Wasteland Wrap-up #41

Irradiating the planet, environmental politics, a bottled solar system...

Another week has somehow gone by! Last week I had my first official day at Sciences Po, where I received an ID and a key to my office and a little orientation. Things seem to be starting up somewhat slowly there, as people were still coming back from their summer vacations, but I think things will be kicking off more this next week.

Lyndon at the Louvre. He is very experienced at posing for photos, and was willing to sit on a little pillar while I took this.

Paris continues to be quite pleasant. We became members at the American Library in Paris, which is an excellent English-language lending library, and will ideally let us economize on books. We have moved a bit out of the “honeymoon” phase of relocation, in that we have settled into some routines, and the frustrations of the language are more apparent. I can read French much better than I can hear or speak it, so even a banal experience (like being asked if I am paying with cash or card) can be confusing to me (I have to rely on context and listening for specific words, like “card”), although I find it very easy to communicate the fact that I don’t speak French well — I barely have to say anything for that to be evident!

A very on-brand sign at a local boutique — “Atoms — Objects of the 20th century.”

But I am getting a bit better at it each week. And I continue my study of the language. So we’ll get there, it’ll just feel agonizingly slow. Fortunately it has not been that hard to navigate the city or anything like that. Stores are pretty straightforward. I even managed to talk the security people at Sciences Po into letting me bring the dog onto campus (by just insisting that it would only be for a few minutes, and that he would just be in my office).

Lyndon at the Jardin du Luxembourg. He loves a park on a sunny day. I mean, who doesn’t? I’m not sure which of these photos I like more — just look at this little (old) boy.

The weather has definitely been transforming into fall. Very pleasant and sunny (with a breeze), but alternating with (mostly) brief thunderstorms and showers. Not humid. Generally not as hot as when we first arrived, and the evenings are cooler, although today may be an exception.

As promised last week, last week I wrote up a post for Doomsday Machines on the two reports, one from 1947 and the other from 1949, that I got from Los Alamos via a FOIA request about the limits to nuclear detonations required to make the Earth’s atmosphere dangerously radioactive:

I should have another post for this next week, on several nuclear weapons-related posters that I have been thinking about.