Somehow I knew he would appear again. I surprised he doesn't use THEORETICAL PHYSICS to state that the nuclear reactors in Japan may cause a black hole.

Or something.

I doubt many, if any, here will agree with me (or maybe not even get why) but I find the following sentence from the Social public advocacy section of his wikipedia article hilariously ironic: "Kaku has publicly stated his concerns over matters including the human cause of global warming, nuclear armament, nuclear power and the general misuse of science."

http://www.plainenglishnuclear.net/2011/03/yet-another-japan-reactor-post/ - blog post by an actual nuclear engineer who said literally the exact same thing I said about the reactors (including the jab at investors.)

Ann Coulter reports that "radiation is good for you," outs herself as a brilliant satirist as she instructs Republicans nationwide to kill themselves in a way that involves vomiting up their stomach lining.

It's more of a "I don't understand how things like chemotherapy work and believe that a correlational relationship is the same as a causational relationship. Also, I apparently believe that there's a minimum amount of radiation required by the government, because I don't quite understand the difference between the words 'minimum' and 'maximum'."

*deep breath*

Wait, I've had radiation treatment! Thus I'm Japan! AND THUS...

... I'M A STALKER SHADOW OF CHERNOBYL ENDING OH NOOOOOOOOOOOO

XKCD to the rescue! Randall has made a chart of comparative radiation doses.

I think it's probably more of an anti-media hysteria thing than anything else. Probably a sentiment many [here] would agree with. Hard to know, though, since I haven't seen the entire piece. Shucks, I probably should DVR her glorious appearances.

It's hard to listen to Coulter. I mean, she has a worse public speaking voice than even that lady from NPR. It's hard to listen to her even if I didn't disagree with almost everything she says.

Reuters reports that "iodine" has been found in milk and vegetables. No ****. Thanks, Reuters.

If I ran the world....

Journalism major:
6 credits in English lit.
6 credits in technical writing
30 credits in chemistry
30 credits in physics
12 credits in mathematics
15 credits in biology
15 credits in philosophy
6 credits in statistics

(Sarah Palin has a journalism degree, if you want a specific example of how university-educated journalists are not being prepared to comment on any subject.
'Journalism' is a specialization of communications, which is also widely-regarded[sup][citation needed][/sup] as the degree that will let you get a 4.0 while being completely baked.)

My mother got a bachelor's in journalism and was a fringe "Obama is a secret Muslim" theorist.

I agree. She "sounds" much better in print.

A GLOWING REPORT ON RADIATION

Every time I hear or read "glorious", I can't help but think of the user of the word being of likeness to Kim Jong-il.

Too long, didn't read.

You know, in all seriousness, this may be the second time I've linked to an editorial of hers that someone that absolutely hates her might absolutely agree with. I'm interested in your thoughts about her recent column.

That's where I was too at first but it's pretty interesting.

Also, I can't say I think too much of her website design.

Due to that screenshot, my assumption would have to that you have some insanely nerdy, "I'm watching the whole world", multi-monitor setup like we've seen in many TV shows and movies.

heh, you could say... Coulter is a radical leftist.

Ahahahaha you agree with her.

Bloomberg, others: some workers got radiation burns from water in a turbine building! THE REACTOR IS LEAKING!!

Shameful. Shame, shame, shame Bloomberg.

The turbine building isn't attached to the reactor, it's adjacent. Steam blows through pipes from the reactor and into the turbine building where it's condensed back into water. These pipes are quite brittle and easy to damage in an earthquake, which is one of the many reasons the reactors are designed to automatically shut down when an accident happens.

This also still isn't a big deal. To give some perspective, the workers stood in this water for three hours and got a dose 1/10th of what is necessary to cause radiation poisoning. This wouldn't have even stopped them from working except β[sup]+[/sup] causes almost all of its damage to the very outer layer of the skin where all of the nerve endings are, like a sunburn from hell.


Read another report yesterday, don't remember where, that said radiation levels in Fukushima spinach are "1.4 times normal." I will eat an entire pair of jeans if the difference is even statistically significant.

I've said it before, all of these reporters should be ashamed. Absolutely ashamed. So should anybody who takes any of them seriously. There is no excuse for anybody with a high school diploma to be so stupid about nuclear physics.
Note how Temperamental has basically disowned all of the stupid **** he posted in this thread, now that it's entirely clear that nothing has happened, nothing will happened and everything I've posted is right.

Yeah.

You should be ashamed, Temperamental.

Reuters, others: reporting that the workers were hurt by "radiation 10,000x higher than normally found in a reactor."

They actually mean 10,000x the radiation normally found in coolant water, but they're too inbred to express their ideas correctly.

