Art in the Streets

at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Little Tokyo.

SLR Magic 35mm F1.7 lens

3 recent photos taken with my recently acquired SLR Magic lens. I was inspired to make the purchase by my friend Sonya, currently abroad on a life-changing voyage 'round the globe with her own micro four-thirds camera and lenses. Check out her blog and follow her adventures, I promise it's worthwhile.

Looking south from my balcony:


California Adventure:


Dionaea muscipula (Venus Flytrap)

Nuclear Testing from 1945-1998

A graphic timeline representation of every nuclear bomb ever detonated (minus North Korea's recent tests in Oct. 2006 and May 2009), produced in 2003 by Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto.



A total of 2053 detonations:

United States 1032
U.S.S.R. 715
France 210
United Kingdom 45
China 45
India 4
Pakistan 2

The world's first explosion of a nuclear device was the Trinity test in Jornada del Muerto's Tularosa Basin on July 16, 1945. The next two detonations were also the first and last time nuclear devices were used in military combat as weapons -- the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945. Of the ensuing tests conducted by the U.S., over 200 were detonated aboveground in the lower 48 states and in the Pacific Ocean between July 1946 and November 1962. Roughly half of these took place at The Nevada Test Site, a 3500 square-kilometer area located 100 kilometers northwest of Las Vegas, NV. More than 800 additional underground weapons tests were conducted from 1962 through September 1992. (source - Division of Radiation Control, Utah Dept. of Environmental Quality)

The U.S. is the only nation that has compensated victims exposed to radiation from nuclear testing.

Storm, by Tim Minchin, with DC Turner and Tracy King

A little over 2 years ago, I posted a video featuring Tim Minchin, a brilliant Australian skeptical performer. Coincidentally, it's taken about that long for DC Turner to complete the gorgeous animation to illustrate his beat-poem, "Storm".

Kampai!

More good information on Fukushima

This from the website of the British Embassy in Tokyo. Sir John Beddington, Britain's Chief Scientific Officer, speaks with other experts from the Department of Health and the Health Protection Agency regarding the most recent advisories given out by the Japanese government. The information is aimed at ex-pats living in Tokyo, but it remains relevant for the rest of the world, especially for those on the west coast of the US listening to the hyperbolic network & cable news coverage of this disaster. I can't recall the last time I've seen this much misinformation and scaremongering.

Here are some relevant passages, including worst case scenarios and data on potassium iodide tablets:

"...Let me now talk about what would be a reasonable worst case scenario.  If the Japanese fail to keep the reactors cool and fail to keep the pressure in the containment vessels at an appropriate level, you can get this, you know, the dramatic word “meltdown”.  But what does that actually mean?  What a meltdown involves is the basic reactor core melts, and as it melts, nuclear material will fall through to the floor of the container. There it will react with concrete and other materials … that is likely… remember this is the reasonable worst case, we don’t think anything worse is going to happen.  In this reasonable worst case you get an explosion.  You get some radioactive material going up to about 500 metres up into the air.  Now, that’s really serious, but it’s serious again for the local area.  It’s not serious for elsewhere even if you get a combination of that explosion it would only have nuclear material going in to the air up to about 500 metres.  If you then couple that with the worst possible weather situation i.e. prevailing weather taking radioactive material in the direction of  Greater Tokyo and you had maybe rainfall which would bring the radioactive material down do we have a problem?  The answer is unequivocally no.   Absolutely no issue.  The problems are within 30 km of the reactor.  And to give you a flavour for that, when Chernobyl had a massive fire at the graphite core, material was going up not just 500 metres but to 30,000 feet.  It was lasting not for the odd hour or so but lasted months, and that was putting nuclear radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere for a very long period of time.  But even in the case of Chernobyl, the exclusion zone that they had was about 30 kilometres.   And in that exclusion zone, outside that, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate people had problems from the radiation.  The problems with Chernobyl were people were continuing to drink the water, continuing to eat vegetables and so on and that was where the problems came from.  That’s not going to be the case here.  So what I would really re-emphasise is that this is very problematic for the area and the immediate vicinity and one has to have concerns for the people working there. Beyond that 20 or 30 kilometres, it’s really not an issue for health.

...

[Q] Could you just explain why the worst case scenario here is much less than at Chernobyl?

[JB] Yeah, very much so.  In Chernobyl, , first of all the top blew off the reactor and then the core of the reactor, the graphite which surrounds the core actually caught fire and burned for a very long time,  so you had very, very, hot fire pushing all the material up in the normal sort of convection processes.  Here, what will happen with the build up of pressure if the radioactive material interacted with the container floor and you would get a single explosion but it would not be a continued explosion.  So that explosion would send material up to about 500 metres would be the sort of level we would expect.  You know, it’s spurious accuracy, it might be 517 or 483 but that’s about it.  And in terms of that, and couple that with weather, we still see absolutely no issue of material being taken at any critical level for human health beyond that 20 kilometres or so.

