The National Youth Peace Prize
Three winners at the Ottawa Regional Science Fair were photographed with John Polanyi at a dinner honoring him in Ottawa in May. Elizabeth Henderson (left) and Andrea Grigotza went on to win the National Peace from Science Award CA trip to the UN). John Rust was the winner of the Museum of Science and Technology Director’s prize.
Honourable mention in the national competition went to Shama Kulkarmi, Queen Elizabeth U.S., Halifax, N.S.
Board Meeting: Tuesday, Sept. 15, 7:45 pm at the Weatherleys’, 15 St Andrews, Scarborough,Ont. Phone (416) 978-6928 or 438-0284 if you plan to come for pot-luck supper at 6:30.
The June Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published Carol Cohn’s account of her encounter with defence intellectuals as “Slick’ems, glick’ems, Christmas trees, and cookie cutters: nuclear language and how we learned to pat the bomb”. The original manuscript was offered to SfP members in February and is still available.
Another aspect of metaphor is explored by Franklin Krohn,
“Military Metaphors: Semantic Pollution of the Market Place” in the Summer, 1987 (Vol. 44, #2) issue of ETC. (ISGS, P. O. Box 2469, San Francisco CA 94126 USA)
President of the Chinese People’s Ass’n for Peace and Disarmament. Zhou Peiyuan, welcoming delegates to the March UN Regional Conference of the World Disarmament Campaign in Beijing:
“Having been engaged in scientific research for more than five decades, I know very well that while science and technology should and can be used to benefit mankind, they may also be misused to bring harm to it It is the aspiration of mankind and the goal of our struggle to halt the arms race, to stop the expansion of the arms race into the outer space and the sea and to make science and technology totally serve peace and benefit mankind According to Chinese tradition, rabbit is a harbinger of good fortune and this is the year of the rabbit.”
Dubbed “an eternal Monument to the victory of peace”,the above-pictured project of Sergio Barjin and Elena Kozelcova was awarded special mention at the UN International Year of Shelter exhibition organized by the Superior Council of Architects of Spain. — El Pais, 31 July, 1987.
Einstein Letter
A 1948 letter on the letterhead of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, Princeton, N.J., USA, typewritten and signed in light blue ink by Albert Einstein,was discovered by Torontonian Deborah Anderson folded as a bookmark in a Mississauga flea market book. The letter said Einstein feared “the imminence of war and the inevitability of the use of atomic weapons in that war.” He urged scientists to “do all within our power to assure that this historic achievement of mankind does not become his trap and his tomb.”
Ms. Anderson intends to donate the letter probably to the U of T’s Einstein collection at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.
SDI
Plans for a dialogue between David Parnas and supporters of SDI at the Winter Meetings of the AMS in January 1987, according to the chairman of the panel, did not materialize. It seems no SDI supporter would “engage” and an illness kept Parnas from a resultant scheduled monologue.
“I think the uses of mathematics in SDI present plenty of controversy which should be much more widely and seriously discussed. The Council has given its approval to a lecture or panel at each Winter meeting hosted by the Science Policy Committee on some ‘Social Use of Mathematics’.”
-David Eisenbud, Brandeis Univ.
AMS Notices, August, 1987 Colleagues Abroad
Die THD Initiative air Abrustüng (The Technische Hochschule-Darmstadt Initiative for Disarmament) a working gtoup of teachers, researchers, nonscientific research workers and students, seeks to clarify global threats to peace, the interface of science,technology and the arms race, to research alternatives to the arms race and to develop a sense of social responsibility for such matters among scientists and students. A seminar series, speakers’ bureau and regular meetings of research groups constitutes their program. The THD Initiative is preparing for Winter 1987 a lecture series on alternative defence concepts for Europe, with which NATO is unable to deal. The series will be a featured part of the nationwide Peace Week, 9-10 November.
For German-reading colleagues,a member of the Initiative, Helmut Fleischer, has made two of his papers available to SfP members on request: ….Four reprints from Narnberger Zeitung (1985-87) of articles about the history of German Nazism, and ….Der Ruf nach einer “Ethik des Friedens” (A Call for an “Ethics of Peace”), a chapter from his book, Ethik ohne Imperativ (Ethics Without Imperative), Frankfurt, 1987.
Two students with Volkswagen Foundation Fellowships have spent the academic year in Darmstadt studying with members of the Initiative.
Since the Chinese People’s Liberation Army started a program of training its soldiers in civilian skills, more than 1,000,000 have mastered trade skills and know-how needed for the country’s development and have been demobilized.
SIPRI Yearbook 1987 — World Armaments and Disarmament is available at main bookstores or from SIPRI, Bergshamra S-171 73 Solna, Sweden: “1986 did not live up to its name as the International Year of Peace. At the end of 1986 there were 36 wars and armed conflicts being fought, the most destructive of which (the Iraq-Iran War) involves the USA and the USSR both supplying arms to the combatants and now protecting shipping in the Persian Gulf. Arms control came to an impasse, weapons proliferated and arms transfers became more uncontrolled.”
Now Available
Professor Dieter Senghaas, University of Bremen, West Germany, Transcending Collective Violence, the Civilizing Process and the Peace Problem. Manuscript of the acceptance address delivered at the awarding of the 1986 Lentz Memorial Peace Prize. From the Bulletin.
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