Actually Carl, the crazy old crane who mostly keeps to himself and mumbles about 'treasure', conveniently has feathers that form a permanent map similar to a tattoo. The other cranes use this map to navigate and between migrations will teach the younger cranes in a classroom type setting.
I am tired of seeing old white men who have a sense of entitlement acting like
they run the world.
While I'm white, I'm not old and I'm not running anything. If China crushes the EU and US, all people in the EU and US are crushed regardless of race. They may get the old white guys, too, but I think the more likely consequence is that the people of the EU and US suffer far far worse.
How about we work towards something together instead of trying to thwart progress by trying to crush one another all the time.
So you're in your car, right? You and 5 others, also in their cars, are pulling this train of big rigs right? Your new tow rope snaps and puts more tension on the others' ropes. Sally in car 4 has an old tow rope that her dad gave her and it is frayed and can't handle the tension so it also snaps (and hits an old lady in the face, killing her - but that's beside the point). The added tension from 2 failed tow ropes causes a cascade effect and all the remaining ropes snap and send the entire big rig train into the enormous gorge that just appeared in my story.
Here's the kicker; one of the big rigs was carrying a nuke which explodes and kills EVERYONE...JUST LIKE THE POWER GRID. It's science.
The moral of the story is that Sally is a bitch for using a shitty tow rope and is responsible for killing not only the old lady but everyone else. Also, what the hell happened to your new tow rope and why did it snap first? You need to get some higher quality emergency roadside equipment. Oh wait...you're dead. Fucking Sally.
I totally agree that they will do anything to cover their asses but this doesn't seem to be the case to me because admitting something like this may open them up to litigation...probably failed litigation but still. My point is that they typically do not even publicly acknowledge things like this that go heavily against their 'teachings'.
Don't get me wrong...I am not religious and don't support what they teach - I do however recognize that this woman publicly acknowledged that she was incorrect and I believe that should be respected regardless of whether or not her flock follows her 'public' statement. Respecting her for reversing her opinion and respecting her religion don't have to be mutually exclusive.
This is the part that is shocking about this to me:
Terri Pearsons, a senior pastor of Eagle Mountain International said she has had concerns about possible ties between early childhood vaccines and autism. In the wake of the measles outbreak, however, Pearsons has urged followers to get vaccinated and the church has held several vaccination clinics.
I respect the hell out of the fact that she actually went against her own original beliefs and recommendations and, in the wake of the outbreak she reversed her opinion no matter the fact that it may have made her look 'stupid'. High five to Terri Pearsons for doing the right thing.
I don't think the parent was saying anything about global warming...or did I miss that somewhere in the thread?
You are obviously right in that those who falsify research should be ignored but the problem is that the initial findings are sensational and PERFECT for media organizations whereas the subsequent retraction and discovery that the 'scientists' in question are crackpots is sensational in that people lose respect for the media organizations who have reported those findings without questioning the methodology or vetting the research properly. Ultimately most people get their information from the media and when you have irresponsible organizations struggling for headlines instead of doing any real reporting, this is exactly what happens.
How can we correct this thought process? A greater emphasis on, and better understanding of, the method might do the trick. It’s significantly harder to deny the import of challenging findings when you have the tools necessary to evaluate the process by which scientists arrived at their results. That new study on global warming is tougher to dismiss when you know (and care enough to check) that the methods used are sound, regardless of what you think the authors’ motivations might be. In the absence of such knowledge, the virtue assigned to “science” might also be a motivational force for ideological distortion, the precise opposite of impartial truth-seeking.
If we had just "dealt with it" every time those with power abused their position, black people would still be slaves, women would still not have the vote, children would still be down in the mines, and manual labourers would still barely earn enough wages to live while working crazy hours under conditions that would seriously damage their health.
Ahh the good ole days!
Seriously, though, I couldn't agree more with this:
We aren't going to get much further if we adopt your attitude every time essential services that make society work start taking advantage of asymmetric power relationships with the ultimate goal of making more money no matter what.