Normally you find almost no radioactivity in coolant water, because coolant water is pure and water itself doesn't readily become radioactive. The water at the plant is radioactive because it's sea water and full of impurities. (Everybody knew this water was going to be a problem sooner or later, btw.)

What's important here is that 10,000 * almost nothing is STILL almost nothing. Journalists just came up with the biggest number they could strangle out of the story to make it sound dangerous and important.


Extra bonus "****ing reporters **** off, I hope all of you get eaten alive by swarms of something" goes to all of the illiterate ****ing drains on society reporting that EXTREMELY DANGEROUS amounts of "radiation" were found in a water sample taken 100 km away from Fuku... fuk... fukish.... Nipponobyl!

The sample was actually taken 100 m away.

Reporters are now literally increasing all numbers by 3 orders of magnitude to make them sound more scary.

Seriously, am I the only person who has noticed that news people are becoming a serious threat to the survival of our culture? Possibly our species? News reporting has never in my life been as poor as it is today. These subhuman monsters knowingly and maliciously lie to stoke the fear and ignorance of the public. They are terrorists in every meaning of the word and they need to be stopped.

Huh? All I was responding to was your silly comment that the only people affected should something happen would be those attempting to line their pockets.

I also said on numerous occasions when I posted that it was not going to be like chernobyl, and that I agreed it wouldn't be super high radiation levels. I stated exactly that the radiation leaked thus far was damaging enough to those living in the area. We were discussing the possibility of something coming towards the US or Canada, not the fact that radiation HAS been leaked and WILL cause significant health issues to those that live in the area and or were subjected to it i.e the workers.



Pretty sure we were discussing the fact that should a core meltdown begin, more than simple lining of the pockets would be affected. That's what sparked the discussion. Not me claiming 2012 was coming and Chernobyl part 2 was on the horizon.


But all in all, it was an ok try, I suppose.

Almost without exception, every news agency is in the business of making money. To do that they need ratings, and to get ratings they need an audience to be continuously tuning in. People are really only going to watch constantly if they feel there there is a serious possibly dangerous issue they need to be informed about.... Like, a nuclear meltdown that will send a deadly cloud of radiation spreading across the Americas!!! Hence all the news agencies doing the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater.

Jon`C, you forget that news is first and foremost a business. News is to be reported if it can make the publisher money. If the event in question won't make them money, they won't print it. Or they can fudge a few facts here and there to make the article appear like something more extraordinary is happening so that more people will buy the print.

If you want news to be factually correct, you will have to remove it from the hands of corporations. Until then, everything will be incorrectly reported as to make the company money.

You're forgetting the fact that Jon C is so smart, he knows literally everything about anything. That includes how news networks should be run by those in charge, who aren't him.

Exactly!

Yes, yes. You think I'm not as smart as everybody else thinks I am. That's great. Look up the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I could and it's so tempting... But no, I won't be suckered in.

Must...resist...urge...to post...retort...


What is the definition of someone that pretends to be smarter than they really are?????

Probably for the best. You were going to attribute the effects of the Dunning-Kruger effect to me. Then I was going to post my retort, which might have made you kill yourself. Posting your highly original retort wouldn't have been in your best interests.

I actually wasn't even looking up the Dunning-Kruger effect since I already know what it is (School yayz who knew?!?) and don't care to actually get into a debate about whether you believe you're incredibly intelligent or not, or how you believe everyone thinks as such.

Not a debate intelligent people get into methinks. And if you're as smart as.... Everyone thinks you are... Then you'd also agree.

EDIT: Was that an e-intelligence threat? (lol)

You misunderstand me, Temperamental.

I'm not insulted, threatened or interested in debating your repeated assertions that I don't know as much as I think I do, or that I'm not intelligent. (If nothing else, I have way too many accolades from people much smarter than either of us to take your opinions about the subject seriously.)

What offends and alarms me is the fact that you honestly believe "heh, well you don't know everything :smug:" is a meaningful retort.

It's not.

You are as bad as the reporters, fear-mongering, deliberately misinterpreting facts and regurgitating the opinions of people who know even less about the situation than you do.

You should be ashamed. I don't know how to state this more clearly.

No Jon, you have me wrong.

I believe that you are an intelligent person. And if you bother to search the forums and read all my past replies where we have gotten somewhat into this discussion in the past, you'd see that I've stated that on multiple occasions.

However, since we are at this point, I'll elaborate.

You are smart. People know that. However, you carry it about yourself in your own sort of smugness, which has been observed also, on multiple occsasions on the forums. You flaunt your "smartness" about, in an intelligently arrogant way. Quite frankly, that's just as off-putting as someone being an outright *******, because well, in a way that's also exactly what you are doing.

