Author: Robert Zimmerman

Visiting a nuclear missile silo

10:04 am

a fuel line for the Titan missile
A fuel line for the Titan missile.

Last week my oldest friend Lloyd and his wife Denise came to visit Diane and I here in Tucson. One of Lloyd’s requests was to visit the Tucson Missile Museum. This museum is built at the site of one of the now disabled missile silos built in the 1960s as a means for launching nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. Fifty-four silos total had been built and operated, with eighteen of those silos scattered around the Tucson, Arizona area. When the U.S. signed a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union in the 1980s these silos were then shut down and sold. Some became private residences. Others remain buried and abandoned.

One silo, however, was kept as intact as allowed by treaty and made into a museum in order to preserve this artifact of history. Because Diane and I happen to know Chuck Penson, the archivist at the museum, we were able to arrange an augmented tour of the facility. Below are some of my pictures as Chuck took us down into the deepest bowels of the silo.
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Physicians fight back against Obamacare.

9:11 pm

Physicians fight back against Obamacare.

Dr. Ryan Neuhofel, 31, offers a rare glimpse at what it would be like to go to the doctor without massive government interference in health care. Dr. Neuhofel, based in the college town of Lawrence, Kansas, charges for his services according to an online price list that’s as straightforward as a restaurant menu. A drained abscess runs $30, a pap smear, $40, a 30-minute house call, $100. Strep cultures, glucose tolerance tests, and pregnancy tests are on the house. Neuhofel doesn’t accept insurance. He even barters on occasion with cash-strapped locals. One patient pays with fresh eggs and another with homemade cheese and goat’s milk. “Direct primary care,” which is the industry term for Neuhofel’s business model, does away with the bureaucratic hassle of insurance, which translates into much lower prices. “What people don’t realize is that most doctors employ an army of people for coding, billing, and gathering payment,” says Neuhofel. “That means you have to charge $200 to remove an ingrown toenail.” Neuhofel charges $50.

Neuhofel is not alone in this. The article describes other doctors who have done the same. As the bureaucratic mess from Obamacare expands and becomes increasingly impossible for anyone to handle, we are going to see this happen more and more.

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NASA has clamped down on travel expenses, reducing it by 30 percent in the past year.

7:11 pm

My heart bleeds: NASA has clamped down on travel expenses, reducing it by 30 percent in the past year.

I’ve been to too many science conferences where there was a whole slew of NASA engineers and scientists from all across the country, there because they were getting a free ride from the taxpayer. Often it was absolutely worthwhile for NASA engineers or scientists to be there. More often, it was a complete waste of money that could have been used elsewhere to better effect.

In related news: NASA’s inspector general has suggested the agency could save a lot more money by closing many of its almost 5,000 facilities nationwide.

Here too I’ve visited many NASA operations and found the work being done there redundant, completely unnecessary, or there was no real work being done at all. In the last case a lot of what I’ve seen is featherbedding, this time imposed by Congress to keep the money flowing to their constituents as pork. Unfortunately this last fact will probably make it very difficult to shut any of these facilities, as our representatives, from both parties, appear completely uninterested in serving the country. They’d rather act as union reps for these government employees.

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The budget battle at NASA

10:49 am

Two stories today highlight not only the budget problems at NASA, but also illustrate the apparent unwillingness of both Congress and Americans to face the terrible budget difficulties of the federal government. In both cases, the focus is instead on trying to fund NASA at levels comparable to 2012, before the Obama administration or sequestration had imposed any budget cuts on the agency.

It is as if we live in a fantasy world, where a $16 trillion dollar debt does not exist, and where money grows on trees and we can spend as much as we want on anything we want.
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The radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant failure in Japan has turned out to be less of a problem than predicted.

3:36 pm

The radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant failure in Japan has turned out to be less of a problem than predicted.

[O]utside the immediate area of Fukushima, this is hardly a problem at all. Although the crippled nuclear reactors themselves still pose a danger, no one, including personnel who worked in the buildings, died from radiation exposure. Most experts agree that future health risks from the released radiation, notably radioactive iodine-131 and cesiums-134 and – 137, are extremely small and likely to be undetectable. Even considering the upper boundary of estimated effects, there is unlikely to be any detectable increase in cancers in Japan, Asia or the world except close to the facility, according to a World Health Organization report. There will almost certainly be no increase in birth defects or genetic abnormalities from radiation.

Even in the most contaminated areas, any increase in cancer risk will be small. For example, a male exposed at age 1 has his lifetime cancer risk increase from 43 percent to 44 percent. Those exposed at 10 or 20 face even smaller increases in risk — similar to what comes from having a whole-body computer tomography scan or living for 12 to 25 years in Denver amid background radiation in the Rocky Mountains.

The entire article is worth reading, as it outlines in detail the less than deadly consequences of both Fukushima and Chernobyl. This is the kind of information we should use to rationally decide whether we want to build more nuclear power planets.

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The Democrats in the Senate are about to introduce their legally required annual budget — for the first time in four years.

9:16 am

Pigs fly! The Democrats in the Senate are about to introduce their legally required annual budget — for the first time in four years.

Not that this budget will do much to solve the federal debt, as it will likely continue the out-of-control spending and is expected to be loaded with new taxes galore.

On that note, has anyone but me noticed this tendency of the modern Democratic Party to grab and grab and grab? They want a blank check in spending, for their own uses, while repeatedly demanding as much money from everyone else as possible. In another time, this behavior would have been perceived as somewhat power-hungry, even tyrannical.

And then there’s this: “We don’t have a spending problem.” Guess who said it.

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