The decision to use the atomic bomb against japan

The decision

A terrible one really. After the New Mexico test... The devastation is on another scale. But what choice did they have? If the USA invaded by force. More than 200,000 US Army and Marines would be dead or wounded. The USA does not want more dead Americans. It was time to use the bomb. Or more soldiers would die. Would you do the same? To sacrifice thousands of your men. When you could just drop a bomb. I think I'll take the latter...

from thales, who is often considered the first western philosopher, to the stoics and skeptics, ancient greek philosophy opened the doors to a particular way of thinking that provided the roots for the western intellectual tradition. here, there is often an explicit preference for the life of reason and rational thought. we find proto-scientific explanations of the natural world in the milesian thinkers, and we hear democritus posit atoms—indivisible and invisible units—as the basic stuff of all matter. with socrates comes a sustained inquiry into ethical matters—an orientation towards human living and the best life for human beings. with plato comes one of the most creative and flexible ways of doing philosophy, which some have since attempted to imitate by writing philosophical dialogues covering topics still of interest today in ethics, political thought, metaphysics, and epistemology. plato’s student, aristotle, was one of the most prolific of ancient authors. he wrote treatises on each of these topics, as well as on the investigation of the natural world, including the composition of animals. the hellenists—epicurus, the cynics, the stoics, and the skeptics—developed schools or movements devoted to distinct philosophical lifestyles, each with reason at its foundation.

with this preference for reason came a critique of traditional ways of living, believing, and thinking, which sometimes caused political trouble for the philosophers themselves. xenophanes directly challenged the traditional anthropomorphic depiction of the gods, and socrates was put to death for allegedly inventing new gods and not believing in the gods mandated by the city of athens. after the fall of alexander the great, and because of aristotle’s ties with alexander and his court, aristotle escaped the same fate as socrates by fleeing athens. epicurus, like xenophanes, claimed that the mass of people is impious, since the people conceive of the gods as little more than superhumans, even though human characteristics cannot appropriately be ascribed to the gods. in short, not only did ancient greek philosophy pave the way for the western intellectual tradition, including modern science, but it also shook cultural foundations in its own time.

answer:   migrations were important in the neolithic period. "two major migrations passing through southeastern europe were confirmed by the means of archaeo-genetic studies."

the first migration was the early neolithic period -- 6,000 before common era (bce) -- when the first farmers, from anatolia -- asia minor -- spread through europe. the second migration occurred during the early bronze age (3,000-2,500 bce) when the so-called "steppe population," from the eurasian steppe, replaced much of northern europe's previous population.

the first farmers of northern and western europe passed through southeastern europe with limited hunter-gatherer genetic admixture, which occurs when two or more previously isolated populations begin interbreeding. however, some groups that remained mixed extensively -- without the male-biased, hunter-gatherer admixture that prevailed later in the north and west, according to latest discoveries. southeastern europe continued to be a nexus between east and west, with intermittent genetic contact with the steppe people up to 2,000 years before the migrations that replaced much of northern europe's population.

"in some places, hunter-gatherers and incoming farmers seem to have mixed very quickly," says iain mathieson, a geneticist at the university of pennsylvania, who was first author of the paper. "but, mostly, the two groups remained isolated, at least for the first few hundred years. these hunter-gatherers had been living there for thousands of years, and it must have been quite a shock to have these new people show up -- with a completely different lifestyle and appearance."