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Henry Miller’s “Air Conditioned Nightmare:” Battle Cry Against The Coming Nuclear Order

December 18, 2014 By Dennis Riches 2 Comments

When Henry Miller (1891-1980) returned from France to America in 1939, he was quick to identify air conditioning as both a metaphor and a real cause of a lamentable degradation of life. His first writing upon his return, published as “The Air Conditioned Nightmare” in 1945, was based on his road trip across America in 1939.

Looking at this book from the 21st century, it is surprising to read his tirades against Americans’ submission to technology. We have come to think of the 1930s as an economically depressed time when industry regressed and people were forced back to agrarian self-reliance. The contemporary perception is that the reaction to the excesses of materialism didn’t become apparent until the 1960s when baby boomers rebelled against the affluence and suburban culture of the 1950s.

But in every crisis there is transformation, and Miller was able to notice the changes going on in spite of the Depression. In the same way that iPhones became an embedded item in our economy regardless of the crash of 2008, there were similar changes in the 1930s.

Filed Under: Media & Culture, National News Tagged With: 1987 Montreal protocol, Air Conditioning, Arthur Miller, automobile, Before Air Conditioning, Black Spring, carbon, carbon emissions, Climate change, communism, Corporate America, democracy, Democratic Party, Denmark, economy, energy, fascism, France, Germany, Henry Miller, Hiroshima, history, How Air Conditioning Remade Modern America, Institutional Thinking, Jack Kerouac, Japan, Kentucky, Manhattan, Manhattan Project, materialism, Naomi Klein, New York Times, nuclear, nuclear bomb, nuclear energy, nuclear war, Occupy, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, ozone depletion, Paducah, Republican Party, Salon, Scientific American, smartphones, Southern China, Taiwan, technology, Thailand, The Air Conditioned Nightmare, the American South, The Great Depression, The New Yorker, Thorium, Tokyo, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, uranium, Vietnam, War, World War II, WWII

Canada & The First Nations In The Manhattan Project

October 16, 2014 By Dennis Riches 1 Comment

In the summer of 1998, representatives of the Dene people of Great Bear Lake in the far north of Canada went to Hiroshima to express their remorse for having hauled the uranium ore that went into the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. They had had no foreknowledge of what they participated in, and they suffered […]

Filed Under: Environment, Foreign Affairs Tagged With: Alberta, Alberta Star, Alberta Tar Sands, Andrew Nikiforuk, atomic bomb, Buffalo, Canada, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Congo, David Henningson, Deline Land Corporation, Dene, Eldorado Mining and Refining Company, Fukushima, Great Bear Lake, Ham Royal Commission, Highway of the Atom, Hiroshima, Japan, Manhattan Project, New York, Niagara Falls, Northwest Territories, nuclear, nuclear power, Ontario, Port Hope, Port Radium mine, Rosalie Bertell, Russia, Saskatchewan, Somba ke: The Money Place, Soviet Union, spent nuclear fuel, Tar sands, The Calgary Herald, The Tyee, uranium, Village of Widows

The Manhattan Project And The Nuclear Uncanny, Part 2

September 30, 2014 By Dennis Riches 1 Comment

Previously: Part 1: “The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico,” & Breaking Bad And The New Mexican Nuclear Uncanny Uncanny #3. Contested narratives At the end of the Cold War, a great deal of information was de-classified, and this gave rise to a strong anti-nuclear movement which was now armed with information about […]

Filed Under: Media & Culture Tagged With: Albuquerque, Bradbury Science Museum, Canada, Cerro Grande forest fire, Chernobyl, Climate change, Fukshima, Hiroshima, Joseph Masco, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Manhattan Project, Mt. Polley mine, Nagasaki, NASA, New Mexico, nuclear, nuclear power, Nuclear Safety Commission, Nuclear Uncanny, Pueblo Indians, sacrifice zones, Sigmund Freud, Smithsonian Institution, Three Mile Island, UN Security Council, WIPP

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