I'm back. I don't know about the rest of you.

Definitely having a CFS day. I got out early and did some very necessary food shopping, but my get-up seems to have gone.

YOLO.

Well, yeah, especially if you're drinking plutonium.

YAY BACK.

the BEIR VII lifetime risk model predicts that approximately 1 person in 100 would be expected to develop cancer (solid cancer or leukemia) from a dose of 0.1 Sv above background, while approximately 42 of the 100 individuals would be expected to develop solid cancer or leukemia from other causes.

Er, wait, am I reading that right? 42% of people are going to have cancer? And if you give them all .1 Sv above background....43% of them will?

(I was posting this when we went down. I may have broken the board.)

Do I need to worry about the cousins (kinda cousins anyway, by marriage--step-cousins?) who are in Japan because the husband is a nuclear engineer in the US Navy working at Fukushima?

I'm sorry I worried you, Burrell. I meant the opposite -- that the CEOs over the nation's nuclear power plants would never visit Fukushima if it was as dangerous as the article implies. Apparently my sarcasm font was broken. If he's working there, he'll have an instrument on him that measures his exposure constantly. There are very conservative annual and lifetime limits on the amount of exposure people working with radioactive materials are allowed to receive. On the unlikely event he reaches his yearly limit, he'll be pulled out of there and not allowed to work anywhere he could be exposed.

Typo, we use the linear threshold model because it's the safest thing to do, and I'm not suggesting we stop acting as if it was true. Things like the annual and lifetime exposure limits I just mentioned are based on it. There are no reliable data, though, and what data we have leans towards the self-healing model you mention. As you've probably read, there are reputable researchers who claim a little radiation is good for you.

I remember it being listed as the most poisonous substance back when I read Guiness records for entertainment.

Plutonium's reputation as the deadliest substance on earth apparent dates back to the early days of the nuclear navy, when they we trying to make sailors treat nuclear materials seriously. Albert Stevens [link] was injected with a large amount of plutonium as part of a highly unethical experiment. He lived 20 more years.

I may have broken the board.

Nuh uh! [link]

It's weird that wanting to repost buffistas.info may make me actually register with tumblr, isn't it?

WHEW so glad to be back! Just in time for me to run off and try to accomplish some errands before it's time to watch football...

I don't wanna grade quizzes. I don't wanna deal with the student who wrote after one of the questions, "Sorry, but I wasn't in class the day you taught this. Can I come to your office hours to learn it?" I really don't wanna deal with the seriously over-stressed student who I know is going to have what looks like an anxiety attack when she sees that she got one problem completely wrong. And I don't wanna deal with the smoke detector in my basement that's beeping every 30 seconds.

I burned two fingers while cleaning a kettle. this fucker hurts.

I've been alternating between cleaning and Tumblr while waiting for the rain to stop so I can get some exercise, but I don't think it's going to stop being wet anytime soon. I guess I'll put more Welcome to Night Vale on my phone and dig my raincoat out of the closet.

It's such a cool, lovely day. I keep meaning to get some stuff done, but then I forget and go back to sleep. Maybe summer is finally over.

I'm attempting to at least get some small tasks done today, like discarding random bits of paper from the top of my desk. Spare Cat is not helping, i.e. she's sitting on top of as much stuff as she can manage.