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Bq seems a fair measure to me. It's a measure of radioactivity. Would you prefer pounds (or kilograms) of X, with no measure of the rate X is releasing radiation?

It's a bad unit to use in this context because it's a measure of individual atomic decays per second. It's kinda like you asking me how far you have to walk to get to the nearest bus stop and me telling you the distance in angstroms. The scale is just completely devoid of any common reference frame for the number to be intuitively useful (not that most people have a common reference frame for radioactivity). That's why Bq is commonly used by people trying to scare the public about radioactivity - when you're talking about a lot of material like, oh, a field, it results in really, really big numbers.

Let's put it this way. A block of soil one square mile by 1 foot deep (790,000 m^3) has a natural radioactivity of 653 billion Bq. If they excavated 1.1 trillion Bq of radioactive material from Fukushima, then they removed about as much radioactive substances as is naturally contained in 1.7 square miles of soil one foot deep. Of course the piece of information that we're missing (and no it's not in TFA) is how much volume of material they removed. If we knew that, we could come up with a ratio and say "Ah hah! The stuff they removed is x times more radioactive than the natural radioactivity of dirt!"

That's right, radioactive bananas, every single one of them is radioactive.

http://chemistry.about.com/b/2011/07/10/bananas-are-radioactive.htm

Full list of radiologic materials found in nature

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm

Rather, it's the SNAP reactor buried in an avalanche at the headwaters of the Ganges river.

Autumn 1965

Actually, yes I am. Look up the statistics.
Deaths caused by nuclear power vs. other means of power generation leads to funny results actually. Since you won't believe me if I try to mathematically explain it. Let me link to a reliable source: http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm . Another fun set of statistics can be found here (though a less reliable source): http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html .

Risks from reactor accidents are estimated by the rapidly developing science of "probabilistic risk analysis" (PRA). A PRA must be done separately for each power plant (at a cost of $5 million) but we give typical results here: A fuel melt-down might be expected once in 20,000 years of reactor operation. In 2 out of 3 melt-downs there would be no deaths, in 1 out of 5 there would be over 1000 deaths, and in 1 out of 100,000 there would be 50,000 deaths. The average for all meltdowns would be 400 deaths. Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning.

From: http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm

I'm sorry, but that is nothing unusual.

People get Geiger counters and then they have fucked up measurements. That's a coincidence!!

Seriously, I could do exactly the same "measurement" anywhere in the world. Soil has massive radioactivity and these little detectors don't measure up. They are basically good to have ON YOUR PERSON to determine if you are in any contaminated area. That's all. Putting them on the ground will get you *wrong* numbers.

There is a reason why there is specific procedure for testing soil. You CANNOT do what is done in the video - it's misinformation and misleading at very least.

Here's some numbers for radioactivity in soil, oceans, etc.. all from natural background. Read the radiation levels in normal soil.

http://physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm

The so-called "study", however, did claim that a coal plant *emits* radiation like a dirty bomb. Now it is staying in the bottom ash and gets deposited? What is it now? Here are real data. So, we are seeing 3.5-4.5 pCi/g in bottom ash and 5.8 pCi/g in fly ash. As a comparison - let's look at a banana then 3.5 pCi/g. Coal ash is at average twice is active as a banana. God, yeah, hellish technology. Average soil according to the same site: about 14 pCi/g. It is less bloody radioactive than soil. So, these are the data. Also: Mercury retention in fabric filters is greater than 80%.

Actually, information about the amount of radiation needed to cause cancer at the very low end of the spectrum is sketchy at best.

According to Idaho State Uni radiation sickness will only occur at higher concentrations. But there is whole spectrum in between 'safe levels' and levels where radiation sickness will occur. And this spectrum is where cancer is most likely to occur - enough to damage cells that then go on to reproduce cancerous cells but not enough to kill the person outright.

Ironically most of our understanding about how much radiation is too much came from the nuclear explosions in Hiroshima.

