WIP

And I recall many real nuclear experts voicing concern that the high amounts of radioactive iodine indicated that fuel was melting and a meltdown was possible; but the probabilities were unknown because there was no information on the condition of the fuel inside the reactors. Just because one of the reactors didn't explode or they didn't start going through meltdown until recent days is not over-reacting by Reuters.... it's just pointing out what the worst case scenarios could be. Yeah, everything really sounds under control! So why are radiation levels continuing to rise if TEPCO has it all under control? Radiation in seawater at new high Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says 180 becquerels per cubic centimeter of radioactive iodine-131 has been detected in seawater sampled on Wednesday at a location 330 meters south of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The level is 4,385 times higher than the legal standard, and far above the 3,355-times level detected on Tuesday. Thursday, March 31, 2011 12:06 +0900 (JST) http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/31_17.html Maybe the contributors to this Reuters analysis of the disaster are closer to the truth: Analysis: Japan's nuclear nightmare set to run and run The ongoing nuclear crisis will continue to take its toll on the nation's economy, said Jesper Koll, director of equity research at JPMorgan Securities in Tokyo. "The worst-case scenario is that this drags on not one month or two months or six months, but for two years, or indefinitely," Koll said.

What I find the most alarming about this story, is how once again a great disaster shines light on men who throw caution to the wind (just like the BP Gulf Disaster) in the higher interests of cutting costs and earning greater profits. If would be fine if it was their lives at stake, but other people pay the price in sickness and early death....on the bright side, word just came over the CNN Newswire that BP is going to face manslaughter charges for the deaths of the 11 oil rig workers who were killed when the Global Horizon exploded.

Here's something I didn't know before...and something that pro-nuke propagandists would rather not talk about: Chernobyl: A Nuclear Accident With No End? It seems that the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster wasn't permanently fixed when thousands of conscripted Soviet soldiers and "volunteers" built a giant steel and concrete sarcophagus to entomb the damaged reactor: Laurin Dodd, an American engineer, has come to the site to talk to VOA. He is directing an American-led project to build a new, modern sarcophagus. "The structure itself is almost a house of cards," says Dodd. "It was built with some robotics and under extreme conditions. And there are large gaping holes. If you go inside, you will see holes the size of picture windows with small mammals going in and out, birds flying in and out." As scaffolding props up the old ventilation stack, Dodd races to keep the nuclear genie in the bottle. "There is almost 200 tons of radioactive material still inside the old sarcophagus," said Dodd, who has worked here off and on since 1995. "And the existing sarcophagus was built in six months in 1986 under, I should say, fairly heroic conditions and it had a design life of 10 years - that’s almost 25 years ago." Built on rails and rising high enough to cover the Statue of Liberty, the new containment structure is to be the largest moveable structure in the world. On April 19, Ukraine officials will hold a donor conference in Kyiv to raise $1 billion to build a structure designed to contain Chernobyl’s nuclear mess for another century. As authorities in Japan may soon discover, big nuclear accidents have a defined beginning. It is unclear when they ever end. http://www.voanews.com/english/news/europe/Chernobyl-A-Nuclear-Accident-With-No-End-118943489.html

It's five years old...I'm sure I posted at least three excerpts from this article in the past; but I've never posted a quote that takes up almost a whole page! Wired may not care because it's old news anyway, but there are fair-use rules regarding posting copyrighted material. Next question, did you read the article yourself? I don't see any comments of yours on the merits or demerits of the story.

