Do you understand the nuclear radioactivity levels resulting from the Japanese nuclear plant crisis? Radioactive Warning
Can you figure out how much radioactivity is dangerous?
This article explains the three major ways radioactivity is measured, to help you compare the numbers reported by the media – so you can make up your own mind whether the amount of radioactive material leakage is dangerous.
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Curies, Becquerels, Grays, Sieverts, rad, rem, roentgen . . . Radiation Chart
Click twice to see chart full-size
Can you explain the meaning of nuclear radiation levels from the Japanese nuclear meltdown crisis?
Can you figure out how much radioactivity is dangerous?
This article explains the three major ways radioactivity is measured, and helps you compare the amounts of radioactivity reported – so you can make up your own mind whether the amount of radioactive material leakage is dangerous.
US President Obama warned high-school students in Virginia September 2009 —
“Be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age whatever you do will be pulled up later somewhere in your life.”
Not Facebook
Credit: twrtoday.com
“Leave Facebook if you don’t want to be spied upon” warns the European Union in March 2015
I do have a Facebook account . . . but I do NOT and will NOT use Facebook for communication – or anything else.
Please *** NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, respond to a request from my Facebook account. (If you get a request or any communication from my Facebook account – it is clearly a scammer. Do not reply. Call me instead.)
This may seem a startling announcement from someone who has been at the leading edge of computer and information technology for decades.
I’m hardly alone.
Here’s a seriously cautionary article by Wired UK’s Editor David Rowan “Six Reasons Why I’m Not On Facebook.
I truly understand the benefits of web based Social Networks, and if you read to the end of this article I will let you know when I have found a system I can trust to genuinely protect you and me both.
I particularly want Elected officials and government employees to understand how much private information they are exposing by using Facebook, so they can adopt laws and regulations protecting our privacy.
(And NO, I do not “friend” anyone on Facebook for the reasons you will soon see . . .)
Here are the:
Top 10 Reasons I Refuse To Use Facebook
(Warning: If you viscerally “love” Facebook – you should stop reading right here) . . .
Update June 2012: Facebook switches off your email and forces you to use their own rusty email addresses. Oops they forgot to ask your permission first – for the 7th time.
Update Janaury 2017: How FacePlant (and Twitter) can destroy your reputation in 24 with a mistaken identity !
Outline – (Examples and links below this short list)
1. Facebook Constantly Lies to You.
2. Facebook Helps Burglars steal your stuff !
3. Facebook Helps Stalkers Find You or your Children !
Mainstream news stories almost always confuse the terms “Radiation” (photons) and “Radioactive” (physical materials), which are significantly different things.
Radiation
Radioactive material
Here are two examples of correct and wrong usage:
Recently a group of people, most new to our community, started several local groups often including the term “Sustainable” in their name; e.g. Sustainable Pacific Grove. Their main activities seem to concern energy and trash reduction, and shopping / buying local and “green” goods.
They were successful in getting several local mayors to sign a “Mayors Climate Protection Agreement” and getting several local cities to sign onto the “Urban Environmental Accords.”
However, as they admit – neither document has any force of law. Laudable, but not really meaningful in the hard-ball arena of local politics. I wonder whether anything in politics has changed as a result of those agreements.
Up until yesterday, the radiation from the failed Japanese Nuclear power plants at Fukushima was described as far less than Chernobyl released.
Experts typically opined by describing the danger along the lines of : “I don’t know how bad the Japanese nuke situation will get, but it won’t be a Chernobyl.”
Now just a few days later researchers report that the fallout is getting uncomfortably high: “Fukushima radioactive fallout nears Chernobyl levels.”
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Newspaper writers and editors often defend incompetent reporting with scrofulous logic — “Both sides were angry so it must have been a good article.”
Publishing gibberish would also anger both sides of any controversial issue; and that takes no effort at all; a reporter wouldn’t even need to show up at the meeting and fall asleep.
You probably can NOT guess who is my favorite President since I’ve been of voting age, or why.
