I have a windoze box to edit videos on; I also use it occasionally to check e-mail and ftp, and so even though I don't have an always-on internet connection, I installed a firewall. And so I discovered that even though I told *everything* installed that I would update manually, Internet Explorer and Windows explorer still want to connect to the internet any time I log on. god only knows what else Media Player is communicating as I listen to the radio. I guess now I need a packet sniffer and a few days of free time. or an antennae that can pick up stations in Greece from North Florida.:-)
yes, you're right, it seems i was. i'm glad you responded anyway; you asked some good questions.
i got my data from Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, regarded by some as an extremist (read: aggressively radical), regarded by others as aggressively logical, regarded by many as an irritant. I could not re-find the original citation, & so was forced to make do with information from the Agency for Toxic Substances and disease Registry. This site does paint a much less grim picture: it states that 1400 pCi/kg body weight causes bone cancer in 4 years. A pCi is equivalent to one-billionth of an mCi; one mCi of plutonium 239 weighs.016 grams. I'm assuming NASA used Pu -239, not Pu -238, which has a much higher toxicity (one mCi weighs.00006 gm). So the upshot is 2.24-8 g/kg body weight is enough to give a person bone cancer in 4 years & therefore.00000152 grams would be carcinogenic to a 150 lb (68kg) person.
nonetheless, that same site lists the Annual Limit on Intake of Pu-239 as 20,000 pCi, which is equivalent to 3.2-7 g, or three millionths of a gram. It does not, however, say what the result of exceeding this limit would be.
Yet NASA's Final Environmental Impact Statement warns of the dangers of "inadvertent reentry," stating that if the Cassini disintegrates, dispersing the plutonium, "5 billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at
the time... could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure." This condition would necessitate the banning of future agricultural land use and the permanent relocation of the population in any affected urban area.
I suppose that now is the time to hang the tie-dyed dancing teddy bears, but it seems to me that if the best safe option is not feasible, perhaps the mission should not be flown at all. The risk of a necessary "permanent relocation" of entire urban areas seems unacceptable to me, especially if we are still theoretically practicing democracy.
As far as the media goes, I think media outlets--especially the conglomerates, or the ones owned by conglomerates--generally hesitate to dig into little-known government scandals, since the government is one of its main sources of information. For instance, a reporter can simply report verbatim what a government agent has said, and feel secure in not verifying it. (I have done the same thing above, perhaps naively).
Civilian reports, on the other hand, require research and verification, which is time-consuming and expensive. Therefore reporters lean towards government sources since it is more expedient and generally puts them in a better light with their bosses, since they don't have to authorize unusual expenditures. Smaller for-profit venues don't have the funds for extensive investigations; not-for-profits are anomalies to be commended.
I do not think this is a conspiracy theory; i think it is simply the result of businesses doing what businesses do, which is attempt to make money. I'm probably safe in saying that media corporations are still corporations, which have as their explicit goal the accumulation of capital.
most people have never heard of the Cassini, launched to Saturn in October 1997 and carrying 34.7 kg of plutonium, a substance so carcinogenic that 1/1,000,000th of a gram will give you cancer;
therefore most people do not know that an explosion of this ship in the atmosphere would give cancer to tens of millions of people (depending on where it was when it blew up) as well as disrupting a number of ecosystems;
the press has been surprisingly nonchalant about future plutonium-bearing missions, including ones to the Outer Solar System like the Comet Nucleus Mission carrying 25.5 kilograms of plutonium (2002 launch date) and the Pluto Flyby carrying 25.5 kilograms of plutonium (2003 launch date); missions to Mars by the Mars SR in 2007 & 2009 with a total of 6.5 kilograms of plutonium; and missions to the moon by the Network in 2001 and 2002 with total of 9 kilograms of plutonium.
Furthermore, I don't think people are relating these future dates to the Challenger, which proceeded in spite of internal warnings about safety issues, or to the two recent Mars satellites, one of which cleared numerous levels of NASA management in spite of including calculations based on the metric inch.
Maybe people in general just find it comforting to believe that the people in charge claiming to know what they're doing do in fact know what they're doing. Certainly evidence is amassing to the contrary. I'm sorry if this sounds like flamebait, but i'm sure we all have pet issues we can point to; elimination of dissent happens to be one of mine. Not very democratic, IMHO....