I'm guessing the same fear inducing forces that makes folks shy away from food irradiation will take hold here. Stem cell research gets a lot of attention, even if governments aren't likely to fund it either. But research into synthesizing a food source is just as important as stem cell research, if not more important, considering what a huge issue world hunger is today.

This water is just marginally more radioactive than brazil nuts.

Meme created.

1 Curie = 2*10^12 disintigrations/minute
17,000 picocuries = ~~625 disintigrations/second
This level of radiation would require .65 picograms of Tritium per liter of water. This water is just marginally more radioactive than brazil nuts.

Coal plant emit more radioactive material (radon) than nuclear plants

It doesn't matter whether something emits radioactive elements but rather how much is emitted. Living organisms and granite are both naturally radioactive just not enough to cause a problem.

A quick google finds a study indicating that each year 100,000 times more radon is emitted directly by the soil than from coal[1]. Show me a better study that says otherwise and I'll believe you, but until then the radiation argument against coal is bunk.

The same goes for sulfur. The question isn't whether it is emitted, but how much relative to other sources and is it enough to actually matter.

[1] Table 4 in http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/radon.htm

Please allow me to enlighten you on the origins of cancer.

Background: Cancer is an uncontrolled growth of cells in the body. There is, and I am oversimplifying here for the sake of explanation, one reason that this occurs: mutation. When cells divide, a lot of very complicated things need to happen. If any of those things go wrong, a mutated cell can appear. Cells are supposed to destroy themselves if they detect that something is wrong, but sometimes the mutation affects this controlled cell death, so they don't. Combine that mutation with one that causes the cell to divide very rapidly, and you have a cancerous cell. You can read more about the specifics of these kinds of mutations in this wikipedia article.

Statistics: Cells have a lot of safeguards in place to protect them against mutation, so the odds are extremely small that any one particular cell will become cancerous. However, there are a lot of cells in your body. Estimates differ, but most seem to be on the order of 10^13 (a multiple of 10 trillion). So while the odds of one particular cell becoming cancerous are not very good, the odds of one of those trillions of cells becoming cancerous are much better. One "hit" (cancer-related mutation) against a cell might not make that cell cancerous; recall from the previous section that the two mutations needed are (1) the inability to self-destruct and (2) a propensity for rapid division. However, once a cell has a "hit" against it, it becomes more likely that such a cell (or its progeny, since they inherit the "hit") will become cancerous later on. This is why some people are predisposed to develop certain kinds of cancer: some of their cells already have one "hit" against them.

Cancer and Longevity: Over time, those odds become more significant for more people. When people lived shorter lives, cancer was not as great a concern, because few people lived long enough to develop a life-threatening form of cancer. With life expectancies increased into the 70s and 80s for many people, the possibility of developing a life-threatening form of cancer has increased commensurately.

Cancer in Men: This brings us to the most common form of cancer in men, prostate cancer. If they live long enough, most men will develop prostate cancer. This is because prostate cancer rates are primarily linked to age. However, and there are more details in the link, most men never even know they have it; you are more likely to die from other causes (including just plain old age) than from prostate cancer. That is why the fact that "in excess of 50 percent of just the male population will develop some form of cancer" exists: most men will develop prostate cancer.

Personal Electronics and Mutation: The concern that radiation emitted by personal electronic devices causes cancer is still a point of much dispute and ongoing investigation. It is known that radiation damages a cell's DNA, potentially causing cancerous mutations. However, there are a variety of sources of such radiation, as documented on this Idaho State University webpage. This webpage from the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management further documents our greater exposure to natural forms of radiation (cosmic rays, etc) than consumer devices.

So if the implication in your statement is that "from somewhere" must include the radiation from personal electronics, that can't be ruled out. But your statement is constructed in such a way as to suggest that the rates of cancer you mention are tied to the forms of radiation under discussion. Tha

As are bananas, and especially potassium chloride salt substitute. Lots of K-40 in both of those items. A link to a great resource - especially the part about areas of the world that have 400x the 'normal' background radiation level.

