1) The Essential Theatre Power Plays Festival begins with Food for Fish.
2) John Legend and India.Arie perform at Chastain Park Amphitheatre.
3) First Existentialist Congregation hosts Love Your Country: Ban Nuclear Weapons.
4) Georgia Fireflies play the Earl.
5) The Buckhead Beach Festival continues.
(Photo courtesy Essential Theatre)
What does North Korea hope to gain by testing nuclear weapons?
On May 25, North Korea flipped a radioactive bird at President Barack Obama when it exploded a nuclear device in an underground facility in the northeast part of the country.
The test site was not far from the spot where, in 2006, North Korea exploded a similarly frightening gizmo, described at the time by the Bush administration as a “nookyullar” device. North Korea is thought to be the only country on Earth to possess both a nuclear and a nookyullar device.
You may have noticed I’m using the word device rather than weapon to describe these North Korean explosive thingies. That’s because I was just listening to Selig Harrison, former Washington Post Northeast Asia bureau chief and current head of the Center for International Policy’s Asia Program, speaking on my favorite news radio show, KCRW-FM’s “To The Point.” (Yes, that was a shameless attempt to earn a KCRW tote bag.)
Harrison says there’s no evidence to suggest North Korea has the technical know-how to fire a nuclear device at anyone. Exploding a weapon underground in what essentially is a laboratory is very different from miniaturizing a weapon and mounting it atop a missile.
I’m not saying don’t be scared of North Korea. I’m just saying you should know precisely what it is you might be scared of.
(Photo illustration by Andisheh Nouraee)
Pakistan is collapsing into civil war, causing world leaders, pundits and assorted chickens, wusses, pussies and scaredy cats to start freaking out.
Why the freakness?
Outside observers are afraid the world is about to confront a nuclear nightmare. They’re afraid Pakistan’s super-violent, fundamentalist Taliban fighters might be able to get their hands on one of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Is it possible?
Yes. It’s actually happened before.
In 1965, an organized crime group led by a man named Emilio Largo stole a French fighter jet loaded with two nuclear weapons.
Largo and his crew hid the weapons in an underwater cave in the Bahamas. Largo threatened to nuke Miami unless he received a sack of diamonds worth approximately $2 billion in today’s money.
Largo was on the brink of bombing Miami, but was thwarted at the last minute by a heroic British government employee who not only found the nukes, but also killed Largo and stole his mega-hot girlfriend…
(Photo illustration by Andisheh Nouraee)
1. 10 films released in 2008 that were worse than Delgo (People love lists — see, you’re reading this one! — especially when they count down the worst of the worst.)
2. Year in review: A look back at the arts in Atlanta for 2008 (The only thing folks love as much as lists: heavy doses of nostalgia.)
3. Atlanta nightlife is DEAD (Um, not really. But the headline sure is catchy.)
4. Don’t Panic: Why is Israel bombing Gaza? (The over-simplified, bloggy answer: Bed-wetting)
5. Atlanta after an asteroid or nuke bomb … thanks, Google! (Is your neighborhood inside the mushroom cloud? Click to find out!)
If Atlanta were unfortunate enough to be targeted by a nuclear bomb — or maybe got caught in the way of an asteroid — the results, as you can imagine, wouldn’t be pretty.
And the kind souls at CarlosLabs used the power of Google Maps to create a tool that lets you know just how far away you better be if you absolutely must navigate your way out of a mushroom cloud hellhole.
Visit the tool to see how many of history’s most famous atomic weapons would impact your friends and neighbors in Atlanta, or anywhere else around the world. Some screenshots of how the metro region would fare after a nuclear bomb and an asteroid’s impact are after the jump.
