Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...your kids with nuclear arms...
...still an instigator. If I fall in love with a show called Gilligan's Island, I'll turn the Tanners' backyard into a lagoon. If I don't like the President's policy on nuclear arms, I'll phone him on Air Force One and explain how we incinerated Melmac. Still the same old me: no moral compass, no sense of proportion, no fear. I still break things a lot too. I learned the hard way that you can't smoke fish in a toaster, puree a rock in a blender or light an oven an hour after you turn...
...most laymen, the explosions of scientific knowledge in the 20th century have been chiefly felt as ominous aftershocks. The splitting of the atom, after all, led to nuclear bombs. The breaking of the genetic code of the DNA molecule raises nightmares about malevolent new designer viruses escaping from laboratories and running wild. And the Big Bang theory of the universe's origin suggests two possible conclusions, both of them unpleasant: infinite expansion, with a concurrent dispersal of heat and an annihilating deep freeze; or eventual contraction and a horrendous Big Crunch...
...Will our species end in fire or ice? Fire, the author concedes, would pose a difficult problem, but man might be able to overcome ice: "It is easier to keep warm on Pluto than to keep cool on Venus." Will we blow ourselves up? Probably not: "We shall abolish nuclear weapons, not by a sudden outburst of peace and goodwill but by a slow process of erosion. The weapons will be abolished as the missions for which they were designed come to seem unnecessary or absurd." And what of tinkering around with life in test tubes? Dyson issues a warning...
...rationale for his candidacy more compelling than Georgia Senator Sam Nunn's failure to enter the race. Gore kept trying to identify himself as a hawk almost in the Scoop Jackson mold even as his private pollsters were insisting that Democratic voters in the South were as uninterested in nuclear strategy as voters elsewhere. But Gore stubbornly refused to modify his approach, even though his record was far less right-of-center than his rhetoric was. According to a top strategist for the candidate, "99% of the problem was Gore's. He refused to give a clearer message and forget...