That's always the pain of statistical models: someone's an exception.
And in the case where someone is an exception and can prove that their associations are the cause of being denied a loan or a job or in any way effecting an individual's credit, here comes the lawsuit. You cannot legally be denied employment and your creditworthiness cannot be effected by your associations. This would have far-reaching discriminatory consequences with regard to race, religion, financial 'class', etc. and ultimately force people to cut off others in their life who were not 'reliable'.
Setting this precedent allows a true class-style system to be introduced whereby unless you are in the 'reliable' category, it is almost impossible to become 'reliable' because 'reliable' people won't associate with you or give you jobs. People would potentially be forced to ostracize family or friends from their realm in society for fear of being dubbed 'unreliable'. This sounds eerily like Gattaca except with financial systems instead of genetics (I know that a better reference is Huxley or possibly even McCarthy in some ways but I just watched Gattaca again a few days ago and it is fresh in my mind).
Wow...you probably believe the federal government has your best interests in mind all the time, too.
Marital status is a valid indicator of your financial stability as an individiual. Zip code identifies the general cost of living associated with the area for comparison to your existing debts and therefore helps determine how much credit you qualify for. Facebook analytics perform an analysis of your associations, hobbies, etc. and based upon arbitrary conclusions levy a judgement against you that affects your creditworthiness and therefore your ability to improve your circumstance.
Ever hear of guilt by association? This is exactly that. Next time one of your friends drinks too much and drives home make sure to never talk to him again because by your logic you should be arrested for knowing him. While there may be some valid metrics they can obtain from shit like this, the likelihood that it will negatively impact those who don't 'deserve it' is astronomical. The first time anyone can equate a negative impact in their credit rating specifically to something like who they know is the time that the credit agency in question gets raped with lawsuits.
I'm just flabbergasted by your flippant attitude to this. Everyone has grown up with people and taken different paths...everyone has friends or family members that fall on hard times. Unless everyone you know is perfect and you are also perfect, you don't get to talk anymore.
I know that you're AC and are trolling but I'll bite on this one and tell you that you're the problem with politics and progress in this nation.
Dude made a fair witticism about the government's overwhelming tendency to legislate down things that are not understood in the interests of 'protecting us' from ourselves, especially where drugs aside from the big 3 are concerned. You respond with 'Keep crying, pothead.' which is so short-sighted it hurts. People like you don't even think two steps beyond themselves and keep themselves locked in an ignorant little hole where they already know all the answers that they ever need. You also vote along party lines every time because you are part of the RIGHT 'club' and people in your club are all on the same side (except when you really start looking at policies and political opinions and voting history and all those little pesky details that you don't concern yourself with).
There is a reason that the majority of the nation has agreed that Marijuana has medicinal functions even though the federal government vehemently denies any medicinal use is possible. This is because they don't want to look like fucking morons for filling our prisons full of non-violent marijuana users so that we can all get buttfucked by the tax man to feed and house people who, most of the time, WERE ALREADY DOING THIS THEMSELVES/AND/ PAYING TAXES. Ultimately you hear the word Marijuana or any argument even closely related to drug policy and put your fingers in your ears and scream 'LA LA LA LA' because you're just not intelligent enough to think things through.
Of course the efforts of the cleanup will be recouped from the people and that this is indeed a cost of doing business after a nuclear disaster has taken place. My only point to make about this is that every investigative agency that has subsequently reviewed conditions at Fukushima prior to the event has determined that there were gross missteps made with handling of safety by the agencies who were supposed to be responsible for assessing conditions of the reactor. I can't find the article I read right now but some reports indicate that had the responsible agencies enforced standards properly, even the earthquake and the tsunami more than likely would not have caused more than minor leakage, if that.
