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USPS Irradiation Damages Electronics
meehawl writes: "Bummer. Turns out the USPS's new Electron Beams anthrax zappers can erase and sometimes permanently damage CompactFlash cards. I wonder what other sensitive electronics will get wiped, not to mention seeds, film, some plastics, and so on. I guess it's more reason to use Fedex and UPS, at least unless and until they deploy these beam weapons as well. All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people? Some people think using the beams will lead to more deaths and injuries among operators. Meanwhile, electron beam makers, SureBeam, just got an analyst upgrade." Err, and be careful what you irradiate.
I can see this being a really big deal to the type of people who'll have conniptions over anything sciencey and scary-sounding... you know, the same ones who lobby against genetically-engineered foods with signs like "NO FRANKENFOODS!".
"And now they're putting radiation in our mail! Where will the madness end?"
These tend to be the same people who are afraid of microwave ovens...
On the more realistic side of things, though, I can see that being a real problem for all sorts of electronics. It's not really the sort of endurance test they're put through in QA.
"All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people? " What's next? "All this security measures for this 4 planes a year that get hijacked?" "All this bombs for this really small percentage of women that are being tortured?"
It isn't widely publicized, but a person known as Bruce Banner was involved in the development of the electron beam. During testing, he and the photographer that the Daily Bugle sent over to cover the event, Peter Parker, were caught inside the test chamber of the electron. Peter Parker also had the misfortune of having his pet spider with him at the time, which unfortunately did not survive being irradiated.
This can only lead us to one conclusion; Bruce Banner and Peter Parker are Batman and Robin.
-- Dan
"All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people?"
Yes, you inhumane fuckwit.
To paraphrase Fyodor Dostoevsky, "If the existence of the entire universe, including your happiness, necessitated the torture of even one little girl, would you want it?"
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
That's an interesting question - what price a human life. Is 100 man years of inconvenience to everyone else worth say, one human life? Has anybody considered the thousands of man years invested in the WTC's construction. In some ways, those lost years might be considered part of the death toll. They have to now be re-spent for reconstruction. Time that people could have spent living or with their families.
``All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people''
What a short-sighted thing to say. You're whining that protections against the launch of a biological attack might erase your digital camera pictures? Firstly, it is the postal service's precautions that have limited the death toll to five; and secondly, if you mean to imply that a mere five deaths doesn't warrant this astounding level of inconvenience, then what death toll would be needed to justify these measures? ie, how long would you wait? This isn't like holding secret military tribunals or any of the other civil-liberty-violating measures that have been discussed -- this is a simple, safe, effective, and prudent thing to do. I'm sure that the first time a UPS package or FedEx package is found to contain Anthrax or anything similar, then the private couriers will immediately begin irradiating their packages too. In fact, it might even become required by law.
If you're sending something by mail that could perhaps be damaged by certain handling in the mail, you can write a message on the outside of the package requesting special handling. ``Photographs: do not bend.'' ``Perishable: do not freeze.'' Sensitive materials ranging from high speed film to live queen bees are routinely sent through the mail, and it works just fine. I'm sure ``Sensitive: Do not irradiate'' or something of that nature would work just fine. Your mail might be ever so slightly delayed due to the alternate handling, but you'll live.
I found the exact quote. I should have looked harder before making the original post, but the point is the same:
Taken from The Brothers Karamazov
Ivan: "Tell me yourself, I challenge you answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature that little child beating its breast with its fist, for instance--and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."
Alyosha: "No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
There is cause for concern; true, anyone worried about their mail turning radioactive is misguided:
things don't become radioactive by being irradiated.
(except if it's fast neutron radiation, in which case radioactivity may be induced)
On the other hand there is cause for concern when it comes to the chemistry.
When organic compounds get hit by gamma radiation, radicals are formed,
chemical bonds are broken, etc. It's a big mess,
and given the huge diversity of substances being irradiated, it's far to early to tell if
dangerous compounds are formed or not. (probably mostly:not)
One example is that gamma radiation can cause oxygen to form ozone, which is poisonous.
