Monthly Archives: February 2012

Faster Than Light Neutrinos Explained?

From Science Insider, there is a possible explanation for the recently observed “faster than light” neutrinos. The Neutrinos were clocked at faster-than-light speeds on their way form CRN in Switzerland to a detectors site in Italy. I had originally proposed that the neutrinos were merely very hungry but unwilling to eat Swiss food, and since they were on their way to Italy, why not go FTL?

The research at first was assumed to most likely be some kind of mistake, but a Mulligan Redo Procedure clearly demonstrated that the most obvious errors could not explain the observation, which violates The Laws of Physics.

It turns out that the reason that the Neutrinos appeared to go faster than the speed of light is exactly the same reason most of these things happen:
Continue reading Faster Than Light Neutrinos Explained?

Space Buckyballs

PASADENA, Calif. — Astronomers using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the microscopic carbon spheres had been found only in gas form in the cosmos.

Formally named buckministerfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes. They are made up of 60 carbon molecules arranged into a hollow sphere, like a soccer ball. Their unusual structure makes them ideal candidates for electrical and chemical applications on Earth, including superconducting materials, medicines, water purification and armor.

Details and more at NASA

Is the gun permitting process a failure?

I suppose that depends on what we think the process is for. I would have hoped that gun permits serve the very important role of making sure that gun owners are more likely than they otherwise might be to know how to properly handle guns, and that guns are kept out of the hands of people who will do damage with them.

Japete at Commongunsense.com suggests that this is not necessarily the case:

Continue reading Is the gun permitting process a failure?

Our Mayor on Bill O’Reilly

R.T. Rybak is the mayor of Minneapolis, and he’s one of the better mayors ever.

He is also the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.

I love the way our local news covered this story. As soon as O’Really interrupted R.T. to shut down any actual discussion, the local news caster jumped in and interpreted O’Really.

Bring Your Gun to the Florida State Fair

First of all, how the heck to you have a State Fair in the middle of the winter time????

Second, … in case you needed to know, you can carry your firearms at the fair this year! Yahooo!

Following complaints by a gun rights group, and a law passed by the Florida Legislature last year, you can now carry your gun at the Florida State Fair.

“We have changed the policy to comply with the state law – it allows a person with a concealed weapon permit to come in with a firearm,” said Charles Pesano, executive director of the State Fair Authority. “We’ve changed some signs to reflect that.”

Instead of “No Weapons,” the signs now say, “No Unlawful Weapons.”

Film at 11. Well, actually, film right now (This is about the whole fair, not the gun packing part of the fair):
Continue reading Bring Your Gun to the Florida State Fair

Zombie Bill Reawakens in Oklahoma

A bill in Oklahoma that would, if enacted, encourage teachers to present the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of “controversial” topics such as “biological evolution” and “global warming” is back from the dead. Entitled the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act,” House Bill 1551 was introduced in the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 2011 by Sally Kern (R-District 84), a persistent sponsor of antievolution legislation in the Sooner State, and referred to the House Common Education Committee. It was rejected there on February 22, 2011, on a 7-9 vote. But, as The Oklahoman (February 23, 2011) reported, the vote was not final, since a sponsor “could ask the committee to bring it up again this session or next year.” And indeed, on February 20, 2012, Gus Blackwell (R-District 61) resurrected the bill in the House Common Education Committee.

Here is the bill

Here is the whole write-up from the NCSE.

Minnesota Redistricting: How will this affect Michele Bachmann, others?

Moments ago, a judicial panel released the new redistricting plan for Minnesota. This is a process that is traditionally started by the legislature, then when they finish disagreeing on it for a while, it is handed over to some judges, who make the final decition.

Michele Bachmann’s place of residence has been placed in the same district as Betty McCollum. McCollum, a Democrat, is very popular in her district, and Bachmann, a Republican, is also popular in hers. Very likely, McCollum would beat Bachmann, and Bachmann sees the writing on the wall. Therefore, she is going to run in a different district than the one she lives in, but essentially in the same district she’s already representing, plus or minus bits and pieces around the edges.

