And if the probability is zero it doesn't.

The assertion that a single particle of radiation could result in someone's death without even specifying a mechanism by which it might do so is ridiculous. I can't believe anyone even said it.

Let's say the odds of dying is 1/1000 and you re exposed for the 1000th time, then on average you should already be dead; 1000 x 1/1000 = 1, but you actually have a 36.7% chance of not being dead (Woo hoo!).

If you buy 1 million lottery tickets with 1 in a million odds on average you should win on average once but there is a 36.7% chance you'll never win but a 36.8% chance of winning only once a 18.4% chance of winning twice, a 6.1% chance you'll win 3 times, etc.

The odds of Megamillions is 195,711,536 to 1. A Megamillions ticket costs $1. In 50 years, playing once a week is 2600 times or $2600 total,
so on average you could only hope to retrieve .0013 cents while your probability of winning at least once would be 1.3 out of 100000.

If we wanted to add the first level of complexity to the story told to the general population, we'd first distinguish between exposure and contamination. It's fairly easy to grasp that contamination means permanent, ongoing exposure forever, rather than that one pass through the hot zone that people seem to be worrying about now.

It's another ball of wax entirely to bring up the chemical identity of those radionuclides; some (like Pu) are supertoxic, but almost all of them change their atomic number as they decay. Elements that pass through a biologic barrier and then change to another element can find themselves trapped forever.

When I read this, I kept thinking about the recent CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) in honey bees and what scientist believe is the cause.

How would it be possible to reduce pollution enough to make a major cut in medical costs (that is to cut them by more than half, i.e. cut out the majority of costs, since oyu seem to be implying that is caused by pollution), while simultaneously at least preserving life expectancy?

Right. Another way to say this is that disordered radiation has fewer benefits than ordered radiation. I know that certain medical treatments require a specific frequency that resonantly excites a mode in the pathogen. Injecting a broad spectrum at the problem will cause wider spread damage.

*clap* *clap8 *clap*

"Our financial dependency on unsustainable economics is broad, ingrained and deep."

Which seems to make it virtually impossible to change it, since it would require entirely re-building the whole mass of our infrastructure from the bottom up. Might as well just let it fall off the great cliff and then start all over, no? As to change it would essentially require taking it all down anyway.

Maybe electronics like phones and computers? Although you could argue they're merely convenient. But then they're *really* convenient.

Please name one thing that we need (emphasize NEED) that only large organizations can provide. And just to be clear, I expect this to be a human need, not a "need" of other complex or large organizations.

Well assuming you live in a major city and depending on what you mean by large! the local water board in one that springs to mind.
True, that water company does not need to be within a larger organisation, unless it gets its water supply from the same pipe.

It's an ok point, but don't play into his strawman.

It assumes his opponent is truly against 'ALL BIG ORGANIZATIONS' ...

'Presuming the extreme' is the intellectually lazy route that we spend way too much time arguing needlessly against here. "Renewables can't replace all the Gasoline!" .. "What, are you going to build 10 Billion of those, so EVERYBODY has one, huh?"

I'll make my ad-hom more general.. 'They're idiots, playing Middle-school games to score points.'

I don't think it is that simple. The reactor buildings were right in the path of the tsunami and would certainly have sustained some damage. We also don't know what damage the buildings sustained from the earthquake.

I'll concede that we'd have less of a disaster on our hands if the diesel generators had kept running, and there would be a greater probability of being able to return some/all of the reactors to service. However, you'd still have the problem of losing a substantial amount of generating capacity for a significant amount of time. From an engineering perspective, you want an important piece of infrastructure like this to be able to withstand any large earthquake/tsunami that could reasonably be expected to occur without an extended shutdown afterwards.

I think the point is that, in the case of nuclear energy, planning for anything but the worst case scenario is unacceptable. Granted the mechanism for tsunami generation is still not totally understood but if the highest one ever seen on the planet in a similar setting (either through direct observation or geologic evidence) is know to have been 15m (for example) then a nuclear plant simply should not have been built in any location that was vulnerable to something half again as high or maybe at least 20m (again for example).

Would it be expensive ? Yes, probably ridiculously so... but it will be chump change compared to the cost (and I don't mean only the $$ aspect) of rendering a significant area uninhabitable for centuries.

