Quote of the Day
A man on the street is pointing up to the sky. "Look, an angel!" he yells. Passersby laugh. "You fool, that is only a cloud."How wonderful it would be to see angels where there are only clouds. How sad it would be to see only clouds where there are angels.
Anonymous
Fox News Doom and Gloom on Fukushima Daiichi Continues
I've gotten to the point I'm limiting my exposure to Fox News. I've written several relevant critical commentaries about their poor quality coverage, and I could literally spend hours each day debunking it. I have other priorities. But I thought I was safe on watching an occasional O'Reilly Factor; in fact, O'Reilly seemed to imply the other night that he wasn't the doom and gloomer like others. But tonight he had on Steven Greer, CEO of the Healthcare Channel; Greer is not quite as hyper and animated as Michio Kaku, but he clearly buys into the untenable full meltdown hypothesis and believes the big pumps (see below) are being sent to entomb the reactors. He also thinks that radioactivity will build up to the level of a chest x-ray (from trace amounts of iodine) and the Japanese are understating the health risks to Japanese workers on site. O'Reilly simply didn't have the background to counteract Greer's claims. The concrete pumps are likely to be used for coolant. The reactors and spent fuel pools are under control. Recent spikes in terms of contamination have been inaccurately measured and result more from overflows of contaminated water, which are in process of being corrected. Ambient radiation levels have been declining, as well as food, water, milk and vegetable samples exceeding safety regulations.
Fukushima Nuclear Incident Update
NOTE: I made an edit to my March 30 post. An NEI blog post made a discussion of external storage tanks being brought to the facility to handle contaminated water which could not be stored in the condenser. (There was no reference of pumping from the condensers to the suppression pool surge tanks in that post, although other blog status reports indicated pumping in process from the reactor 2 and 3 condensers to their respective suppression pool surge tanks.)
IAEA notes:
- Trench water from the reactor 1 tunnel is going to a storage tank in the central environmental facility process main building. Pumping water from the full reactor 1 condenser to the suppression pool surge tanks, joining similar ongoing processes for reactor 2 and reactor 3. There are ongoing injections in reactor pressurized vessels for reactors 1 through 3; coolant was added to spent fuel pools 1 and 3 yesterday and spent fuel pool 4 today.
- Some 13 of 111 samples (vegetables, meat, seafood, and raw milk) from 4 of 8 prefectures in the Fukushima region tested didn't meet Japanese safety standards; Fukushima and Ibaraki prefectures, as expected, had the most issues with vegetables and raw milk.
NEI notes:
- Big Pump: There has been some coverage of this--two of the world's largest concrete pumps, in the US, are being loaned to Japan; these units can be operated remotely. No doubt the Michio Kaku's of the world applaud the move, long arguing Fukushima Daiichi should be buried in sand and concrete. But, as the NEI blogger points out, these can also be used for water--just like the existing concrete pumps on site.
- afternoon: The US Navy freshwater barge is in tow to the pier; synthetic resin, which will be used to pin down radioactive debris, has yet to be applied, primarily due to weather reasons. Samples of beef from 4 prefectures in the Fukushima region have exceeded Japanese safety standards and will not be shipped.
Atomic Power Review published a single Fukushima daily update; in the blog's update yesterday, it made mention that TEPCO reported a high 10,000 times the acceptable limit. Since then, TEPCO has backed off that number (similar with the earlier misstatement of very high iodine readings at a nearby sea location). NISA has been sharply critical of TEPCO's vacillating numbers and Health Physics management.
The Hiroshima Syndrome blogger notes by past history, all of us trying to battle the tabloid doom-and-gloomers in the media are in for a long battle. [I think I first looked at Drudge Report back in 2002; I wouldn't say I'm a daily viewer, but yesterday when I checked it, it was saturated with negative Fukushima stories, and I quickly closed my browser tab.] He mentioned, on a more hopeful note, his website picked up over 10,000 pageviews last month from 80 countries, meaning people hungry for the truth, not sensational nonsense. (In contrast, I don't think I've ever had a single pageview from Japan, despite weeks of covering the incident--and I used to work for an American subsidiary of a Japanese corporation.) I will say of all the blogs I read, this is the one I look forward to reading the most. It's different: it's practical, detailed but highly readable. You almost see this incident through his eyes--the kinds of things he looks for, his takeaways, his predictions, his frustration with power management bureaucracy, incomplete information releases and impatience for poor safety standards for workers...
Along with various detailed statuses, he references that a local media network managed to get a camera in a position over controversial spent fuel pond 4. There's been some speculation over the earthquake have sloshed off some of the covering water over the stored fuel--but also whether all the water in the pool had boiled off. There's also been some speculation over whether there was a leak, a fault in the lining of the spent fuel pool. The blogger states that the media company reported no observable defect.
Supreme Court and Betty Dukes v Wal-Mart: Plaintiff: Thumbs DOWN!
Only in a world where ideology (in this case, politically correct feminism) trumps common sense and hard facts can you see a preposterous class-action suit which seems to suggest a huge organization like Wal-Mart is engaged in systemic gender discrimination based on collectivist criteria: there are all these female employees "and then some magic happens" and men have higher overall pay and greater proportional representation in management. And basically the argument is that "magic" is some inferred systematic gender bias, a "vast male conspiracy", if you will, even though the company has had for decades published policies against gender discrimination. The lawyers cherrypick a handful of cases that seem to reflect poorly on Wal-Mart, which may be little more that anecdotal evidence of rogue managers acting without the knowledge or consent of higher management. The fact of the matter is that personnel decisions are based on performance, qualifications (experience, technical skills, educational or professional credentials), and other factors (e.g., people skills), many of which are subjective, a matter of judgment (potential for management).