The districts are not all that different than they were before at the large scale. The fourth district, McCollum’s has grown a bit and eaten part of the 6th district, Bachmanns. Meanwhile, the 6th district has been extended to the west a bit, into a region that I think is simply more Bachmann-country. In addition, the sixth has been extended to the south, into an area that may be mixed with respect to Bachmann’s support base. On balance, I think (subject to correction) that Bachmann has lost some of the pesky liberals from the area in which she actually lives, and gained some likely supporters in other areas. In other words, if she was going to be hard to unseat, she is now harder to unseat.

Meanwhile, my district, where I’m supporting DFL candidate Sharon Sund, has changed a bit as well, including a larger area to the south. It is unclear to me what this will mean in terms of relative support for the Republican incumbant vs. the DFL challenger. At first glance, I don’t see a lot of change.

Here is the judicial branch web site on redistricting.

Peter Gleick, The Heartland Revelations and Situational Journalism

Peter Gleick, renowned scientist, great guy, crappy journalist.

First, let me catch you up. On Valentine’s Day, there was a release of documents from the Heartland Institute documenting their budget and the status of their fund raising, as well as their strategy for protecting corporate interests in light of overwhelming evidence that Anthropogenic Global Warming and other climate change requires us to alter our global energy strategy. Heartland has been involved in science denialsm for some time. They are one of the groups that worked to deny evidence of the negative health effects of smoking, among other things. Heartland, a Libertarian “think” tank is a relatively small player in the overall climate discussion, and the documents indicate that the annual balance of their budget has been diminishing owing to reductions in contributions. Nonetheless, the documents painted a picture of systematic dishonesty. In particular, the documents seemed to indicate that Heartland was launching a bought and paid for effort to interfere with the teaching of good science in our K-12 educational system, replacing honest science with the willful misdirection we know of as science denialism. Continue reading Peter Gleick, The Heartland Revelations and Situational Journalism

The Heartland Science Denial Documents and the Future of the Planet

The best available evidence now suggests that the most damning of the “Heartland Documents” — the strategy memo which explicitly states that Heartland’s strategy is to interfere with good science education in order to advance their political agenda — is legitimate. The legitimacy of the document was being questioned because it was physically and stylistically different from the other documents with which it was released. We now know that the strategy memo was sent to climate scientist Peter Gleick and that Peter then took steps to acquire corraborating documents from Heartland (see “The Origin of the Heartland Documents.”) The “one of these things is not like the others” defense is now obviated.
Continue reading The Heartland Science Denial Documents and the Future of the Planet

Japan Nuclear Disaster Update # 43: why do we feel the need to be alarmist?

i-a0a364fd0eef55066400b5ac1ceac8cb-Fukushima_explosion.jpgBecause the situation is alarming.

There is still a great deal of uncertainty about where the melted-down fuel at Fukushima I’s reactors is resting. TEPCO and various NPA’s have insisted all along that they know where it is, and everything is under control. The most recent information from TEPCO is that the fuel is contained in the containment vessel, but they won’t be able to confirm that for ten years when it cools down enough to go have a look. Recent efforts to peek inside the rubble have been hampered. One attempt resulted in very blurry photographs … apparently the high levels of radiation mess up the camera. An interesting development is afoot: Scientists at Nagoya have a muon camera! Muons are part of the background radiation stuff that is wafting through us and all our matter at a low level all the time. Even though muons can pass through most matter without even noticing it, the densest of matter does absorb some of them. The Nagoya scientist have been using a “muon camera” to photograph the insides of volcanoes. You set up the film, filter out other background radiation, and wait a very long time (weeks, months, etc.) and the muons eventually leave an image. This could be used to detect the very dense nuclear fuel at Fukushima. It may not work because of the high levels of radiation at the crippled plant, but it is probably worth a try. TEPCO so far seems to be ignoring the offer. We have come to the point where we can assume that if a method of analysis could show that things are worse off than TEPCO’s rose-colored-glasses version that they will resist using that method, so don’t expect the muon camera to be installed any time soon, or ever. Unless, of course, some outside agency simply comes in and takes over.

Speaking of lies and deceit, we also learned of a worst-case scenario report produced after the meltdown that indicated the distinct possibility of large amounts of radiation being spewed over a large area that would have actually required a voluntary evacuation of … wait for it …. Tokyo. This was a worst-case scenario, and that did not happen, but it was considered plausible. The disturbing part of this is that a small number of officials got hold of it and decided it was too scary to tell anyone about, so it was suppressed. Just like in all those overdone highly implausible science fiction movies.