My point is that responsible handling of nuclear power plants makes it a very safe source of energy. Yes there are byproducts that last an extremely long time and that are extremely dangerous, yes there are hazards if handled improperly or in the case of natural disaster that destroys the safeguards in place, but historically there have been very few nuclear power disasters. Even in Chernobyl which is recognized as the worst nuclear power disaster in history, modern studies indicate that the health impact from that event is relatively low compared to the scale of the disaster:
Among the residents of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, there had been up to the year 2005 more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, and more cases can be expected during the next decades. Notwithstanding the influence of enhanced screening regimes, many of those cancers were most likely caused by radiation exposures shortly after the accident. Apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure. The incidence of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to the shorter time expected between exposure and its occurrence compared with solid cancers, does not appear to be elevated. Although those most highly exposed individuals are at an increased risk of radiation-associated effects, the great majority of the population is not likely to experience serious health consequences as a result of radiation from the Chernobyl accident. Many other health problems have been noted in the populations that are not related to radiation exposure. http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html
My point here is that people have this negative opinion of nuclear power because they don't understand it and it is simply FUD. I retorted to the original poster's assertion that we should "ask the people in Fukushima how they feel about those low-low prices" and as I said previously it is a silly argument because what the people of Fukushima are concerned about is the damage from the giant earthquake and resulting enormous tsunami and that the impact of the Fukushima disaster on the populace is almost negligible.
Ultimately, you're right in that wind, wave, and solar power make sense there and they do have quite a bit of these technologies in place or in experimental stages but power-to-cost, nuclear is the cheapest option to fulfill the demands of the society at this point. In the future, it would be great if we could get away from nuclear power and subsist entirely on renewable energy sources but we are not there at this point. You're also right in that people are irrational and want everyone else to pay but it also has to be considered that those who say "So what solar costs more per kWh? That's the price you pay for clean energy!" have no concept of poverty and the impact that such an elevation in the cost of energy would cause.
I understand...this is a level 3 event compared to the level 7 event that was the actual partial meltdown resulting from the tsunami. While this may represent a serious potential risk, this is only for the emergency cleanup workers and plant workers tasked with fixing the leak and cleanup of the contamination. It's not like this has poisoned the water supply, old west style.
To give this some perspective, they detected leaks of 100mSv/h recently but during the partial meltdown in 2011 the highest level measured was approx 1000mSv/h.
According to the Guardian, the Fukushima workers have to be wary of radiation spiking—a sudden and unforeseen rise in radiation.[28] This threat forced to evacuate the workers for a short period of time on the morning of Tuesday 15 March 2011 when radiation detected at Fukushima rose to approximately 1000 mSv/h,[29] the highest level of radiation detected at any point of time during the accident at the plant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_50
I'm not saying that anyone should go splash in the contaminated puddles like a schoolchild - I'm just saying that it is isolated, it effects a relatively minimal number of people, and it is about 10 times less than the original exposure rate.
The people in Fukushima will have to wait for a couple of hundred years, live in tents and get 10.000$ for their lost property if they are lucky.
The people in Fukushima are the ones that have to rebuild after the earthquake and resulting tsunami but that's my point - those are the things that damaged the city and the partial meltdown was a byproduct of the earthquake and tsunami that had relatively little to no impact comparatively.
The Earthquake caused the Tsunami and both caused devastation to the people of Fukushima. I'm not ignoring the recent reports of leaks from the plant...I'm identifying that those leaks combined with all of the radiation generated during the partial meltdown event and still inconsequential to the people in Fukushima because of the following:
There were no deaths caused by radiation exposure, while approximately 18,500 people died due to the earthquake and tsunami. Future cancer deaths from accumulated radiation exposures in the population living near Fukushima are predicted by some agencies to be extremely low to none. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster
Before anyone jumps down my throat, the following sentence in the Wikipedia article is this:
However, other researchers are less optimistic, with predictions that 25 times as many people in Fukushima area will develop thyroid cancer after the disaster compared to before: Professor Shinzo Kimura of Dokkyo Medical University in Japan, had been collecting radiation contamination data and studied the radiation exposure risks from Chernobyl. He was the first scientist on the ground in Fukushima after the disaster, keen to establish data independent of TEPCO and the government.
