Vicious and Vain
Surreal, this report that mass murderer Anders Brievik had plastic surgery to make himself look more ‘Aryan’. Far right extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who confessed to a bombing and youth camp massacre that killed 77 people in Norway earlier in July, had reportedly undergone plastic surgery to appear more Aryan, a Norwegian intelligence official claimed [...]
Norway’s Oklahoma City
Violence against innocent people, who knows why? Criminals always have their reasons, but it never makes sense. With so much hate it’s easy for murder to hide in plain sight. One man, it seems, took ninety-one lives. Not only by the impersonal crime of bombing, but with a gun. It will never make sense. Our [...]
Australia Halts Murdoch Monopoly
If we’re lucky, future historians will look back on this time as a turning point… Scandal stricken News Corp suffered a fresh setback today when Australian Competition Commission said that its $2.7 billion takeover bid of Austar raised “significant” monopoly issues and delayed decision on it till September. The takeover bid by Foxtel, part owned [...]
Smell Test
I upset my family sometimes by my casual attitude in the kitchen. Expiration dates are only a suggestion, I believe. Being old, I remember when there were no expiration dates and you just guessed, and my grandparents got by with an icebox. If the ice melted you just had to wing it. I took microbiology, [...]
Roomba Vacuums Nuclear Waste?
The New York Times has a long but fascinating article today about how the nuclear industry and political allies took control of the public perception of nuclear power in Japan. One strategy was to censor school textbooks of any scientific or historical information that might raise doubts. Another was to hire young women to represent [...]
Robot and Drone Fail
The Japanese and Americans are world leaders in robotics and remote-controlled weapons, but the latest attempt to use this technology at Fukushima has stalled… TOKYO (AP) — Two high-tech machines intended to help workers at Japan’s tsunami-hit nuclear plant malfunctioned Friday, including a long-awaited Japanese robot making its first attempt to take important measurements in [...]
Trustworthy Source
When government and industry have a vested interest in minimizing a crisis, and partisans have an interest in pumping it up, who do you look to for accurate information? Crowdsourcing may be one answer… Since the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, people in Japan have been keeping up on the radiation levels in their area. [...]
Long Term Effects
Two million Fukushima residents will undergo radiation health checks for thirty years. This is not because Tokyo Electric Power Company is taking corporate responsibility, or because the Japanese nanny state is solicitous of the health of citizens. This is because the Japanese people demand an honest assessment of the real damage. Citizen groups are buying [...]
Workers Dark and Stranded at Fukushima
A damning report today from the Toronto Star details how the Fukushima nuclear disaster was worsened by lack of an emergency plan. Workers were left to their own desperate measures to try to stop the radioactive core from melting– their heroic efforts thwarted by omissions and errors of management… TOKYO — A new report says [...]
Agent Orange
From Yahoo News… HANOI, Vietnam – Vietnam on Friday started the first phase of a joint plan with former enemy the United States to clean up environmental damage leftover from the chemical defoliant Agent Orange, a lasting legacy from the Vietnam War. The work concentrates on a former U.S. military base in central Vietnam where [...]
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