Saturday Morning, Half the Radiation

Less radiation after a rainstorm?  Here is the report...

This morning's reading is ~0.01mr/hr.  

I count the clicks per minute and then use a conversion factor for my geiger.  I'm getting anywhere from 5 to 15 clicks per minute in the areas I'm testing, which translates to ~0.01mr/hr to 0.02mr/hr, and is considered background levels.     

The Dept. of Health has a monitoring station in Seattle.  They are using clicks per min(cpm).  Last month, Seattle had a high of 41 cpm with an average of 14. Yesterday, it was 11cpm. 

http://www.doh.wa.gov/Topics/japan/monitor.htm

Look at Spokane's readings.  


Someone on a geigercounter yahoo group was reporting a spike on the 17th

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/CDV700CLUB/message/33547

"Chris,

 I've been measuring radiation here in SW WA state since Monday.
 The equipment used is the CDV-457.
 Everything was normal until 1430 hrs Pacific time yesterday, when the background radiation doubled fairly quickly.
 The level stayed well above normal for about an hour and a half, then slowly went back down to nearly normal background.
 I'm not sure if this was an isolated instance, or if it was the first sign of stuff coming over from Japan.
 Radiation levels appear to be about normal background so far this morning.

-Tom

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Big Nuke & Innovation

In a free market what is introduced is originally not very good, expensive, few options and slow to acquire. The market in time, in the measure the market in the category is free,  makes later iterations more better cheaper faster.  If this is not the case, it is a dead giveaway the market is not free.  Nuclear power is a cartel, an industry in lockdown.  Nuclear power is a hallmark of capitalism, inasmuch as we could not have such nukes without capitalism.  So I am a free market anti-capitalist, because capitalism stops innovation.

Japan spent the last twenty years trying to kick start their economy again, contra demographics and economic policies, by building projects of bridges to nowhere and highways for no one.  How come they did not replace the worn out nuke plants, the very ones they are struggling with right now?  The nuke plants were poorly designed, in retrospect, and poorly situated, yet it did not occur to anyone to replace those rather than build more stadiums?

Big nuke power came out of big war nuke power, and is sustainable only by massive concentrations of capital, and a combination of taxes and fees.  It looks good on paper, but I wonder if a cost benefit of nuke power, that included Chernobyl, Three Mile island, and Fukushima factored in, would still show on paper what the cost per KW Hour did lo those many years ago.  Of course, you cannot price illness and death from disaster into the spreadsheet, but it would be interesting.

Another factor in econ analysis is what we do not see.  A huge hydroelectric dam offers cheap electricity.  We all see that.  But it so attenuates fish runs that we cannot quite count the cost to fisheries industries, and the drop in omega three in local diets does to health and productivity.  Next, what to do with the hazmat from smelting bauxite into aluminum?  The answer is call it flouride (yes, but not the good for teeth flouride) and dump it in drinking water.  (One solution to pollution is dilution.)  The cost in disease from flouridation is incalculable.  Next, now that we have cheap aluminum, we have cheap packaging, and longer shipping distances are affordable, so we have more packaging in landfills.  What does that cost?

Progressive rant at capitalism, the means that generate these results, but of course acquiesce as long as the powers that be shave off a few bucks for their welfare plantations.  So the result is we have a symbiotic relation between the capitalists and the progressives, each exempt from the horrors of their systems and policies, but each in charge, and thus with no incentive to ameliorate.

These ancient nuke power plants were not touched by progress because they are a cash cow for GE, and Japan has enough Harvard MBAs with USA Harvard MBAs making policy to assure those plants were not touched.  And this in spite of the fact that Toshiba has safe, small, cheap nuke plants for sale.  Nothing in that for GE.  Think if the markets were free in Japan.  Japan would have converted from big nuke to small dispersed nuke.  And the natural disaster would have been limited to water over the berms...

Economics is subset of ethics, a subset of philosophy, the area of how people treat people in the market place.  Capitalism is antihuman.  In the measure we embrace free markets is the measure we get more better cheaper faster for the masses.

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Seattle Radiation Readings

It's Friday, but still no tick tick tick...

