I'm not entirely sure. He seemed to be a beat off.

In a perfect world, that would end the thread.

But I paradiddled a lot as a kid.

NSFSanity, that should be.

Need brain bleach!

Hah, you can't make me click on the link! I heard about it on Jordan, Jesse, Go!

In a perfect world, 1 would end the universe - a fraction late.

Also, where is the video where the other hand is typing comments at the g/uardian's site?

Werdna, I'm not commenting myself because I don't do serious comments on CiF (My dear, the noise! The people!), but your piece on consequentialist justification of atrocities in wartime really needs a strong follow up explaining in more detail why you take an absolute position on torture, but not on nuking Japanese cities or sacking Irish ones [I believe current estimates of the casualties at Drogheda and Wexford are far lower than Hume supposed].

As a coda, "I do in fact take an absolutist position on torture, and certain other human rights. I'm much less sure it is generally applicable." might be interpreted by the uncharitable as an unsubstantiated cop out. Personally I'm inclined to agree with you, but I'd like to see your working.

It's not so much a cop-out as a feeling that I couldn't possibly explore my feelings inside an 800 word piece that would then be commented on there. I find that most of my moral muscles are needed just to deal with the problems immediately in front of me, rather than in erecting great systems. But I think I meant that I am an absolutist about torture, but not, for instance, a pacifist. In part I'd want to say that killing someone really isn't the worst that could be done to them.

It is difficult and perhaps rather obscene to justify nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But I think they are a great deal more justifiable than what Bomber Command did to Hamburg, Dresden, or Berlin. Despite some contrary opinions, I believe they did shorten the war or could at least reasonably be expected to do so.

Any more would be total thread derail, as if this wasn't anyway.

I couldn't possibly explore my feelings inside an 800 word piece that would then be commented on there.

Fair play. I wouldn't do that either; just think there's another 1000 words waiting to be written somewhere.

Any more would be total thread derail, as if this wasn't anyway.

In a way, the drummer was expressing his feelings about the persistence of life in the face of total war.

1 could have only ended the thread if he'd included a sound file of himself playing the "ba-da-bing" that goes with jokes. Like this.

12 It would have come as a shock to my parents' generation that this is what they were fighting for.

I didn't watch the whole video. Did it have a happy ending?

I actually skipped to the end to find out. It doesn't.

||

Is this the thread for obscenity?

So I took my iPod to the Apple Store yesterday, because the USB port had stopped working. I explain the problem and the blue shirt lady leans in close to me and says "Is there something unusual you do with your iPod that you would like to disclose to me right now."

!?

Exactly what depraved act (that messes up USB ports!) was I being accused of here?

|>

It isn't a sad ending, though.

Attaching non-Apple peripherals?

That's a very polite way of putting it.

17: she wanted to know if you've been drumming with it. Or alternately if you got a vacuum attachment.

17: Maybe she was flirting with you?

Does anybody else remember Neal Pollack's Andrew Sullivan parody with the penis port?

Ah...the joys of internets remembered.

17 -- she probably wanted to know if you'd done something warranty-violating, and was getting you to confess. Or, she was totes hitting on you.

9, 10: Only very recently did I hear the idea that the U.S. could have dropped the first bomb somewhere uninhabited or even in the ocean to demonstrate its power and then threaten to drop one on a populated city. Does anyone know if that was an option considered at the time? It would obviously have been far, far more humane. The only argument I can think of against it (once the decision had been made to drop it somewhere) is that it might not be terrible enough to scare the Japanese government into surrendering and there was only one more bomb, which could have failed in some way.

I guess another version of the question is how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets.

(Sorry for the early threadjack, but everyone seems to agree it should have ended at 1 anyway.)

25. My understanding is that they only had the two, literally - one of each type, so whatever strategy they picked had to make the most effective use of two bombs, because it would take a while to build another one. So if they used one in a demonstration and Japan didn't surrender, they had one shot at using the other one in anger, assuming that they both actually worked.

It presented Truman with a choice I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. In retrospect we know that even using one on a populated area didn't make Japan surrender, which makes it look clearer than it would have seemed at the time.

a choice I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy

Yeah, no kidding, and even more so as I've learned more about the Pacific theater (though admittedly only from the Allied perspective).

It presented Truman with a choice I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Right. Wishing that your worst enemy had nuclear weapons is pretty stupid.

I guess another version of the question is how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets.

In addition to what Chris Y said, I understand that Hiroshima was chosen in part because it hadn't been heavily damaged by previous bombing raids, so it would make it easier to judge the effect of the atomic bomb.

That is pretty horrible, but I also find it difficult to condemn the choice.

Nagasaki was chosen because it was cloudy over the primary target (Kokura) that day.

It was cloudy in Kokura that day because a butterfly in China flapped its wings.

The sun never shines on my birthday (Aug. 9th).

See also the wonderful Dr Beachcombing on bombs that dropped where they shouldn't

I'm so happy to learn that I'm not Dr Beachcombing's only reader.

I was actually just at a thing about promoting the stories of Japanese atomic bomb survivors. Harry Truman's grandson was there.

So this happened and Obama has yet to call it an act of terror, but I think it only prudent that extra guards be put in place in case there are follow-on attacks on our most cherished icons (they've tried before).

In retrospect we know that even using one on a populated area didn't make Japan surrender, which makes it look clearer than it would have seemed at the time.

We do? I had always been told that even before the first bomb dropped, the Japanese were open to a surrender that allowed them to keep their emperor, and that we went ahead with them mostly to let the Soviets know we had a mean uppercut.

37: Looking at the Wikipedia narrative, even after Nagasaki on August 9th, the senior leadership was still completely against unconditional surrender, deadlocking between sets of conditions -- one side for just retaining the emperor, the other for further conditions including no occupation. The Emperor broke the deadlock on the 10th in favor of the former side, Truman rejected the condition on the 12th, the Emperor agreed to unconditional surrender on the 14th, and that night there was an unsuccessful coup d'etat before surrender was broadcast on the 15th.

I tend to agree that the US could probably have figured out some better way to brandish its power, but the facts do seem to agree with 26.2.

In particular, it looks like the US always intended to drop the two bombs in quick succession, without giving them the time reasonably necessary to make a surrender decision, to prevent the Japanese from assuming there was only one A-bomb available - which many of them indeed did at first. But who knows, perhaps after the Russian invasion and the unprecedentedly-massive Tokyo bombings and the leaflets, they would have surrendered after a couple of weeks anyway, at least with purely-nominal retention of the Emperor. It would certainly have been feasible and more moral to just wait a bit and see.

Because external links are likely to go dead, I'd like to note for posterity that this thread started with a link to a video of a naked guy drumming while stroking his penis. That is all.

This sounds very plausible to me. That Japan did not surrender on account of the dropping of the bombs but because the Soviet Union had entered the war. Why didn't they surrender in late May of 1945 when the firebombing of Tokyo was much worse than what had happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

36: I'm monitoring TVs viewing our sacred stone from four different angles right now.

Why didn't they surrender in late May of 1945 when the firebombing of Tokyo was much worse than what had happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
One involved many planes over multiple days, the other one flight per city. I don't know on what they based their decision, but there's a reason nuclear weapons provoke horror beyond firebombing.