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Emergency preparations

For electric power outages longer than half an hour, or so, It is possible and even practical to have a generator to provide power for the necessary appliances. Freezer, refrigerator, electric control for a gas furnace, some lights, and even tv and radio are fairly low power. Look at the name plate of all of these you want to be able to maintain functional through a power outage of perhaps a few days. Add up the number of Watts they use. That gives you a rough starting point to shop for generators. I have a 3000 Watt generator that is more than enough for me. This one is just a small and cheap one to show how inexpensive it can be. http://www.lowes.com/pd_473285-48270-APG3014_0__... The simplest way to hook one up to the house wiring is not legal so have an electrician install a switch and instruct you on how to turn some circuit breakers off to reduce the load. The labor will be the biggest expense. Here is an example of the low end switches. http://www.lowes.com/pd_394441-48019-TF151W_0__... Gasoline is still the least expensive and easiest to store for emergency backup. Once you have your generator and can hook it up, the only limit to how long you can run it is the amount of gas you have on hand. A few 5 gallon cans of gas can be handy to have around for many things. You are already thinking along these lines so i hope you proceed with it. Emergency preparedness is a good thing. The exact nature of an emergency is impossible to predict, by definition. But the basic needs are almost always the same. Shelter, water, food and fuel.

Prof Wade Allison

Why radiation is safe & all nations should embrace nuclear technology - Professor Wade Allison

Radiation is Freightening

The possible proliferation of nuclear weapons is not really related to the fission nuclear power plants, except as a red herring employed by the fear mongering crowd. The same is true of the potential nuclear fallout from the detonation of nuclear weapons or "accidents" at fission nuclear power plants. The lack of danger from nuclear fallout has been demonstrated by the many above ground weapons tests half a century ago and the worst case scenario at a nuclear power plant already happened at Chernobyl - lots of very nasty fallout from inside the core of a running reactor spread of Europe, yet no related increase of cancers in 3 decades. It turns out that exposure to low level ionizing radiation is not a significant cause of cancer. We have learned that almost everything can contribute to causing cancer, but it requires several events.

The prolific estimates of thousands or more of cancer deaths have been proven false.

Radiation is scary because we know enough about it to know that some radiation is dangerous. For most of us, we first learn about radiation with the story of Madam Curie's discoveries and subsequent early demise. Her work was so dangerous because she was making discoveries. No one knew the danger. But, thanks to her and the many researchers that followed her, those same experiments and observations can be done safely. We now know how to prevent the damage. Some radiation is dangerous but with knowledge and respect we can (and do) work with radiation sources safely.

Recursion

Recursion is a fundamental property of reality. The laws of physics operate on the present instant to produce the next. Although the progress of time from one instant to the next for us seem seems to be continuous but is not. There is some minimum time interval, probably near the Planck time. 

The resolution of the Ultraviolet catastrophe was to assume that there is a finite minimum frequency. Without that assumption, the energy would become infinite as the wavelength decreases to zero. Length, time, and energy all had to have some minimum quantity, called quanta. The size of the minimums just had to be finite - not zero. The size turns out to be some 35 orders of magnitude smaller than our familiar world. 

Some very simple recursive systems display complicated, even unpredictable behavior. Conway's Game of Life is an example well worth the time to investigate. If you want a deep dive into the concepts, I recommend a book, A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram.

Concept of the week for 2013 52 -- Hormesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

Nuclear Proliferation

The US never had a monopoly on the knowledge of how to make nuclear bombs. At least two of the people who worked on the Manhattan project thought that it was too important for not only one nation to have this knowledge. They found ways to communicate it to Russia, which was an ally at the time. When FDR told Stalin that we had nuclear bombs Stalin did not ask any questions. I think that was because he was afraid he reveal that he already knew as much as FDR. Non-proliferation efforts were doomed even before the first test. Then with Ike's"Atoms for Peace" program and France's entry into the nuclear "club" the race was on. FDR's decision to not share the results from the Manhattan project with Russia or even England was a mistake that undermined the trust we could have had internationally. I agree that nuclear weapons, themselves, are not the problem. The attitudes of regimes are the problem. We need to face the fact that we are part of the problem. Now, how to fix this?

Richard Feynman on the 2-slit experiment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJfjRoxCbk

Defund the EPA

 Tax code as social engineering.
"Off-budget expenditure" would better describe the granting of tax-exempt status. The honest way to achieve the honest objectives of the granting of tax-exempt status would be to appropriate it like any other expenditure.

Rajan Loknathan

The spread of languages is complex, of course. Although it is not a specific example discussed in this book, "Games of Life: Explorations in Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour" by Karl Sigmund, You will see the parallels.

The Zeroth Amendment

What has been tried before did not prevent recurrence of tragic events like the one in Sandy Hook yesterday, December 15, 2012. The police response was very fast and effective. The shooting ended when the shooter heard the police coming and shot himself to prevent being captured alive to face the consequences of his cowardly act. They and the school had practiced and prepared for such an event. No doubt that prevented the death of many more. At least two adults died trying to subdue the shooter even though they apparently had no weapons more powerful than a blunt nose pair of scissors, not even a knife. They were denied the right to defend themselves, which is what I am calling the "Zeroth Amendment" to the USA Constitution.

The right to defend one's self was so obvious and natural that the founders saw no need to state it in the constitution. Perhaps they thought it was implicit in "The Bill of Rights". I certainly think it is. Don't you?

What could have prevented this tragedy?
The police response could not have been better.  But it was not enough.
Profiling and locking up all potential attackers would probably still miss some and wrongfully violate the rights of many who never would have hurt anyone. It would not be enough.
How about banning the sale of all guns and ammunition and collecting all of the registered guns in the entire country? It would not be enough.
Collect all of the guns and all of the ammunition in the entire country. Welcome to the police state, it still would not be enough.
Encouraging responsible adults to have the training and tools to defend themselves might not have prevented it either but probably could have stopped it sooner.


 

Radiation Hormesis

My memory of the study that showed that very low levels of gamma radiation could be beneficial was flawed. It happened in Taiwan rather than Japan. When I finally did a search without "Japan" it popped right up. This link to Wikipedia can lead you to a lot of information on the subject of radiation hormesis.
High levels of radiation are obviously harmful, even fatal, and the correlation between amount of exposure and harm is high. However, it is not obvious that a given dose of radiation given in a very short time is equally harmful as exactly the same dose given over a lifetime. It may be analogous to losing all of the blood I have donated over the years all at once. On the other hand, it is quite conceivable that a single gamma "ray" of exactly right energy could hit and break exatly the right bond of exactly the right DNA molecule in exactly the right cell at exactly the right time to trigger a cancer that defeats all the repair mechanisms to start.

The limits of tolerance

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society... then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
― Karl R. Popper

To everyone:

I do respect your right to your religion. I do NOT have to respect your religion. Nor do I have to respect you for choosing your religion. I do respect your rights and insist that you also respect my rights.

-- Virgil Fenn

 

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Time travel is so dangerous to the entire universe that the discovery of how to travel in time had to be prevented. It seems that some Time Scout has successfully accomplished that  mission. As the timeline is healing, my memories of life as a Time Scout is fading rapidly. Already it feels like a fantasy. All I remember for sure is that the prime mission of the Time Scouts is to guide and assist Earth to a long future supporting life, especially intelligent life. I will try to continue with that mission. Any help toward that goal will be appreciated.

Virgil, Time Scout