I'd like to think that GM foods can be safe, but the doc shows a nice ad of a happy family underneath a birds nest promoting DDT(which is from the 50's) before they knew the real dangers.
Getting back to the irradiation, this step was more for easing the general public opinions of anthrax letters. We all wanted to see action, and this was the best idea used. Now that we know that the side affects are worse than the prevention, it's time to scrap it and start over. Maybe we can genetically modify canaries to die whenever they detect anthrax spores(kinda a throwback to the coalminers)
I really hate Dan Patrick.
...is what is going to happen when someone smuggles C4 onto a plane in his ass, and gets caught. Full-body-cavity searches for all passengers!
This is rapidly getting ridiculous. And I feel no safer.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I think what we're seeing is the first of many "oopses" that show that strong irradiation of mail may be approaching this problem in the wrong fashion. As I implied in the subject line, they're driving a finishing nail with a sledge hammer.
Rather than focus on irradication of what most probably is not there (anthrax), we'd do well to focus on methods that allow us to detect its presence in a non-destructive and non-damaging fashion to the contents of the mail. Once detected, we can use the irradication method, or perhaps we'd choose isolation and chemical testing in order to find the source of the moron that was putting anthrax in the mail.
For instance, we've come a long way in x-raying luggage, adding expert systems that attempt to assist the operator in identifying potentially hazardous items. Something similar is needed that can identify chemical compounds behind barriers such as paper, plastic, and perhaps even metal.
If I'm correct, what this method would need to look for (where anthrax is concerned) is a chemical residue or trace, in powder form. I like the idea of using a beam of radiation, since it can pass through a sealed package and its contents without causing us to become a society that searches people's mail by hand.
What I think would be optimum is a very low intensity radiation at just the right frequency to excite the structure of the Anthrax such that it immediately shows up as a "hot spot" on the detector circuitry, yet with the beam kept at a low enough power that flash memory cards don't get erased or damaged, film doesn't get fogged, paper doesn't release noxious fumes, etc...
Do I know how to accomplish this? Sorry, not my field... But I'm hoping someone whose field this is sees my comments. Perhaps it'll trigger an idea in the right direction.
Oh dear..
I'm afraid your thinking is just a touch flawed. Yeah, Americans had their head in the anthrax bucket for a month straight, and it only killed a handful of people. By your logic, we should just dismiss what happened on 9/11 because only 3000 people died, and only a handful of buildings collapsed. We should go after Boeing because after all, they manufacture FLYING DEATH WEAPONS that PERMANENTLY DAMAGE stuff.
Don't be so dramatic. The same technology used to irradiate your Compact Flash at the post office is the same technology used to heat your damn burrito at CIrcle K. Take your tinfoil hat off and relax.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I thought you needed a ton of permits to work with ionizing radiation, and it would stand to reason that to get them you would have to prove what you are doing is safe. How did they manage to get the permits and get this started so suddenly?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
It's the old "import an animal to destroy a local pest" problem all over again.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people?
I was glad to see so many more people completely pissed off at that comment. The poster must not have heard that the last anthrax sent to DC was potent enough to kill "hundreds of thousands of people". When the government was too scared to open it thinking they couldn't contain it, I took notice.
It doesn't help much that I live about 15 minutes from West Trenton, NJ -- the source of all that Anthrax going to NYC and Washington.
Intelligent Life on Earth
According to FAS, it is massive. LD50 (ie 50% killing rate) for 55kGy is
about 80%. The big ass electron gun is really equipped for the atomic age. Maybe, eBay and Amazon will office us a choice of "radiation hardening" as gift wrap for our electronic gadget.
PS: I know how will be the survivers of WWIII. The postal worker who hides within the within that mail disinfecting machine. :-)
All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people? RTFM.
I wonder if the irradiation process degrades latex?
We could be blameing the government for a rash of unwitting pregnancies.
Course, it won't affect the slashdot crowd. Slashdotters don't have sex, they fsck.
~z
sig?
In this cases it was not the workers that were irradiated. It was just the package. But I guess it cooked something, accounting for the fumes.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Only five people?
/. staff for even posting the article. C'mon, guys, READ the damn thing first.