Fine. Show them how radioactive bananas, Brazil nuts, and KCl salt substitute are, then, all of which are _ingested_. They all contain fairly high amounts of K-40, and Brazil nuts also contain Ra226! This page has a nice rundown of naturally-occurring radioactive sources present in our environment, including places that have extremely high naturally-occurring background radiation levels.

I've heard that they've also tried "space pizza" prototypes as well.

Reading the article, it seemed obvious to me what the solution is likely to be. Cook them, let them cool to room temperature, cut into slices, package them airtight, and then use existing technology for food irradiation to render them shelf-stable at room temperature. Packaging them as separate slices would likely make them easier to handle, albeit at the expense of extra packaging material (although I think that there would be an interesting publicity shot in a group of astronauts around a pizza floating in the middle of the cabin). There might be some issues with arranging how they sit in the launch vehicle to ensure that they're not placed sideways to acceleration -- 3G across the surface of the pizza would rip the toppings right off.

"Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning"

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm

please read and take note, nuclear power is MUCH safer and just as useful as any form of power generation we have.

So interesting, that i took the liberty of finding the source.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm

Unfortunately, some of the stuff on the Earth is radioactive. So what?

For example, what would a global flood do to carbon dating evidence? How precise is carbon dating? How much do we really know about mountains forming? We assume a lot of things about our planet because we live such short lives and our good 'hard' science isn't that old.

It doesn't take that much effort to read up on carbon dating. Various things can change the relative ratio of the radioactive isotope (Carbon 14, IIRC) to stable carbon isotopes. A global flood would temporarily change the ratio since plants (which would die in great amounts and decay) do selectively absorb a little more of one isotope over the other. But IMHO it would be a temporary effect and rather small. Once the flood was over, the plants would grow back and the old isotope ratios would be reestablished. The radioactive decay rate wouldn't change at all.

Further a global flood would leave a lot of debris and water in passing. For example, there are a number of areas that don't drain to the oceans. A key one is the Great Basin the western US. It actually was mostly covered with water after the end of the last ice age. That lake is now called Lake Bonneville. The main remnant is the Great Salt Lake near Salt Lake City. The bottleneck that drained the lake broke open, so it is claimed, around 15,000 years ago and resulted in a huge flood. There are unmistakeable erosion patterns from that ancient flood. If a global flood had occured since then, it's quite possible that we'd still see a lot of water in some of these basins. Or maybe not since these basins probably would, even under the usual scientific theory, dry out in a few thousand years. The Dead Sea is another such basin.

Second, if there was a global flood, why aren't we see huge erosion features? By this, I mean features hundreds of feet high. Columbia River has plenty of examples of things to look for elsewhere. For example, the Sacramento River in California, USA drains a huge region. I can attest that a key mountain, Mount Diablo lies just south of the outlet of the Sacramento River. But there are no signs of huge flooding. Where are the vast channels carved by the drainage from that flood? And where did all this water go?

PS, I don't believe dinosaurs and humans necessarily lived together, but within a similar frame of history? Quite possibly. Considering how rare fossilized evidence is vis-a-vis the number of a species in history, the lack of such evidence isn't entirely telling.

But that's not a useful observation to make. Lack of evidence is far weaker than a definite counterexample. A T. Rex with a caveman skeleton in its stomach would be far better than what we actually see. Namely, that fossils of hominids never appear near fossils of dinosaurs.

Also, why is being skeptical and essentially rude to people of opposing beliefs held in such high regard in western civilizations? What's wrong with inclusive thinking and open mindedness with a slant toward evidence instead? You already believe chairs will hold your weight without individual testing, and sometimes you turn out to be wrong. Why not consider how much of your life is based on belief that others knew what they were talking about, and not your own proofs. You don't have time to prove everything you rely on, so pick and choose, and spend some of your life living instead of caring so much.