Again, however, there are existing studies and evidence to the contrary of this and there is little to no empirical evidence that has been identified in support of the claims that 25 times 18,500 people (462,500) will develop thyroid cancer. The sheer scale of the estimations for thyroid cancer seems to illustrate to me that these 'researchers' are using this event to garner attention with predictions of the sky falling. Ultimately the WHO report and other various reports identify the thyroid cancer risk and using hard data they have found that the risk is almost negligible that more people would develop thyroid cancer than normal. Also, they identify that the most at-risk group, the emergency workers, still have a very low potential to develop thyroid cancer (and there are definitely not 462,500 of them).
Ultimately, your statement that I "move there and put my money where my mouth is" seems a bit silly. Obviously I'm not going to pack up my belongings and sell my house to prove a point. However, if there were a nuclear disaster on this scale near enough that I had been or could potentially be exposed to it with the same potential after-effects, I also would not pack up my belongings and sell my house.
Sensationalism much? They feel fine...only their warm-fuzzies were really effected and mostly due to trauma from either proximity to the plant's fire or due to the massive fucking tsunami that caused all of the actual problems . (http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/28/world/asia/japan-who-radiation)
The lifetime risk of contracting certain types of cancer rose slightly for a small group of people because they were exposed to radiation from the nuclear disaster, the WHO said Thursday.
The notable exception was young emergency workers at the plant, who inhaled high doses of radioactive iodine, probably raising their risk of developing thyroid cancer. But since the thyroid is relatively resistant to cancer, the overall risk for these people remains low, the report said.
Otherwise, any increase in human disease after the partial meltdown triggered by the March 2011 tsunami is "likely to remain below detectable levels," the WHO said in its report.
So basically the tsunami and resulting devastation from the tsunami's aftermath are what the people in Fukushima are really concerned about...not growing extra arms or dying of cancer any sooner than they already would have. The real question for people there is whether or not they are willing to pay double price for their power and be safe from the apparent nuclear menace that is destroying lives...I'm betting people like cheap power.
Hey now...people aren't idiots...they are just too tied up in fighting with others 'on their level' about who is right and which politician that they supported is right. Nevermind actual truth or logical discussion/debate or anything like that.
Ultimately, no matter where you live, politicians seek to make the common man fight himself in order to secret away more and more power to separate themselves from the commoners. It used to be harder in some countries but since terrorists are lurking around every corner and in your trashcan outside your kitchen window now, we the commoners have become scared little sheepses who NEED the shepher-ticians to order our lives and keep the bad men away. Pretty pathetic that this is happening in every single 'civilized' nation out there now.
Maybe they just don't have the technology to request additional info from the reporter.
The largest social media site on teh internets does not have the technology to request additional information? I'm assuming here (and I don't think this is too much of an assumption) that they are using a pre-existing reporting or ticketing platform and every single software suite released to perform this function since the early 90s has had this type of functionality. Even if they rolled their own and used inspiration from other platforms, there is no way this feature would have been left out.
Taking this even FURTHER...oh wait...we're talking about incompetence on the technical staff at Facebook, right? Totally plausible.
Yes - as long as his camera crew is there to give him shelter and food after he finishes peeing in his own mouth and picking through his feces for "the good bits", he will survive. Les Stroud on the other hand would be hiking his body weight in cameras around and sucking water from Martian rocks while his support crew remains in orbit...just in case.
I was at two of the Occupy protests in downtown LA and one in San Francisco and they were ALL exactly as the media reported - there was no real organization or structure to them that all or even most of those involved participated in, the message each 'group' was trying to deliver was highly divergent, and many of the 'protesters' were just assholes on bikes with bandanas covering their nose and mouth being dicks to passersby and drivers alike.