No change in levels today, still holding at 0.02mr/hr

Also, cool interactive map of the plume from the NY Times, just hit the play button.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/16/science/plume-graphic.html?ref=science

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JA On Plan A Testing

On Mar 17, 2011, at 11:18 AM, JA wrote:

Hi John,

I’m about to try to implement step number 4 and I have a question about it:

If we approach stores as a Customer, how do we ask to talk to the stores’ owner or buyer?  It seems very likely that we’ll walk into a store and be assisted by an employee, who isn’t part of the decision-making.  Based on what I learned from your book (and the few lesson transcripts I’ve read), I have to get answers to the following questions:

1.       Do they sell the product I have in mind?

2.       If they don’t sell the product I have in mind, I have to determine why:

o   Is it because it doesn’t exist?

o   …or perhaps it exists but the buyer doesn’t think it is worth selling.

I will most likely get an answer to the first question by simply talking to any employee, but to get a reliable answer to the 2ndquestion, it seems like I would need to talk to the store’s owner or buyer.  If I approach a store as a Customer, wouldn’t it sound weird for me to ask to speak to the owner/buyer?  …especially for a store like Nordstrom?

JA

Exactly... you first contact is a clerk...  who says "may I help you?"  To which you reply, "Yes, I am looking for..."

Your persistence leads to the hapless clerk calling on a manager to help you, which in turn, perhaps even over several visits, gets you  somehow communicating with a buyer.  Recall the whole process is experienced with you as a customer for the store for the product you are describing...

So no, you do not ask to speak to a buyer/owner, because you will get told no.  You just keep pushing for a resolution to your problem.  Eventually there is management intervention.  There is where you get the feedback that matters...  

John

On Mar 17, 2011, at 11:44 AM, JAwrote:

Thanks for the super quick response John!  J

Okay.  So, I’m trying to imagine the conversation I’ll have with the clerk:

·         Clerk: May I help you?

·         Me: Yes, do you have a product that does [this]?

·         Clerk: Sorry, but we don’t.

[so far so good, but I have to keep the conversation going, right?]

·         Me: Really???  …but I would think that a lot of people would like something like this, don’t you?

·         Clerk: Yeah, I would think so too, but it isn’t available.

[Here, is where I’m not sure what to say.  As an ordinary customer, I would simply walk out and try to find the product I’m looking for somewhere else.  …but I need to keep the conversation going.  If you were me, what would you say?]

JA

ehhh...

your follow up sounds like sales...

·         Me: Really???  …but I would think that a lot of people would like something like this, don’t you?

·         Clerk: Yeah, I would think so too, but it isn’t available.

maybe something more along the lines of 

I really need this...  maybe in other stores...?  have you ever heard of anything like this...

stick with lines of questions that get to existence of the item, as well as if it is good...

John

On Mar 17, 2011, at 1:36 PM, JA wrote:

LOL!  I’m so glad I emailed you before going to a store :-P

I have a pretty good idea of what to say now.

Thanks so much John!

JA

Right... be intense about getting the item...  major feedback... "it does not exist..."  minor feedback... "it is a good idea..."

John

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Seattle Radiation Reader Checks In

NY Times is saying the United Nations' "Test Band Treaty Group" is forcasting the Plume will hit Southern California on Friday.  They have monitoring stations across the globe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/science/17plume.html

Note the UN refused to release its findings to the public...how nice of them.

"On Wednesday, the agency declined to release its Japanese forecast, which The New York Times obtained from other sources. The forecast was distributed widely to the agency’s member states." 

Seattle Radiation readings remain unchanged at normal background levels:

Hiawatha Community Center 0.02mr/hr
Alki Community Center 0.02mr/hr
Dakota Place Park 0.01mr/hr


***
And here is art imitating life, if not predicting it...

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Big Media Royalties

Given that the enforcement of monopolies is grounded in violence, we can see that IPR is contrary to free markets, which are nonviolent.  Having said that, a monopoly is a lovely thing, for a while, for he who owns one.

Media houses offer advances on royalties, and costs, to their clients.  This is terribly attractive, since an author can live on the advance while he finishes the book.  But note, in essence, you are being paid from your own efforts to write, someone is merely loaning you the money.

But so happy is the artist that he does not notice "the costs" which are being charged to his account.  Fancy offices, private jets, luxury lunches and champagne soirees.  I may be exaggerating slightly to make the the point, but you see that although publishing houses spend a lot of money getting a book out, it is not true that it costs a lot of money to get a book out.  So it is with any big business that contracts with creative.

  The implicit reverse is, designers get a very good deal working with small and start -up compaines, with the straight royaltiy deal.  The small business is keen on keeping costs down, but regardless, the designer gets a straight royalty, no matter what the costs.  And should the small business fail, the designer still "owns" the item, to license elsewhere.