HOW MANY before it's worth the meaningless contents of your compact flash cards?
Even YOUR life is worth the contents of that flash card.
Not many people have 'make a fool out of myself before thousands of people and drag a few other people down with me' on thier to-do list, but by golly you managed!
-10 out of 10 for style to you,
-100 out of 10 to the
/*
Even if you think some unknown number of destroyed compact flash cards is an acceptable price for killing bacterial spores, that will rarely be present, what about other things that can be damaged or destroyed? What about blood, stool and tissue samples that are mailed to medical labs for testing? How many people will die because the sample was degraded or destroyed, and the test result was incorrect? What about prescription medicines that are damaged by the radiation? Sure, the packages can be labelled. We all know how delivery services take careful note of labels on packages.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
People who were arguing the value of human life vs. data in the posts below, calm down. Remember you live in America, land of the great. Every day your country proves that human life is worth far less than other things, such as.. money, and... er.. money. Why build tall, even when it endangers lives? because it saves money. Why put 100's of people into one big plane?.. money. Why were sufficent measures not put in place to [try and] stop hi-jackings and suicide attacks _before_ they happened? yes, because its was a waste of money. Im not even going to talk about how violating your sacred first amendment for the dmca is because of money, that would be offtopic :)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
There's good and bad in everything, I guess.
I dont know why they are irradiating mail, we all know that it doesnt work well against objects, you need something fleshy like zerg zerglings or overlords.
.mincus
Your Geek-dom has finally put technology ahead of human life.
Congrats
They've been saying this since the process started. In fact, the plastic bad that my irradiated mail arrived in had the following note on it:
The letter was yellow and fell apart to some extent when I opened the envelope.
Since others have commented on the relative worth of those five people's lives, I'll just point out that there was significant disruption due to this "campaign", including: a postal worker strike at a office; the shutting down and decontamination of a federal building (a suite of which is, AFAIK, still closed); the salaries of numerous FBI agents who's job these past six months has been to try to solve this case; panic, fear, and stress to the lives of thousands, if not millions...
"All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people?"
People die for MANYreasons.
How many kids die from drugs every day?
How many people die from poverty?
etc...
Without defending the original statement, what we are doing here is deciding where to spend time, money and energy preventing deaths. Effectively though are we deciding who is more important to save? How many Americans would give up cheap gas and larger and larger SUVs so people in the Middle East, Africa, and South America could eat decent meals, get affordable medication, and learn to read? How many Americans would essentially take a hit to their checkbook for an implementation aimed to save lives other then their own (be it the people in their town, state, ethnic group, country, intl alliance), and not because said plan didn't aim to protect them too, but because there was no threat to them in the first place. For instance, would an affluent suburb support inner-city sports or reading programs aimed to reduce crime and dropout rates. Not likely. They would most likely brush it off as "not my [city's, state's, neighborhood's] problem". I would hope that many Americans would support these things, but I have my doubts. We have no attention span (50 yrs TV, 100 yrs marketing), we don't know our own history (one thats both bloody and brutal but heroic and rich), we are short-sighted (oops, we trained those guys?).
sig
Not to piss on your parade, but if you truely believe that I suggest to be a tad more critical towards your ministry of propaganda.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I mailed a CD-R to my brother. When it arrived, it looked almost exactly like a CD-R that had been intentionally destroyed by being put in a microwave for 5 seconds. I ended up hand-delivering a replacement (this was over the Christmas holidays) since I was going to be in town anyway. I can't imagine that they would be using radiation strong enough to do this, but what else could account for this level of damage?
All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people?
Although the self-righteous amoung us have pounced on this statement, it's not out of line. We can't substantially change our way of life every time someone dies.
Look at automobiles. A 1981 VW Rabbit (Golf in Europe) weighed about 1,800lbs. A modern Golf weighs in at about 2,800lbs. Most of that weight gain is because of safety regulations requiring everything from stronger bumpers to airbags to bracing in the doors. In another 50 years, will economy cars weigh as much as Chevy Suburbans due to ever-increasing safety regulation?