I did see a documentary that showed a wall that a Japanese town had built after their community had been hit by a tsunami back in the 50's or 60's. While it would have protected the town from the tsunami they had experienced, I doubt it would have coped with the recent tsunami.

That means they are designing for a 50-year tsunami. The problem with designing for a 50-year event is that the average person will experience one of them, or possibly two, during their lifetime.

Reportedly, the last time a similar tsunami hit the area was 869 AD, so this was likely a 1000-year event.

Rocky - Here’s a thought that may stir some folks up. Watch my words closely and don’t make assumptions:

Should motor cycle riders wear helmets? Obviously two very divided views. If you vote yes the reason could be that mc riders bear a greater risk of brain injuries. But what did I really just say? More mc riders die from brain injuries or that they have a higher prob of being killed in an accident? What’s really important: the prob of death or the number of deaths? IOW what’s the real consideration: the stat or the deaths themselves? I would think most folks would say the actual deaths: wearing a helmet reduces the absolute number of deaths of mc riders. I’m guessing most here would agree.

If I’m correct then most TODsters would agree that we should pass a law requiring all passengers in automobiles wear helmets. Simple logic: most auto deaths are a result of brain injury. Add that to the fact that around 60 times as many folks die from brain injuries in auto accidents than mc accidents. Then since so many more folks would survive auto accidents than mc accidents we should all wear helmets in our cars. Many thousands of lives would be saved (many more than mc riders) if everyone were to wear helmets in their cars. Isn’t that why we have laws that require baby car seats…to save the lives of those babies? We’re worried about their lives and not the stats, aren’t we? For every mc rider whose life is saved by wearing a helmet than 60 auto riders would be saved by wearing a helmet.

So a show of hands: who is going to buy a helmet tomorrow?

PCBs in our water

You're probably not going to like this, but I'm going to say it anyway: PCB's are not really very toxic. The problem arises because they are persistent organic pollutants. They are nearly impossible to get rid of. You have to burn them at very high temperatures under controlled conditions to dispose of them.. If you burn them at low temperatures, e.g. accidentally in a transformer fire, they generate dioxins and furans, which are very toxic.

More inconvenient facts to deal with from the real world of chemistry.

A truly consistent "libertarian" (and I'm not sure I've met any) would not believe that corporations should be allowed to do anything. Corporations as they exist now are only made possible by a regulatory and legal environment that is created by that very government that the libertarian supposedly opposes.

Even stripping away the tax breaks, the subsidies, and the like, the corporation is possible as a result of limited liability rules that create the legal entity while shielding the participants from any exposure of their own wealth. (This is why we don't talk too much about the largest "partnerships"). This existence separate from the owners was extended to give corporations a legal "person-hood" which then allows them to take advantage of further government protection, including things like special bankruptcy rules (as an individual you bankruptcy options are limited, but their are many variations for corporations).

It would be an interesting though experiment to work through the implications of removing the legal underpinnings of limited liability and corporate person-hood. But few of those implications would result in the large corporations that your hypothetical libertarian believes in. Indeed, your hypothetical libertarian (much as s/he resembles the current real world examples) would probably find such a world quite to their dislike. For that sort of libertarian is not really interested in a reduced gov't role in their life, they really just want that government role to benefit their only view of how things should be.

Ah. I can give a slight illumination to where those Maine Tea Partiers are coming from.

My sister had an idea for a cool children's jewelry.

When she started looking into the business aspect of it more deeply, she discovered that those laws about lead? She would have had to have every batch, of every ingredient, of each and every separate jewelry model, independently tested by a professional lab at a cost of thousands of dollars.

Even though she planned to make the jewelry from completely nontoxic substances. Small boutique artisans are held to the same testing burden as mega-billions rich Chinese manufacturers.

Needless to say that was one cool kid's jewelry that never came to market.

The same testing regulations apply to all small-time individuals who make anything at all for under age 13, even children's books and t-shirts.

The mega-billions rich Chinese manufacturers switch to some different poison not covered by the law. And all the American small businessmen go out of business.

That is what the Tea Partiers in Maine are fighting over. Poorly written laws that slaughter the little guy while the big guys laugh and find a loophole.

I thought it put a smudge on the forehead in March so one can then claim their position is FAR better than the other.