Oh I'm sorry, did the Marxist-Leninists win over one million votes nationally in any federal elections they fielded candidates? NO, then where's the comparison. What this is about is an effort by the major parties, the media, and no doubt a lot of corporate lobbying from industries who don't want any party on the ballot that makes the environment the focus of their attention. Have the big three said anything about carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes this time around? If they have, I'm not aware of it. For them, the environment is just one more issue to play with for votes.....or to ignore completely, if they think it's going to work better to cozy up to the tar sands developers. Supposedly, when fringe parties and satirists like the Rhinoceros Party, started getting squeezed out of the political process by high ballot entry fees, we were assured that any new parties that received significant popular support, and could field candidates nationally, they would be allowed into the process by being included in the debates....but that appears to be another broken promise. When I've felt bored enough to sit through a few minutes of election news coverage in the last few days, it's the same song and dance, in the same order: a photo op of Harper making another promise he'll never keep; and Iggy and Layton going through the motions, since this will likely be the last campaigns for both of them! And sometimes they throw in video clip of Gilles Duceppe stepping off his campaign bus. Judging from the pre-emptive campaign advertising that has been all over the TV during the last year, I'm betting that we are reaching the threshold which America passed a few election cycles ago, where corporate donations will determine who wins elections. Along with the increased cost of politicking, we will likely be heading down the road to a two party system....with either the Libs or the NDP disappearing, or being amalgamated. Then we can have a gung-ho pro-business party on the right, and a more discreet pro-business party supposedly on the left...just like those Democrats in the U.S..

You are an idiot, and beyond contempt for accusing others who disagree with you of wanting to see death and destruction. If I was an asshole like you, I could redirect that thought right back at you for your carefree disregard of the inherent risks involved with the nuclear industry, and denying climate change out of a purely political agenda! In the real world: Japan may have lost race to save nuclear reactor The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site. The warning follows an analysis by a leading US expert of radiation levels at the plant. Readings from reactor two at the site have been made public by the Japanese authorities and Tepco, the utility that operates it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/29/japan-lost-race-save-nuclear-reactor And more than 2 weeks after the disaster, they are finally going to test the area around the plant for plutonium: Radiation Surges at Reactor as Tests for Plutonium Ordered March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Radiation in water at Japan’s earthquake-damaged nuclear plant reached potentially lethal levels, hampering work to cool reactors. As the worst atomic accident since Chernobyl entered its third week, the government said soil near the Fukushima plant would be tested for plutonium contamination. The radioactive metal was used in one of the reactors and its presence outside the plant would suggest the fuel rods were damaged. Water in the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 2 reactor’s turbine building was measured at more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said today. That’s higher than the dose that would cause vomiting, hair loss and diarrhoea, according to the World Nuclear Association. The radiation is 10 million times the plant’s normal level, broadcaster NHK said. “They’re finding quite high levels of radiation fields, which is impeding their progress dealing with the situation,” said Richard Wakeford, an expert in radiation epidemiology at the U.K.’s Dalton Nuclear Institute in Manchester. At reactor 2, “you’d have a lot of difficulty putting anyone in there.” Efforts to gain control over the damaged plant have been hampered by radiation leaks, forcing repair work to be suspended and engineers to rotate shifts. Japanese officials say they do not know how radioactive water is escaping from the reactors, or from the spent fuel ponds. According to Dr. David Lochbaum from the Union of Concerned Scientists, this is partly because the main reactor control rooms are not operational. The guages and computers are not working. Under the heading: How Much Does Japan Know About the Status of its Reactors? Lochbaum shows that the recent picture of the control room at Unit 2 shows that: A - Computer monitors are blank. B - Clock out of service. C - Annunciators seem to be de-energized: no alarms reported despite many plant parameters off-normal. D - Equipment status indicator lights not available. E - Instrument gauges all downscale (not reading parameter values). and Lochbaum asks whether TEPCO executives and spokesmen even have the information available to determine how radioactive water is escaping from the reactors or the spent fuel ponds!