What if it could be shown that taking people's guns away wuld prevent deaths? In the U.S. in 1998, there were 30,708 deaths from firearms: Suicide 17,424; Homicide 12,102; Accident 866; Undetermined 316. And no rational person could possibly claim that self-defense uses of firearms saved anywhere near that many lives. So does that death toll justify repealing the Second Amendment (right to bear arms)?
We are slowly paralyzing ourselves as a country. We need to realize that we can't legislate or regulate death out of existence. People are going to die, sometimes tragically before their time, no matter how many laws, procedures, rules, and regulations we put into place.
Should I have my er! oregano courier have the next package routed via the US, since the contents might be EXTRA POTENT upon arrival ?
Anxiously awaiting your answer...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
What if you mother, father, wife or kids got anthrax from the mail? Would it be worth it then?
Please. Most of the threads here are just (forgive me for saying) moronic. "All this for just 5 deaths", "This is the last nail being hammered into our coffin", "Oh dear me... my rights have been violated". Please.
How many people buy a hard drive and expect it to be shipped in an envelope without padding or an anti-static bag? None. You ship me a drive like that, I'll send it right back without testing it. Sure, it might work; but that's not the point. It may or may not work very long. Not worth the risk.
Similarly, now when you ship a compact flash card, you'll have to protect it properly. Duh. A hard drive isn't susceptible to this beam because it is surrounded by the plastic case... which is covered on both sides with about 2 or maybe 3 mil of aluminum. So, from now on, ship compact flash cards wrapped in aluminum foil or, once "professional" baggies are available, use those.
An electron beam needn't be harmful, folks. I can't remember the exact equation of how far the electrons will penetrate, but in my work with Auger Electron Spectroscopy, a 3keV beam only gets me about a nanometer into the surface of a material. Going to higher energy proportionally increases the depth--but really this isn't something that's difficult to shield against. This isn't nearly as big a deal as people are making it out to be.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
I can see this being a really big deal to the type of people who'll have conniptions over anything sciencey and scary-sounding... you know, the same ones who lobby against genetically-engineered foods with signs like "NO FRANKENFOODS!".
I normally don't bother feeding the trolls (even with genetically-modified foods), but here I'll make an exception.
Ever hear of Monsanto?
They're a corporate giant thats a big player in the GM field. Based on their track record, I wouldn't trust them to provide food for my dog or cat...never mind for my own consumption.
Here are a few lowlights:
Monsanto recently sued canadian canola farmer Percy Schmeiser for patent infringement. The reason? His neighbour had been sowing Monsanto GM canola seed and some of the seed blew onto his property.
The Washington Post recently published this article detailing how for decades Monsanto dumped PCBs into streams in a small Alabama town despite having studies from the '60s describing the damage that was being done.
Monsanto is the parent company of Nutrasweet, one of the nastiest substances approved for human consumption.
Monsanto is also involved with a GM seed technology known as terminator. Terminator involves producing seeds that grow sterile plants, requiring the farmer to aquire new seeds from the company every growing season. It shouldn't take much imagination to realise that if these plants cross-polinate with unmodified plants, the results could be catastrophic.
Is this a company you would trust and whose products you want to be putting in your mouth?
Maybe next time you see people waving signs that that say "NO FRANKENFOODS", you might ask why before pointing the finger and screaming "Conspiracy nut!"
With other technologies, there's an element of trust involved. Break the trust and you will get flak every time you try to introduce something new...good or bad. Have the individuals making these sorts of decisions shown themselves to be responsible, looking out for our best interests? Here's your answer: After approving Nutrasweet for use in carbonated beverages, the Commissioner of the FDA, Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr left his post and went to work for Nutrasweet's PR division.
You're using her as bait, Master!
The radiation level that the USPS is testing now (and maybe has in production already) is so high that even radiation-hardened microchips (for space and defense systems) cannot withstand it. Also, some packages have been reportedly catching on fire because of the high radiation levels.
I use thermal labels to address my business mail and I've had several returned with "Address Unreadable". The label turns jet black after irradiation.
It was lucky that I didn't use a thermal label for the return address as well or I never would have known that this was happening.