Since this thread is about risk assessment and mitigation I will point to something which caused a *boggle* the first time I saw it. During the slavery/near post slavery era of American history blacks often lived in cabins with leaning tip-able wood chimneys. They were designed to be tipped away from the cabin when they caught fire, which they often did, a kind of active safety scheme. It reminds me of nuclear reactors that way. The japanese are the new black!

Three feet. Sixteen inches with a proper heat shield between the stove and the wall.

And never hang socks less than six inches away to dry; a neighbor burned his house down that way once. No insurance either, poor guy.

I'll try to respond to each question, thanks.

1) So could you tell me an example of a change that does NOT operate on a "completely selfish basis"?

There seems to be very little evidence of non-selfish behavior. So given the predominance of selfishness, it's likely that all our best laid plans will go awry. And yet I think there is evidence for the possibility of selflessness, yes.

Evidence for this rests, for one thing, in our capacity to recognize error. The discovery of error is an action in the sense that it changes (acts on) our view of the world. And it's not selfish because it is in many ways self-negating. The selfish impulse is to resist the recognition of our own stupidity and error.

Often it is the error -- the apple falling on Newton's head -- which leads to discontinuous leaps of insight. The rejection of one's entire framework of thought is a non-selfish act, I think, because it is not so much an act of our own volition (not an act of desire or selfish want), but an action forced upon the brain (against its will often enough) by facts themselves. In the same way that the recognition of oil peak was forced upon the brain by facts.

But what I'm suggesting is that selfishness would not arise by effort (or goal setting), because that still lies within the framework of selfishness (because, if we can bear to look at this brutal fact, any willful action has selfish aims). I'm suggesting, therefore, that we can't gradually become free of selfishness any more than a dog on a chain can gradually become free from his chain. No matter how long a chain we give the dog, there is a discontinuous leap between a dog on a chain and a dog off the chain.

In short, here are the assumptions driving this statement (and we can examine them one at a time through your questions below): 1) we're selfish; 2) psychological (as opposed to biological) selfishness is dangerous; 3) At this rate (through gradualism and incremental change) we're only extending the length of our chain, but are still tied to a conditioned, selfish level of existence; 4) therefore so long as we make no discontinuous leaps into a different framework, we're doomed.
These are the assumptions, and we can examine their validity and proper contexts.

2) If we all made all THOSE changes, would we have a great world that was in almost every respect unparalleled in human history?

No changes are being suggested in the usual sense of "change" (as a willful, goal-oriented action): First, only the fact of selfishness is observed. But the possibility of a new framework is left open, evidenced by the capacity for selfless actions (such as the discovery of unpleasant facts).

But rather than picturing a "great world" (as a selfish goal), what I'm picturing is purely negational. We are confronted with problems arising from a world/self view that takes as its primary assumption the idea that the world is composed of separate things bouncing off one another. Is it an error to imagine the world in this way? (Can this view be negated?) For by thinking of it as divided into separate things (not merely distinct forms of the whole), then we act accordingly, competing beyond the point where we are protecting ourselves biologically, but acting out of a belief that we're isolated in a hostile world, acting with such wreckless abandonment of reason that we create nuclear weapons (to protect ourselves?), and so and on. I take these self-destructive actions as evidence that we're extending our biological instinct for self (body) preservation beyond its proper context, driven by ideas of separation.

When we think of our national interest, or of my personal pride and vanity, and act in anger in protection of those "things", we are extending our biological instinct for self preservation into an imaginary realm -- where our nation (pure idea), or my self esteem (idea), needs to be perpetuated, even if it means starting a war that kills real living things.

We act according to how we think the world is organized. That is, the assumption is that human nature is a product of our understanding. And as it changes, so, then, do we. Nothing appears more plastic than life, moving from primordial soup to dolphins. It is a whole system but we are behaving as if it were broken up into pieces, with many "others" lying outside the pale, where empathy is not extended.

3) What exactly does this mean? What are thoughts of "self" and not of "self", anyway, that "need protecting", and what happens if one drops this barrier of "protections"?

I'm hoping that my response to 2 covered this more or less as well.

4) So what, you can't do that -- 'talk to yourself internally' (what, when you think words in your head?! As that's how I'm interpreting it)?