Zeko says: "I think taking legal action against Napster is like sueing gun companies for making the guns that were invovled in killing someone."
all right, except this: the gun companies do in fact need to be sued. The gun industry, arm-in-arm with the NRA, has lobbied against any sort of regulation on something which they mysticize as a sacred right, but which is no more a sacred right than cars or happy meal toys or processed meat.
unlike every other industry in the U.S., the gun industry does not release any important policy-making information about itself, including the quantity of each kind of gun made and sold, the ownership of all the companies making the guns, the record of specific defects in each kind of gun and the efforts made to correct them, and the quantities of foreign guns imported by whom into the U.S. The gun industry also does not release any transcripts of conversations occuring between itself and the ATF. In 1997 the CDC determined that in the 26 countries it studied, 86% of all firearms deaths under age 15 occured in the U.S.
But meanwhile the industry has continued increasing lethality while at the same time doing what every business does, which is attempt to maximize sales. They have succeeded. Child protection locks were available in the late 1800s. They were abandoned because they were not profitable.
the napster issue has also been distorted. metallica etc., instead of suing people, should be finishing their contract with their labels & then posting mp3s of their songs themselves, on the honor system (which seems to have worked just fine for stephen king). Metallica is really just a bunch of weenies for suing napster to begin with since, while napster may dig into metallica's profits, metallica has already dug into other groups' profits as a result of ASCAP's means of charting songs (which is statistically unreliable to begin with). (Jesus, metallica, what happened? that dollar bill melted your iconoclasm? nihilism be damned when capital comes knocking? think PHISH: free wheeling, unconcerned about piracy, shunned corporate radio...profitable anyway).
anyway so these ASCAP dorks listen to a few stations at a few random times to take a "representative" sample of songs being played & from there determine which artists get payed for their works. Chances are very slim that they will ever chart a song by less-recognized artists, though those songs are being played. those artists are just not paid for it. ASCAP has the funds to determine _every_ song being played in the U.S. simply by requesting setlists. They have not pursued that option. Furthermore ASCAP is lawsuit-happy & almost always wins (they even went up against the Girl Scouts, for signing songs around the campfire--& lost for once) but any money that ASCAP wins goes into the coffers, not to the artists whose copyright was violated. the argument that napster should be shut down is really just reactionary propaganda put out by big money to protect itself. much like the argument that the gun industry should be unregulated.
Slashdot Mirror
Roger Ebert has interesting things to say about it: MaxiVision48 vs. digital
http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/privacy/cgi_feed back
I have a windoze box to edit videos on; I also use it occasionally to check e-mail and ftp, and so even though I don't have an always-on internet connection, I installed a firewall. And so I discovered that even though I told *everything* installed that I would update manually, Internet Explorer and Windows explorer still want to connect to the internet any time I log on. god only knows what else Media Player is communicating as I listen to the radio. I guess now I need a packet sniffer and a few days of free time. or an antennae that can pick up stations in Greece from North Florida. :-)
yes, you're right, it seems i was. i'm glad you responded anyway; you asked some good questions.
.016 grams. I'm assuming NASA used Pu -239, not Pu -238, which has a much higher toxicity (one mCi weighs .00006 gm). So the upshot is 2.24-8 g/kg body weight is enough to give a person bone cancer in 4 years & therefore .00000152 grams would be carcinogenic to a 150 lb (68kg) person.
... could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure." This condition would necessitate the banning of future agricultural land use and the permanent relocation of the population in any affected urban area.
i got my data from Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, regarded by some as an extremist (read: aggressively radical), regarded by others as aggressively logical, regarded by many as an irritant. I could not re-find the original citation, & so was forced to make do with information from the Agency for Toxic Substances and disease Registry. This site does paint a much less grim picture: it states that 1400 pCi/kg body weight causes bone cancer in 4 years. A pCi is equivalent to one-billionth of an mCi; one mCi of plutonium 239 weighs
nonetheless, that same site lists the Annual Limit on Intake of Pu-239 as 20,000 pCi, which is equivalent to 3.2-7 g, or three millionths of a gram. It does not, however, say what the result of exceeding this limit would be.
Yet NASA's Final Environmental Impact Statement warns of the dangers of "inadvertent reentry," stating that if the Cassini disintegrates, dispersing the plutonium, "5 billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at the time
Originally I had thought that solar power was a viable alternative. Visiting the European Space Research and Technology Centre shows that it is not.
I suppose that now is the time to hang the tie-dyed dancing teddy bears, but it seems to me that if the best safe option is not feasible, perhaps the mission should not be flown at all. The risk of a necessary "permanent relocation" of entire urban areas seems unacceptable to me, especially if we are still theoretically practicing democracy.