55 kGray = 5500 kilorad.
Radiation-hardened ICs can withstand "only" 300 kilorad .
Think it's safe to send your consumer-grade electronics through the mail?
FYI, USPS outsourced Priority Mail to FedEx last year. So I wouldn't be surprised if we saw FedEx scanning packages in a similar fashion.
The field of risk management is perhaps where society is at it's stupidest. If you calculate the dollars spent per saved life for supposed life saving actions, there is a span of 9 magnitudes, IIRC.
It's next to impossible to put forward such arguments, especially in the very emotional times after great losses of lives when safety decisions are made. Still, it's an undisputable fact that there is a limited amount of resources, and if you choose to put it where you can save one life for $100M, rather than where it can be done for $1k, you're not really saving lifes, even if you think you do.
About 6500 people die every day in the US. I haven't done the math, but I feel pretty safe saying that if we spent as much per life saved on other dangers than mailed anthrax, we would be bankrupt many times over.
So why does this happen? Because of the intense media coverage, anthrax is on everybodys mind, and the government has to "do something". Thus, it's really not about "saving lifes", but about PR and saving face.
I was under the impression that they were just doing letters. What point is it to do packages?
Why don't I just line my box with lead or aluminum foil (obviously if I know how to make anthrax, I can calculate how thick the foil needs to be). Then put my anthrax in it.
People get all kinds of letters from strange sources. But hardly ever strange packages, right? Except of course for public figures, but perhaps their mail should be treated differently.
It's just more SNAKE OIL designed to make everybody feel good. Like checking for nail clippers at the airport.
As for the five lives comment, well I guess in the USA we value whatever life is broadcast on the evening news. But I agree with the poster's sentiment, there's a balance to be made between the illusion of safety and the day-to-day functioning of society.
Profit Over People causes companies to dump chemicals into the rivers, streams, bays, oceans, and air without thought to humans.
Profit Over People causes the EPA to grant quotas to companies allowing them so much harm in a year, and if they don't use it all up, it carries over to the next year (unlike our vacation time).
Concern for Human Life extends far beyond. A simple thing such as an Anthrax scare, that harms so few, causes panic, and allows the USPS to potentially do much much more harm. How can someone possibly think this safe to begin with?
Will anyone ever test the effects before deployment? In a word: No. In a statement: Not without people getting off their a$$e$, getting informed, and voting. Because when citizens make decisions, it won't be to allow untested genetic engineering on the dinner table, toxic chemicals in their drinking glasses, and irradiated mail on the hall table.
I apparently damages cd-r media (which I've always thought to be somewhat sensitive anyways). CD's that work here in colorado don't by the time the get to a friend in Washington, DC, but they're just fine when I send them to destinations that aren't likely to be using the irradiating equipment yet (small town Nebraska). This is just speculation.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
your understanding of science astounds me. the reason we (god bless the united states of america) use anthrax as a biological weapon is that it's indestinguishable from several million other fine powdery substances. You ever notice how when there's an anthrax scare no information about the validity is released for some three days? We have to take samples and grow cultures. While it's not unreasonable to expect the usps to take an extra three days to deliver a given piece of mail do you really them to make a practice of it?
and as far as your radiation detection goes I don't know why you think you know anyhting about science. I found your post amusing because for the most part people who have no understanding of current technical capabilities, such as yourself, refrain from making public statements of their ignorance. Stop watching star trek and pick up the textbooks for those science classes you failed in high school. you'll find them just as boring as you did last time, but much more realistic and applicable
circumvention device?
Wouldn't that violate the DMCA?
Reality has a liberal bias
I don't even have to repeat the quote from the title, you all know what it is. It is tasteless, uncaring, and selfish in a disturbing way.
It is even further disturbing to see the discussions about it here... how everyone who argues against such emotion gets even more selfish, uncaring responses, and how some people are relating this to deaths from drunk driving or careless eating.
This is a PUBLIC HEALTH SAFETY MATTER. French fries don't kill you the same way anthrax does. Drunk driving is a result of irresponsible behavior and is not tolerated much at all in this country, and our society has gone to great lengths to prevent needless deaths from auto accidents in general... why could we not apply this to eliminating anthrax and other biological threats from our postal mail system?