Skeptism is a sign of using intelligence properly rather than being rude. It's not incompatible with open-mindedness. New ideas should be considered, but sometimes they should be rejected. And remember some ideas and belief systems are incompatible with open-mindedness.

According to this page, by Prof. Bernard Cohen, burning coal (the primary source of electrical power) is responsible for around 10,000 deaths per year. You would need to have an average of 25 meltdowns a year for nuclear power to kill as many people.

If not for the hysterical campaigns against nuclear energy, we would not be having this awful dependency on oil and other grossly unhealthy fossil fuels...

Indeed. For all the "OMG, nuclear power is going to kill us all!" folks, here's an interesting bit of information:

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm

Risks from reactor accidents are estimated by the rapidly developing science of "probabilistic risk analysis" (PRA). A PRA must be done separately for each power plant (at a cost of $5 million) but we give typical results here: A fuel melt-down might be expected once in 20,000 years of reactor operation. In 2 out of 3 melt-downs there would be no deaths, in 1 out of 5 there would be over 1000 deaths, and in 1 out of 100,000 there would be 50,000 deaths. The average for all meltdowns would be 400 deaths. Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning.

If you just burned nuclear waste you would be burning 100% nuclear material. This would not be a good thing. You would have a 100% nuclear plume of highly radioactive materials settling over the downwind land.

Think about this for one second.

• Average coal in the US only has less than 3 ppm radionuclides, and only 0.5% of that goes up the smoke stack. Leaving only 15 ppb in the air emissions before further dilution as it diffuses in the air.
• Coal is carbon from biological sources. It doesn't have more ppm of natural radionuclides than anything else around you: wood 11.3 ppm, granite countertop 10 ppm, cement 9.3 ppm, wallboard 4 ppm, brick 21 ppm, etc.
• Uranium 238 and other natural radionuclides decay very slowly and aren't very radioactive. It is not I-131!

Buring coal with 15 ppb uranium 238 emissions, is NOT the same thing as burning 100% highly radioactive nuclear waste!

OMG he's burning a wood campfire, think of the radioactive waste going into the air, 3 times more than coal!
Give me a break, put your brain back in and quit reading nuclear industry marketing materials.

Very true. What they are calling "sand" is actually more on the order of silt or clay in sedimentary geologic terms. There's a picture of a handy little pocket grain size chart here for reference.

The beta radiation from tritium won't even penetrate the outler layer of dead skin cells on your body. It's that weak. Nothing would get out of the battery to trip any detectors.
You have to eat huge amounts of it to get any harmful doses.
See : http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/tritium.htm

I think it is likewise valid to say that conclusions drawn from studying the actual source of one OS are not directly comparable to conclusions drawn merely by observing the apparent effects of the other and speculating about the contents of the actual source.

It is somewhat similar to attempting to determine the members of Falconiformes without looking at the DNA

If that were true then I doubt that we would be seeing naturally occuring nuclear reactors. :)
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/1 6/167237&tid=134&tid=14
That link to APOD should actually have been:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021016.html

I also just found this page with some interesting information about natural radioactivity with stats like Annual estimated average effective dose equivalent received by a member of the population of the United States:
http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm

As you can see, the user agent string gets quite silly as you go down the list, but Internet Explorer is definately losing popularity.

Back in 2002, I mirored another story; the breakdown is available here.

Yes, full of facts from Idaho State University.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/tritium.htm

Yes, full of facts from Idaho State University.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/tritium.htm

I remember The Dalles from the game I used to play in grade school, The Oregon Trail. Some quick googling found this:
http://www.isu.edu/~trinmich/Thedalles.html

Apparently The Dalles is where the Oregon Trail ends and the 100 mile Columbia River rafting to the Willamette Valley began.