Oh, hell, we can do anything we want. But I'm noticing that a lot of mental energy is spent voicing things to no one at all. No one's home. For I already know what I'm going to say to myself before I say it. It's a fancy, a freak show, a schizophrenic outbreak that I find amusing. This is the theory: Our belief in separateness is a cancerous meme that has infected every aspect of our consciousness, including our relationship to self.

The stream of consciousness that most people seem to experience seems to be (if observed very very subtly) a series of responses to previous thoughts. The attempt to control ourselves or change ourselves or any of the ways we try to edit our image of self, keeping it forever on the higher end of our perpetually sinking ship of state, looks to me like a sign of madness, or hallucination, of believing that "I" am separate from "Me." This push and pull internally wastes a great deal of mental strength. But it seems to hold a key to its own resolution.

It looks like a form of the children's toy -- the chinese torture game -- where the more you pull to be free, the more caught you are. Whcih then strenghtens the delusionn that "I" acutally exist in a form that can be controlled (because I feel resistance!). This belief in being an operator free enough from our own selves to operate on ourselves (controlling ourselves and editing our images, pulling and pulling), is based on an unconscious vision of division, separation. Which then gets extended outwardly the world as nations, races, religions, and so on, leading to war. It is a war philospohy, seen in seed form in the stream of consciousness we presume to be an unalterable fact of human life. Baah. It's a product of theory, like everything else from this perspective.

5) Wouldn't that need a fundamental change in the very biology of the brain?

I'm presuming this means that the division is seen as "human nature", as in biologically determined. Well, obviously, I'm coming from the assumption that human nature is a product of how we think the world is organized. And again, I see no signs of a stable form for any kind of life system. It's all too plastic.

6) What is this "mere thought of oneself" that "has to be preserved", and how is it inevitably *evil*?

This is an interesting question. I've already gone on too long. But some of this has been covered. I could rough out a quicker summary (that might not work but let's fling it) by saying a thought of self is any verbal structure that I defend or get angry over or feel is real.

There is Evil (as in christian doctrine, whcih I find preposterous) and then there is little e evil, which is what I mean. We act miserably to anyone outside our horizons of empathy -- anyone who is believed to be separate from us, or an other. These horizons extend and contract with context and with depth of perception. In rare cases a person of no empathy perceives everyone in the world as an other(serial killers and such?). Sometimes the horizon extends to the idea of "our nation". In a sense, evil can be seen as a fragmented sense of goodness. Because even Hitler tried to be good to those with whom he identified (and was an utter monster to those with whom he couldn't). Even a seriel killer is good to himself presumably. And some, like Gandhi perhaps, have extensive horizons of empathy.

But neverthelss, the assumption here is that no matter how wide the horizon of empathy extends, it's still a leash to which our dogged brains are tied. And so long as this rope continues to expand merely incrementally, we will eventually find contexts that bring us up short, causing us to project divisions that are actually only ideational constructs (hallucinations). War is implicit in the existence of a horizon of any kind. The idea is not to "get rid of" the horizon, for that goal, then, is only another ideational construct. The idea (if one can call it that) is to see the fact for what it is, a hallucination of division where perhaps only distinction exists. It's to negate, not posit new ideas. It's to recognize the fundamental error which supports the cancer of war on every level of consciousness.

7) What do you mean by "difference between thought and thing"? The difference between the thought and the thing thought of? As the latter seems trivial. The difference between a thought and an actual physical object? Again, it seems fairly easy.

It's easy to tell the difference between a thought of a tree and a tree. But it's not so easy to tell the difference between a thought of "my wife" and the actuality of her unknown potential. For the thought of my wife is my memory of her, that's all. My expectations, my limited vision. The reality of anyon exceeds any idea, but we forget that, frequently, and tend to go to war believing we "know" what "the enemy" is up to and wants, who they are. And then there are the ideas for which there is no thing -- nations, religions. They are entirely ideas. And then it's necessary to realize that the idea is itself merely a thing, a construct, an invention, that has no reality (that has no Corresponding "thingness" outside itself).

Yes, yes. And I wonder why I lose touch with this watching mentality so easily. Because it's easy when it happens. It's doing nothing, it's not resisting. What could be simpler. But I mess even that up.