You see, I do think you are smart. But it's comments and posts that you make, like "Yes, yes. You think I'm not as smart as everybody else thinks I am." that illustrate this. When someone posts something, you usually come in with that smug arrogance I outlined above. You could have just as easily said "You think I'm not as smart as I actually am." Yet, you encompass EVERYONE. And that's what I mean.

My argument is two fold. When I say you're smart, I know it's because you have an education. However with such a broad range of subject matter unless you are Albert Einstein, you probably spend most of your time googling things and reading websites all day, which while a source of information, is not something that makes someone "smart". It makes someone informed. You are a very informed person, someone who is able to spend values of time reading up on various subjects, who then posts pertaining to those subjects just read about. Yet you act as if you know everything, about anything.

Unless you are a very rich person, with a plethora of books in a vast library in your house which you can afford to sit in all day and read up on, then yes, I do believe you are someone that googles quite a fair amount of things, and posts about them to try to sound smart. It's very easy to sit and read up breifly on how a nuclear reactor works for example, and then to post about what you've just learned. But that does not make you smart. Just informed.

For example, with the reactors posts you've made. It's very possible that you could be someone that works in physics, or nuclear physics, etc. However, it's just as likely that you could also be sitting at home, reading website after website, of information on the specific topic. That does not make you a nuclear physicist, however you will come here pretending you are.

I could go on all day going back, gathering times that you've been like this, or times that it's been illustrated to you by other members, but I don't have that time and patience. All I am saying is that while you are an intelligently informed person, you are by no means the genius that you portray yourself to be. And if I am incorrect, then I do apologize, however the recent posts that I have read by you (and that goes back to my join date...) all come across in this manner. And quite frankly, it's damned annoying. You outright insult people sometimes with your "intelligenece"(read your above posts towards me), and that my friend, is not smart.

There are times where you take a debate to the next level. In both intelligence, but also sometimes arrogance.

Words, words, words.

What's important is that you don't actually know anything about me or about nuclear power, you didn't actually read the post you originally disagreed with, and you've already decided that nuclear power is scary so you automatically discount anything contradictory.

We're not talking about me. We're talking about you. Shame.

Words Words words, yes. But they are true.

You're right, I obviously don't know as much as you about nuclear power. Even though I've read into the subject quite a bit. I am somewhat informed.

It seems to me you didn't read the posts that I originally disagreed with. Again, I state that never once in this topic did I say "OMG THIS IS CHERNOBYL AGAIN", the only thing that comes close to that are the links I posted. Which, I will remind you, are not MY words.

The only thing I outright disagreed with you on was the fact that more people are going to be affected than what you so eloquently put as "those whom are lining their pockets". People are going to die from this, and people already have.

Not once did I say that nuclear power was scary, and now you're just putting words in my mouth. The possibility of what could happen is what's scary, but not once did I ever say that this is what was happening and we should all go buy some iodine pills. By your logic, does this now make you as bad as the news networks reporting incorrect information?

I'd also like to point out that you know just as much about me as I do about you, yet you're assuming just as much as I am.


Shame.

No, you disagreed with my assertion that the shareholders are the only people affected by a meltdown. Do you even know what a meltdown is? Why it happens, or what it means, or why it's more or less dangerous than any other kind of nuclear accident?

You don't.

And look, you're still doing it. You're still fear-mongering.

People are going to die? At these doses, are you kidding me? All of the people who died from working at Chernobyl got doses at least 32 times higher than the maximum dose of any worker so far. It is extremely unlikely that you would be able to find a statistically significant change in the mortality rate among even the workers. I demand you back up this claim.

People who did die? The only people who have died in this accident would have been exposed to similar hazards in any other form of power generation (any plant with a crane, a steam turbine, explosive chemicals or a large amount of concrete.) Nobody has died because of radiation exposure.

Shame.

Ugh...

Those workers inside the plant are going to have issues later in life if not quite soon.

Thus, the chances of someone dying from this is significant.

http://www.670kboi.com/rssItem.asp?feedid=113&itemid=29649169
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0324/japan.html (read the first ****ing paragraph)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/24/japan-workers-radiation-injured-nuclear-plant_n_839369.html
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Japan+Workers+exposed+radiation+levels+times+higher+than+expected/4495925/story.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/24/science/la-sci-japan-workers-exposed-20110324

The fact remains that while the effects might not be immediate, you cannot determine what is going to show up 10, 20, or 30 years down the road.


I'm seriously done trying to point out to you the posts that I made which SPECIFICALLY state the opposite of what you are claiming I said.



Yet.

You are quite frankly the smartest idiot I've ever encountered.

Fallacy. Argument from ignorance.

None of the articles you have cited say anything about the long-term mortality of the workers at the plant.



YOU SAID PEOPLE ALREADY HAVE! If I'm the "smartest idiot," what does that make you?