The Big Picture presents another excellent series of photographs to remember the first atomic bomb used during warfare. Many of the photos highlight the mass destruction of life and property that took place on August 6, 1945.

The U.S. B-29 Superfortress bomber “Enola Gay” took off from Tinian Island very early on the morning of August 6th, carrying a single 4,000 kg (8,900 lb) uranium bomb codenamed “Little Boy”. At 8:15 am, Little Boy was dropped from 9,400 m (31,000 ft) above the city, freefalling for 57 seconds while a complicated series of fuse triggers looked for a target height of 600 m (2,000 ft) above the ground. At the moment of detonation, a small explosive initiated a super-critical mass in 64 kg (141 lbs) of uranium. Of that 64 kg, only .7 kg (1.5 lbs) underwent fission, and of that mass, only 600 milligrams was converted into energy – an explosive energy that seared everything within a few miles, flattened the city below with a massive shockwave, set off a raging firestorm and bathed every living thing in deadly radiation. Nearly 70,000 people are believed to have been killed immediately, with possibly another 70,000 survivors dying of injuries and radiation exposure by 1950.

Despite that, a second bomb was detonated in Nagasaki two days later.  Why the US Military didn’t detonate it in a remote section of Japan first to display the nuclear bomb’s destructive power, I’ll never understand.

Balk succinctly puts this speech into proper context:  “It’s the last time an American President thought that appealing to a shared sense of sacrifice while being frank and honest with the American people was a good idea. . . it’s hard to look at this speech and not be amazed by the boldness of its aims or the implicit respect for the intelligence of the citizenry in its tone. Thank God everyone pulled together and we totally got the whole energy thing solved. Can you imagine what the world would be like today if we hadn’t?” 

Though the speech ultimately doomed Carter and his reelection chances in 1980, at least one scholar thinks we should look at the “malaise” speech as a call to action, much like Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.” 

Thirty years ago, we knew we had an energy problem that needed solving.  We had a president that spoke openly and honestly with the public about those problems and laid out a plan to solve them.  Thirty years later we are still in the same mess. 

And you wonder why people think nothing gets done in Washington, D.C. or has a deep distrust of the institution of government.  As cynical as this sounds, don’t be the least bit surprised when Obama doesn’t change anything.

Don’t forget to call you’re dad today, if he’s still in your life.  They’re important, ya know.

Kids also learn from fathers during a unique form of papa play. Unlike mothers, fathers tend to roughhouse with their children.

“They rile them up, almost to the point that they are going to snap, and then calm them down,” Geary said.

This pattern teaches kids to control their emotions — a trait that garners them popularity among superiors and peers, he said.

This isn’t the most exemplary story about my Dad — behavior-wise — but it is one of my favorites because it involved baseball and something so much more.

Anyway, the setup is one of my final high school baseball games.  Don’t really remember the score or some of the finer details, but I remember my final at bat.

I hit a sharp grounder in the hole and being a relatively quick lefty I could usually make any grounder hit in the hole a difficult play for any shortstop.  On this particular play, the shortstop made a good play on the ball and an even better throw.  It was close and the case could be made that I was safe by half-a-step.  The umpire, probably wanting to go home as soon as possible, banged me out.  And I was getting ready to go talk to him about his incorrect call, I hear my dad start yelling from the stands and then he wouldn’t let up. And he kept yelling and yelling and yelling.  Until, if memory serves correct, he was asked to leave the stands.

Normally, I’d think geez he’s acting like one of those parents.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  But in that moment his passion for baseball and his love for me coalesced into something that he could probably never verbalize.  I’m sure in his mind he wanted my final at bat to be a basehit.  But more than anything, it was a moment I’ll never forget because he fought for me.  It was so crystal as I was hunched over and dejected from not getting the right call, that even if I was never much of a ballplayer my old man would still go to bat for me.

That’s what sons need:  fathers who are willing to fight for them, teach them manners, how to respect other people, act tender and loving towards women, be firm in establishing discipline, teach them to hit a golf ball or baseball or throw a spiral or shoot a free throw, share with them the music of their youth, impress upon them the importance of a firm handshake and making eye contact with others, stress the importance of picking yourselves up off the ground after a colossal disappointment, how to shuck corn and grill slabs of meat, how to tie a tie, and never trying to live their dreams vicariously through their sons.

In essence, kids need fathers to show them how to be well-adjusted men. Luckily, my father gave me everything I need.