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IPR Felony Madness

So the government wants to make a felony of a 12 year old girl streaming a Lady Gaga sound, under the Patriot Act.  For those awaiting good things from the Tea Party polticians, too late, theya lready voted to extend the Patriot Act.  Next, make IPR violations a felony under the Act.

• Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move "would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses."

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20043421-281.html#ixzz1GnIXlNEI

This is absolute madness. Read the generally sane comments, mixed in the the delusional comments, especially from the fellow who claims he does not make much money from writing software, because everyone steals his.  He is of course dreaming.  He does not make much money because people do not buy his software, because they do not want to pay for it.  he should write better software, not ask the government to spy and imprison 12 year old girls over IPR violations under a terrorism act.  I've had a book on Amazon/com for 10 years, and free on googlebooks.  Sure people "steal it" by downloading and not paying me anything.   So what?  They were never my customer anyway.  I am not out anything. If I want to earn, I must market.  Natural law.  IPR whiners want to make the rest of us pay for enforcement because they neither do very good work nor are willing to market their wares.  Welfare queens, the lot of them.

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Seattle Radiation Update

No change today.   Still reading at ~0.02mr/hr which according to the manual is considered background radiation levels.


Careful what you wish for, KI (potassium iodide) can be a poison if too much and a danger if your thyroid is already compromised...  eat shellfish for a proper dose... but it looks like so far there is no problem.  The cloud hit Tuesday, and today is still fine.

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Quirky

I was asked to review Quirky.com, a sort of product development generator website.  My first impressions are good:  Obviously they compete on design, a key part of start-up. I like crowd-sourcing design as a tactic, and they rely on that.  If you nose around a bit, you see Quirky.com gets orders before going into production, which shows they follow the entrepreneurs' task of minimizing risk.

Crowd-sourcing here seems to be a feature, when in fact it may not always be a benefit.  I like crowd-sourcing as a means to review a lot of talent swiftly.  But once we find good talent, I think it is better to keep using your winner.  To crowd-source every single item seems too much work.  And too many designers on a simple item seems like trying to sip water from a fire hose.  Just too much.

If I were running Quirky.com, I would shy away from the mass merchandise/ narrow margins market they target (there even seems to be an association with Bed Bath and Beyond & HSN).  Better to work up a network of say 5000 small specialty retailers and feed them the new products.  Design is important, but customer feedback trumps design every time, design is in the service of the customer. With the specialty stores the margins are wider, and the quantities lower, but there is progress on the design, a process that in itself generates revenue and profits.  Going straight to BB&B and HSN leaves way too much money and market feedback on the table.

A couple of points that may cause problems:

1. By appearing to go "big," they risk all sorts of legal action.  Big gets sued... but Quirky.com in fact is a small business.

2. Along those lines, I did not see anything relating to IPR, and I hope they steer clear of any part of that, they don't need it.  Be open source!  Make your money marketing, not controlling.

Small businesses reflect the uniqueness of the owner, as does the product mix.  It would be interesting to see how a company apparently without the uniqueness of individual small owner will progress.  I wonder if it is replicable, since design is so diffuse.  Is this the next groupon, will it be copied to death?

Some things I could not quite figure out, such as how do participants make money?  Royalties? And then some metrics might be useful.  Such as for a given idea,  how much time in design vs how many make it to "shipping?"

This looks like good, innovative, creative, perhaps even seminal effort.  It will be interesting to watch.  But without a stronger integration with specialty markets, it may be more of an excellent Junior Achievement learning project than a sustainable business model. Time will tell.

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Tuesday Seattle Radiation Readings

A reader is sending in the readings from his govt surplus civil defense geiger counter, and todays fallout radiation reading is :

No Change in levels.  Still ~0.02mr/hr.   


In a disaster, the internet becomes spotty, as it has in Japan, according to my biz partners there.  Check out geiger counters on Amazon if you think you want your own...

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Unfunded Pension Liability

I've been warning on pensions as long as I have been blogging, Wisconsin public unions lost their rights, and now Kansas is planning on cutting back, a wee bit.  This is just the start.  It will expand and get to the point where people will regret they took a government job.  It's a matter of going after the low hanging fruit, and government workers and their pensions are the easiest targets.  They have no allies outside of government, so to whom will they appeal?  The Republicans?

