"[3] A biography of Alvin describes his design of a mechanical device that enabled the operation of an automobile accelerator and brake with a single pedal, compensating for his physical disability and allowing him to get a driver's license.
[4] Despite pressure from his church leaders to be content with a high-school education, Coblentz attended Malone University, a nearby Quaker college, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Psychology in 1982.
He also dabbled in theater – a creative outlet that had been forbidden during his early years – taking leading roles in four consecutive university productions, and writing and directing his first play, The Playground.
Symbol, properly configured, reinforced the power of the queen; slightly realigned, it fortified King James I.”[7] To illustrate this assertion, Coblentz examines the symbolism and pseudo-science applied to the archetypal “Other” – particularly to blacks and women – as England entered the 17th century: In the English Renaissance cosmology of “natural correspondences” and “self-evident truth,” white skin was superior to black just as day follows night; conveniently, the globe was constructed with Europe above and Africa below (and hell, presumably, below that)….
It is as simple as that.Coblentz argues that the Einstein-Bohr debates and the Copenhagen Interpretation were rooted in epistemology, not strictly physics or mathematics, and thus ultimately led to a search for new forms of language and expression.
The Einsteinian’s insistent refusal to accept Bohr’s ambiguities is an insistence born of panic – the panic of the dispassionate objectivist (who is neither dispassionate nor objective except by his inherited white male tradition) forced to face a Void (or, if you like, a Womb) he cannot penetrate, forced to accept truth without explanation, a ‘non-material’ ‘non-thing’ ‘non-inhabiting’ ‘non-space’ that nevertheless demands acknowledgement (notice that language necessarily breaks down; there are no words, and therefore no tools of discovery).
[7]These theories – drawing on Coblentz's divergent early background in communication, psychology, and nuclear physics – became the lens through which he came to view advanced science and technology.
They would increasingly shape his career and particularly his public policy contributions in areas ranging from sustainable development and nuclear non-proliferation to higher education, technology transfer, and entrepreneurship.
Coblentz designed and spearheaded the project with Kevin Landy, Lieberman's counsel on the Committee, negotiating with Senate rules officials to gain permission for this first-of-kind approach to use the Internet to engage citizens in online interaction, enabling direct public input in planning the electronic government legislation.
On the day that the IAEA was asked by the U.S. to pull its inspectors out of Iraq, in advance of the March 2003 bombing, ElBaradei altered the draft of a speech he was about to deliver to the IAEA Board of Governors, adding a quote from Adlai Stevenson: “There is no evil in the atom; only in men’s souls.” Coblentz noted that: Finding many of the allegations, the points on which the U.S. and the U.K. were making their case, to be inaccurate, it seemed very clear to [ElBaradei] that he was building the case for why there was … no imminent threat.
… We were sitting in his office and [ElBaradei] said … “What the Iraq War should have taught us is that security and development are inextricably intertwined.” Where you have poverty and abrogation of human rights, you also often have inept governance, you have a circumstance in which people, as they see the inequity, and are not allowed to express their views, the result is a natural situation for fomenting not only humiliation and injustice but anger, and a sense of wanting to redress wrongs.
So from that you have violence of multiple sorts: you have civil strife; you have a breeding ground for extremism; and ultimately, if the seeds are sown deeply enough, that is where we are seeing the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
With its extraordinary acoustics and capabilities for creating immersive human-scale multisensory environments, EMPAC lays claim to being three buildings in one: a performance venue for time-based arts, an educational facility, and a first-of-kind research laboratory.
Coblentz created the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Council to bring coherence to university wide tech transfer operations,[30] and revamped the RPI incubation approach, launching the Emerging Ventures Ecosystem (EVE)[see 2] in February 2011.
“To do that, we intend to tap the entire range of Rensselaer resources, and to create partnerships that take symbiotic advantage of strengths in the local community, for mutual benefit.”[31] Coblentz left RPI in September 2011 without public explanation, leading to speculation on the reasons for his departure.
[37][see 3] With the support of a local group of inventors and entrepreneurs, Coblentz transformed an abandoned 5000 square-foot off-track betting facility into a MakerSpace, a member-governed "idea factory" outfitted for metalworking, woodworking, 3D printing, optics, biotech, robotics, electronics, welding, and textile work.
[41] In a discussion with the Albany Business Review, Coblentz explained the design of the Center of Gravity's hybrid incubator-makerspace model as an economic development measure intended to counteract the “exodus” of young innovators from the regional economy.
In 2014, based in part on a $550,000 grant from the Empire State Development Corporation, Coblentz and the Center of Gravity launched a $4 million renovation of the Quackenbush, a long-vacant Victorian-era building in the heart of downtown Troy.
[46] Coblentz pointed out the role that social media played in convincing ElBaradei that the young people of Egypt were ready for change: “It was really this last 14 months, where someone I knew as not being particularly computer savvy, taught himself to use Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and started to do in virtual space what was forbidden to do by the Mubarak regime, the freedom of assembly by large groups.”[47] In September 2015, Coblentz took a new position as head of communication at ITER, the full-scale nuclear fusion facility in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France.
[48][49][see 4] The largest, most complex multinational science and technology project in history, ITER is designed to demonstrate a self-heating or “burning” plasma, paving the way for the first commercial electricity plants powered by fusion.
As Coblentz said to CNN, “What we’re really doing here [at ITER] is trying to build a star on Earth.” The technological approach, known as magnetic confinement fusion, has been demonstrated in hundreds of experimental machines over the past six decades, usually in the form of a tokamak or a stellarator.
The benefit of this arrangement is that the major powers pool their best expertise, share the costs, and receive equal access to the intellectual property and technology spin-offs, much like CERN.
The ITER project encountered management shortcomings, cost overruns and delays and a sharply critical 2013 audit, leaked to Raffi Katchadourian at The New Yorker, called for urgent reform.
Comprehensive reform included integration of the ITER Organization with its Domestic Agencies, more effective decision-making and communication, exhaustive reassessment of the construction and assembly schedule and associated costs, finalization of major component design, and creation of a project culture applying the best principles of risk management and systems engineering.
[55][56] Additional countries were expressing interest in joining the newly revitalized project, including Iran – which, as Coblentz noted to the Associated Press, highlighted the exclusively peaceful nature of ITER and magnetic confinement fusion.
[62] Although progress continued on ITER with the start machine assembly[63] in July 2020, the project was hindered by supply-chain delays related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the discovery of cracks in the piping system for cooling the thermal shields.