I hate organized media organizations for the travesty that they have become to unbiased reporting but my personal experience with the Occupy protests were that they were spot-the-fuck on. Also, in each of the three that I traveled hundreds of miles to go to, the police didn't stamp out shit...they showed up in strength but they didn't bother me or anyone I knew of who wasn't purposely trying to cause problems. Again, I'm not fond of the establishment but I was fairly impressed at the restraint shown by the 'peace-keepers'.
Things may be different in NYC; however, in other parts of the country, at least in the two cities I visited during the Occupy protests, there was local and national media coverage all over the place and things were as fair as could be expected.
Slashdot Mirror
Wish I had some mod points to throw at you. Awesome.
Actually Carl, the crazy old crane who mostly keeps to himself and mumbles about 'treasure', conveniently has feathers that form a permanent map similar to a tattoo. The other cranes use this map to navigate and between migrations will teach the younger cranes in a classroom type setting.
I am tired of seeing old white men who have a sense of entitlement acting like they run the world.
While I'm white, I'm not old and I'm not running anything. If China crushes the EU and US, all people in the EU and US are crushed regardless of race. They may get the old white guys, too, but I think the more likely consequence is that the people of the EU and US suffer far far worse.
How about we work towards something together instead of trying to thwart progress by trying to crush one another all the time.
So you're in your car, right? You and 5 others, also in their cars, are pulling this train of big rigs right? Your new tow rope snaps and puts more tension on the others' ropes. Sally in car 4 has an old tow rope that her dad gave her and it is frayed and can't handle the tension so it also snaps (and hits an old lady in the face, killing her - but that's beside the point). The added tension from 2 failed tow ropes causes a cascade effect and all the remaining ropes snap and send the entire big rig train into the enormous gorge that just appeared in my story.
Here's the kicker; one of the big rigs was carrying a nuke which explodes and kills EVERYONE...JUST LIKE THE POWER GRID. It's science.
The moral of the story is that Sally is a bitch for using a shitty tow rope and is responsible for killing not only the old lady but everyone else. Also, what the hell happened to your new tow rope and why did it snap first? You need to get some higher quality emergency roadside equipment. Oh wait...you're dead. Fucking Sally.
I totally agree that they will do anything to cover their asses but this doesn't seem to be the case to me because admitting something like this may open them up to litigation...probably failed litigation but still. My point is that they typically do not even publicly acknowledge things like this that go heavily against their 'teachings'.
Don't get me wrong...I am not religious and don't support what they teach - I do however recognize that this woman publicly acknowledged that she was incorrect and I believe that should be respected regardless of whether or not her flock follows her 'public' statement. Respecting her for reversing her opinion and respecting her religion don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Terri Pearsons, a senior pastor of Eagle Mountain International said she has had concerns about possible ties between early childhood vaccines and autism. In the wake of the measles outbreak, however, Pearsons has urged followers to get vaccinated and the church has held several vaccination clinics.
I respect the hell out of the fact that she actually went against her own original beliefs and recommendations and, in the wake of the outbreak she reversed her opinion no matter the fact that it may have made her look 'stupid'. High five to Terri Pearsons for doing the right thing.
You are obviously right in that those who falsify research should be ignored but the problem is that the initial findings are sensational and PERFECT for media organizations whereas the subsequent retraction and discovery that the 'scientists' in question are crackpots is sensational in that people lose respect for the media organizations who have reported those findings without questioning the methodology or vetting the research properly. Ultimately most people get their information from the media and when you have irresponsible organizations struggling for headlines instead of doing any real reporting, this is exactly what happens.
This story from earlier makes an excellent point:
How can we correct this thought process? A greater emphasis on, and better understanding of, the method might do the trick. It’s significantly harder to deny the import of challenging findings when you have the tools necessary to evaluate the process by which scientists arrived at their results. That new study on global warming is tougher to dismiss when you know (and care enough to check) that the methods used are sound, regardless of what you think the authors’ motivations might be. In the absence of such knowledge, the virtue assigned to “science” might also be a motivational force for ideological distortion, the precise opposite of impartial truth-seeking.
People just need to make more of an effort.
