Christmas Stasis

I have been extremely busy since last weekend with packing my stuff, graduation, and moving to a new location. I will also be spending Christmas at the home of one of my aunts and so I will be out of town until the twenty-sixth of this month. Because of this, my blog series on nuclear technology will be suspended until next week.

In addition, I will wish you all a merry Christmas in advance. Whether or not you identify as Christian, the holiday should be a joyful occasion. This is because to me as well as many other atheists, Christmas is an important cultural holiday and the values of goodwill, love, peace, and prosperity are just as relevant from a secular standpoint as they are from people who profess belief in supernatural deities.

Who among you does not like a tree full of beautiful lights and decorations? Who would turn his head from the wonderful Christmas dinners, candy and cookies, snacks? How many of us would freely part from the exchanging of gifts that we experience during Christmas? Our relatives and guests might be a bit loud and raucous at times after the wine, beer, and egg nog flows freely but Christmas has a miraculous way of preventing resentment from becoming full-scale arguments.

So, the nuclear reactor and the machines that run my blog will continue to operate all throughout Christmas as they do every day until my return on the 26th where we will pick up where we left off with the plutonium fuel cycle. For those of you who have to travel far, I do hope that the roads are safe and that the TSA does not become too taxing on your nerves with their fraudulent security theaters. In addition, I wish that everybody gets plenty to eat this Christmas and that they get all that they have asked for or wanted this year.

Finally, in order to keep up with the festivities, I have decided to decorate this facility for the Christmas season and play some fitting music. I hope you do not mind listening to Burl Ives, Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin for awhile. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Thanksgiving Day Post

Today is Thanksgiving, which is an important holiday in the American calendar. Although Thanksgiving is said to commemorate the feast that the Native American tribes had with the early puritan colonists, the actual holiday itself was not established until 1863 by president Lincoln during his Thanksgiving proclamation. Up until then, many states scheduled their own "thanksgiving" events as an irregular observance, often during years when there was an especially bountiful harvest.

A magazine editor by the name of Sarah Josepha Hale wrote a series of letters to president Lincoln urging him to declare Thanksgiving as an official holiday. America was being torn apart by civil war and Mrs. Hale felt that nationalizing the custom of thanksgiving would help restore a feeling of unity throughout the US. The holiday was vaguely based on the Puritan harvest festival at Plymouth Plantation during 1621, which lasted three days from late September to early October. However, the idea behind Thanksgiving as set forth by Mrs. Hale was more of a celebration of "home and hearth" before the dead of winter rather than a specific historical event.

Since the Thanksgiving proclamation, Thanksgiving has been a national holiday that is celebrated on the last Thursday in November. Although the Puritans were more than likely eating venison at Plymouth, turkey is traditionally eaten on the holiday because West Point students were customarily served turkey during Thanksgiving, which had generally been a northeastern culinary tradition until then. Because of this, many West Point troops had been exposed to turkey, which helped cement its place on the Thanksgiving dinner table. After the end of World War II the famous Norman Rockwell image of a roast turkey serving as the symbol for "Freedom From Want" made turkey the national icon for Thanksgiving.

I myself had an enjoyable Thanksgiving today. The turkey was roasted upside-down to make sure that the breast area does not become desiccated during the cooking process. The dog, myself, and everybody else had plenty to eat and everybody seemed to have a good time. My favorite cut of a turkey is the leg or "drumstick" as I prefer dark meat to white meat when it comes to poultry flesh. The "white meat" on birds consists of fast-twitch muscle fibers, which are used for short bursts of intense activity, while the "dark meat" contains slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are mainly meant for sustained physical activity. Slow-twitch muscle fibers contain more myoglobin, which is a protein in muscle tissue that gives it a darker color.

I wish everybody an enjoyable Thanksgiving and I hope that they make sure they get enough to eat and that the company of their dinner guests is not too trying on their patience. The best part of Thanksgiving is often the leftover food the day after, as it is just as good if not better than the day before. Finally, one must not underestimate the remaining turkey skeleton, which is highly valuable for making soup stock out of after the last of the meat has been picked off by ravenous humans.