Betsy, it's been said a million times already, but I'll give it one more shot here because this is a particularly bad example: you are using one-sided propaganda to try to support your positions on issues. If you quote a hit-piece on Richard Dawkins for example, why not step outside your Christian bubble and read something by the author, so that you at least understand his position from his own point of view, instead of the one deliberately skewed by a writer with an agenda? Just like his bullshit writings on politics, D'Souza uses adverbs and adjectives to try to smear Singer: "cheerfully advocates infanticide and euthanasia." And D'Souza uses Peter Singer's philosophical writings on utilitarianism to try to hang on all atheists. Not all atheists are utilitarians, nor do all atheists agree that answers to all ethical dilemmas can be found in one of the three major systems of ethics: Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, or the Deontological systems that are part of nearly every religion-based ethics. Singer in his own words, will tell you that he is trying to apply philosophical rules to real world problems, and will develop a position (like the one above) whether he actually agrees with it personally or not. Singer is trying to develop something that would be a perfect, flawless system of ethics, with no inherent contradictions in the real world...and that's not likely even possible right from the start. In the original article, Singer is asking a difficult, though valid question that most ethicists would rather avoid: what's the difference between a very late-term fetus and a newborn baby in terms other than independent viability? And the truth is: not very much! A newborn baby's brain is only slightly further down the road to sentience than the 36 week old fetus; so, if privacy rights are absolute, and a pregnant woman has a right to abortion at any stage of pregnancy, then why not infanticide? Most people living in the everyday world realize that ethical dilemmas like the abortion issue, are never going to be perfectly settled to everyone's liking. So, even if we are pragmatic, non-god believers, who favour utilitarianism largely, we still realize that following a consequentialist system to the letter, will sometimes lead to problems where a better answer might be found from virtue ethics for example. And since that little piece of propaganda by D'Souza appeared on a Catholic Church site, how about if they delve into the ethical absurdities on the abortion issue that Catholic ethics based on their rigid deontological rules leads to...such as the women who have their lives endangered by Catholic rules that the fetus inside them has an equal right to life! Or that a woman who is pregnant through rape, is obligated to carry the pregnancy to term, and be reminded of the crime for the next nine months...and permanently, if she is obligated to raise the child afterwards. Let's see the Catholic Church deal with the harms they have caused for this world by their attempts to stop women from having a say in how many children to bring into this world.

Yeah, I especially didn't appreciate being told that my concerns were emanating from a desire for a nuclear meltdown. That commenter seems to have headed for the bunker in his hasmat suit since then!

Latest news from Japan indicates that the evidence of partial meltdowns and cracked reactor cores is moving beyond the point where other excuses can be found, and radiation will continue leaking indefinitely; so when will they start considering a Chernobyl solution and try to bury the place in concrete? Japan on 'Maximum Alert' for Nuclear Crisis

I'm noticing that the pro-nuclear advocates who were assuring us that everything would be okay a week or so ago have vanished! Have they already headed for their fallout shelters?

There will be a cost to income-splitting to keep the women at home though! The now forgotten Liberal plans to set up a national day care system would have cost too much to also have support for stay-at-home moms as an alternative. In my situation, I became a sole breadwinner out of health issues that occurred after our children were growing up. It's likely the wrong thread to open up a philosophical debate, but since you put it out there -- I don't accept your premise that the trend towards women in the workplace is a negative for society. Were things better in the old days? If so, someone will have to explain to me why the remaining traditional societies that keep women sequestered are the most miserable hell-holes on the planet today.

It's been said already, but a migration route across Antarctica is quite a stretch, since we would have to go back a long time to when the Antarctic was last ice-free. During brief periods of rapid warming that last melted the Arctic Ocean, the Antarctic still had ice sheets. All the evidence from the thread-starter tells us is that archaeological evidence points to an earlier settlement than Clovis...over 2000 years before the Clovis arrowheads are found, if I recall. The archaeologist who found the site expressed a hypothesis on radio, that Clovis arrowheads were developed in central North America, and were not brought over from Asia. From what I can gather on the subject of genetic evidence such as mtDNA, it is not cut and dried process to determine migration patterns by studying haplogroup genes. Aboriginal populations in the Americas have all five haplogroups of mitochondrial DNA, but that doesn't necessarily mean multiple migrations from all over the world, such as Europe and the Pacific Islands for example. Early migration patterns out of Africa are too complicated to tell us how every race got to their present locations today, or how much mixing of different racial groups occurred along the way. I came across a science news article on this Brazilian research study on American origins awhile back. The authors favour the traditional model of the Beringia Land Bridge as the likely migration route, but don't rule out migration along the coasts. Since the full report is available free online, it's worth having a look at. Ultimately, when and how the Americas were first settled is not the most crucial issue. The one thing we can be sure of is that when modern European explorers first arrived, there were already people living here. And we're still trying to deal with the fallout of exploration, invasion, settlement, and broken treaties to this day.