You’re right, “favorite” is way too strong. Lets just say the “least disappointing” President.
Its Gerald Ford, but the “Why” may be more interesting.
OK, Quick – what is Gerald Ford known for?
Pardoning Nixon. Yes, that was a giant mistake. It tells the world how American politics lets the powerful get away with murder, sometimes literally. It shows Nixon was disgustingly right when he said “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.”
US President Barak Obama started a War with Libya on Sunday March 19, 2011.
Libyan media reported that 48 people were killed; “mostly children” and three times that many were injured. Associated Press reports that during rescue of the downed fighter pilots, a US aircraft fired on and severely injured 6 Libyan civilians assisting the pilots.
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Monterey Herald’s Joe Livernois-Disgusted with Public Comments at Government Meetings
This is Part 2 of a report on HOPE’s first meeting with the Gary Omernick, President of The Herald, Monterey’s local daily newspaper.
A primary subject on our agenda is the Herald’s 7 year long Blackout; complete news and editorial blackout (censorship) of our Water Management District’s “Right-Sized” Water solution.
Dr MalPractice – More Common than You Thought
100,000 – 200,000 Medical Error Deaths
Estimates range from 40,000 to 98,000 to 200,000
“Iatrogenic” means Doctor caused Deaths
“A handful” = The number of doctors removed from the Medical field because they caused a patient death. (The actual numbers are unknown because the AMA seems to take great efforts to hide this information.)
“Nocosomial” means Hospital Caused Deaths
“Never Events” are inexcusable outcomes in a health care setting (e.g. surgery on wrong body part)
President Harry S Truman
“I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.”
–US President Harry Truman
That pretty well describes my experience in local politics.
Mark Twain, my father’s favorite humorist, said
“Always do right. this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
Mark Twain and Will Rogers are proof that if you want to tell the truth in politics, it helps to have humorist skills.
Did you ever wonder why newspaper stories are biased in favor of government and business — and against public interests ?
Livernois vs Citizens
Well, we got a rare insight in a Monterey Count Herald blog article by the Herald’s “City Editor” Joe Livernois. A city Editor is responsible for all local stories. A City editor can and does Block stories (sometimes for years), remove or “edit” your quotes, and writes (sometimes highly) misleading headlines.
Livernois boasts of his disgust with citizens who speak at public meetings. He is apparently not the least bit embarrassed about his bitter name-calling attack on those few members of the public who try to help elected officials make good and better decisions, and give them informed advice against making bad decisions.
Did you ever wonder why newspaper stories are biased in favor of government and business — and against public interests ? Livernois vs Citizens
Well, we got a rare insight in a Herald blog article by Joe Livernois. Livernois is the Herald’s “City Editor” who has responsibility for all local stories. A City editor can and does block stories, remove or “edit” your quotes, and writes (sometimes highly) misleading headlines.
Livernois admits his disgust with, and is apparently not the least bit embarrassed about his name-calling attack on, citizens who speak at public meetings, those trying to help elected officials make better decisions, and give them informed advice against making bad decisions.
Livernois is bothered because “gadflies and kooks waste our time.” (See http://heraldeditors.blogspot.com/2009/08/gadflies-and-kooks.html )
Lets review whether the Political Power Deck (which he is supposed to be reporting objectively upon) is even remotely reasonably balanced:
Agenda Setting
Elected officials set the agenda and focus subjects on just those issues they want to deal with. The public can not add an agenda item unless they can get government to agree to do so. I estimate the ratio of government set agenda items vs public requested agenda items is roughly 1,000 to 1, probably even worse.
“I’ll never print anything from you.” – Monterey Herald’s Royal Calkins
Monterey Herald Letter Editor Royal Calkins-Angrily Censoring and Blacklisting Peninsula Residents
After HOPE received an unusually high number of Herald political censorship complaints (on top of their complete lack of response to HOPE’s carefully written Better Water Supply Commentary) I called their letter editor, Royal Calkins, leaving a message asking to meet with him.
