Tara: Do you have any books on robots? Giles: Oh, yes, dozens. There's a lot of research to be done in order to--no, I'm lying. Haven't got squat. I just like watching Xander squirm.

'Get It Done'


Natter 67: Overriding Vetoes  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, nail polish, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


Ginger - Mar 22, 2011 8:51:32 am PDT #29569 of 30001
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

Nora, fear of radiation is often so irrational that it's hard to come up with an argument someone will respond to. One problem is that many people seem to think radioactivity is some kind of cartoon-villain death ray that turns the food radioactive. Instead, we're talking about small radioactive particles floating in the air. Most of the radioactive isotopes from a nuclear plant have very short half-lives, so they don't even come into the equation on crops away from the plant. The main culprits are Cesium 134, Cesium 137, Strontium 90 and iodine 131. Cesium and strontium have half lives about 30 years, so they'll be around for a while. Iodine 131 has a half life of eight days, which means it's gone altogether in about 80 days. Cesium gets into the food supply because it's water soluble and absorbed like potassium by living things. Strontium 90 mimics calcium, which is how it gets into milk. However, both of these elements pass out of the body pretty quickly and that can be speeded up by using chemicals that bind to them. Everyone alive today has ingested some radioactive strontium and cesium from atomic bomb tests.

In the U.S., one of the first instructions after an event is to put milk animals in barns and feed them stored food. (Once, in a media conference drill, one of the participating journalists asked, "I'm nursing. Am I a milk animal?" The executive doing the briefing took a while to recover.)

Foods like spinach tend to show higher levels because they have so much leaf surface. The highest readings found so far was on spinach grown about 60 miles south of Fukushima Daiichi, which was found to contain 54,000 becquerels of iodine-131, or 27 times the allowable limit. That sounds terrible, doesn't it? To reach the exposure allowed annually for power plant workers, you'd have to eat 41 pounds of spinach. To reach the level that could increase your cancer risk by 4%, you'd have to eat 820 pounds of spinach. In the case of the highest level found in milk so far, you'd have to drink more than 58,000 glasses of milk raise your lifetime cancer risk by 4 percent.


Hil R. - Mar 22, 2011 8:51:46 am PDT #29570 of 30001
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l

My great-grandmother lived with my grandmother and her family for the last 40 years of her life. (She lived to 103.) When my grandmother got sick, my mom offered to have her come live with us, but my grandmother wanted to stay where she was, because she said she didn't feel safe having her neighbors be "so far away." (She'd lived in apartment buildings her entire life. We lived in the suburbs, on about 1/3 of a acre, approximately a 30 second walk to any of about six neighbors.)


Hil R. - Mar 22, 2011 8:54:11 am PDT #29571 of 30001
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l

To reach the exposure allowed annually for power plant workers, you'd have to eat 41 pounds of spinach.

I probably do eat about that much spinach in a year. This is going to become one of those things where my crazy relatives point and say, "See? Eating all those vegetables will kill you!" isn't it?


DawnK - Mar 22, 2011 8:55:29 am PDT #29572 of 30001
giraffe mode

Oh Consuela, I wish I had words of wisdom for you, we are in exactly the same situation with my mother-in-law, and instead of trying to find a place for her to be comfortable before she was as far down the dementia path as she is now, we moved in with her, it was a mistake. I can tell you it is a constant struggle for us (this morning she came up the stairs to tell us that she had swine flu at 4:50). Plus I have lingering resentment that we are living in her house, it's not "my" house, etc. My sister-in-law comes over 4 days a week and my husband takes Friday's off, but we haven't been on a family vacation in the 3 years we have lived with her, because of her fears.


Allyson - Mar 22, 2011 8:55:37 am PDT #29573 of 30001
Wait, is this real-world child support, where the money goes to buy food for the kids, or MRA fantasyland child support where the women just buy Ferraris and cocaine? -Jessica

I'm trying to find the origin of this legend:

Once upon a time, there was a big truck stuck under a bridge. It was too big to clear the bridge, and woe, the traffic backed up for miles as engineers of great expertise tried in vain to find a way to raise the bridge.

And then, a tiny voice emerges from the back of a station wagon, and a five year old child asks, "Why not just let the air out of the tires?"

And the moral of the story is engineers are stupid. I think.

Has everyone heard this? Where does it come from? Google is being bitchy about giving me any clue.


§ ita § - Mar 22, 2011 8:56:51 am PDT #29574 of 30001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

"See? Eating all those vegetables will kill you!"

I am feeling pretty vindicated about my life choices right about now, to be honest.


Connie Neil - Mar 22, 2011 8:57:09 am PDT #29575 of 30001
brillig

I've heard that story, but it's not a cute, wise child that comes up with the answer, it's an engineer who comes up with it. With the moral being that "smart people will get it fixed when everyone else is standing around with slack jaws."


Polter-Cow - Mar 22, 2011 8:57:30 am PDT #29576 of 30001
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!

And then, a tiny voice emerges from the back of a station wagon, and a five year old child asks, "Why not just let the air out of the tires?"

I've heard this as a brainteaser, I think.


Ginger - Mar 22, 2011 8:57:52 am PDT #29577 of 30001
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

I probably do eat about that much spinach in a year.

Even if you did and it was all contaminated, that would mean you had the exposure that is safe for plant workers to receive every year, year after year, and nuclear plant workers on average live somewhat longer than the general population. (That's probably because of the selection process of needing to be fairly bright and physically active, not because of the magic of radiation.)


Burrell - Mar 22, 2011 8:57:58 am PDT #29578 of 30001
Why did Darth Vader cross the road? To get to the Dark Side!

Run. My mother spent the last eight years or so of my father's life getting up at 4 a.m.; changing the sheets; changing his diapers; moving him to his chair; and setting up lunch and drinks for him. Then she worked for 8 hours; came home; changed his diapers; made dinner; and washed his clothes and the sheets. She was hurt more than once trying to support his weight to get him from room to room in the house and to doctor appointments.

Hmm, not sure if this comment was directed at me or at Suela, but since you're quoting me, I will just say I don't need your mother's experience to go by, I can go by my own. I took care of my own mother for 7 years along with my husband and my brother. And it was much like you describe above, minus the bad temper as my mother was the sweetest dementia patient the world has ever known. Seriously.