Because you want to send a compact flash card unwrapped in a 34 cent envelope? Shame on you.
But it's not even that. It's that you think that your needs for freedom and convienience are more powerful and weighty than the public's need for safety and security. And on top of that, you implicitly and coldheartedly suggest that if those 5 people hadn't died yet, but they would if they stopped irradiation, you'd still consider stopping it because you don't want to risk damaging improperly marked electronic equipment.
It's not all of you. Some of you are actually appalled by this, as am I. But the rest of you... that's just sick. And, sadly, this kind of stuff happens all the time on here. And it's Michael who usually posts it, too. He does a poor job of weeding out such bad taste from what might be an interesting discussion. Rather than say "All because 5 people died...", we could ask "How can we eliminate the public health threat AND ensure the safety of our equipment?" The fact that it isn't appalling to you to say the former is appalling to the people among us who value human life, no matter how sick and fucked up it can be at times.
Ah, who's listening to me anyway? Go back to your coffee, games, and coding.
I don't think the authors have any knowledge of physics at all. Electrons are in everything we do, are the arbiters of every chemical process, and are the binders of every molecule.
An electron beam is no different from a cathode ray, where electrons are freed from an ionizing or very hot negative source, are are then attracted toward a highly charged positive destination.
The common CRT (cathode RAY tube) that most you people are using to read this right now has an e-beam aimed directly at your head. It just happens that the vast majority of it is intercepted by the phosphor screen.
Judging from the link to the activist site, it's not 100% in all cases.
So what you're saying is, this electron beam will kill anthrax, but it's easily blocked... so we all start using electron-beam-proof wrapping... and so does whoever has been mailing anthrax.
Gee, now I feel safe.
If what you're saying is right, what this means is that we're all just going to have to pay for more expensive wrapping for our mail, particularly for film, medicine, or electronics, for no actual benefit.
Evolution's lazy, and typically crawls towards the minimum that works.
No. We're whining that the compactflash card that we pay $250 for online could show up damaged at our homes and never work right in the first place, because the postal service chose to do interesting things to its package en route. We're whining that our prescription-by-mail medicine may have been altered in unknown ways and may no longer make us well or may in fact be toxic.
I haven't been to a post office in a couple of weeks. Have they posted large safety orange "WARNING, WE IRRADIATE YOUR MAIL, YOUR FILM AND ELECTRONICS WILL BE DAMAGED AND YOUR MEDICINE WILL BECOME TOXIC" signs everywhere yet? How many dozens or hundreds of people die in the United States every year from slipping in the bathtub? what death toll are you waiting for to justify the banning of bathtubs?
You can't legislate away death. Living has risks. Tell the folks at the commerce department whose paper gave off toxic gas because it was irradiated that it's safe. I'm sure that'll be very comforting to the terrorists who have been mailing anthrax, to know that they can just write "do not irradiate" on their envelopes full of death. Look, if this is such a wonderful thing like you say it should be done to everything. If it can't be safely done to everything, maybe it shouldn't be done at all: creating a false sense of security is much worse than being insecure and knowing it.
A bucket of water can drown a dozen people if adminstered properly as well. So which should we ban, buckets or water?
They already have lead lined bags for shielding film, just use those for your sensitive electronics.
What is bacillis thermophilus you ask? It a handy little bacteria that is commonly and legaly sent through the US Mail system by Medical and Dental professionals. Its used because it is highly resistant to heat, it will not grow until its heated to 140 C.
How it's used is, a spore sample is inserted into the office's autoclave, a steam heat sterilizer, with a normal load of instruments to be sterilized. The exposed sample is then send to a lab and cultured. If the B.thermophilis grows the autoclave must be fixed or adjusted, if it doesn't all is well.
Since the mail is now sterilized by irradiation, the B. thermophilis is dead and will never grow, and all of the autoclave check out good no matter how bad they may be!