Over time, the annual growth in income gaps lead to a greater disparity in wealth, especially with tax cuts on investment income. Canada used to have greater income equality than the U.S., but we are catching up fast: Canada’s richest 1% are taking more of the gains from economic growth than ever before in recorded history, says a report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). The Rise of Canada’s Richest 1% looks at income trends over the past 90 years and reveals the 246,000 privileged few who rank among the country’s richest 1% took almost a third (32%) of all growth in incomes between 1997 and 2007. “That's a bigger piece of the action than any other generation of rich Canadians has taken,” says Armine Yalnizyan, CCPA senior economist and the report’s author. “The last time Canada’s elite held so much of the nation’s income in their hands was in the 1920s. Even then, their incomes didn’t soar as fast as they are today. It’s a first in Canadian history and it underscores a dramatic reversal of long-term trends.” * From the beginning of the Second World War to 1977, the income share of the richest 1% dropped from 14% to 7.7%; * By 2007 they’d made a comeback: the richest 1% held 13.8% of incomes; * Since the late 1970s, the richest 1% has almost doubled its share of total income; the richest 0.1% has almost tripled its share of total income; and the richest 0.01% has more than quintupled its share of income. http://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/news-releases/richest-1-income-shares-historic-high You mean it doesn't affect the earnings of major shareholders? If this is true that corporate taxes can just be deferred to the consumer, why are they moving headquarters's to fake addresses in the Cayman Islands, and other tax free zones to reduce corporate taxes owed in the U.S. and Canada?

Didn't they already promise income-splitting during the last election? It could have helped me out if it really happened. And since the federal budget will never be balanced, they'll be able to save the promise for the next federal election. One thing is apparent here though -- if Harper was ever a supply-sider, he's left the reservation by making the tax cut contingent on a balanced budget. That means that he's not following the accepted wisdom that tax cuts pay for themselves.

It's not an either/or situation. The archeological evidence now is pointing to earlier migrations by boat, but that doesn't disprove the fact that many groups migrated overland to Alaska during the last ice age, when sea levels were drastically lower than they are today....and there is geological evidence supporting the existence of a land bridge that cut off the Arctic Ocean from the Pacific for a short period of time.

They would not be in the gene pool if that was true.

