Copenhagen: What *did* those two talk about, really? Last night I saw Copenhagen, the PBS movie adaptation of the Michael Frayn play of the same name. It's about the 1941 meeting between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Bohr and Heisenberg had collaborated together in earlier years. But my 1941, they were on opposite sides: Heisenberg was in (and part of, tho how much he sympathized with The Third Reich is unknown) Hitler's Germany, and Bohr's Denmark was occupied by the Nazis. Bohr (half-Jewish) later escaped Denmark and made his way briefly to Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.
If I hadn't visited Ground Zero (that's the Trinity Test site of July 16, 1945, the first Ground Zero, not the one in Manhattan NY of just over a year ago) and read Richard Rhodes' authoritative tome, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, I'd've found the movie more confusing.
The play inspired the Bohr family to release from its archives Bohr's drafts of a letter to Heisenberg about the meeting.
The play itself? Fascinating. I'd like to see it again (yay for VCRs!); it explores and enacts the uncertaintly principle, especially in the relationships among humans.
More fire news Again, Mary Lu Wehmeier has good updates on the Williams fire (Angeles Forest). I've been blessing the colder, overcast skies and the bit of rain on Saturday night. This image is pretty close to what I saw a week ago Monday morning (fire started Sunday; it was still young then).



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