Happy feasting everybody!

N^4 Has Been Redesigned!

I thought that my layout for N^4 was getting a bit stale, so I overhauled it. It turned out better than I thought. The new options for Blogger also allowed me to get rid of that damn space between my blog articles and the sidebar that Firefox kept insisting on doing for some reason. As a bonus, I also put in a new header image.

My Eyes Have Been Opened!

I have seen the light! Gaia came to me in a dream last night and told me that she was the mother goddess and that nuclear power was poisoning the Earth and destroying the ecosystem! She showed me apocalyptic visions of the future in which humanity was reduced to roving bands of miserable survivors after the environmental holocaust. The few people that were left had taken to scavenging what remained of the land while defending themselves from attack by raiders.

I cried from the pain of the vision that the mother goddess showed me and prayed to her that it would not come true. I have decided to become a wiccan and worship Gaia. I am now a strict vegan and promise to only buy and wear green products and organic foods. I hope to make most of my clothing myself out of hemp, but even if I do need to buy clothing, it will be eco-friendly. Even my underwear will be green. I am going to drop out of school and live independently of the grid, using decentralized wind and solar energy. It is unlikely that I will become ill because I will not be ingesting toxins in my food which are ubiquitous in the western factory-farming industrial complex. However, in the rare event that I do get sick, I will not support the western medical establishment by going to a doctor. Instead I will use alternative medicine such as homoeopathy, enemas, and ear-candling to flush the evil, disease-causing toxins from my system. I was vaccinated as a child so I might get cancer as the damage has been done. But I hope that I will be able to prevent it by tapping into my Chakra centers and realigning my aura.

My days of being brainwashed by big energy and big agriculture have ended. I hope that other people will learn to follow my example which I will promote in various green blogs, chatrooms, and Internet forums of a low-energy, sustainable future. The basic layout of this blog is not going to change much since it is already the color green but I will edit my links and blogroll to feature more ecofriendly news sources and websites. I wish to make up for my days of being an agent of Big Nuclear and the large amounts of money that they have given me to support its agenda. Remember, my friends...use negawatts, not megawatts!

APRIL FOOLS!!

The State of Nuclear Medicine and Research

Aside from energy generation, another useful aspect of nuclear fission is its ability to produce isotopes for many medical and industrial uses. Reactors that are designed to create these isotopes are typically called research reactors as they do not have much in the way of power output compared to their cousins, the dedicated nuclear power plants. However, isotopes such as technetium-99, chromium-51, gallium-57, etc. must be produced in research reactors by radiating parent isotopes and many research reactors are also used for nuclear scientific testing.

Unfortunately, many research reactors are badly in need of an overhaul as the world demand for radiopharmaceuticals has increased over the years and the number of these specialized reactors still operating has dwindled as many of them are shutdown over hysteria or age. The few that are still operating are running at full tilt and the increased stress on their components is causing them to wear out even faster and many research reactors are badly in need of major repairs. However, to temporarily shut down a research reactor usually means that it is depriving people of valuable isotopes that are needed for many medical procedures and tests. The shortage of research reactors across the world also means that ones that are still operational have to balance their obligations between isotope production, and the queues of researchers that have lined up to use the reactor for experiments and have been waiting for several years to do so.

The Depleted Cranium blog has an excellent post on the status of this phenomenon and the history of how the world came to be in this mess. Research reactors have not been immune to the same idiocy and short-sightedness that has surrounded nuclear power generation and they have also suffered because of it. The construction of new nuclear research facilities should be a world top priority because both science and peoples lives are being endangered with the status of our current situation. I whole-heartedly recommend that my readers visit the post on Depleted Cranium as it really does show how dire the situation is.