...

[Q] The next question, there’s a lot of concern in the community about the taking of iodine.  At what point should iodine be taken and would you recommend people taking it proactively?

[Nick Kent, HPA Physician]  Yes, I am. I think I’ll answer it in two ways. The ways you may get exposed to radio iodine are either you inhale volatile radio iodine and that will only happen very close to the nuclear power plant itself, and we certainly do recommend where people are close to a nuclear plant when an accident occurs that they should take stable iodine to block iodine uptake to the thyroid in those circumstances.  But there’s nobody close to the nuclear plant and that’s not a means by which there will be exposure here, and therefore that’s not, you know that is not a reason to take iodine in the case of yourselves living in Tokyo.  
The second but most important way that people get exposed to radio iodine is that as the radio iodine settles into the environment, it gets incorporated into crops, it gets taken up into animals and it gets excreted into milk. And the problem in the case of Chernobyl which is where quite a number of cases of thyroid cancer were seen, it is now clear that the exposure pathway in the Russian Federation and Ukraine was ingestion of contaminated food, particularly milk.  Now, we do not envisage the food chain as being an issue for you to take it up, and in any case, to use iodine to protect against the food chain would take long term administration of iodine, which would not be appropriate for other reasons, like the effects that would be on the thyroid.  So I’ll just summarise. You’re not close to the plant so you’re not at an inhalation risk which is the principle use for iodine, and you we do not envisage you getting any radio iodine exposure through the food chain so again you know, no exposure therefore no need to use iodine as a countermeasure.  Thank you."




The Ryōzen Kannon (霊山観音) in Kyoto: a war memorial dedicated to the Japanese and Allied soldiers who died in WWII.
May 17, 2008

Nuclear/Unclear

I've read a lot of articles over the last 3 days attempting to explain the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and discussing the potential problems for Japan and the rest of the world. Sadly, the vast majority of them are speculative and use fear mongering to attract readers. It's difficult to find good data right now, especially since the crisis is still unfolding amidst real human tragedy (more on that below). Nevertheless, the best three pieces I've seen in the aftermath of this catastrophe are:

1. Nuclear Overreactors in Slate, by William Saletan. It is pithy and enlightening in its comparison of nuclear energy production to fossil fuels: "...fossil fuel is more dangerous. The sole fatal nuclear power accident of the last 40 years, Chernobyl, directly killed 31 people. By comparison, Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute calculates that from 1969 to 2000, more than 20,000 people died in severe accidents in the oil supply chain. More than 15,000 people died in severe accidents in the coal supply chain—11,000 in China alone. The rate of direct fatalities per unit of energy production is 18 times worse for oil than it is for nuclear power."

2. Japan's nuclear reactor overreaction by the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait. As always, Phil nails it; like Saletan, he keeps it short and to the point, and brings in some more facts that I wasn't aware of, like "coal plants release more radiation than nuclear plants by a long shot...not to mention the disastrous environmental impact of burning it. How safe is that? Yet we use far more energy from coal than from nuclear plants."

3. The best by far is this discussion by Dr. Joseph Oehmen, originally posted on the blog of an English teacher in Japan, but now hosted and maintained by the MIT Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering. This is a very comprehensive explication of nuclear reactions, nuclear reactors in general, what has specifically happened thus far at Fukushima, and what will most likely happen. The educational value of this piece is priceless, and though it's longer than the others, it reads like a thriller.

The absolute worst thing I've seen in the last three days is this Youtube clip of a cretinous American Christian, deliriously thanking the god of the Bible for shaking Japan at this start of the Lentil [sic] season, in an attempt to open the eyes of atheists everywhere.



Despite this young lady's enthusiasm for the death and destruction she believes she helped cause, intercessory prayer doesn't work, whether one is trying to hurt the victims or help them. If you would like to do the latter, please consider donating to the Center For Inquiry's S.H.A.R.E. program. 100% of your donation, with no operating costs retained, will be given to Doctors Without Borders, a secular organization that already has teams assisting the government-led response in Japan.

A day at the Los Angeles Zoo

While it may not be as extensive or have as many animals as Taronga Zoo in Sydney, The San Diego Zoo, The London Zoo, or The Smithsonian National Zoo in D.C. (okay, the Los Angeles Zoo pretty unspectacular), my visit yesterday was still a fun diversion on a warm spring morning. Clicking on any of the photos below will transport you to the flickr page with larger viewing sizes, information on the animal, and geotag data; or clicking here will take you to the photoset.

Tweet #107

To most help those affected by #earthquake and #tsunami, rather than #prayforjapan, please #donateforjapan instead: http://www.redcross.org/