Alaska, Library, Coffee, and Nuclear Abolition

Alright, so this is going to be a content dump of some of the stuff that has been going in the past few weeks.  I'm sure I'm going to begin by writing in detail and get tired half-way through and fail to write what I truly wanted to share. But this is what I get for stalling on my own self-imposed obligation to report to my journal.

So I'll begin by reporting that I went to Alaska last week. Off the bat, let me say that taking a family vacation was a lot more enjoyable when all family members are adults. Our family rarely goes on vacations together, partly because of our disparate schedules, but also because we tend to prioritize having fun with different people. I guess that's normal. But this experience was enjoyable, although because my mom was running the show, it was rather hectic and tiring.

At Anchorage. My younger bro in the back, my older bro sleeping it off.  My dad in the way back.

Well, I guess my first struggle over the vacation was self-imposed. I had a lot of stuff to do for Moot Court and to make up for school that I left myself the earlier part of the break to take my Evidence midterm.  That effectively meant that I would be studying on the plane, which was sufficient time given that we had about 7 or 8 hours of flight time, plus an 8 hour layover in Anchorage before we arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska (Oh, we did stop at Phoenix first, but our flight landed there so late that we had a negative layover time.  The plus side to that is that we had a guy drive this electric vehicle through the airport and basically threw us into our plane to Anchorage). I spent the layover in Anchorage taking the exam, but I was exhausted from the plane ride.  To add to the madness, when I submitted the exam with literally 3 minutes remaining, an error screen popped up in the browser conveniently informing that I didn't have sufficient rights to access the page.  I emailed the blackboard people at the school, and fortunately, one of the people was at her office at 8:30EST to reply back and tell me she received the scores. Fortunate that was the case, because I was going mad.

Fairbanks Airport

Okay, so I know I'm already spending too much time on Alaska. Let me just run through some of the things we did there so I don't get so overwhelmed writing this post. The first thing we did immediately after landing in Fairbanks (a remote little town they like to call a city, with a downtown that is all of three blocks) was to get on one of those small private planes with my family and to fly out to another little town in North Alaska called Bettles.  The population of that place is 62, I believe, with only one person under the age of 20.  It's actually a pretty cool place, but necessarily because of the culture or anything, but simply because they have to work to get running water (doing it the regular way would freeze the pipes) and to stay warm (it was -20 degrees).  The 1hour plane ride was scary, but fun. The plane literally tipped over nearly 45 degrees and was shaking.

After Bettles, we got back to our hotel and spent the rest of the night traveling by car to another remote location by car to look for the aurora. Unfortunately we couldn't see it because the moon was so close and lit up the sky.  The next day, we rented a car and saw the world ice sculpture contest in Fairbanks. I'm not sure why they do it it in Fairbanks besides the fact that the temp has to be below freezing, but it was actually really cool.  Sorry for the low quality pics, but take a look below:

Oh, I forgot to mention that before that, we went to the University of Alaska to check out their exhibit on Alaskan Culture. We were all too tired from the day before to really take in any of it, but I'm glad I went nonetheless.  Let's see, we got back to our hotel, and while everyone else slept, I somehow found the dexterity to go running in the little gym they had on the first floor. That was just an awkward experience because I don't even do that at home.  I guess that's why they call it a vacation, though I'm not sure how many people exercise during that time.  At any rate, that night we went to yet another remote location (these are all people's houses by the way - everyone owns 20-80 acres of land and gives these mini explanatory session about the aurora lights at night) and saw some faint signs of the lights.  Take a look at the pic below. That night, which ended at 3am like the night before, was nice simply because there were so few people at that session.  We just mingled with others in the freezing temps.

It looks like it was taken during the day, but that's just due to the exposure.

The final day we stayed at another remote location but this time, it was part of a package type thing.  We went dog mushing, ice fishing, and then returned to some person's home to watch the aurora lights.  What can I say, it was quite the adventure.  At this house, there were about 20 people using it as a hostel, just to give you an image of how big the house was. We were able to see the lights really clearly this time, though I left the  photography to my little bro, who has a pretty nice camera. I'll post more once I receive them.

With my dog, Kate, during the dog mushing part of the trip.

After Alaska, I had to frantically finalize a lot of our plans for the SGI peace fair at the Columbia Central Branch library.  I'd like to go into more detail about preparation, but I'll pass because the lethargy is kicking in right about now.  I'll just say that our goal was to have 50 people drop by, but we ended getting 85 plus.  We used this activity as our March 16th event, and we had a bunch of different booths set up - the People's Decade for Nuclear Abolition, promotion for our Gandhi, King, Ikeda Exhibit at Coppin State (see previous post), and the Victory Over Violence exhibit.  I took a picture with my cell, but it doesn't really do justice to the success we experienced.

Toward the end, when some of the youth were performing their medley dance.

After the event, I got together with my friend from middle school, who still to this day keeps in touch despite my incompetence in that.  I can't even remember the name of the place we went, but it was on Main Street in Old Ellicott City.  It was real nice - not just the coffee, but catchin' up with her, who I see about once a month.

The Grasshopper

So I recognize that I can't write too much more, yet I feel compelled to explain what I learned today at our SGI meeting, particularly in the People's Decade Group. So we Fred Mattis come in, who is not just an SGI member but an expert on nuclear abolition.  He spoke to us about the science behind nuclear weapons, the international legal mechanisms in place to combat nuclear proliferation, and his thoughts on the eventual abolition of those weapons.  We also had a little bit of a discussion about the idea of using nukes as a deterrent, and some of the underlying [and false] assumptions of safety that these weapons bring. Overall, it was just a great meeting.  And for some reason, I wanted to share some of the basic science I learned at this meeting.

As everyone may know, I suffer from severe ignorance in the sciences. But this is what I got from today's meeting.  Please feel free to correct my mistakes.  So, nukes come in three different weaponized forms: (1) Gun weapon or explosion; (2) Implosion; and, (3) Thermonuclear.  All three forms use either uranium (#1 and #2), plutonium (#2 only), or hydrogen (#3).  Two forms use nuclear fission (#1 and #2) and the #3 uses fusion.  Fusion causes a lot more damage and is technically emits less nuclear waste because of the nature of fusion.  

As most of you know, nuclear fission weapons are made of uranium or plutonium. With both, the effect of separating an atom causes a hole of missing mass to be created where the separation occurred, which results in an enormous blast of heat and fire (or in other words, the blast). In order to create a nuclear weapon from uranium, regular plain old uranium 238 (the isotope) from the ground won't do.  What scientists would require is highly enriched uranium, or otherwise called Uranium 235.  Apparently any old person who got a hold of Uranium 235 could create a nuclear explosion, because all it would require is to set off the separation of the Uranium nucleus by using something like dynamite. Apparently, in order to effectuate the same level of explosion used in Japan, 100lbs of enriched uranium would be necessary.

Speaking of Japan, I learned from Fred about how Nuclear reactors work.  Enriched Uranimum (of course, much less of it) are separated within rods, which are placed under water. When the heat from the fission reaction causes the rods to heat up, it of course also heats up the water.  The water turns into steam, which turns some nearby turbines. The turbines are hooked up to a generator, creating electricity.  There you go! That is the extent of my knowledge about nuclear technology.  By far, I know a lot more about the anti-nuclear weapons treaties and conventions. Okay - I'm exhausted from writing this post. I hope it was a little entertaining!