Hmmm, now I'm wondering why you didn't figure me as someone into martial arts! Yes, I just saw the rebroadcast last night, and I thought I knew Jiu Jitsu...but I've never seen or heard of a submission hold called a "twister" before....learned something new last night. As a side note, I've noticed lately that having a major UFC event close by (Toronto) has improved the quality of UFC Unleashed lately. I haven't watched as many events in the last year, except for the ones I've seen at the local sports bar, because I'm not paying 50 or $60 to watch anyone fight, and UFC was starting to get greedy...saving everything for pay-per-view. First time in awhile that they've had something that isn't 4 or 5 years old. This is where winning a fight conflicts with entertainment value of a fight, because it was on display especially in that fight Dan Hardy lost to Anthony Johnson. The fans were booing because Dan Hardy isn't good enough to stop the takedowns from a good wrestler, but he is strong enough in the hands to have good wrist control, and seems to have a decent guard. Nevertheless, he was having to expend a lot of energy to avoid the ground-and-pound, and you could see him fade noticably in round 3. I don't know what Joe Rogan and that other clown were watching, because they were talking about Johnson getting tired, while not noticing that Dana White's pet had run out of gas. Maybe they're suppose to keep puffing up this one dimensional fighter to make him seem a legitimate no.1 contender....which reminds me, after three losses, why is Hardy still the no.1 contender? Anyway, if the ref had kept standing them up, it would have improved Hardy's chances somewhat, so regardless of what the drunken fools in the crowd think, I'm glad the ref let the fight take it's natural course! That's true! In the first UFC tournament in 93, Ken Shamrock had a career in shootfighting (submission wrestling) in Japan. He was proficient at a lot of the basic Jiu Jitsu moves, yet in his match with Gracie, he was so caught up in trying to secure a leg-lock that he didn't notice that Gracie had the sleeve of his gee wrapped around Shamrock's neck, and forced Shamrock to tap out from the choke hold. After Gracie won that first round-robin tournament everybody was clamoring to learn more about BJJ. Oh, they already crossed that threshold a long time ago! I think Tito Ortiz was one of the first to use the features of fighting in an octogon cage to his advantage, by pushing an opponent into the cage and make escape from ground-and-pound more difficult. A lot of stuff that works in cagefighting, does not work as well in a streetfight, In general, I would say that it's not a good idea to put someone on the fast track, but Lesnar has so much natural abilities that he will either be a champion or a top contender for a long time to come...assuming he stays healthy of course. What he lacks in skill or knowledge is made up for by brute strength and surprising quickness. I noticed this in his first fight with Frank Mir, who couldn't stop the takedowns. The only reason he won that first fight was because of Lesnar's lack of expertise...stepping over an opponent on the ground, and getting caught in a submission leg hold. If Bisping was able to get by Dan Henderson, I'm sure they would have tried to maneuver him into position for a title shot. They may have been put off by some weak performances like his undeserved win against Matt Hamill. I guess that's why Dan Hardy started becoming the focus of attention for the British UFC franchise.

Nixon's recession correlates with the rise of OPEC and America reaching peak oil around 1973; also, there was a lot of debt leftover from the military buildup during the Cold War and the Vietnam War....which was the no.1 reason why Nixon wanted out of Vietnam and a policy of detente for dealing with the Soviet Union and China. Carter's recession was from the Energy Crisis from start to finish. But, what I'm talking about is not the recessions, but rather the stock market bubbles and busts that had been absent from 1929 until the re-introduction of free-wheeling, deregulated capitalism beginning with Reagan. When U.S. real estate prices were already inflated beyond reasonable levels, and there was no more money to be made to keep high commissions rolling in, all of these "repackaging" schemes started popping up to keep high profits and lavish bonuses coming in. They created CDO's to hide bad mortgages blended in with good investments, and giving the blend an undeserved high credit rating. A small hedge fund dealer was a major factor in the banking meltdown, through the 23 to 40 billion dollars worth of CDO's they created, and then bet against them with AIG's unregulated insurance scam - Credit Default Swaps: The Magnetar Trade Apparently, Alan Greenspan was a major factor in keeping derivatives markets unregulated and free from any independent oversight....and we're all still waiting for the libertarians to explain why the "invisible hand of the market" failed to work, and U.S. taxpayers, along with taxpayers in many other nations with banks that were exposed to over-inflated U.S. real estate had to be bailed out. The no.1 crime committed here for U.S. citizens is the fact that banks got their money, and yet have refused to write down mortgages of millions of underwater property owners -- choosing instead to foreclose and force them out of their homes...and consequently create a cascading effect that lowers property values for existing homes in the neighbourhood. And, needless to say, the Government has declined to put any pressure on the banks to provide relief for homeowners, even though they have the leverage -- if what I've heard is accurate, the are still receiving money from the Fed at 0% interest, and profiting from whatever interests rates they charge for borrowers.....further proof that the banksters and other gangster capitalists own the system, and the political institutions of democracy are a sham, since the majority of the people have no say over the policies that are made which effect their lives. I know Canadian banks got dragged down in the banking crisis, especially the banks with the highest exposure to U.S. real estate investments, but at least we didn't end up bailing out the banksters. According to the top Keynsian economists like Paul Krugman, the stimulus wasn't big enough to re-inflate the economy; nor was it the right kind of stimulus, since at least 40% of it was tax breaks and tax deferments....money that would be used for savings or paying off existing debt. What was needed was a large public works projects system similar to what FDR created in the 1930's. Looking at the big picture, I couldn't get over-excited about stimulus strategies, since it doesn't deal with the big no.1 problem -- the U.S. economy, as well as most economies around the world are facing constraints being applied by the environment and declining resources. Sooner or later we are going to have to get beyond an economic system that depends on continuous growth...may as well start preparing now, instead of waiting till we hit the wall.

