Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Protest to reinstate Pluto as a planet
Right on! A protest to reinstate Pluto as a planet.
Second nuclear meltdown likely under way in Japan, official says
More bad news: According to Japanese officials, a second nuclear meltdown is likely under way.
TSA to retest airport body scanners for radiation
Does this make you feel safer? The TSA is going to retest the radiation levels of all its airport body scanners after maintenance records on some showed levels 10 times higher than expected. Also this:
The TSA is responsible for the safety of its own X-ray devices. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said it does not routinely inspect airport X-ray machines because they are not considered medical devices. The TSA’s airport scanners are exempt from state radiation inspections because they belong to a federal agency.
David Horowitz Takes on Muslim Students at Brooklyn College
So who are the real hate-mongers here? David Horowitz speaks at Brooklyn College while under heavy security. To me, the key quote is this:
Mr. Horowitz began by ruefully observing, “When I went to college you didn’t need all of this security on campus, but things have changed and that’s the reason we now need checkpoints on campuses. Checkpoints are essential to defend against terrorists and Jew haters.” Adding that he has been verbally and physically assaulted on campuses around the country for his forthright views, he said, “Our campuses are controlled by liberal fascists and it is a movement to suppress the free speech rights of conservatives.”
Nuclear Meltdown at Quake-Damaged Japanese Plant
This ain’t good: A nuclear meltdown appears to have occurred at the quake-damaged Japanese power plant.
Random variations are still too large for climate models
The uncertainty of science: a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters has concluded that the the long term random variations of the climate, sometimes lasting as long as three or four decades, are large enough to hide any actual changes to the climate. In the quote from the abstract below, the term “random walk” is jargon for a long term random fluctuation having nothing to do with climate change.
This result indicates that the shorter records may not totally capture the random variability of climate relevant on the time scale of civilizations, for which the random walk length is likely to be about 30 years. For this random walk length, the observed standard deviations of maximum temperature and minimum temperature yield respective expected maximum excursions on land of 1.4 and 2.3°C and over the ocean of 0.5 and 0.7°C, which are substantial fractions of the global warming signal.
In other words, it might simply be too soon to be making predictions about the climate, based upon the presently available data.
Quake moved Japan coast 8 feet; shifted Earth’s axis
The earthquake moved Japan’s coast eight feet while shifting the Earth’s axis about four inches.
Japan to fill leaking nuke reactor with sea water
Japan to fill leaking nuke reactor with sea water.
Earthquake update
An earthquake update, with images.
Japan’s Third Disaster
Japanese quake disrupts space station operations
The 8.9 earthquake has shut down the Japanese space station mission control center, forcing NASA to take over monitoring Japanese ISS modules.