As far as the media goes, I think media outlets--especially the conglomerates, or the ones owned by conglomerates--generally hesitate to dig into little-known government scandals, since the government is one of its main sources of information. For instance, a reporter can simply report verbatim what a government agent has said, and feel secure in not verifying it. (I have done the same thing above, perhaps naively).
Civilian reports, on the other hand, require research and verification, which is time-consuming and expensive. Therefore reporters lean towards government sources since it is more expedient and generally puts them in a better light with their bosses, since they don't have to authorize unusual expenditures. Smaller for-profit venues don't have the funds for extensive investigations; not-for-profits are anomalies to be commended.
I do not think this is a conspiracy theory; i think it is simply the result of businesses doing what businesses do, which is attempt to make money. I'm probably safe in saying that media corporations are still corporations, which have as their explicit goal the accumulation of capital.
- most people have never heard of the Cassini, launched to Saturn in October 1997 and carrying 34.7 kg of plutonium, a substance so carcinogenic that 1/1,000,000th of a gram will give you cancer;
- therefore most people do not know that an explosion of this ship in the atmosphere would give cancer to tens of millions of people (depending on where it was when it blew up) as well as disrupting a number of ecosystems;
- the press has been surprisingly nonchalant about future plutonium-bearing missions, including ones to the Outer Solar System like the Comet Nucleus Mission carrying 25.5 kilograms of plutonium (2002 launch date) and the Pluto Flyby carrying 25.5 kilograms of plutonium (2003 launch date); missions to Mars by the Mars SR in 2007 & 2009 with a total of 6.5 kilograms of plutonium; and missions to the moon by the Network in 2001 and 2002 with total of 9 kilograms of plutonium.
Furthermore, I don't think people are relating these future dates to the Challenger, which proceeded in spite of internal warnings about safety issues, or to the two recent Mars satellites, one of which cleared numerous levels of NASA management in spite of including calculations based on the metric inch.Maybe people in general just find it comforting to believe that the people in charge claiming to know what they're doing do in fact know what they're doing. Certainly evidence is amassing to the contrary. I'm sorry if this sounds like flamebait, but i'm sure we all have pet issues we can point to; elimination of dissent happens to be one of mine. Not very democratic, IMHO....
Zeko says: "I think taking legal action against Napster is like sueing gun companies for making the guns that were invovled in killing someone."
all right, except this: the gun companies do in fact need to be sued. The gun industry, arm-in-arm with the NRA, has lobbied against any sort of regulation on something which they mysticize as a sacred right, but which is no more a sacred right than cars or happy meal toys or processed meat.
unlike every other industry in the U.S., the gun industry does not release any important policy-making information about itself, including the quantity of each kind of gun made and sold, the ownership of all the companies making the guns, the record of specific defects in each kind of gun and the efforts made to correct them, and the quantities of foreign guns imported by whom into the U.S. The gun industry also does not release any transcripts of conversations occuring between itself and the ATF. In 1997 the CDC determined that in the 26 countries it studied, 86% of all firearms deaths under age 15 occured in the U.S.
But meanwhile the industry has continued increasing lethality while at the same time doing what every business does, which is attempt to maximize sales. They have succeeded. Child protection locks were available in the late 1800s. They were abandoned because they were not profitable.
the napster issue has also been distorted. metallica etc., instead of suing people, should be finishing their contract with their labels & then posting mp3s of their songs themselves, on the honor system (which seems to have worked just fine for stephen king). Metallica is really just a bunch of weenies for suing napster to begin with since, while napster may dig into metallica's profits, metallica has already dug into other groups' profits as a result of ASCAP's means of charting songs (which is statistically unreliable to begin with). (Jesus, metallica, what happened? that dollar bill melted your iconoclasm? nihilism be damned when capital comes knocking? think PHISH: free wheeling, unconcerned about piracy, shunned corporate radio...profitable anyway).
anyway so these ASCAP dorks listen to a few stations at a few random times to take a "representative" sample of songs being played & from there determine which artists get payed for their works. Chances are very slim that they will ever chart a song by less-recognized artists, though those songs are being played. those artists are just not paid for it. ASCAP has the funds to determine _every_ song being played in the U.S. simply by requesting setlists. They have not pursued that option. Furthermore ASCAP is lawsuit-happy & almost always wins (they even went up against the Girl Scouts, for signing songs around the campfire--& lost for once) but any money that ASCAP wins goes into the coffers, not to the artists whose copyright was violated. the argument that napster should be shut down is really just reactionary propaganda put out by big money to protect itself. much like the argument that the gun industry should be unregulated.