"Dear is right" - echo of "Hobbes was right"? If so, Peter would probably appreciate the comparison.
Not that I entirely disagree w/ your argument, but I'm still curious how you reconcile canon-defending w/ doing history of mat sci (a field no other canon-defender - defo not Peter - cares ab/).
🎆 STS NL Conference in Twente was full of Nanobubbles!
📣 We presented our work in the "Making Science Better?" track throughout the conference, organized by Bart Penders, Willem Halffman, Serge Horbach, Yj Erden and Yagmur Ozturk.
Here is a glimpse of our presented studies:
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Open PhD position in the History of Science & Technology and/or Environmental History at the University of St Gallen, with the wonderful Dania Achermann! 📣 3+2 years. Application deadline 30 April.
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Huntsville! Nice to see the Lone Stars getting out of the Austin-Houston-College Station circuit.
"There is not a worry on Prince Edward Island except tomorrow's hockey match and possibly the price of potatoes," Jones told an interviewer.
not what you're looking for, but your query put me in mind of this classic piece of CanCon from farmer-politician John Walter Jones:
📣Join us for the 3rd History of Knowledge Conference, "Decentering the History of Knowledge"! The event will take place in Utrecht on 25-27 August 2027.
📝A call for papers will follow in Fall 2026. For more information:
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anyway, if you want to get a sense of what the eventual special issue will look like, check out Nuncius's Advanced View page & the articles by, among others, @nescioquid.bsky.social, Deborah Warner, Simon Werrett, David Pantalony, Liba Taub, Klaus Hentschel, etc. 11/11
brill.com/view/journal...
conversely, nuclear research by Manhattan Project veterans such as Samuel King Allison (h/t @randomjetship.bsky.social) & even Hans Bethe was funded by oil firms long after the war. here's Bethe billing Exxon for hi research on using lasers for fusion ignition &/or isotope separation in 1979. 10/x
moreover, those wartime oil-atom relationships persisted long after the war. e.g., prominent petroleum geophysicists such as Wallace Pratt, Everette Lee DeGolyer & King Hubbert became advisers to the AEC. the article proposing Hubbert's Peak was entitled "Nuclear Energy & the Fossil Fuels!" 9/x
Michiel & I argue that the oil industry's considerable prewar expertise in both lab & field instruments (esp. instruments that incorporated the new quantum physics &/or that could be used to detect uranium) made both individual and corporate oil actors attractive to Manhattan Project planners. 8/x
conversely, there are a few histories of field instruments (seismometers, various forms of well logging) that dwell at length on oil firms' development of those tools, but are less interested in how those tools traveled elsewhere or how they gave the oil industry access to other domains. 7/x
from the instrument history side, there are many histories of laboratory instruments (esp. various chromatographies & spectrometries) that nod in passing to oil firms' contributions but then focus on the innovation & use of those instruments by academic researchers. 6/x
which is true enough, but other industries had similar expertise. so why oil & petrochemical firms, especially given that those firms were already stretched thin w/ other contributions to the war effort? 5/x
earlier accounts, including by participants, just attributed those firms' participation in the Manhattan Project to their experience w/ rapid construction & operation of high-throughput, continuous production of specialty materials - U-235 & plutonium being the ultimate specialty materials. 4/x
anyway, as befits the special issue, we approach one of the Manhattan Project's oddities - the prevalence of firms & individuals associated w/ the oil & petrochemical industries - from the angle of scientific instrumentation. 3/x
this article will be part of a special issue honoring the 30th anniversary of the Paul Bunge Prize for histories of scientific instruments. if you're doing instrument history, nominate yourself or others - it's a great institution for a small but innovative subfield:
en.gdch.de/gdch/foundat...
new publication by @michielbron.bsky.social & me (mostly Michiel, tho) in Nuncius: "Scientific Instruments and/as Oil Spillovers: The Role of the Oil Industry in Developing Nuclear Instruments for the Manhattan Project." 1/x
doi.org/10.1163/1825...
you've definitely seen an elk! but was it an "elk" 🫎
or an "elk" 🦌?
the cover of https://uncpress.org/9781469694757/globalizing-wildlife/ showing a deer being carted off by helicopter
you should check out @vbateman.bsky.social @rafdebont.bsky.social & Tom Quick's new volume to get it all straightened out (that's a red deer on the cover I believe, but Vanessa can tell you more)
Hmm, not quite. Probably more accurate to say that "elk" & "elk" are *different* things.
oh, so the saying goes "billions for defense *and* millions for tribute." we've been getting it wrong for a couple centuries, huh.
Together with Edoardo Celeste, I co-edit the Routledge Series in Digital Law and Governance. Do you have an idea for a monograph or edited volume that pushes the boundaries of the field? Get in touch! We welcome proposals from, e.g., political science, law, sociology, STS and communication studies.
hey @randomjetship.bsky.social - were you aware that after he retired from the National Bureau of Standards, Allen Astin was either living or had an office at 5008 *Battery* Lane in Bethesda? seems a bit on the nose. anyway, here's diplomat George McGhee writing Astin ab/ a HUD panel they were on.
they call it two-factor authorization, but for some tasks I have to input EIGHT factors: password, PIN, 2FA, PIN, password, PIN, 2FA, PIN. four times as safe, no doubt.
well, I'm a mere dabbler but ask @inquiline.myatproto.social - she finds ducks very attractive
uh, "attractive" how, @vbateman.bsky.social?
anyway, for me the labels that almost but don't quite fit a wood duck are "striking" (close, but it's too muted in comparison to, say, a scarlet bunting) & "elegant" (again close, but too busy compared to, say, a sandhill crane)
I think that's a dozen flying very high on an ESE flight path over Maastricht in the past half hour, plus a handful flying the opposite route (returning?) & a few on a somewhat more southerly route. Definitely more planes than usual & I've never seen so many on parallel flight paths at once.