If we had just "dealt with it" every time those with power abused their position, black people would still be slaves, women would still not have the vote, children would still be down in the mines, and manual labourers would still barely earn enough wages to live while working crazy hours under conditions that would seriously damage their health.
Ahh the good ole days!
Seriously, though, I couldn't agree more with this:
We aren't going to get much further if we adopt your attitude every time essential services that make society work start taking advantage of asymmetric power relationships with the ultimate goal of making more money no matter what.
That's always the pain of statistical models: someone's an exception.
And in the case where someone is an exception and can prove that their associations are the cause of being denied a loan or a job or in any way effecting an individual's credit, here comes the lawsuit. You cannot legally be denied employment and your creditworthiness cannot be effected by your associations. This would have far-reaching discriminatory consequences with regard to race, religion, financial 'class', etc. and ultimately force people to cut off others in their life who were not 'reliable'.
Setting this precedent allows a true class-style system to be introduced whereby unless you are in the 'reliable' category, it is almost impossible to become 'reliable' because 'reliable' people won't associate with you or give you jobs. People would potentially be forced to ostracize family or friends from their realm in society for fear of being dubbed 'unreliable'. This sounds eerily like Gattaca except with financial systems instead of genetics (I know that a better reference is Huxley or possibly even McCarthy in some ways but I just watched Gattaca again a few days ago and it is fresh in my mind).
Wow...you probably believe the federal government has your best interests in mind all the time, too.
Marital status is a valid indicator of your financial stability as an individiual. Zip code identifies the general cost of living associated with the area for comparison to your existing debts and therefore helps determine how much credit you qualify for. Facebook analytics perform an analysis of your associations, hobbies, etc. and based upon arbitrary conclusions levy a judgement against you that affects your creditworthiness and therefore your ability to improve your circumstance.
Ever hear of guilt by association? This is exactly that. Next time one of your friends drinks too much and drives home make sure to never talk to him again because by your logic you should be arrested for knowing him. While there may be some valid metrics they can obtain from shit like this, the likelihood that it will negatively impact those who don't 'deserve it' is astronomical. The first time anyone can equate a negative impact in their credit rating specifically to something like who they know is the time that the credit agency in question gets raped with lawsuits.
I'm just flabbergasted by your flippant attitude to this. Everyone has grown up with people and taken different paths...everyone has friends or family members that fall on hard times. Unless everyone you know is perfect and you are also perfect, you don't get to talk anymore.
Your FB friends are not trustworthy and therefore /. has restricted your access to the moderation system.
I know that you're AC and are trolling but I'll bite on this one and tell you that you're the problem with politics and progress in this nation.
/AND/ PAYING TAXES. Ultimately you hear the word Marijuana or any argument even closely related to drug policy and put your fingers in your ears and scream 'LA LA LA LA' because you're just not intelligent enough to think things through.
Dude made a fair witticism about the government's overwhelming tendency to legislate down things that are not understood in the interests of 'protecting us' from ourselves, especially where drugs aside from the big 3 are concerned. You respond with 'Keep crying, pothead.' which is so short-sighted it hurts. People like you don't even think two steps beyond themselves and keep themselves locked in an ignorant little hole where they already know all the answers that they ever need. You also vote along party lines every time because you are part of the RIGHT 'club' and people in your club are all on the same side (except when you really start looking at policies and political opinions and voting history and all those little pesky details that you don't concern yourself with).
There is a reason that the majority of the nation has agreed that Marijuana has medicinal functions even though the federal government vehemently denies any medicinal use is possible. This is because they don't want to look like fucking morons for filling our prisons full of non-violent marijuana users so that we can all get buttfucked by the tax man to feed and house people who, most of the time, WERE ALREADY DOING THIS THEMSELVES
Maybe you're thinking of MEGAhertz?
