Author Archives: Peter

Fukushima Daiichi reactors faults

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Donate to the Red Cross

Let’s assume that the Fukushima Daiichi reactors collectively manage a plume the size of a square kilometer with radiation levels of 400 mSv/hour. Now, to get comparable numbers we need to get the dose per year:

400 x 24 x 365 = 3.5 million mSv/year.

Now let’s take that as a uniform distribution over 1 km square and spread it out over the whole earth. Divide by 500 million square km (global distribution).

3.5 million ÷500 million = .007 milliseiverts / year

One Japanese reactor site is not going to sustain that level of emission for a week, much less for a year. Also, 400 mSv/hour is probably a peak value not average value. The real numbers are much, much less. So,the absolute crazy-absurd worst case scenario is less than .007 mSv / year globally.

Typical, natural background radiation levels are about 2.4 millisievert (mSv) per year.  You are already being irradiated at this moment with 342 times the absolute worst case dose from that reactor. So crunch your iodine tablets if it makes you happy, but people in Japan are suffering from the quake and tsunami damage, not radiation. How about we spend our iodine budget on helping out the Red Cross?

Adapted from Pournelle http://www.jerrypournelle.com/

Robotics is better for America than football

According to this story which was covered by reddit not too long ago:

Current members of the first Portland area high school robotics club — chartered as “Team 1432” by FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) — ponder the club’s future as they sit with their only asset — last year’s robot — in the dank basement of an aging fraternal organization’s clubhouse

There is a high school in Oregon that is disbanding its robotics team on a technicality and pocketing the money that the team raised for its competition. I have nothing against football, but it strikes me as unfair that this would never happen to a football team.

This got me thinking that Football,a s an industry, is probably smaller than Robotics. And, indeed, I was pretty close. Both American Football and Robotics are about $6 billion businesses annually. In the next few years, toys and domestic service robots like the Roomba will likely reach about $6 billion., according to The Robot Report.

There is no reason to think that a person has a better chance of getting a job in football than in robotics. Now, to some people, football is entertaining. But shouldn’t school be a place where students are encouraged to do more than entertain themselves?

-Peter

Zune software suggestions

I wished Zune worked exactly like Amazon.com. I don’t like the Zune software, but I love the subscription service and I like the device itself. It can download music without a PC at all, which is awesome. But I hate the software.

How it works:

  • Connect the Zune
  • Boot software
  • Listen to my fan spin up as it takes 60% of my system resources
  • Search music
  • Click “download”
  • Find it in my collection
  • Drag it to my device
  • Wait for it to download
  • Disconnect the device

How it should work:

  • Go to zune.com
  • Search
  • Click “download it now” button
  • Music magically appears on the Zune

This is completely possible with existing hardware. Kindle does it. The Zune has WiFi. Why the hell do I need to interface my brain with a cumbersome mess of software to put bits onto my Zune? Is this a HP calculator circa 1989 or a Microsoft Next Gen device in 2010?

Remember WinAMP? Back circa 1999 it was great. It enqueued music, it played music, it needed almost no overhead. You want to stream music? Click the link, it enqueues the streaming station. Then AOL bought it, loaded it to the gills with spyware, bloatware, a browser (?!), fancy skins, and I stopped using it.  It’s dead now. Like RealPlayer. Another example: there is an open source Media Player Classic that is VASTLY SUPERIOR to any major company’s bloated hulk of media software. When I want to play an AVI, I want to play the AVI. That’s it. As bottle openers, can openers and scissors go, Swiss army knives are crap.

I absolutely refuse to let Quicktime or iTunes on my PC. I wish I could avoid Media Player 12, but eventually something like Netflix will require it.

-Peter

Tip:

To reduce Zune’s overhead and stop it from bogging down your system:

  • Go to Zune -> Settings -> Display -> Screen Graphics slider
  • Put it far to “basic” so that Zune doesn’t completely dominate your processor

Income Distribution

 

There are five people at the table. One of them owns the table, the turkey, the stuffing, the salad and the pies. The other four people all pooled their resources to buy the cranberry sauce and the casserole. The richest 20% of  Americans own 84% of the wealth in America.

This graph is distribution of the Bottom 80%. This graph tops out at $100K. The people who own the vast majority of America are not even on this graph.

I got on this topic thanks to”The ‘American dream’ is actually Swedish.” Sweden is a social democracy, if I may remind the reader. http://www.thelocal.se/30008/20101103/

Data:

http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032007/hhinc/new06_000.htm

 

 

Data:

http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032007/hhinc/new06_000.htm

Nuclear Renaissance China

It seems that there will be a nuclear Renaissance in China.

https://www.llnl.gov/news/aroundthelab/2010/Nov/ATL-110510_china.html

This is probably good news for US companies who can can bid on contracts for the components for new reactors. And the US still is a leader in that field. China considers Nuclear energy to be Green energy – as well they should. The Chinese coal industry kills miners regularly and sickens the populace with pollutants. Say what you will about nuclear energy, it kills a lot fewer people and the pollution is, gram for gram, a enormously smaller problem.

-Peter