Easy To Ignore

"The leaders of the free world are just little boys throwing stones
And it's easy to ignore until they're knocking on the door of your home"
Leaders of the Free World, Elbow

Watching this video of the Baker underwater nuclear test in 1946, which I discovered courtesy of Videosift, should be enough to prove to anyone that nuclear weapons really aren't all that great an invention.

Yeah, sure, man now has the ability to wipe out all traces of its own species at the push of a button. But maybe that's not such a fantastic power for people like George Bush, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-il to have.

Chillingly beautiful? Yes it is. Although I'd imagine that if you were on one of the 90 vessels sitting around the blast zone to find out what would happen, you'd probably not be all that excited by the beauty, and just a tad concerned at the massive mushroom cloud enveloping everything in its path.

I'm no pinko lefty peacenik - if Iran has nuclear weapons, it's probably better that we do as well, if only to act as a discouragement. But maybe it'd just be better if all the little boys put their toys back in the cupboard, or - even better - dismantled them.