Papa and I go to UA events regularly, several times per week! The UA calendar is a "favorite" on my computer and I check to see what is coming up that we might enjoy. Last night we attended a discussion between Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg on the topic of nuclear policy and war. Noam Chomsky joined the University of Arizona as a laureate professor of linguistics last fall. He has had an amazing career, joining the MIT faculty in 1955, and best known as "the father of modern linguistics, as a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science." There is more about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky. Daniel Ellsberg is most famous as the Pentagon Papers whistleblower. He has written a new book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. There is more about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg.
Last night's discussion was held in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, to a full house auditorium. It was very interesting! We were reminded of the times we participated in school drills as children, with the bell sounding and everyone getting under their desk. Chomsky and Ellsberg's message was that the world's nuclear situation, number of bombs and nuclear material, is actually not much changed since those days, and is completely at the whim of world leaders who make comments such as "I have a much bigger nuclear button than ..." What is very different is the world's population has grown exponentially and many millions more people would be affected by a nuclear war today than 50 years ago. A free livestream of last night's event is here.
Last night's discussion was held in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, to a full house auditorium. It was very interesting! We were reminded of the times we participated in school drills as children, with the bell sounding and everyone getting under their desk. Chomsky and Ellsberg's message was that the world's nuclear situation, number of bombs and nuclear material, is actually not much changed since those days, and is completely at the whim of world leaders who make comments such as "I have a much bigger nuclear button than ..." What is very different is the world's population has grown exponentially and many millions more people would be affected by a nuclear war today than 50 years ago. A free livestream of last night's event is here.