I figured Wisconsin the game was lost in Wisconsin when the teamsters backed govt unions.  In the 1980s, the truckers (teamsters) pensions were largely wiped out (and I suspect Hoffa was murdered for his objection) and nary a peep from the truckers in defiance.

With Obama everyone should realize it is not just a matter of getting the right person in office.  Even if Hillary is president in 2012, government workers and their pensions are sunk.

The powers that be will get around to every pension there is, since there is not enough in all pensions to cover what was stolen by the bankers. If you are depending on a pension in old age, forget about it.  Start a business now, so you'll live better.  Having something to trade is having options.

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Jews Return To Europe

There are many people who view Jews they way they view lawyers:  they are all the same.  Mark Kurlansky has written a book on the resurrection of Jewry in Europe after the holocaust. One thing you will learn from this book is Jews are not all the same.

Kurlansky along with Spence and Schama are my three favorite writers currently, and all of them are historians.  I did not care for history as a topic in school, but then even the Catholic schools were ladeling out tripe when they decided to drink the kool-aid and accept government oversight of Catholic schools.  School got boring for Catholics too.

Elsewhere Schama recounts that at a seminar at Balliol College circa 1968 a don suggested to write history about people and not so much events.  It has occurred to me that this is the case with all three writers.  In A Chosen Few, Kurlansky traces familes in Antwerp, Budapest, Cracow, Paris and North Africa, and at various points in time: prewar, war, post war, and a few points until the 1990s.

kurlansky

Of particular interest to me is how people survive a disaster, what are the best moves, since we too have experienced a disaster, that is the economic boom of the 2000s in USA, when all of that damage was done to our economy.  Since we are in the phase where we pay for it, blame is set, and scapegoats are “sacrificed” (a goat is killed ... just who made a sacrifice here?) it is interesting to me the best way to navigate these well trodden paths.  Some important points:  people generally did not see what was coming.  What we think of as a swift disaster in the holocaust unfolded rather slowly.  Kurlansky relates frankly how some Jewish elites cooperated with the Nazis, but it did them no good.  After the war, escape to Israel was for many worse than staying in Europe since Israel had no economy.  Being a Jew in Germany had more opportunites than a Jew in Israel.  This is of particular interest to me: for all the vaunted Jewish entrepreneurialism, how come Israel could not survive without massive financial intervention of the communist states (it is undebatable that Israel was a socialist state, certainly at the start.)  Is it simply impossible to have a productive economy under socialism?  Would Israel have thrived if it had free markets, something it does not have to this day?

For those who wish to believe all Jews are alike, this book shows a distressing range of thoughts and actions by Jews.  First there is the argument as to who is a Jew.  Is Jewry a race, a nation, a culture?  All of the above?  Next, is assimilation a good idea, or the maintenance of  Jewish identity?  If so, what is the Jewish identity? From this uncertain foundation, there is a dizzying array of ideas, actions and even outright antipathy, such as Ashkenazim vs Sephardim.

Although Kurlansky is a Jew himself, he excels at not letting his personal views get in the way of his storytellers.  A Jewish informant for the Stasi, who explains she was just building a socialist paradise in East Germany, gets as fair a shake as the Jew who escaped a concentration camp and went on to fight the nazis.  Just the facts in this book.  Kurlansky is even fair to politicians who have a tin ear to Jewish sensibilities, such as some French polticians.  

There may be something unique about Jewish experience, and it is not about Jewish experience per se, but that is about non-Jew reporting thereof. Much is made of gas ovens in concentration camps, but apparently disease was the big killer.  This is extremely important information, if true.  Another Jewish scholar was looking at the number of six million dead, and comes up with a number of four million, with two million escaped East.  The Soviet Union set up a Jewish Autonomous Region in 1934.  It still exists... how come we haven’t heard anything on this?  It leaves it up to Jews to write about Jews, but why?  Good scholarship is not something peculiar to Jews.  The fact is especially in academia, people are afraid to touch the topic.

The stories that Kurlansky tells, within the narrow bounds of the time and location of his subject,  about Jews is so very true about any people at any time.  The range of personalities, the ideas, the options, the actions, the motivations.

Something Kurlansky alludes to in this history like Speilberg in Schindler’s List, is Jews sell Jews down the river.  Perhaps this topic is simply too clear to Jews to bear stating, given that in their bible Cain kills Abel and Joseph’s brothers actually do sell Joseph down the river.  Perhaps it is too painful, and for a people feeling beset, an obvious lack of unity is too dangerous a notion to allow abroad.  When your enemy thinks you are all alike, it is dangerous to let them know that divisions run deep in your ranks.  But it seems it is exactly awareness of Jewish divisions that Nazis used so effectively.