I have met many people whom have no desire for management and the related responsibilities (e.g., longer hours, travel, dealing with personnel issues and budgets, business meetings, etc.): "Just give me my 40 hours". Perhaps working mothers want to work part-time schedules. I once interviewed with a management consulting company which had two career paths: the first was a traditional hierarchical progression to partner; the second was more of a core technical consultant track, without managerial responsibilities. The point is, a number of potential candidates opt out of the management path for personal, quality-of-life reasons. If a disproportionate number of these employees are women, it doesn't mean that Wal-Mart made a decision against them based on nefarious unwritten gender policies any more than, say, engineering departments in colleges discriminate against female students although most engineering students are male. It may simply reflect gender preferences.
Those of us who have been trained in statistical sampling methodology instinctively cringe when lawyers engage in cherrypicking tactics as if a handful of cases constitute a representative sample of management candidates (or female employees). We would need to operationalize what constitutes sexist behavior and instances of managerial gender bias. Note that certain events, say, a female candidate being promoted over male candidates, would be problematic for the gender bias argument. We would need to see compelling preponderance of corroborative evidence, e.g., female manager quotas, short shift of gender-related complaints, derisive descriptions of female candidates, promotion of lesser qualified males over female applicants, etc. There must be an objective, well-documented pattern of behavior.
What I don't like is trial lawyers trying to shakedown a major corporation on patently frivolous grounds, a de facto self-serving business tax. In effect, any special interest group could threaten a company in an attempt to interfere with a company's personnel decisions, perhaps to implement a de facto quota system. Wal-Mart has an intrinsic interest to rightsize employee compensation and to promote the right people into management; if it doesn't, it risks losing talented people to competitors.
The government, including the judicial branch, should minimize any interference with economic liberty and refrain from opening up Pandora's box, sanctioning an explosion of even more frivolous, job-killing, business-killing class action lawsuits.
Becerra, Social Security and Fox News
I think I was watching Cavuto's Your World yesterday when Congressman Becerra (D-CA) was interviewed and entitlements came up. (I specifically wrote down the Congressman's surname so I could post a relevant comment.) Becerra is in a state of denial about social security. He specifically said that social security was not adding a single penny to the federal deficit. I do not know what's worse--that Becerra is lying or the FNC interviewer did not challenge this much-repeated lie.
This is one of these recurring bits of fiction/political spin that persists despite debunking, just like Sarah Palin pretended to have been against the Bridge to Nowhere at the 2008 GOP convention and in several campaign stops later. In fact, she ran for governor supporting the Bridge to Nowhere (she did try to hedge her position late in the campaign). It's true that she eventually killed the proposal--late in her first year in office, several months after learning the projected cost had doubled and there was no chance of getting that money from Congress. She canceled it at a time which would draw the least public attention, knowing Gravina Island Bridge supporters would be furious with her flip-flop.
I have posted several comments about this. How can these two people not know this? The federal budget includes outlays for social security payments. Social security contributions have been reduced by fewer employees, and social security payments have increased by more frustrated job-seekers electing early retirement (age 62). The gap must be made up by drawing down by the reserves. This has the effect of shifting debt held in the social security reserves to the public, which is neutral in terms of the national debt. But the deficit will increase by the social security deficit (unless, of course, offset by a federal operational surplus--which hasn't happened in decades; we did run surpluses around the turn of the millennium--but that's because the operational deficit was covered by the social security surplus).
It's possible that the progressive Democrats are confusing the deficit with the overall debt. Shifting debt has a couple of major problems. First, there's supply and demand for public debt, including the possibility of having to raise interest rates to attract buyers. Second, there is no "free lunch"; liquidating the social security reserves increases the unfunded liabilities of the social security Ponzi scheme and hastens the day of reckoning. The issue is a moral one: we are knowingly underfunding our own retirements, given actuarial realities, and leaving it to the next generations to make the politically difficult decisions of shoring up the program: decreasing benefits or increasing taxes.
Even FactCheck.org (not exactly conservative-friendly) notes the fact we ran a social security deficit last year, with an even bigger deficit this year--and that was before a partial payroll tax reduction enacted for this year. The CBO earlier this year announced that an anticipated post-recession surplus period wasn't viable and predicted an ongoing social security deficit. It provides a long list of other Democrats caught repeating the lie (of not adding a penny to the deficit).
Political Humor. A periodic reminder that you can find late night joke summaries at many late night show websites and digests of jokes at websites like newsmax.
"President Obama didn’t throw any first pitches for opening day. Of course, he did throw us that curveball on Libya." - Jay Leno
[Jay, you need a pitching coach; what President Obama threw was a knuckleball, a pitch with little spin that can break in unusual ways so that the batter doesn't know where it's going and even the catcher can't grasp it. (Okay, so you got me: has Obama ever pitched anything without political spin?)
Anyway, you should already know that Obama came out of spring training with a number of new campaign pitches: a screwball on healthcare policy, a slider on entitlement reform, a changeup on budget cuts, and hardball with Speaker of the House John Boehner.]
An original:
- I'm not saying other 2012 GOP Presidential contenders are nervous about Donald Trump's entry into race, but competing against The Donald is tough: every card in the hand he plays is a Trump card.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Beach Boys, "I Get Around"