It's easy to induce that any movement away from watching is evidence of resistance. There seems to be a more profound error in the thought/thing issue than I can bring out verbally. There are certain realizations that need to be received more physically than cognitively, if that makes sense.

Rather than posit an alternative perspective (from a sense of life as a whole being the living thing, etc.), which would only lead to an artificial sense (verbal sense) of knowing something, it may be necessary to confront the limitlessness (inescapabilitiy) of selfishness and let the impossibility of escape from this fact do something to our fundamental assumptions. For our behavior is generated at that deeper root of how we often unconsciously assume things to be.

Here's an interesting paradox: everything infinite is also limited. It's another way of seeing relativity's meaning. It sounds ridiculous but is pretty easy to see.

Here's a simplified example: Picture a two dimensional world populated by stick figures. (Someone recently told me that a guy wrote a book on this concept around 1900, and I've got to find it). The plane extends without end. So it IS infinite in one context (the horizontal dimension or context). But it's limited in a way that those stuck in that context of horizontal thinking can't yet perceive: it's limited with regard to the vertical. (Any subject is the same: math is infinite in its capacity to depict the world, but is not poetry; or vice versa, and so on).

If a vertical creature were to step into the horizontal and say "here is a vertical dimension", the horizontal thinkers would perceive that only as yet another horizontal dot. And the concept of "verticality" would remain only a verbal construct, confusing some into thinking they know what they don't know (like me?).

Much of our despair is in running from the fact that everything is selfish. We try to do good, but essentially, usually, for selfish reasons. And this is ultimately going to kill us (which is a selfish reason to stop!).

My tendency is to reject that premise or ignore it (for selfish reasons). The belief that I CAN reject this fact or escape it is evidence that I still haven't perceived the fact as a fact. It seems negotiable.

Here is the confusing thing: The infinity of selfishness (the inescapability of it) is also its limit. If I were to confront the inescapability of selfishness I am in a position where escape is impossible, and the attempt to selfishly try and escape comes to an end -- the limit is reached. At that moment (and most of us have been there at least briefly, for me extremely briefly, but enough to indicate) a new vertical movement ensues at that very point. Any humbling discovery implies this. In realizing the inescapabiliy (the infinity) of selfishness, that very realization is a 1st movement of non-selfishness.

But these discoveries are more like hitting a wall than moments of genius. When we let the intellect (the verbalization) intrude, the brain inevitably makes the logical (but faulty!) leap of inducing the following: limitlessness "therefore" implies "no other possibility." Endgame. It's that implicit leap along "therefore" to an endgame that is the key error somehow. Possibilities need to be kept open even in teh face of inescapability. For it's not "escape" per se that opens up a new possibility.

I think there is need for what you said: watching what the brain does. In particular, when confronted with this inescapable (infinite) trap of selfishness. For we will always want to escape from it into some new perspective (artificial or verbal). And if we keep feeling (touching, sensing, not thinking through) that escape (not stopping the escape, but not escaping from the sensation of escape), then does this very sensation of escape communicate something to us non-intellectually, non verbally, which in and by itself refutes the horrible infinity of selfishness?

The physicist David Bohm and the extremely misperceived and underestimated Krishnamurti went into this stuff in great depth.

They are some good thoughts, and I'm afraid I'm off and running into life today..

To keep my view functional, I have to keep remember that 'There is more under the heaven and stars, Horatio, than is dreamt of in my philosophy' .. if I can keep enough of that humility intact, then I can also remember during the darker moments that 'I might be wrong.. and for the moment, I'm still breathing.' .. and the little girl comes up and asks me to play. Accepting that offer is a tough turn away from the darkness, and has been a decent form of self-medication.

You said "I understand that evolution is composed of both incremental and sudden, non-incremental leaps. "

It reminds me of the tale of the Grandfather advising the impatient grandson.. "What's the hurry? Life is long." .. and later, when the grandson had gotten a little too procrastinative and pokey, he chided, "Hurry up! Life is short!"

The paradoxes give me hope. (But if I choose to, I could also use them to confirm my despair.)

You can't edit the comment Jokuhl was referring to anymore because Mike3 replied to it. Once someone has replied to a comment, the edit option goes away.

""The choices we are given are seldom if ever between good and evil, they are almost always between the lesser evil and the greater evil.""

