It’s pretty simple.
20/01/2012 • 2:12 am 0
how modern business works
29/12/2011 • 11:44 pm 0
fukushima
According to the Canadian Medical Association, the Japanese response to Fukushima was worse than the Soviet response to Chernobyl:
International authorities have urged Japan to expand the exclusion zone around the plant to 80 kilometres but the government has instead opted to “define the problem out of existence” by raising the permissible level of radiation exposure for members of the public to 20 millisieverts per year, considerably higher than the international standard of one millisievert per year, Gould adds.
This “arbitrary increase” in the maximum permissible dose of radiation is an “unconscionable” failure of government, contends Ruff. “Subject a class of 30 children to 20 millisieverts of radiation for five years and you’re talking an increased risk of cancer to the order of about 1 in 30, which is completely unacceptable. I’m not aware of any other government in recent decades that’s been willing to accept such a high level of radiation-related risk for its population.”
Following the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine, “clear targets were set so that anybody anticipated to receive more than five millisieverts in a year were evacuated, no question,” Ruff explains. In areas with levels between one and five millisieverts, measures were taken to mitigate the risk of ingesting radioactive materials, including bans on local food consumption, and residents were offered the option of relocating. Exposures below one millisievert were still considered worth monitoring.
One study claims that fallout from Fukushima killed 14,000 Americans.
Filed under: sad
29/12/2011 • 11:32 pm 0
america: the decline years
21/11/2011 • 1:12 am 0
infant mortality
The United States has fallen to 30th in rankings of infant mortality. But it still outranks Slovakia.
Slovakians? Suck. On. This.
Filed under: sad, the stupid - it burns!
19/11/2011 • 7:38 pm 0
campus saved from dangerous protestors by brave peace officer
UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi walks to her car while protesters watch. For any political protester that wants to know how to create an effective message, this is how you do it, kids.
Filed under: sad, the stupid - it burns!
27/07/2011 • 2:29 am 0
the modern hierarchy of needs
link.
Filed under: funny, sad, the stupid - it burns!
26/07/2011 • 9:58 am 0
the decline of the tomato
According to analyses conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, fresh tomatoes today have 30 percent less vitamin C, 30 percent less thiamin, 19 percent less niacin, and 62 percent less calcium than they did in the 1960s. But the modern tomato does shame its 1960s counterpart in one area: It contains fourteen times as much sodium.
04/06/2011 • 9:56 pm 0
the demolition of detroit
As Otis approaches the house, Lorenzo cranks open a fire hydrant. A rush of rusty water pours out. He attaches a hose and starts spraying the house to tamp down all the dust and ash that come with obliteration. The CAT thrums insistently forward, mmmmm-hmmmm-mmmmm-hmmmm, and Otis digs the grapple into the front yard, pulling it up in pieces and laying the lawn over the sidewalk to protect it from the weight of his encroaching machine. “The city’s a wreck,” says Lorenzo, “but we don’t treat it like that. We try not to crush anything we don’t have to crush.”
-link
Filed under: housing, interesting, sad
19/05/2011 • 1:51 am 0
when you’ve lost the economist….
The Economist on the non-violent protests by Palestinians against Israel:
We’ve asked the Palestinians to lay down their arms. We’ve told them their lack of a state is their own fault; if only they would embrace non-violence, a reasonable and unprejudiced world would see the merit of their claims. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of them did just that, and it seems likely to continue. If crowds of tens of thousands of non-violent Palestinian protestors continue to march, and if Israel continues to shoot at them, what will we do? Will we make good on our rhetoric, and press Israel to give them their state? Or will it turn out that our paeans to non-violence were just cynical tactics in an amoral international power contest staged by militaristic Israeli and American right-wing groups whose elective affinities lead them to shape a common narrative of the alien Arab/Muslim threat? Will we even bother to acknowledge that the Palestinians are protesting non-violently? Or will we soldier on with the same empty decades-old rhetoric, now drained of any truth or meaning, because it protects established relationships of power? What will it take to make Americans recognise that the real Martin Luther King-style non-violent Palestinian protestors have arrived, and that Israeli soldiers are shooting them with real bullets?
-link
The answer, of course, to the last question, is that is there is no such animal.
Filed under: sad, the stupid - it burns!
12/03/2011 • 9:53 pm 0
dystopia
Dubai has been built very fast. The plan was money. The architect was money. The designer was money and the builder was money. And if you ever wondered what money would look like if it were left to its own devices, it’s Dubai.
-link
Filed under: sad, the stupid - it burns!
04/03/2011 • 3:09 am 0
democracy never
23/01/2011 • 5:05 am 0
trekking in nepal
The dark secret of wilderness around the world is that the land is usually not developed because it is too hard to profit off of
…
The opportunities are depressing. The government is depressing. The people have lived through hell and are seeing their country being built into a three-star hotel for assholes like me to come and experience their Himalayan dream. With more than 30% of the children not attending school, the government focuses on tourism in 2011. I don’t how this will help the core problems, major problems, at all. It will only hurt more.
I’ve never felt dirtier as a traveler.
-link
Filed under: sad, Uncategorized
09/01/2011 • 5:57 am 0
advice never taken
Various sources are reporting that the man suspected of attempting to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was also responsible for a series of YouTube videos that featured ranting such as:
Every human who’s mentally capable is always able to be treasurer of their new currency.
If you create one new currency then you’re able to create a second new currency.
If you’re able to create second new currency then you’re able to create third new currency.
You create one new currency.
Thus, you’re able to create a third new currency.
You’re a treasurer for a new currency, listener?
You create and distribute your new currency, listener?
Someone under the name Erad3 was posting similar writing at a web site called abovetopsecret:
Is it possible for an infinite source of currency?
If a member of the treasury creates 5 new currency’s then the new currency replaces the previous currency.
If the new currency replaces the previous currency then the previous currency is no longer in use.
A members of the treasury creates 5 new currency’s.
Therefore, the previous currency is no longer in use.If the treasury creates a new currency then the new currency will replace the previous currency.
The treasury creates a new currency.
Therefore, the new currency will replace the previous currency.If the treasury creates one new currency then why couldn’t they create an infinite amount?
Wouldn’t be beautiful to see your face on the new coins?
One of the ATS posters noted the coincidence.
Some of the people in the forum made fun of him, some assumed he was a non-native English speaker, one of them said:
I think youre frankly schizophrenic, and no that’s not an amateur opinion and not intended as an uninformed or insulting remark, you clearly make no sense and are unable to communicate. I really do care.
Seek help before you hurt yourself or others or start taking your medications again, please. Maybe, it’d be better for some there be an infinite source of haldol or cogentin then fiat currency.
But that advice was never taken.
Filed under: sad
01/09/2010 • 3:24 am 0
statistics of the day
According to Chris Hedges in Empire of Illusion, 42% of college graduates never read another book in their lives.
Also, the highest paid employee in the California university system is Berkeley’s head football coach.
That is all.
Filed under: sad