My point is that responsible handling of nuclear power plants makes it a very safe source of energy. Yes there are byproducts that last an extremely long time and that are extremely dangerous, yes there are hazards if handled improperly or in the case of natural disaster that destroys the safeguards in place, but historically there have been very few nuclear power disasters. Even in Chernobyl which is recognized as the worst nuclear power disaster in history, modern studies indicate that the health impact from that event is relatively low compared to the scale of the disaster:
Among the residents of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, there had been up to the year 2005 more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, and more cases can be expected during the next decades. Notwithstanding the influence of enhanced screening regimes, many of those cancers were most likely caused by radiation exposures shortly after the accident. Apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure. The incidence of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to the shorter time expected between exposure and its occurrence compared with solid cancers, does not appear to be elevated. Although those most highly exposed individuals are at an increased risk of radiation-associated effects, the great majority of the population is not likely to experience serious health consequences as a result of radiation from the Chernobyl accident. Many other health problems have been noted in the populations that are not related to radiation exposure.
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html
My point here is that people have this negative opinion of nuclear power because they don't understand it and it is simply FUD. I retorted to the original poster's assertion that we should "ask the people in Fukushima how they feel about those low-low prices" and as I said previously it is a silly argument because what the people of Fukushima are concerned about is the damage from the giant earthquake and resulting enormous tsunami and that the impact of the Fukushima disaster on the populace is almost negligible.
Ultimately, you're right in that wind, wave, and solar power make sense there and they do have quite a bit of these technologies in place or in experimental stages but power-to-cost, nuclear is the cheapest option to fulfill the demands of the society at this point. In the future, it would be great if we could get away from nuclear power and subsist entirely on renewable energy sources but we are not there at this point. You're also right in that people are irrational and want everyone else to pay but it also has to be considered that those who say "So what solar costs more per kWh? That's the price you pay for clean energy!" have no concept of poverty and the impact that such an elevation in the cost of energy would cause.
To give this some perspective, they detected leaks of 100mSv/h recently but during the partial meltdown in 2011 the highest level measured was approx 1000mSv/h.
According to the Guardian, the Fukushima workers have to be wary of radiation spiking—a sudden and unforeseen rise in radiation.[28] This threat forced to evacuate the workers for a short period of time on the morning of Tuesday 15 March 2011 when radiation detected at Fukushima rose to approximately 1000 mSv/h,[29] the highest level of radiation detected at any point of time during the accident at the plant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_50
I'm not saying that anyone should go splash in the contaminated puddles like a schoolchild - I'm just saying that it is isolated, it effects a relatively minimal number of people, and it is about 10 times less than the original exposure rate.
The people in Fukushima will have to wait for a couple of hundred years, live in tents and get 10.000$ for their lost property if they are lucky.
The people in Fukushima are the ones that have to rebuild after the earthquake and resulting tsunami but that's my point - those are the things that damaged the city and the partial meltdown was a byproduct of the earthquake and tsunami that had relatively little to no impact comparatively.
There were no deaths caused by radiation exposure, while approximately 18,500 people died due to the earthquake and tsunami. Future cancer deaths from accumulated radiation exposures in the population living near Fukushima are predicted by some agencies to be extremely low to none.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster
Before anyone jumps down my throat, the following sentence in the Wikipedia article is this:
However, other researchers are less optimistic, with predictions that 25 times as many people in Fukushima area will develop thyroid cancer after the disaster compared to before: Professor Shinzo Kimura of Dokkyo Medical University in Japan, had been collecting radiation contamination data and studied the radiation exposure risks from Chernobyl. He was the first scientist on the ground in Fukushima after the disaster, keen to establish data independent of TEPCO and the government.
Again, however, there are existing studies and evidence to the contrary of this and there is little to no empirical evidence that has been identified in support of the claims that 25 times 18,500 people (462,500) will develop thyroid cancer. The sheer scale of the estimations for thyroid cancer seems to illustrate to me that these 'researchers' are using this event to garner attention with predictions of the sky falling. Ultimately the WHO report and other various reports identify the thyroid cancer risk and using hard data they have found that the risk is almost negligible that more people would develop thyroid cancer than normal. Also, they identify that the most at-risk group, the emergency workers, still have a very low potential to develop thyroid cancer (and there are definitely not 462,500 of them).