Now where do you think your greater risk comes from, untested autoclaves at the dentist's office, or anthrax in the mail? Of course the samples can be sent by an alternate carrier that doesn't irradiate, but knowing how the dental profession marks up prices, every patient will pay for the once a month expense.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I'm sorry, but if one of those people were a close family member, then you'd care more about personal safety than some damn compact flash cards. I can't believe I actually had to read that.
I sent some software and a divx movie to a friend in Cali. Not only did it take longer than it should have to get there, the divx movie was corrupted whereas it was not when I sent it...hmmm...
If the damage that random e-beams do to products sent via the mail (think everything shipped for eBay auctions for a start) hampers commerce, that will go a long ways to fulfilling Bin Laden's goal of disrupting the US economy.
Higher shipping charges, disruptions to just-in-time deliveries, the collapse of the USPS as all the business shippers switch to other carriers.
And the disturbing thing I'm getting from these posts is, the USPS isn't even notifying you when this is done. I'd hate for some critical part to fail prematurely because it was cooked at random.
Time to put some couriers on the payroll. Hand-carrying stuff is back in style.
Hi! How are you?
I send you these spores in order to have your advice.
See you later. Thanks
Manufacturers of ant farms used for science education are starting to release a new product: cockroach farms. We've always known that after a nuclear war, all that would be left would be radiation resistant cockroaches. These enterprising entrepreneurs aren't going to wait until WWIII to use that characteristing to their advantage. The new procedures at the post office will ensure that the new product is a market success.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
No... he's actually saying that there are other things that kill many more people. And that instead of spending an incredible amount of money on such a low risk event, we should be spending that money on higher-risk events, like falling in bathtubs. For example, in 1998, 98 Americans were killed by "bites and stings" (see the CDC: http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html)
Are you saying that the lives of these 98 are less important than the 5 that died of anthrax? Where's the campaign and massive expenditure to stop these senseless deaths?
Even better (worse, really), 3228 died in 1998 of "Medical care, Adverse Effects" What about them?
So, you see, it's not just a matter of 5 lives vs inconvenience. It's a matter of how much is spent to prevent a low-risk death compared to higher risk events. Anthrax is scary - a bee sting is not.
To shiled your package you only need to block line of sight into the contents. You don't have to make it air-tight. So you could make a bag of anthrax that survives irradiation but is still contagious before openning the package.
The USPS is only employing this technology in very specific instances - such as mail bound for Capitol Hill.
Why not email your bits instead?
God knows my latest electro-toy is worth a few postal employees being killed. If I don't get my new linux powered pda to supplement the five or so I've already got and still don't have any real reason other than it looks cool to own, the terorrists have already won.
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Trusting is like a chain reaction. If the terrorists trusted us (*gasp*) to not attack their people and to not interrupt their way of life, then we can trust them to not attack us. Then, perhaps we could trust that our mail would not be contaminated with irradiation or anthrax, then we could trust the United States Postal Service to safely deliver our packages.
Though, we must keep in mind that trust is a two-way thing. To be trusted, one must trust.
Our only problem is that it will be a very long time for us to achieve such a thing.
Just a few thoughts.
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And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
I submitted the original story and I really think a lot of people are missing the point. It's about risk management.
I was not comparing people's lives to a camera smart card, I was trying to get people to think about the health consequences of low-wage, badly trained employees using particle beam weapons in confined spaces, and the dangers to mail recipients from irradiated letters and denatured packages leaking toxic gases.
The economic fallout is of course tremendous as well. Fundamentally, we are talking about a terror campaign that succeeded due to a classic media panic about a rare scare.
Perhaps we need to start irradiating all paper money at points-of-sale, to prevent them carrying pathogens? Yeah, that makes sense as well. Right.
Da Blog
The irradiation is only used on mail which was in the contaminated facilities, or which was routed near them, or is currently Target Mail. Unless your mail is coming to you in a color that is not white, but yellowish, and in a plastic bag that says "This mail has been irradiated," then it has not been irradiated. I'm sorry to clarify the FUD that is spreading, but your compact flash cards are safe no matter which carrier you send them through, unless the shipper is incapable of using correct addresses and postage.