My guess is that you are a small fish, since votes are awarded by the numbers of shares owned. Not to mention that you are not likely privy to inside information that the big guys have through their contacts.

Shouldn't the growing wealth gap of the last 30 years in Canada and the U.S. be proof enough that the rich pay too little tax?

The haplogroup genes of the Ainu indicate that they also originated in northern Siberia. I remember years ago, that the Ainu were classified as Caucasian, because of their appearance...lack of eye-folds, extensive body hair etc.; but just like Kennewick Man, appearances can be deceiving. Likely because all of the genes that manifest as racial characteristics can be found in the DNA of every population anywhere on Earth. The differences arise out of a combination of environment and sexual selection. So different populations in similar environments could take on some similarities of appearance without having any recent contact with each other. I read a few articles awhile ago about the genetic research on Native American populations. What I recall is that there is substantial evidence of a Polynesian component in the populations in Central and South America, but not much in North America. This group that found it's way into Texas, and others like the group Kennewick Man belonged to, were likely very small in number, and were overwhelmed by sheer numbers once a passage way through the ice allowed overland travel through North America.

Ignore the thinly disguised racist bullshit! Maybe I would be on the same modernization and economic expansion bandwagon as the capitalist deadenders here too, but, the problem is that our wonderful modern lifestyle (at least here in the West) may be already hitting the wall imposed by Planet Earth's finite resources for us to use. Our modern cities give us a false sense that we are somehow separate from nature, and can engineer nature when needed to suit our growing needs. All this has done is expand populations and energy & resource demands to the point where we are going to hit the wall even harder when the limits to growth arrive. Fifteen years ago, Jared Diamond wrote a book based on archaeological evidence from Easter Island, which showed how Polynesian sailors arrived at this extremely remote South Pacific island rich in natural resources; but eventually exploited and consumed their way to extinction....leaving their giant statues behind as their legacy. Diamond considers our modern unwillingness to deal directly with natural environmental limits to be a situation that could make the entire Earth one big Easter Island, and lead to the possible extinction of the human race as well: http://www.skeptically.org/env/id12.html I'm waiting for more economists to ponder the modern day dilemma of transitioning from an economic system dependent on continuous growth, to one that can function in a world where both environmental impact and resource impacts have to be reduced; so far, I've only found one who's considered the issue, but not much of the work is translated into english: http://www.goodplanet.info/eng/Economy/De-growth/Degrowth/%28theme%29/2386

If the total financial and environmental costs of uranium mining, processing, building and operating nuclear power stations PLUS the big, unpaid for cost that we are off-loading on many generations of future descendants -- nuclear wastes -- was all added to the cost of that kilowatt/hr., we would have been well down the road to sustainable energy sources with low environmental impact....assuming of course, that the total costs of the fossil fuel industries were also up front, and not payed for by taxpayers.

Correction: they will continue to buy politicians across the political spectrum to advance the interests of large corporations and the majority shareholders.

We have so much evidence now that supply side economic theory and economic globalization have been scams that have robbed from the poor and enriched the wealthiest 1% over the last 30 years, that it's time for the 95% majority that have seen real incomes decline to push back against the policies that reduce corporate taxes, investment income, and income taxes on the highest income earners, while increasing user fees, sales taxes, and other regressive tax policies that take more money from average working people. In the specific case of G.E.; this corporation and others like Exxon and Haliburton, which also use fake oversees addresses to shelter profits from taxation, should be faced with the threat of having their corporate charters dissolved and replaced with new ownership that pays their fair share of taxes.