Water and temperature levels at Fukushima I are still varying in ways that are not understood and that should cause concern.

Thousands of tons of crushed stone was mined from near the Fukushima plant after the meltdowns but before anyone thought to restrict the use of radioactive rock from the area, and has been used to build about 60 homes; another several dozen homes are about to be built with the same stone. Also, radioactive gravel has been used to build walls at an Elementary school and in roads and pathways.

In Nihonmatsu, children wearing dosimeters were found to have been exposed to alarmingly high levels of radiation. When the source of this radiation was discovered, it turned out to be from concrete made with this radioactive gravel. The levels of radiation inside the homes made from this concrete was higher than the radiation levels outside the home. Of the families that had moved into the apartments, many had moved from the Fukushima evacuation zone.

The party line of NPA’s regarding Chernobyl is that nothing really bad happened there despite rumors to the contrary. Now we hare hearing that noting really bad happened at Fukushima, but the comparison is being made to Chernobyl … Everything is fine at Fukushima because unlike Chernobyl, where “…people were dying from huge, high exposures, some of the workers were dying very soon…” nothing like that is happening in Japan. This would be funny if it wasn’t so demented.

Meanwhile, at Fukushima, where nothing has gone wrong and everything is fine, researchers have found that bird populations are dwindling as a result of radioactive fallout.

In the first major study of the impact of the world’s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, the researchers, from Japan, the US and Denmark, said their analysis of 14 species of bird common to Fukushima and Chernobyl, the Ukrainian city which suffered a similar nuclear meltdown, showed the effect on abundance is worse in the Japanese disaster zone.

One of the effects of increased ambient radiation is reduction in brain size in birds, and it can be safely guessed that this may happen in humans as well. More information about this is here.

A study of mother’s milk at Fukushima is starting, and there is now concern over locust consumption … the edible insects may be sufficiently radioactive that they should be avoided, which is a bummer, because they are rather tasty.

The Japanese have developed a way to plow their fields so that the surface radiation readings are reduced. The radioactive stuff is plowed deeper where it will not be read by surface sensors. We assume plants will still be able to absorb the radioactive elements via their roots. A recent study documented high levels of radiation in earthworm castings in the Fukushima area. We wonder if it is easier to catch radioactive fish with radioactive worms? One study has also shown that the fact that a large percentage of the radioactive fallout from Fukushima fell into the sea, things are better than they otherwise might be. On land. Of course, a month after the multiple meltdown, it is now known that discharge at the plant (into the ocean) had 45,000,000 times the amount of radioactive Cesium-137 than it did before the multiple meltdown. This is not of great immediate concern because the ocean is big and the amount of radiation is small enough to be quickly dispersed, but there is concern that over subsequent months and years persistent radioactive material will be concentrated in fish.

Here’s a very very interesting piece by Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen about Reactor 1. We’ll call this the Brunswick Effect:

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The significance of this is that a post-Fukushima “fix” on this design of reactor will not be effective. The nuclear power industry appears to be about to blow it. Again. Literally.

Speaking of which, we note that one important source of power at Fukushima, that might have allowed continued collection of data during the crisis, had been turned off and left off months before the earthquake, by mistake. The reason that this is important is because it is a just discovered, uncontrolled goof with consequences (GWC) that is undoubtedly NOT being incorporated into the much touted “post-Fukushima” considerations in new plant design and operation procedure. The nuclear power industry assures us that they’ve learned everything they can from Fukushima and has incorporated all the appropriate changes in future new construction, design, ongoing procedure and licensing. But they have not considered Arnie’s elastic bolts or random GWS’s such as this one.

Also from Fairwinds, something on BEIR and health risks to children.

Cancer Risk To Young Children Near Fukushima Daiichi Underestimated from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.

Oh, and remember “Fukushima II” (the other Fukushima plant)? “One Japanese expert, Hiromitsu Ino, said a Containment Vessel at Fukushima II (Daini) is broken, and they are trying to repair it. It was probably caused by the earthquake, not tsunami.”

Ooops

All this and more are documented below in Ana’s Feed:

Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update # 43: why do we feel the need to be alarmist?