BTW, did anyone else here ever play The Oregon Trail? I practically grew up with it. Version 1 on the Apple II only required 48 KB of RAM but it was crap. Version 2 was way better but I thnk it required 96 or 128 KB and used a double sided disk. The first Mac version was awesome, it even supported LAN play via AppleTalk. I recently got to play a modern version at my Mom's school... all sorts of funky pre-rendered 3D, but it was more restrictive and less fun than the original versions.

Of course, Slashdot had to put a space in the URL; here's an actual link: Hand of God Shot. This was old-hat by 1998 as well; people had been running translucent windows for years prior to then.

The best guide to the studies on animals and humans, as of a couple of years ago, was a survey article in Science Magazine, one of the leading professional science publications in the world. Rather than relying on the sorts of news reports you reference (which are not scientific and report information from governments which have a major financial stake in blaming all problems on Chernobyl), I'll take Science Magazine any time

Your evolution based argument is pure supposition, and is unlikely given that there are natural compounds with similar chemical toxicity (other heavy metals) and plenty of natural alpha-emitting natural compounds (e.g. polonium).

As far as the chemical toxicity, this says: :The chemical toxicity of plutonium (a heavy metal) is inconsequential alongside the radiation effects.

In other words, the chemical toxicity is irrelevant.

Overall, ricin, of Al Qaeda fame, is 10-20 times more toxic than plutonium. Botulinum toxins (the reference bacteria strain for which was found in a refrigerator in Iraq by David Kay's team) is 10,000 times more toxic than plutonium.

Furthermore, I do not deny that high levels of radiation cause cancer, not to mention radiation sickness. What is not well known is that people live and prosper in areas of very high natural radiation.

When one looks at low levels of radiation, the sensitivity is undetectable. Low dose radiation level rules are based on an unproven and somewhat implausible theory called Linear, No-threshold Theory (LNT). This theory is used to derive radiation hazard predictions and exposure standards as one of the first uses of the Precautionary Principle. The theory assumes that one can estimate risk at a low level by applying the ratio of that level to a high level where the risk as been established. The risks for low level radiation dosages are hypothetical, having been derived by this ratioing from populations exposed to much higher dosages (uranium miners, Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivors).

Furthermore, the risk is presumed to be based on total lifetime dosage independent of the rate of exposure. Again, this has not been established scientifically.

You mention Hiroshima. Because Hiroshima had no local fallout, all excess radiation exposure occurred in an extremely short period of time - most of it in a few seconds. Furthermore, the levels of dosage received by Hiroshima victims had to be estimated, which could not be done accurately.

There are several problems with LNT. First, it is based on a very old, discredited model of carcinogenesis which assumes that a single point mutation in DNA is the cause of cancer. In fact, the process is far more complex, with cells having the ability to repair mutations.

This means that the odds of acquiring non-repairable damage are higher if the radiation is delivered more quickly, because a single cell may sustain multiple hits. There may also be secondary effects, due to the death of an excessive number of cells at the same time.

great radiobiologist, the late Harald Rossi summarized the situation as follows: "It would appear...that radiation carcinogenesis is an intricate intercellular process and that the notion that it is caused by simple mutations in a unicellular response is erroneous. Thus, there is no scientific basis for the "linearity hypothesis" according to which cancer risk is proportional to absorbed dose and independent of dose rate at low doses" .

However, lets just assume that LNT is correct, since it is widely used.

Consider this (April 2000):

The Chernobyl catastrophe resulted in vast quantities of radionuclides being released into the global atmosphere, which were easy to measure even high in the stratosphere, and far away at the South Pole . It was a godsend for anti-nuclear activists. Yet according to estimates of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR),

• Nuclear proliferation through coal burning (PDF)
• Voyager radioactivity problem
• Natural radioactivity

Notice that cinder blocks may include...cinders. Ash from coal. Concentrated minerals.

You bet, although it'll be short (a Google for radiation, epidemiology, and "Bernard Cohen" will get you more, as will "radiation" and "hormesis".