Yet people selling their own down the river is nothing new.  Japanese sell Japanses down the river, American Americans, Congolese Congolese, Argentinians Argentines, Romans Romans... there is no story to tell in history unless someone sells someone down the river.  Jesus and Judas.

Kurlansky is adept enough to flesh out what differences there are, and when people kill over tennis shoes, I suppose these differences can have lethal consequences.  So Carmelite nuns put up a convent at Oswiecim, and American Jews (fascinating politics this story) object.    American Jews want this killing place left forever a desolate reminder.  Christians build a convent on the grounds.  Sort of a ground zero mosque story, circa 1995.  Yes, Jews tend toward “l’chaim,” and Christians tend towards “pray for me.” The difference may be religious views, but the fight is politics.

I do recognize the “the Jews” are a favorite topic of wacko-americans, indeed wackos worldwide, and much junk and libel is written about them. But why cede any ground to them?  We’ll be better off when reticence on certain topics is relieved.  

In the meantime, read this book, it is great storytelling, fascinating history.

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Geiger Counter Readings For Failed GE Reactors In Japan

What is the radiation from the failed GE nuclear reactors in Japan at Seattle so far?


Here are Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle at 
Alki Community Center 0.02mr/hr
Hiawatha Community Center  0.02mr/hr
Dakota Place Park 0.01mr/hr

According to the Electro Neutronics instructions,  0.01 - 0.02mr/hr is normal background radiation levels.  Also, the built in check source is reading 2.0mr/hr, which, according to instructions,  is right where it should be for a calibrated geiger counter.  

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Good Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy is a naturally occurring and nothing to fear, but of course what nuclear power we have now was designed by government for imperialistic war purposes, so it is dangerous and expensive.  I've asked many physicists how come we cannot have safe bread box sized home nuclear reactors, and have never got a good answer.

Well now comes community-sized nuke power plants, and I want one!  This has been slow coming, even though the technology is old.  Here is another.  We are denied so much good in return for the security of having so few people sit on top and dictate our lives.  I understand why the powers-that-be make war on small business, we see they are not necessary to peace and prosperity.  In fact, they contrary to human development. Small business must be silenced for the benefit of those who do love big oppression.

A new small business category is opening up: nuclear power.

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Catholic Church & War

A while back I speculated that the hype of Catholic Clergy abuse was in response to the Church's condemnation of the criminal invasion of Iraq by the United State of America.  The Church had to be silenced.  Now comes some wikileaks showing not quite the above, but the level of stupidity and venality of who we elect in USA.  To wit:

Because many Catholic bishops in developing countries have been vehemently opposed to the controversial crops, the US applied particular pressure to the pope's advisers.

Cables from the US embassy in the Vatican show that the US believes the pope is broadly supportive of the crops after sustained lobbying of senior Holy See advisers, but regrets that he has not yet stated his support. The US state department special adviser on biotechnology as well as government biotech advisers based in Kenya lobbied Vatican insiders to persuade the pope to declare his backing. "… met with [US monsignor] Fr Michael Osborn of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, offering a chance to push the Vatican on biotech issues, and an opportunity for post to analyse the current state of play on biotech in the Vatican generally," says one cable in 2008.

"Opportunities exist to press the issue with the Vatican, and in turn to influence a wide segment of the population in Europe and the developing world," says another.

But in a setback, the US embassy found that its closest ally on GM, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the powerful Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the man who mostly represents the pope at the United Nations, had withdrawn his support for the US.

"A Martino deputy told us recently that the cardinal had co-operated with embassy Vatican on biotech over the past two years in part to compensate for his vocal disapproval of the Iraq war and its aftermath – to keep relations with the USG [US government] smooth. According to our source, Martino no longer feels the need to take this approach," says the cable.

Of course he did, Martino got his facts straight and would not support the USA powers-that-be policies.  These moves are acts of war.  Agriculture is USA #1 export, and the leading edge of our imperialistic designs.  Go on to read how Monsanto uses Blackwater to cover its tracks.  AS the known science proves these frankenfoods to be harmful to human consumption, we'll see USA foods become less of interest overseas.

Big government and big food is a disastrous combination.

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