Blues legend Chester “Howlin’ Wolf” Burnett was born 99 years ago today.  Here he is in 1964 with ”Blind” Willie Dixon and Hubert Sumlin performing “Smokestack Lightening.” 

Oddly enough, the Mississippi-born guitarist was named after US President Chester A. Arthur.

The world was watching, but now 20 years later to the day, even Chinese youth barely know the significance of the student protests — or what has become known as The Tiananmen Square Massacre (or in China, The June Fourth Incident).  Even as a 10-year-old there was power in those images.  Captivating, historical.  There was no way to understand its significance.  But the image was all that matter.  A lone student in a white shirt standing up to a tank.  The courage of a lion.

James Fallow, writing in The Atlantic, “I have spent a lot of time over the past three years with Chinese university students. They know a lot about the world, and about American history, and about certain periods in their own country’s past. Virtually everyone can recite chapter and verse of the Japanese cruelties in China from the 1930s onward, or the 100 Years of Humiliation, or the long background of Chinese engagement with Tibet. Through their own family’s experiences, many have heard of the trauma of the Cultural Revolution years and the starvation and hardship of the Great Leap Forward. But you can’t assume they will ever have heard of what happened in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago. For a minority of people in China, the upcoming date of June 4 has tremendous significance. For most young people, it’s just another day.”

The NY Times Lens blog,  has a great story about the photographers who took the pictures of the man in the white shirt staring down the tanks in Tiananmen twenty years ago.

As the tanks neared the Beijing Hotel, the lone young man walked toward the middle of the avenue waving his jacket and shopping bag to stop the tanks. I kept shooting in anticipation of what I felt was his certain doom. But to my amazement, the lead tank stopped, then tried to move around him. But the young man cut it off again. Finally, the PSB (Public Security Bureau) grabbed him and ran away with him. Stuart and I looked at each other somewhat in disbelief at what we had just seen and photographed.

I think his action captured peoples’ hearts everywhere, and when the moment came, his character defined the moment, rather than the moment defining him. He made the image. I was just one of the photographers. And I felt honored to be there.

There are plenty of great stories and essays about today and I’d encourage anyone to just dive and read.

Update: The New York Times has an audio-slideshow from Nicholas D. Kristof, an Op-Ed columnist who happened to be Beijing bureau chief for The Times in 1989. He recalls the city’s mood during the student protests leading up to June 4, 1989 and gives a pretty solid history lesson of the events surrounding the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Woah, 1994.

For those that are into celebrating and stuff.  Did you know that today is not just a day for drinking Corona’s and tequilla, but is actually a celebration in the state of Puebla (not so much the rest of the country) that commemorates the Mexican army’s unlikely defeat of French forces at the Battle of Puebla on this day in 1862, under the leadership of Mexican General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín.

Until that point, the French army hadn’t really been defeated much, which seems laughable know given their ignominy the past century and a half, but still.  So, today is a day for the state of Puebla and frat boys and sorority girls everywhere to get fucked up.

This country might as well just roll up St. Patty’s Day and Cinco de Mayo into one holiday in the middle of April and call it a day.

[via Perpetua]

He’s kinda the epitome of the bizarro pop culture landscape that was the 80’s.  I barely remember him, but I remember him enough to conclusively wonder what the hell kind of drugs people were doing back then aside from lotsa blow.

Also, New Coke was a failure.  But we won’t talk about that inauspiscious debut.

When the month and day form the square root of the year, math geeks celebrate a special holiday.  Presumably.  I don’t know to many math geeks.  Actually, the closest I come is myself and that watching that show Numbers on Saturday morning.

“These days are like calendar comets, you wait and wait and wait for them, then they brighten up your day — and poof — they’re gone,” said Ron Gordon, a Redwood City teacher who started a contest meant to get people excited about the event.

The winner gets, of course, $339 for having the biggest Square Root Day event.

Gordon’s daughter even set up a Facebook page — one of a half-dozen or so dedicated to the holiday — and hundreds of people had signed up with plans to celebrate in some way. Celebrations are as varied: Some cut root vegetables into squares, others make food in the shape of a square root symbol.

The last such day was five years ago, Feb. 2, 2004, which coincided with Groundhog Day. The next is seven years away, on April 4, 2016.

There are only nine such days this century. Better make the most of it. I’m going to celebrate by cutting root vegetables into squares. Anyone have a good suggestion for how to celebrate?

I kinda feel like everyone should get this day off from work.  (We’re sticking this one to the front page today!)

