #MeToo moments and the conferences used to have “booth babes” and a lot of “locker room talk.”

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