Idaho State has a site on radiaiton effects and radiation protection. They've also got some stuff on depleted uranium that looks good, although I've not read it in detail.

There is a journal devoted to low-dose radiation studies.

This page has about a zillion references. (Some of them disagree, by the way. This makes the page very useful.)

This paper has a nice discussion of hormesis and the linear no-threshold model.

BELLE Online is a good source in general. Also, the names "Bernard Cohen" and "Edward Calabrese" show up quite often.

One point about the "suspiciously low" cancer rates that I didn't say is that the rates in, eg, Cohen's epi paper are smoking-adjusted.

Hard to say which is the loony toon. The "And how do you pillage the ocean..." or the reply with it's "... human intervention most likely...". In the former case declining fisheries is a valid counter. In the latter, well:

a) the natural ocean background radiation
far exceeds the meagre amounts humans have dumped unless you're sitting right next to the dumped core;

b) recent volvanic activity (above (Mt. St. Helen's) and below (black
smokers) the ocean) has contributed considerably more "pollution" than human industry has (recall some recent eruptions have tangibly affected the atmosphere _globally_); and

c) research (e.g. work of Jan Veizer) has pointed out far more plausible climate altering effects than our meagre industrial effluent. Speaking of which, we still do not have a proven climate model let alone one of the role of various chemicals within the atmosphere except in the most very general sense.

So is humankind the big baddie? We really don't know. Is it blameless? We really don't know. But why is natural pollution OK, but "unatural"(?) pollution bad? Why does it seem that human activity beyond the most primitive animal functions is "bad"?

It might just be that we humans neither appreciate how truly huge this planet is, how truly insignificant we are, and how profoundly ignorant we still are about all that is around us.

Here is my favorite... This guy has his SSN, name, position and his address in this picutre!!
http://inconnu.isu.edu/~ink/pics/misc/badges.gif

I stand by my statement. Uranium before isotope separation is .7 pCi/g. The human body's about .6 pCi/g, counting only the C-14 isotope. Factor in the K-40, the thorium, the radium, and all the other stuff you've got merrily decaying away inside of you, and you're up over .7.

I'm gonna switch to Becquerels 'cause the numbers are easier. 25 Bq/kg for uranium, so 1750 Bq for a 70kg mass of uranium. For 70 kg of human body, you're talking about 15,000 Bq just from the C-14, and another 4400 Bq from the K-40.

Source.

Says the scanner will give you a dose less than 2% of normal dosage picked up from background radiation.

sickboy@inconnu.isu.edu

spambot galore

Yes, plutonium 238 isn't a natural isotope.

Russ Christensen
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...would screen-print a giant appropriate response mozilla advertisement about butterfies and drape it down the side of the building.

My recommendation:
http://inconnu.isu.edu/~ink/new/humor/mozilla1280. jpg

Good and simple information can be found on page 1102 in 6th edition of Halliday's 'fundamentals of physics'.
Oklo, located in the Republic of Gabon, was discovered about 30 years after the first artificial nuclear reactor was built by Fermi et al.

This site also contains rich information.

Conceptually, the logic states that there should be multiple backbones through multiple geographic areas, such that a failure of one provider could be dealt with by routing traffic through the alternate backbone. Realistically this is difficult and expensive, and the primary reason that there are very few top tier connections running across the united states.

If you look at the map from 1992 (NSF Net | XO OC192 Network), you'll notice that there really are only 2 main paths from east coast to west coast. The southern path is probably at least slightly affected by the incoming hurricaine, and the northern path seems to be overloaded or failing for some other reason.

Precautions? Make sure the hardware is sound and easily replaced, and that alternate routes are available in case of failure. The problem is finding alternate routes that aren't completely congested due to the failure.

Your post just irritates me. I get tired repeating myself to five people.