I’m a bit late with this one, but I don’t want to forget any of our Illinois readers out there. For those not aware, Illinis celebrate on the first Monday of March in honor of Polish immigrant and Revolutionary War general Casimir Pulaski.

So ah, for any Illinois-native readers, what do people do to celebrate Casimir Pulaski?  I hate a brat and had a beer.

Today marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday.  And though only 39% of Americans believe in evolution, which is a bit baffling [I met someone recently who admitted to not believing in evolution and I was stunned, just didn't know how to react], today is a day to celebrate a scientist and good man.

He practiced a kind of ideal, dream-like science. He examined the minutiae of nature — shells of barnacles, pistils of flowers — but worked on grand themes. He corresponded with lofty men of learning, but also with farmers and pigeon breeders. He observed, questioned, experimented, constantly testing his ideas.

Could plants from the mainland colonize a newly formed island? If so, they would need a way to get there. Could they survive in the ocean? To find out, he immersed seeds in salt water for weeks, then planted them to see how many could sprout. He reported, for example, that “an asparagus plant with ripe berries floated for 23 days, when dried it floated for 85 days, and the seeds afterwards germinated.” The Atlantic current moved at 33 nautical miles a day; he figured that would take a seed more than 1,300 miles in 42 days. Yes, seeds could travel by sea.

He published important work on subjects as diverse as the biology of carnivorous plants, barnacles, earthworms and the formation of coral reefs. He wrote a travelogue, “The Voyage of the Beagle,” that was an immediate best seller and remains a classic of its kind. And as if that was not enough, he discovered two major forces in evolution — natural selection and sexual selection — and wrote three radical scientific masterpieces, “On the Origin of Species” (1859), “The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex” (1871) and “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals” (1872).

The “Origin,” of course, is what he is best known for. This volume, colossal in scope yet minutely detailed, laid the foundations of modern biology. Here, Darwin presented extensive and compelling evidence that all living beings — including humans — have evolved from a common ancestor, and that natural selection is the chief force driving evolutionary change. Sexual selection, he argued, was an additional force, responsible for spectacular features like the tail feathers of peacocks that are useless for (or even detrimental to) survival but essential for seduction.

There are a ton of events and celebrations taking place today.  The official celebration website lists 281 events in 31 nations, including more than 170 in the USA. Events range from “Evolutionpalooza!” at the San Francisco Main Branch Public Library to an all-day reading of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (its 150th anniversary year) at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.

Fifty years ago, Feb. 3, 1959, a plane carrying Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. Richardson AKA The Big Bopper crashed due to a snowstorm shorlty into their flight from Clear Lake, Iowa to Fargo, North Dakota.  All three rock n’roll legends died in the crash.  The three were only two stops on the Winter Dance Party tour.

That was 50 years ago today.  I won’t vouch for the Big Bopper or Richie Valens (which is to say I’ve never really heard anything from them other than their well known hits.  Are they worth it?), but you really should make an effort to dig into the Buddy Holly and The Crickets catalog.  The dude was totally punk rock, even if he was just playing sped up rockabilly.

Ludwig van Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 and Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 on this day in 1808 at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. Both performances were underrehearsed

The fiery Symphony No. 5 is one of the most well-known and often-played symphonies is music history; it’s impossible to not hear the four note opening motif and be unsure what song you are hearing.? Strange but true: The BBC used the motif to open their broadcasts during World War II because it evoked the Morse Code for the letter V (”. . . _”) as in Victory.?

Symphony No. 6 is often known as the “Pastoral Symphony.”? It’s reception that night was met with a cold shoulder due to No. 5. You could consider it the exceptional younger brother to No. 5’s overachieving sibling.

As Beethoven himself said of Symphony No. 6, it is “a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds.” Though the calmer and more introspective No. 6 was greeted lukewarmly, it has since become a favorite for many classical music indulgers. The symphony breaks from standard symphonies being composed of five movements, rather than four.

We all know the story of what happened when John Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman.  The tragic loss of one of music’s most beloved artists.  Yoko is asking for people to share their memories or thoughts about John at Imagine Peace.  You can do so below or here.

I wasn’t alive really to have any actual memories of John Lennon, but for me listening to The Beatles and later his solo stuff, I think in many ways allowed my dad and I to bond over something besides baseball.  I think it gave us something else to share and for that I could never thank John Lennon enough.

And as always, you can watch John hanging with Bob Dylan drunk in the back of a cab. Surreal and boring video of music’s two finest song smiths.