A Thousand Years into One

Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech is often seen as the founding story of atomic energy’s peaceful side. In fact, it was not such a dramatic break from the past. The Democrats had begun to use the atom in this way, first with radioisotopes and then with other intriguing ideas, such as irradiating seeds in the hope of generating wondrous mutations. The Democrats hatched the germ of the idea of “Atoms for Peace,” calling for a global atomic Marshall Plan, shortly after President Truman announced in 1949 his decision to pursue development of the hydrogen bomb. The idea of the peaceful atom was deployed rhetorically to mitigate the political consequences of significant escalations in weapons development. Eisenhower’s pledge delivered not a new program but American political consensus about how the atom should be discussed as a matter of state.

Atomic War and the Destructive Sublime

This chapter on atomic ruins begins with a discussion of the bomb itself and the iconic form of the mushroom cloud, which quickly emerged from photographs of the explosion. The photography of nuclear war is considered in the work of Japanese photographers like Yamahata and Matsushige, whose horrifying images of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts eventually were shown in the pages of Life magazine after the ban was lifted. Edward Steichen’s celebrated Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art is considered in terms of the image of the hydrogen bomb and its later disappearance from the book version of the show. The post-atomic response of artists like Isozaki is examined, along with American photographers who pictured the Southwest US testing grounds in stunning photographs that explored ways of imaging the unimaginable. How beautiful was the bomb itself? Michael Light’s collection of imagery and related museum exhibitions have shown us the ambiguities of viewing the Destructive Sublime.

His Fate Was Larger than Himself: Andrei D. Sakharov’s Centenary

The world-renowned physicist Andrei D. Sakharov (1921–1989) was ‘the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb’ and, as such, an architect of the Soviet superpower. He developed into a fierce fighter for human rights, distinguished by the Nobel Peace Prize. In his words, ‘my fate was larger than what would have followed from my personality. I was merely trying to be worthy of my fate.’1 His life and career provide thought-provoking lessons and is worthy of review on the eve of his centennial.

REAKSI PASAR MODAL INDONESIA TERHADAP PELUNCURAN RUDAL KOREA UTARA

This study aimed to examine the Indonesia capital market reaction to the North Korean missile launching. The type of this research is an event study by using the market model estimation to estimate the expected return. This research used 100 days as the estimated period and 9 days as the windows period. The sample of this research consisted of 76 companies listed in the Index Kompas 100. The result shew that the stock price did not react negatively toward North Korean missile launching. In this research, the emergence of disturbing events at t+3 and t+4 that North Korea succeded in testing hydrogen bomb disturb the events observed by the author. At t +3 and t+4, the stock price react negatively and significantly. The result of this research supported the Signaling theory that the information about a country’s particular events such as information about North Korea’s succes in testing a hydrogen bomb was interpreted as a negative signal (bad news)

Groundlessness of L. Shestov as the Way of Going Beyond the Mind

The article is devoted to identifying the specifics of Russian philosophy through the analysis of F. M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Shestov’s texts. The stylistic features of the two philosophers have been considered, their ways of philosophizing and denying of the cult of reason have been examined. The analysis is carried out using additional literature of French existentialism (were used such philosophers who wrote in similar styles as philosophical essays). To date, there are many researches in which study features of Russian philosophy. It is noted, that one of them are imagery, inseparable connection between philosophy and faith and criticism of rationalism. The excessive cult of reason leads to such problems in the history as the creation of the hydrogen bomb, the environmental crisis and so on. The revolt against reason and the state of groundlessness are a response to the processes of modern rationalization and technocratization, an attempt to go beyond the limits of the usual paradigm, to get out of the closed subjectivity. Thus, it’s necessary to define the limits of the reason and develop a new way of philosophizing, for this reason it is proposed to consider the concept of groundlessness in the philosophy of L.N. Shestov, which makes the attempt to construct a philosophy, avoiding strict logic and excessive rationality.

4. Race for the H-bomb

America’s monopoly on atomic weapons was shorter than expected. ‘Race for the H-bomb’ details the development of the hydrogen bomb and the political developments surrounding it. The Soviet Union developed an atomic weapon faster than worst-case scenarios had predicted. Stalin appeared at first to dismiss the bomb, but it is likely that his understanding was more nuanced. What else could America have done with their short window of opportunity? Some argued for preventive war, but this went against the national character. The development of the hydrogen bomb took war out of the realms of logic and human control altogether, and anti-nuclear movements began to gather force in the 1950s.