Only USPS Target mail is being sent through the ebeam irradiation, now that the contaminated facilites have been cleared out. Target mail is a piece of mail that looks suspicious enough to be held out and examined (not opened), and poses the threat of causing either physical harm to an employee, or fiscal damage to the USPS.
The CES is just repeating that which is printed on the back of the Iraddiation Notice Bag that all the irradiated mail comes in. Don't thank them for telling you your stuff may be messed up. The Postal Service already knew and told you before the CES started spouting FUD.
What if your mother, farther, wife, or kids dies because their diabetes testing materials, or insulin, was irradiated by the USPS in transit to the pharmacy where you bought it and you didn't know about it, and their blood sugar test results are incorrect and they consequently eat too much, or too little, sugar?
What if their prescription medicine has been irradiated and has become toxic (due to chemical breakdown) and it kills them? Or if it just doesn't work any more and they die of what it was supposed to cure them of?
What if your grandmother's medicine arrives in the mail and they DID stick a warning label on it but she can't afford to get it replaced so she takes it anyway, it doesn't work, and she dies?
What would it be worth then?
The point is that they clearly haven't thought out all the consequences of this. They're so eager to prevent any further anthrax cases that they're not considering potential adverse consequences of their concept of a solution.
America has ridiculously high suicide rates anyway, second only to Japan, I beleive, indicative that the problem is something entirely different from guns.
(*Note: Japan's rate is higher, but guns are nowhere near as common, ergo where is the connection?)
Back to my original point, so guns can be used for suicide, so what? Will you outlaw knives as well? How about rope? Automobiles? Any of these can be used for that purpose, it all goes back to intent.
What about these fucking government beams on MY HERB, man!? Tha fuck's up with that shit?
--hongpong.com
Wow, as if postal workers with AK-47s arent bad enough, now someone goes and gives them nukes... How long until some psycho postal employee decides to irradiate their cow-orkers? :)
Insert witty
GM foods are nothing to be concerned about. If you are crying NO FRANKENFOODS! then you don't understand genetics. I know quite a bit about the subject. All that DNA does is code for proteins. Thats it. DNA has four different kinds of bases, Thymine, Adenine, Guanine, and Cytosine. Three of these bases get grouped together into codons. A codon, through a complicated process involving mRNA
and many other things, makes an particular amino acid.
A whole bunch of these DNA codons will produce a protein. A protein is multiple amino acids linked.
If you insert a gene to produce the Vitamin A protein into a wheat plant, the wheat plant will produce Vitamin A along with everything else. A gene that codes for Vitamin A codes for Vitamin A, nothing else. It won't produce cyanide or anything else that you may be afraid of. One of the things about gm foods is that YOU KNOW WHAT THESE GENES DO. By contrast interbreeding mixes the genomes of two plants and you don't know what will happen.
One of the persistant arguments I hear is that BT corn (that is, corn with the safe, natural BT insecticide) kills monarch butterflies. I'm sure it does kill monarch butterflies. But it probably kills less monarchs that spraying a highly toxic insecticide from a plane.
Another argument is that it's not natural and your'e tampering with millions of years of evolution. I got a reality check. The plants that we eat did not evolve for our benefit. They are random products of evolution designed to spread their seeds around better than other plants.
Take rice, for example. For millions of years, it was a sucessful swampy-area plant. It did not bother wasting energy to meet the nutritional requirements of other animals eating it. Then, around 10,000 years ago, man comes along and finds that rice makes pretty good eatin' and decides to farm it. Unfortunately, this random product of evolution wasn't very nutritious for man, and he got Vitamin A from only eating rice. A few years ago, some people said "Hey, all these people in Vietnam and Laos are starving because they don't get enough Vitamin A in their rice diet. Lets engineer some rice to have vitamin A so they don't die." They did that and that's how we got golden rice, a vitamin A rich rice that's carrot orange from all the Vitamin A in it. That is an excellent example of how we improved on nature.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
"Evolution" as an English word, means more than what is actually occurring in nature. The process in nature that we label "evolution" has no "direction". Random chance and a generic selection function (offspring <=> no offspring) does not a defined direction make. You get what you get.
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool