Multiculturalism As It Was Meant To Be, Illustrated

Bruce Thornton on Islam, here:

Muslims have a religious world-view and sensibility that condition their actions and interests, and we must understand those spiritual beliefs in their own terms rather than reducing them to the materialist determinism that dominates our thinking.

Sage Advice

Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,
Wearing out life's evening gray,
Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell,
Where is bliss? and which the way?

Thus I spoke, and speaking sighed--
Scarce repressed the starting tear--
When the smiling sage replied,
'Come, my lad, and drink some beer'.

-- Samuel Johnson --

Main Radiation Effects at Fukushima I From No. 4 Spent Fuel Cooling Pond

So says Tony Irwin of the Australian National University for France24 here:

"Reactors 5 and 6, they are now in what's called cold shutdown, and the spent fuel cooling ponds are at normal temperatures.

"They are in the sort of situation now we would like to see 1, 2, 3 and 4 in.

"There was already spent fuel in there [before No. 4 was drained and emptied last November] so there was quite a high load of spent fuel in that pond. And that has been giving the main radiation effects on site."


One presumes from that that the high heat coming off the pond kept boiling away the water during the crisis and not that an earthquake related leak in the pond kept drawing down the level.

For the first time I read in the article a concern about all the sea water being poured on the stricken reactors because it thereby becomes radioactive waste.

Where is it all going, ton after ton? To air and back to sea?

Undoubtedly.

Radiation Level at Iitate, Japan

Breitbart reports here that a monitor in Iitate, Japan (A), thirty miles northwest of Fukushima I (B), recorded the highest radiation sample recently taken from 12 monitoring stations in the area: 12.1 microsieverts per hour.

That would be 290.4 microsieverts per 24 hour day, or a normal annual dose in America of 6,200 microsieverts in just 21 days.

The rate per hour of 12.1 microsieverts is over 17 times the normal rate in America of .70776 microsieverts per hour.

Smoke at Fukushima But No Reported Change in Radiation Levels

Kyodo News has the latest update here, with the following related information:

[O]ne of seven workers who were injured following a March 14 hydrogen explosion at the No. 3 reactor was found to have been exposed to radiation amounting to over 150 millisievert per hour.

The level is lower than the maximum limit of 250 millisievert per hour set by the health ministry for workers tackling the emergency at the Fukushima plant.

An emergency worker in the US is permitted a once in a lifetime maximum single exposure of 250 mSv. Added to normal radiation exposure over the course of a lifetime, such exposure raises lifetime totals from a normal 484 mSv to 734 mSv, 52 percent more than normal.

Supreme Court Rejects 8 Bank Clearing House Appeal on Loan Disclosures

The decision, which is moot as to future disclosure requirements because of the disclosure requirements under the Dodd-Frank legislation, will require that the Federal Reserve disclose loans made at the discount window in 2008. The story, excerpted below, is reported by Bloomberg here:

The order marks the first time a court has forced the Fed to reveal the names of banks that borrowed from its oldest lending program, the 98-year-old discount window. The disclosures, together with details of six bailout programs released by the central bank in December under a congressional mandate, would give taxpayers insight into the Fed’s unprecedented $3.5 trillion effort to stem the 2008 financial panic.

Radiation Update, Fukushima I Reactor 2

Dateline Tokyo for March 20th, 2011, as reported here by Kyodo News:

Meanwhile, a total of 40 tons of seawater was pumped into the spent fuel tank of the No. 2 unit, using a makeshift power source.

The radiation level inside the plant is on a declining trend. At about 0.5 kilometer northwest from the No. 2 reactor, the level dropped to 2,830 microsievert per hour as of 4:30 p.m., compared to 3,443 microsievert per hour at 2 p.m. Saturday.

In millisieverts, the level has dropped from 3.443 mSv/hour to 2.830 mSv/hour according to this report. At this lower rate it would take just over one week if continuously present to be exposed to a lifetime's worth of normal radiation at the location specified.

Any volunteers?

Brazilian Commies Protest Visit of Imperialist Obama

Why? Because they are purists and Obama isn't.

Like FDR before him, he's a crossbreeding collectivist who's happy borrowing from communists, fascists and national socialists alike to suit his purposes.

Don't Drive . . . Drink!

h/t Theo

The Lesson of Fukushima is "Where Do We Put All The Spent Fuel?"

Where do we put all the spent fuel?

The Japanese haven't had a clue, because like everyone else with common sense, the Japanese also are NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard). So they've been dragging their feet on what to do with all those spent fuel rods for years.

In the interim they've had nowhere to go with them, so they've ganged them up in the pools in the reactor plants themselves in ever increasing numbers, in effect putting them in everyone's backyard anyway. And as we've been seeing, the failure to keep those pools, some thirty and forty feet deep, full of water in a crisis has caused most, if not all, of the trouble.

The problem is the nuclear waste.

But Richard Cowan for Reuters says that problem is even worse in America:

Of 104 nuclear reactors in the United States, [Robert] Alvarez [a former US DOE official under Clinton] said, 34 are of the same design -- open-air, elevated storage pools -- as the Fukushima plant.

But the U.S. pools are storing much more spent fuel than the ones in Fukushima and "are currently holding, on the average, four times more than their design intended," he said.

That's because the United States has been unable to settle on long-term sites for storing waste from nuclear power plants.

You can thank Harry Reid of Nevada for that. He doesn't want Yucca Mountain to be the home for all that radioactive waste anymore than anyone else wants it in their backyard.

Most Republicans, meanwhile, remain enthusiastic boosters for nuclear power, even as they push to curtail spending at the Office of Nuclear Energy and elsewhere. The House budget bill passed earlier this year included more than $330 million in cuts for nuclear waste disposal, safety oversight and other programs, according to advocacy groups.

So says Dan Eggen for The Washington Post, who provides a detailed accounting of the nuclear industry's lobbying efforts this week in the wake of the disaster, and how three major players have been throwing around upwards of $20 million in recent years, much of it to Democrats.

As in Japan, we have an on-going but bi-partisan decision to make no decision about a gorilla in the living room who glows in the dark.

It's high time we made one, or give up on nuclear power altogether, because we're just asking for it if we maintain the status quo.

Mark Levin Defends Reagan's Conservatism Against W's and Pete Wehner

In an extended but very worthwhile comparison of the Reagan and GW Bush records for Human Events, Mark Levin begins at the end of the Bush record:

Who said? "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system." Well, those words would never have passed Reagan's lips.  It was infamously said by Bush, in defense of his massive spending spree in the last weeks of his presidency.  There's nothing conservative about it.  But it sums up Bush's lack of confidence in the free market system, and his repeated and excessive use of government intervention in American society.  

Bush never claimed to be the conservative Reagan was, nor did he spend his early political career challenging GOP orthodoxy, which, until Reagan won in 1980, was mostly incoherent mush of the Rockefeller-Scranton-Nixon-Ford-Bush/41 kind. George H. W. Bush and other mainstream Republican primary challengers sought to thwart Reagan because, they insisted, his conservatism would be rejected by the voters.  Now, Pete insists that as president, Reagan's record, in virtually all respects, is inferior to George W. Bush's, in advancing conservative principles.  This is not only counter-intuitive, it is factually defective.  As I proceed with this discussion, I believe it will become evident.

And it does.

But I missed in the discussion of taxes how the top rate eventually came down to 28% for a brief shining moment in 1988, 1989, and 1990 because of Reagan's sometimes maligned 1986 tax legislation.

Nor does Levin really discuss what W was doing in his early political career, like getting sober and glad-handing Texas Democrats.

And how about how Bush thought of himself as the person who would redefine the right: "That conservative movement stuff is over. I've redefined the Republican party"?

The office went to his head, because loyalty was his lodestar, not conservative principles.

Ronald Reagan Wasn't Really Conservative, Either

(Well, how could he be? He was a Democrat in recovery).

So says Peter Wehner in Commentary here, without really intending to do so.

Some people will do anything to defend George W. Bush (who was a Bush in recovery).

Japan Admits Radiation at Fukushima is Deadly: 4,000 mSv Per Hour

Ten times worse than a previous report, and over 7.5 times the normal lifetime average total exposure of 483 millisieverts, and all in one hour.

The UK Daily Mail has all the details and photos, here, but most pointedly, this:

The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears - as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens. ...

Unlike the other reactors which use uranium, Reactor 3 uses a mixture of uranium and plutonium. Plutonium, best known as an ingredient in nuclear weapons, is particularly dangerous if released into the environment. In the worst case scenario, exposed fuel will melt, triggering a chemical explosion that will send radioactive dust hundreds of yards into the air. Chinook helicopters flying at less than 300 feet dropped four loads of water over the wrecked building in the hope that some water would seep into the dried-out pool and cool the fuel. However, footage suggested much of the 2,000 gallons of water missed its target. Later, six fire engines and a water cannon tried to spray the building with 9,000 gallons of water from high pressure hoses. However, radiation levels within the plant rose from 3,700 millisieverts to 4,000 millisieverts an hour immediately afterwards. People exposed to such doses will suffer radiation sickness and many will die.

We've been lied to all week while the media in America have been full of apologists for the nuclear industry, soft-peddling the seriousness of this situation.

Radiation in Perspective

Over the course of an average American life of 78 years, cumulative normal overall radiation exposure of 6.2 millisieverts annually amounts to about 484 millisieverts in a lifetime. Expressed in microsieverts, 6,200 annually amounts to 483,600 microsieverts in a lifetime.

The Wall Street Journal reports here about current radiation conditions in Fukushima City, 60 miles from the damaged reactors on the Japanese coast:

At Fukushima City, 60 miles from the plant, the recorded amount of radiation on Thursday was 20 microsieverts per hour, a level that is roughly 1,000 times higher than in Japanese cities far from the plant. Still, scientists say it isn't enough to cause long-term health effects.

Officials at Fukushima City also said that they found iodine, cesium-135 and cesium-137 in drinking water, at about one-quarter the levels that would make the water unfit to drink.

If the rate of 20 microsieverts per hour persisted indefinitely, it would take just 2.76 years for a resident of Fukushima to absorb what under normal conditions an American might expect to be exposed to in a lifetime: 483,600 microsieverts.

Expressed in millisieverts, the present rate of exposure 60 miles away is the equivalent of 175.2 millisieverts per year. Normal in America would be 6.2 millisieverts per year. So over the course of a lifetime, that's about 13,666 millisieverts for residents of Fukushima, 54 times above what is normal in America. The cumulative one time exposure limit for an emergency worker is 250 millisieverts, which is reported to be the amount radiated HOURLY above Fukushima I, reactor 3.

"Scientists say it isn't enough to cause long-term health effects" in this context is completely unbelievable.

Are they just saying this stuff to keep a lid on the anger which is threatening to boil over?

Just remember, it's all in the name of mere electricity.

Once in a Lifetime Emergency Dose of Radiation Emitted Hourly at Fukushima Reactor 3

The New York Times reports here about the high levels of radiation thrown off of reactor no. 3 at Fukushima I, the only plant reported to be using plutonium fuel:

Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said . . .

. . . that radiation of about 250 millisievert an hour had been detected 100 feet above the plant. In the United States the limit for police officers, firefighters and other emergency workers engaged in life-saving activity as a once-in-a-lifetime exposure is equal to being exposed to 250 millisieverts for a full hour. The radiation figures provided by the Japanese Self-Defense Force may provide an indication of why a helicopter turned back on Wednesday from an attempt to dump cold water on a storage pool at the plant.

Reports of much lower measurements at the gate to the whole complex may be meaningful in the context of relative measures of safety at various distances, but the reality is that these damaged reactors pose a deadly threat to human life and health. 

Joan Baez Thinks Obama's Just a Victim of His Inputs

What is he, a mere animal without a will? Pavlov's dog?

"[H]e could do extraordinary things by not falling into the trap that I think he is: of waking up in the morning and meeting with the military. So that's all he gets for input, unless we can make ourselves heard somehow."

-- Joan Baez, quoted here

Remember this from last September, the president complaining how he thought his opposition likened him to a dog?:

"And over the last two years, that's meant taking on some powerful interests -- some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time. And they're not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. (Applause.) That's not in my prepared remarks, it's just -- but it's true."

Who knew those powerful interests included Joan Baez?

Radiation Bullshit Repeated by CNBC from Thomson Reuters? Ah, No.

Updated and corrected, because yours truly mixed up millisieverts and microsieverts before he had his morning coffee and flew off the handle and accused CNBC and Thomson Reuters of being morons:

The average individual background radiation dose for Americans is 3 millisieverts/year, according to Wikipedia here. In microsieverts, that would come to 3000 in one year, the same dose a woman gets once a year from a mammogram in addition to the individual background radiation.

From all sources, the average American presently gets a dose of 6.2 mSv/year, or 6200 microsieverts in one year.

Taking a story from Thomson Reuters, CNBC this morning publishes this, entitled "Risks at Each Reactor of Japan's Stricken Plant Explained":

Radiation levels were higher than normal but not dangerous, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said on Thursday.

They were measured at 338 microsieverts per hour at the west gate at 2000 GMT March 16 (5 am local time March 17). If a person stands outdoors for a year, they would be exposed to a  radiation level of 400 microsieverts, the agency said.

The wind is blowing northwest-to-southeast, towards the Pacific Ocean, Japan Meteorological Agency said.

If 6200 microsieverts per year is normal for an American, 338 microsieverts per hour does not become out of the ordinary until after 18 hours of continuous exposure. But compressing into the course of two or three days the radiation exposure one gets normally in a year is nothing to sniff at.

Standing outside for a year equals 400 microsieverts? That's about 0.4 mSv/year.

Acute radiation exposure over one day begins near 250 millisieverts, with possible symptoms including nausea and appetite loss, and damage to the bone marrow, lymph nodes and the spleen. In microsieverts, this would be 250,000 IN ONE DAY. On Tuesday there was a brief time in which radiation levels at Fukushima reached way beyond 250 millisieverts to 400 mSv/hour, or 400,000 microsieverts. Very dangerous.

So I figured it out . . . before I died!

And apologies to Reuters, which I now realize had a good post on the milli/micro ins and outs here yesterday.

The Tariff: Workhorse of the US Treasury Until 1913

James Grant reviews "Peddling Protectionism" by Douglas A. Irwin here for The Wall Street Journal and concludes that Ben Bernanke was already alive and hard at work wrecking the economy in 1914.

The money line of the book:

"The magnitude of the tariff shock in the Smoot-Hawley legislation, which increased the domestic price of imports by 5% at a time when dutiable imports were just 1.4% of GDP, was simply not large enough to trigger the kind of economic contraction experienced after 1930."

The money line of the review:

Here is a model of the economic tract. Lavishly illustrated with political cartoons, it contains but one algebraic equation, and that probably unavoidable.

The World Owes More Money to Japan Than to Any Other Country

So what happens if they cash in all their chips to pay for this mess?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard asks us to think about that, here:

We are discovering once again that [Japan] is the world's top creditor by far with nearly £2 trillion of net assets overseas. ...

HSBC said the pattern after the 1987 crash, the 1998 Asia crisis, and Lehman's collapse, was that Japanese repatriation kicked in violently with a lag of a week. The impact may be greater this time given the trauma, and power-rationing as 11 nuclear reactors are shut down.

Jeff Immelt: Obama's Crony Nuclear Capitalist

Rachel Layne for Bloomberg has a lengthy article about GE's nuclear business, which its chairman Jeff Immelt, was hoping to expand dramatically in India:

General Electric Co. (GE)’s goal of broadening its $1 billion nuclear service-and-parts business with sales of new reactors risks stalling as world leaders reconsider the future of atomic energy.

Governments from Germany, which halted 25 percent of its nuclear-generated electricity, to India, with $175 billion in planned spending by 2030, are reassessing the technology after Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled a power plant and raised the threat of a meltdown.

Immelt is the new head of Obama's team of economic advisers, on which he also sat before he replaced Paul Volcker.

He was among numerous American corporate figures who accompanied Obama on his lavish trip to India after the November elections in 2010.

Watch for GE to make a huge contribution after Obama is out of office to his presidential library.