Ultimately, your statement that I "move there and put my money where my mouth is" seems a bit silly. Obviously I'm not going to pack up my belongings and sell my house to prove a point. However, if there were a nuclear disaster on this scale near enough that I had been or could potentially be exposed to it with the same potential after-effects, I also would not pack up my belongings and sell my house.
Except you still pay for the nuclear subsidies while ALSO paying for the solar subsidies.
The lifetime risk of contracting certain types of cancer rose slightly for a small group of people because they were exposed to radiation from the nuclear disaster, the WHO said Thursday.
The notable exception was young emergency workers at the plant, who inhaled high doses of radioactive iodine, probably raising their risk of developing thyroid cancer. But since the thyroid is relatively resistant to cancer, the overall risk for these people remains low, the report said.
Otherwise, any increase in human disease after the partial meltdown triggered by the March 2011 tsunami is "likely to remain below detectable levels," the WHO said in its report.
So basically the tsunami and resulting devastation from the tsunami's aftermath are what the people in Fukushima are really concerned about...not growing extra arms or dying of cancer any sooner than they already would have. The real question for people there is whether or not they are willing to pay double price for their power and be safe from the apparent nuclear menace that is destroying lives...I'm betting people like cheap power.
Hey now...people aren't idiots...they are just too tied up in fighting with others 'on their level' about who is right and which politician that they supported is right. Nevermind actual truth or logical discussion/debate or anything like that.
Ultimately, no matter where you live, politicians seek to make the common man fight himself in order to secret away more and more power to separate themselves from the commoners. It used to be harder in some countries but since terrorists are lurking around every corner and in your trashcan outside your kitchen window now, we the commoners have become scared little sheepses who NEED the shepher-ticians to order our lives and keep the bad men away. Pretty pathetic that this is happening in every single 'civilized' nation out there now.
High five for reason. Where are my mod points when I need them?
Maybe they just don't have the technology to request additional info from the reporter.
The largest social media site on teh internets does not have the technology to request additional information? I'm assuming here (and I don't think this is too much of an assumption) that they are using a pre-existing reporting or ticketing platform and every single software suite released to perform this function since the early 90s has had this type of functionality. Even if they rolled their own and used inspiration from other platforms, there is no way this feature would have been left out.
Taking this even FURTHER...oh wait...we're talking about incompetence on the technical staff at Facebook, right? Totally plausible.
Yes - as long as his camera crew is there to give him shelter and food after he finishes peeing in his own mouth and picking through his feces for "the good bits", he will survive. Les Stroud on the other hand would be hiking his body weight in cameras around and sucking water from Martian rocks while his support crew remains in orbit...just in case.
Les Stroud fo' liife!
You're right...those damn republicans will do anything to get the dems down. The democrats NEVER did anything of the SORT with a republican in office.
Fuck em both. Two parties = failure of Democracy.
I was at two of the Occupy protests in downtown LA and one in San Francisco and they were ALL exactly as the media reported - there was no real organization or structure to them that all or even most of those involved participated in, the message each 'group' was trying to deliver was highly divergent, and many of the 'protesters' were just assholes on bikes with bandanas covering their nose and mouth being dicks to passersby and drivers alike.
I hate organized media organizations for the travesty that they have become to unbiased reporting but my personal experience with the Occupy protests were that they were spot-the-fuck on. Also, in each of the three that I traveled hundreds of miles to go to, the police didn't stamp out shit...they showed up in strength but they didn't bother me or anyone I knew of who wasn't purposely trying to cause problems. Again, I'm not fond of the establishment but I was fairly impressed at the restraint shown by the 'peace-keepers'.
Things may be different in NYC; however, in other parts of the country, at least in the two cities I visited during the Occupy protests, there was local and national media coverage all over the place and things were as fair as could be expected.