There is nothing that exists in Nature, to the extent of being "good" or "evil". No such thing.

Only opinion exists. A Human construct.

The Martian.

I don't know but I would say that was some twisted pretzel logic.

I'm not sure I understand the logic behind this rant. Is this blogger saying...

Mr. Byrne isn't a blogger at banovsky's site. He's just a guy who left a comment there. You probably know that, but I wanted to make it clear.

He's basically advocating a consumer boycott. He thinks the greedy oil barons will lower the price of gas if consumers refuse to buy it at what he believes is an artificially inflated price.

While in theory Canadians might still be able to drive 10 or even 25 years from now, in practice it seems unlikely that we will be able to maintain a BAU economy while the US and much of the rest of the world suffers from a liquid fuels crisis.

It may seem far-fetched but I would not put it past a US administration to beat the war drums against Canada in the not too distant future.

What's your source material for the comments about China and "their vast foreign exchange reserves"?

Various sources, e.g. Xinhua News:

China should diversify foreign exchange reserves to keep safe: leading economist

China had accumulated 2.85 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of 2010 from robust foreign trade over the past a few years. The foreign exchange regulator has not disclose the currency structure of the holding, but the U.S. dollar is widely believed to take up a lion's share.

China's ODI up 13.1% in the first two months: MOC

BEIJING, March 22 (Xinhua) -- China's outbound direct investment (ODI) in the non-financial sector saw an increase of 13.1 percent year on year to 5.27 billion U.S. dollars in the first two months, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced Tuesday. the Jan.-Feb. period, Chinese entrepreneurs invested in 680 overseas enterprises in 88 countries and regions, said Yao Jian, spokesman for the ministry.

MOC figures show that China's outbound direct investment in the non-financial sector had amounted to 264 billion U.S. dollars by the end of February 2011.

You have to keep your eye on the ball to see how the game is being played.

Shaman, resist the urge to point anyone to Derrida, he can only confirm and enforce any bias against such thinking.

There are many better sources, less full of BS, you can use, and far more relevant.

The stories we tell ourselves do not need external sources to explain, we can explain them without such references, and the explanations would be much more honest and accurate.

The function of language is to tell stories. We invent specific languages, ie, of the hunt, of basket weaving, etc, to allow ourselves to tell each stories about how to make such things, and why, and so on.

Engineering talk, math talk, are all such languages, and the stories they create are the stories we rely on to see our world, at least they are in this current social body we inhabit. The sum total, for example, of all the varied oil industry stories allow for the creation of large devices, the flowing of social capital to their making and use, then, as an outcome, allow the oil to come out of the earth, to be wasted, burned, by us, all the while we do not pause for probably even a second to ask ourselves about this story we are living in, which is itself really only about 100 years old now.

But that's how stories go, we live in them, and when and as they change, so too does our telling each other of the story, to the degree that we don't even realize we have come to tell a new story. I've read more than one instance of Native Americans modifying their myths in real time to account for the arrival of the Europeans, but without any awareness that the myths had changed to adapt to a new reality.

Also what Soros calls 'bias' guiding 'trends'.

Now the story Derrida tells is one of vacuous intellectual blather that hasn't the first clue about any first principle.

Now if you'll forgive me, I have to return to a very boring conversation with some web servers...

Yeah, narratives and stories have been part of the human psyche far longer than math and science, and IMO, are still far more powerful. Since math is the language of science, it can be (mis)used like any other language to describe or delude; it's all about application. As I've said, we humans live in a dream-world of our own creation.

Reality? What a concept ;-)

Hmmmm. How do I explain this. It's not the thing itself (stories) that I denigrate. Without our stories- our history and philosophy- we are little more than monkeys hooting in the trees.

It's the label that leaves me rolling my eyes in disgust. People who use words like "narrative" when what they mean is closer to "mindset" tend to be those Kumbaya-starry-eyed-all-we-need-is-love types who live in some fairy la-la land that has no connection whatever with the real world.

They are the equal-but-opposite of the calculator-punchers who hide inside equations and spreadsheets. Neither the singing-clapping-dancing bunch nor the quadratic-and-differential huggers are doing the world any good.

What we need is a middle way, with a healthy dose of realism and practicality.

The problem, of course, is that everyone defines realism and practicality differently.

$124.31 - justlikethat!