unforgiven

Google very kindly gave me my account back with their apologies and advice to change my password.

In the meantime I read something on the AP wire that claimed an individual nuclear reactor had a 1-100,000 chance of an accident. And that the mainstream public was too uneducated to understand how low the risk was, or how irrational is the fear of radiation .

IMO a major accident is a release large enough to cause evacuation. That has happened at least three times: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. At least one reactor involved @ Fukushima, perhaps as many as three or four reactors involved.

Since google search claims less than 500 active reactors in the world, where the 1 per 100,000 figure comes from I have no idea.

Logically it would appear that if the risk was 1 in 100,000 and there have been accidents at a minimum of three reactors, there would have to exist 300,000 reactors to create those odds.

Let me assure you that my lack of understanding those statistics has nothing to do with a lack of education.

Zeitgeist Moving On

I went to a local pot luck dinner and showing of Zeitgeist Moving On last night. I am already planning on what food to take to the next one.

There we were, a little over a dozen of us aging hippies. It's up to us to change the world?

"Don't underestimate" said Boss, herself a Swedish native who naturally seeks the left path. (Although Boss had not heard of the documentary, most likely since Mr. Boss, also left, is a Dr. of Economics. The economists are portrayed as the bad guys in the film. Shhh, didn't tell Boss!)

Basically Zeitgeist portrays a point of how and why things are wrong with society. It begins quite classically with the nature or nurture argument, ie, whether a trait is inherited or aquired through external stimuli.

Zeitgeist takes the postition that external influences can stimulate an inherited trait to wake up or sleep. In otherwords, the fact that a trait is inherited deosn't matter unless it is the external force that triggers it. While the writers were busy making that argument, I didn't see many red-haired people in the film.

Economics is discussed at lengt; how health care makes up a huge part of our GDP so the country actually looks better on the books if a lot of people are sick. Sick people= higher health costs.

How making things for profit builds in a made-to-break mentality; just to keep the production line moving.

How the monetary system began, who started it, and how people now make money on the idea of money. And those people make more money than people trying to find a cure for cancer.

A perfect little Utopian society is introduced at length as the solution, at this point feeling like a well done High School class project, "How would you build your perfect society?"

Oh, without violence that is caused by abuse that is caused by stress that is caused by poverty that is caused by 1% of world's population owning 98% of the wealth.

If any of that's news to you, watch Zeitgeist Moving On.

One more snow

7:30am


7:35am

Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone

ROOTS and leaves themselves alone are these;
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the pond-side,
Breast-sorrel and pinks of love—fingers that wind around tighter than vines,
Gushes from the throats of birds, hid in the foliage of trees, as the sun is risen;
Breezes of land and love—breezes set from living shores out to you on the living
sea—to
you, O sailors!
Frost-mellow’d berries, and Third-month twigs, offer’d fresh to young persons
wandering
out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms;
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color,
perfume, to
you;
If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall blanches and
trees.

Walt Whitman

How do you like those odds?

There are 440 commercial nuclear reactors in the world. There have been major nuclear accidents at 5 of them: Three (so far) at Fukushima, one each at Chernobyl and Three mile Island. There have major accidents at 1 in 90 commercial nuclear reactors.

For something as dangerous as a nuclear accident, are those odds acceptable?

What odds would you feel comfortable with, 1 in 1000, one in a million? Do you suppose big business admitted the odds are 1 in 90 that a major contamination would occur?

My hopes and prayers go out to those touched by this disaster.

The Passing Strange

Out of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.

Water and saltness held together
To tread the dust and stand the weather,
And plough the field and stretch the tether,

To pass the wine-cup and be witty,
Water the sands and build the city,
Slaughter like devils and have pity,

Be red with rage and pale with lust,
Make beauty come, make peace, make trust,
Water and saltness mixed with dust;

Drive over earth, swim under sea,
Fly in the eagle’s secrecy,
Guess where the hidden comets be;

Know all the deathy seeds that still
Queen Helen’s beauty, Caesar’s will,
And slay them even as they kill;

Fashion an altar for a rood,
Defile a continent with blood,
And watch a brother starve for food:

Love like a madman, shaking, blind,
Till self is burnt into a kind
Possession of another mind;

Brood upon beauty, till the grace
Of beauty with the holy face
Brings peace into the bitter place;

Prove in the lifeless granites, scan
The stars for hope, for guide, for plan;
Live as a woman or a man;

Fasten to lover or to friend,
Until the heart break at the end:
The break of death that cannot mend;

Then to lie useless, helpless, still,
Down in the earth, in dark, to fill
The roots of grass or daffodil.

Down in the earth, in dark, alone,
A mockery of the ghost in bone,
The strangeness, passing the unknown.

Time will go by, that outlasts clocks,
Dawn in the thorps will rouse the cocks,
Sunset be glory on the rocks:

But it, the thing, will never heed
Even the rootling from the seed
Thrusting to suck it for its need.

Since moons decay and suns decline,
How else should end this life of mine?
Water and saltness are not wine.

But in the darkest hour of night,
When even the foxes peer for sight,
The byre-cock crows; he feels the light.

So, in this water mixed with dust,
The byre-cock spirit crows from trust
That death will change because it must;

For all things change, the darkness changes,
The wandering spirits change their ranges,
The corn is gathered to the granges.

The corn is sown again, it grows;
The stars burn out, the darkness goes;
The rhythms change, they do not close.

They change, and we, who pass like foam,
Like dust blown through the streets of Rome,
Change ever, too; we have no home,

Only a beauty, only a power,
Sad in the fruit, bright in the flower,
Endlessly erring for its hour,

But gathering, as we stray, a sense
Of Life, so lovely and intense,
It lingers when we wander hence,

That those who follow feel behind
Their backs, when all before is blind,
Our joy, a rampart to the mind.

John Masefield

Pretty Words

Poets make pets of pretty, docile words:
I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish
Which circle slowly with a silken swish,
And tender ones, like downy-feathred birds:
Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds,
Come to my hand, and playful if I wish,
Or purring softly at a silver dish,
Blue Persian kittens fed on cream and curds.

I love bright words, words up and singing early;
Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;
Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;
I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,
Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees,
Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.

Elinor Wylie