As do scientists to the ICR. We repeat and repeat and the knowledge just bounces off. The ICR repeats its lies. Let's take a look at an example

Radiocarbon dating has been demonstrated repeatedly in the Creation magazine to be wildly inaccurate. They don't date the strata themselves, but send them off to recognised and respected laboratories. I suggest you grab some Creation magazines and read these examples for yourself.

I have. Let's, for example, look at their argument that radioactive decay rates aren't constant This is of course very important since a dozen different radioactive clocks date the earth and the universe to a lot older than 6K years, and the ICR cannot allow that since they must swear that they believe the 6K date.

First, we see that experimental decay rates have a 1% error bar on them. Yep they do: the article then goes on to state that this shows that the rates could vary tremendously since nobody has checked in the last 50 years. That's simply wrong: even without experiments directly checking, people operating nuclear power plants would know. So would biological researchers who work with short-lived isotopes daily.

The first two reasons why to believe in changing decay rates aren't worthy of discussion. Backed by experimental data both would win Nobel prizes when shown true. (There can be slight alterations in some decay rates, most commonly those with k-capture in certain molecules since k-capture involves the electron density around the nucleus, but these don't affect most radioactive clocks.) Why not publish and win fame and fortune?

Radiohaloes: I assume they are talking about Po halos. Old argument

Speed of light changing? Didn't you claim in another post that ICR had given up on this one? Given that c is a fundamental constant, the universe itself wouldn't exist with a large change in c.

Observed values of half lives. He's somehow amazed that thay have such different values for different isotopes. This is such a bizarre comment that I don't even know what to make of it. Is he also amazed at the difference in the strength of gravity and the strong nuclear force?

He now goes on to do some curve fitting. His math is correct, but he gives no reason *why* we should believe alpha and beta are changing: he simply plugs in random numbers until he gets the answer he wants. That's not how science is done.

Now, let's see if there's any good evidence that alpha doesn't change. Oh, here we go. SN1987a happened 170,000 years ago and the isotopes created by the supernova decay at exactly the same rate they do on earth today. Or perhaps the evidence from a natural atomic reactor that atomic physics was the same ~1.7 billion years ago as it is today?

This is pretty typical creationist stuff. The arguments presented make little sense, extrapolate from experimental error into something huge, make up numbers where appropriate and finally don't agree with what we see in the real world.

I'm going to stop here. There's no real point in further discussion: you've decided that the world is 6K years old and that evolution is a sham. If you want to believe that I won't further disabuse you.

Well, I managed to mirror the front page before the machine went down (hopefully others can mirror my copy before my machine goes down!) http://inconnu.isu.edu/~ink/c64

source http://otc.isu.edu/bnetd/src/

source http://otc.isu.edu/bnetd/src/

1. online course materials via products like Blackboard (grades, tests, syllabi, lecture notes, discussions, etc)

Done.

2. Wireless networking (encrypted and/or MAC filtered) in libraries and public places

Done; and the wireless is in most campus buildings.

3. Wireless laptops, either for everyone or for "borrowing" perhaps at the library or other public places.

We have laptops to loan out, and students can get free wireless cards for their own laptops, so "done".

4. Intelligent routing to prevent the gnutella users from sucking up all the bandwidth. You can do this without entirely blocking the ports, thus letting it happen but preserving the bulk of the bandwidth for other (presumably more legitimate) uses.

We have a Packeteer shaper, so "done".

5. Internet stations placed in public places for general email and web.

That's been done for years already.

6. IMAP mail (including a Web client) if you currently use POP.

That's been done for a long time as well. What do we do now? In the midst of a buget crisis (Idaho State University), we have spent a ton of money on technology. We are now installing these useless "smart boards" that came with state-of-the-art laptops that can copy the contents down (let me tell you, facutly are just lining up to take notes for their students [sarcasm]). It seems we may have too much money for technology? Is there nothing left?

We also just finished installing our first all-Linux lab for the computer science department (yay!). We could have spent more money if we had used Windows, I suppose...