He never called back. Reflecting back over the years, he’d never returned any calls and had avoided my many requests to meet with him. However, not one to give up, I kept calling until he answered his phone on July 24, 2009.
After at most two civil sentences from him, when I courteously asked to meet with him about letters not getting printed, he not only refused to meet with me, his voice rose rapidly until he was yelling at me. At that point Calkins said (shouted actually) clearly “I’ll never print anything from you.”
Its hard to find any political issue the Carmel Pine Cone Publisher Paul Miller and I agree upon. His loathing for environmental protection, the laws protecting it, and his sucking up to Clint Eastwood and his Pebble Beach Company forest destruction project are a “good” start.
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Update May 31, 2011: “Finally-The First Official Recognition that Cell-Phones Could Cause Brain Cancer”
Is Cell Phone Brain Damage Impossible?
It is unfortunate that it is necessary to disprove Paul Miller’s January 14, 2011 (unsigned) editorial in the Carmel Pine Cone with science facts, but like Rush Limbaugh, Miller (R-Jumps-to-Conclusions) gets so mightily exercised that when facts get in his way, he just detours around them.
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Led by Mayor Dan Cort —
Pacific Grove’s City Council Gave Away
Pacific Grove’s Beloved Natural History Museum
in June 2009 to a New Organization with No Experience or Money
This huge change to Pacific Grove has —
1. No Business Plan,
2. No Budget,
3. No Money or Funding Guarantee from the New “Owners,”
4. No Public Accountability (Secret meetings and documents)
5. No Fundraising Plan,
6. No Needs Assessment,
7. No Emergency,
8. No Open Bidding Process,
9. We must pay them at least some $150,000 per year, and yet the contract requires them to give our City nothing in return, absolutely nothing, except vague unenforceable ideas.
Details:
* There is No Business Plan !
This Contract will cost our City of Pacific Grove $3 Million dollars over 15 years.
Yet nothing in writing is due until three months after the council gives it away. The Council should not vote on a $3 million dollar contract until after they read a Business Plan that includes a Budget.
* There is No Budget!
But the City Has Guaranteed Costs of at least $180,000 a year (150k plus maintenance).
* There is No Fundraising Plan
* There is No Needs Assessment
Why would we need this. It costs the City just as much money to keep control as to give it away. What’s really going on here?
* There is No Money or Funding Guarantee
from the new (penniless) Organization. They Don’t Promise to Raise any Money – Only to Use “Best Efforts.” They even want our city to give back $185,000 the City received as a grant from the Packard Foundation last year.
* There is No Public Accountability
All Control was Given Away to a Private Group who’ll have Secret Meetings, Secret Plans, Secret Records. The City Must Sue Them (Legal fees) to recover any control or oversight.
* There is No Emergency
The Deadline is Fabricated, the Crisis is Manufactured. With or without the Contract the City has already Budgeted Museum funding for next Year at $150,000+.
Anyone who genuinely Cares about Our Museum and Our Town will still be there when we are ready. Why is this secretive group insisting we act now?
* There was No Open Bidding Process
Other Non-profits should be invited to help City Museum.
* Money Raised at Museum by this group can go to other Groups that have nothing to do with our Museum.
Who will get money from this misguided contract?
* Who Are Those Guys?
It Doesn’t Matter Who They Are
No matter who they are – this is a horrible One-Sided Deal. Our Museum is NOT “Leased” because We, as the City, Get No Money from them – Its Just a Give Away to a Secret Group with No Guarantee of anything.
What we do know about them is —
1. The IRS says this Group is not a Foundation – its a regular non-profit (with no money) yet the group has a misleading name using the term “Foundation.”
2. Group has Changed Presidents three (3) times in only the recent six (6) Months – Chris Hasegawa (Jan. 09), Judd Perry, and Jason Burnett (May 09)
The Pacific Grove City Council lead by Mayor Dan Cort gave away Our Beloved Museum to People who have no Experience Running a Museum and no Money.
Questions –
* Why Does this group want Control?
* What is their Secret Agenda?
* What are the real reasons Mayor Cort fights so hard for this?