So Manhattan got cancelled. Which doesn't suprise me: the s2 finale very much felt like a show finale, they raced the show to get there, including time jumps, so the writing staff must have been strongly aware of the likelihood they wouldn't get a third season, and the ratings were terrible. Otoh, my problems with some of the s2 creative decisions not withstanding, this was an intriguing, well acted and often well written show, and I am glad we got at least two seasons out of it.

In which several characters go Macbeth on us, and I discover (again) I have a double standard.

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In which various characters have to face where they draw the line. I continue to love this show when it explores moral dilemmas.

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Now that was the first Manhattan episode which really dissappointed me.

( Did you have to, show? )

This show wins for continuity and character development, all the way. I am ever more impressed.

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The show about fictional physicists in an all too real historical surrounding is back.

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...related to the nuclear bomb project, that is, not the part of New York City. merry_maia, you're going to love this. Via nwhyte, I just discovered a blog by a historian about the Manhattan Project. After some cursory browsing, here are some of the intriguing entries:


Tokyo versus Hiroshima: But I depart from the standard comparison in two places. The first is the idea that since the atomic bombings were not original in targeting civilians, then they do not present a moral or ethical question. As I’ve written about before, I think the question of morality gets more problematic. If the atomic bombings were one-off events, rare interventions to end the war, then it might (for some) be compelling to say that they were worth the price of crossing over some kind of line regarding the deliberate burning of civilians to death en masse. But if they were instead the continuation of a well-established policy of burning civilians to death en masse, then the moral question gets much broader. The question changes from, Was it morally justified to commit a civilian massacre two times?, to Was it morally justified to make civilian massacre a standard means of fighting the war? I want to state explicitly that I don’t think, and I don’t want my phrasing to imply, that the answer to the above is necessarily an unequivocal “no.” There are certainly many moral frameworks that can allow for massacres (e.g. ends-justify-the-means). But I prefer to not dress this sort of thing up in euphemisms, whether we think it justified or not. Massacre means to deliberately and indiscriminately kill people. That is what you get when you bomb densely-populated cities with weapons that cannot distinguish between civilians and members of the military.


Oppenheimer and the Gita: analyses the context of the famous quote, and comes complete with a Youtube link to Oppenheimer discussing it in the 1960s, shortly before his death.

The worst Manhattan Project leaks: no, not Klaus Fuchs, but the press which published an article naming Los Alamos (complete with geographical description), Oppenheimer and Groves in 1944. Their guess as to what was actually being made there was wrong (though I like the death ray taking out German air planes idea, it's very comics-like), but given the correctness of much other info, I'm just saying this is why any dangerous German WWII spy is clearly fictional. Apparantly German intelligence couldn't even read American newspapers. Though Russian intelligence could. Which brings me to:


Photos and stories from the Soviet bomb project. Complete with thank you letter the scientists had to write Stalin and Stalin complaining the German scientist among them hadn't signed it.

Still an awful combination of sick and busy, so behind with replying to everyone's replies. But finally able to catch up on Manhattan which I just learned got renewed for another season!

( Transparacy is democracy )

In which Sid's wife shows up and I love that events from the pilot still have ongoing consequences.

( Also there is mind messing - or is there? )

Alas, I won't be able to watch The Good Wife or Manhattan for another week (don't spoil me!), but I can get a hold of the Sleepy Hollow season opener; watch this space. Meanwhile, the weather is splendid, meaning the Aged Parents & self spend most of this week outdoors, and thus there isn't much internet for me. But there is some.

Since the Yuletide nominations are open now, Penny Dreadful fans, shouldn't we coordinate our efforts to get as many characters as possible nominated? (However, I'll have to drop my Vikings intentions since this year you can nominate three fandoms, no more. I definitely want Penny Dreadful and The Americans, which leaves me with just one slot for one of my cracky historical RPF ideas.

Also: it's always a pleasure when a poster you appreciate discovers an old show of yours for the first time. local_max is watching Twin Peaks, and has been writing Twin Peaks meta already. The owls are not what they seem!

Lastly: for some reason, I can't copy a link to The Guardian anymore on this iPad since the latest update, so, without links: you may or may not have heard about the current kerfuffle that unfolded when Hilary Mantel's short story The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher and an interview accompagnying it in which she mentioned having carried it with her for thirty years got published. Now on the one hand, as Lisa Appignanesi points out in one of the commenting articles I can't link, either, given that assassination plots against public figures who did in fact not get assassinated have a long tradition in fiction, both of the written, tv and movie kind (she mentions The Day of the Jackal for Charles de Gaulle, and Nicholas Baker's 2004 take on the assassination of George W. Bush, which didn't get him called "sick and deranged" or in need of a therapist or a visit by the coppers). But on the other, the interview with Mantel that went with the publication of the story contained something I objected to as well, and it wasn't the idea of killing off Margaret T. in fiction. (Or for that matter, anyone in fiction. I mean, were it a public figure I actually care about, like, say, Patrick Stewart, I certainly wouldn't read it, but I wouldn't call the pitchforks, either.) No, it's Mantel something I also recall Antonia Fraser saying once, and several others when commenting on Thatcher: calling her a "psychological transvestite" (or, to give the context: The idea that women must imitate men to succeed is anti-feminist. She was not of woman born. She was a psychological transvestite. (Mantel) or "honorary male" (Fraser, who also called Elizabeth Tudor this when comparing her to Mary Stuart), in other words, a woman who isn't really a woman, not entitled to be treated as a woman. Which, just: no. "Woman" isn't a title you can deserve or can be discarded of.

Speculating, I would guess where this comes from: if you're a woman seeing yourself as a feminist, and loathe a female politician, you're unconformtably aware that there is an eons old misogynistic tradition there of vilifiying any woman in power. On the other hand, this politician truly does do and say things you can't stomach, and which you'd have no problem attacking were they voiced and done by a male politician. So your psychological and emotional out is to declare that this woman doesn't deserve any type of female solidarity because she's not truly a woman. I get the mechanism of that, but that doesn't make it less objectionable for me, because, to repeat: nobody gets to decide who is or isn't a woman. Margaret Thatcher did a great many things which left lasting damage to British society. She also was beyond any doubt a woman. (And let's not even get into the use of "transvestite" as a negative.) And it should be possible to hold forth on why her policies were objectionable without feeling the urge to strip her of her gender.