It is Christmas Once Again

I am wishing everybody an early Christmas since I will be out of town until the 26th. Please reflect on the true meaning of Christmas which is to have a good time and reflect on the happy memories that Christmas has brought you. Some will claim that the true meaning of Christmas is the birth of Jesus Christ, but the Roman inventors of Saturnalia and other winter solstice holidays would vehemently disagree on that point. As Christmas was contrived from many cultural traditions across several early cultures, both Christian and not it would be unfair to classify it as a purely "Christian" holiday. This is why many Christian sects forbade the celebration of Christmas ranging from the Puritans of colonial times to the modern Seventh Day Adventists. I feel sorry for those who are not able to experience Christmas since it has always been an enjoyable time of the year for me.

Underneath all of the religious and mythological trappings of Christmas, the ORIGINAL meaning is simply the celebration of life and joy during the icy depths of winter cold. It is a time of food, candy, cookies, gifts, colorful lights, majestically decorated trees, relatives, etc. All of these things go to make our lives richer as Christmas is a day for remembering and bringing joy to others as well.

I sincerely wish you all

A Merry Christmas.

Christianity and Politics

At the risk of drifting too far into politics, I would like to comment on the phenomenon of Christian conservatives who have aligned themselves with the Republican party in the American political system. Does the current day Republican party turn many atheist would be supporters away because of its emphasis on religiously motivated social conservatism?

I have watched the documentary "Gay Republicans" with interest as it showed the conflict that arose between homosexual Republicans and the apparent ideology of the current day Republican party. Do Republican atheists feel a similar disenfranchisement with the American GOP? Is this enough to prevent them from voting for or supporting the Republican party during elections?

Speaking from my own experience, I disagree with the Democratic party on many things. However it seems as if the base of the Republican party is formed from Christian fundamentalists, (Often militant ones at that) Young Earth Creationists, theocratically motivated authoritarians, as well as an underlying feeling of homophobia. GOP might as well stand for God's Own Party. However, this could just be personal bias on my part since it seems like you only hear about the trouble makers.

For the atheists that are reading this blog, how much does the religious wing of the modern Republican party affect your viewpoint of the party as a whole? Does it discourage or frighten you? Are atheist Republicans and conservatives a diminishing minority in our political system as a result? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanksgiving Joy

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday. I went to my mother's apartment for dinner and thoroughly enjoyed myself. She managed to find a huge twenty-five pound frozen bird at the grocery store two weeks ago. It just barely fit into the roasting pan, but I will remember it as one of the best turkeys I have ever had. Sadly, even if it is just my mother and I for Thanksgiving, our leftovers never really last very long as they are so delicious. Even as we speak, our turkey is already half gone.

Since my parents have separated since August, I am still getting used to not having any animals around. My dog and my three cats have gone to live with one of my aunts since my father has become violently mentally ill and my mother cannot have pets in her apartment. Part of the fun of visiting my parents was petting a large fluffy dog underneath the table as he was asking for handouts. I will hopefully see Joey and the rest of my pets tomorrow.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is traditionally held up as an example of "giving thanks" for our lives and things that we are grateful to have. Although Thanksgiving is thought to be a purely secular holiday, it contains a religious element for many people as well. Prayers are often sent to various gods, thanking them for successes or giving people the opportunity learn from failures as people reflect on the end of the year.

In retrospect, Thanksgiving should also be about enjoying yourself. Late October and November are typically the most drab and depressing times of the year where I live. The leaves have all fallen off of the trees and the grass is withered and brown. The air gets cold and usually brings freezing rain with the chilly temperatures. We can all use a holiday like Thanksgiving to cheer us up with family and friends before the onset of winter.

Those Krazy Katholics Are At It Again

In case you thought that all of the sexual abuse scandals involving the Catholic church were over and done with, we have another round of cover-ups by a Bishop who wanted to hide the misdeeds of the priests in his parish. Refresh my memory, but how many "moral authority" by default cards does a religious organization get before it is considered a degenerate cult? After all of this, I would SERIOUSLY think twice about letting my child be an altar boy if I were a parent and a Catholic one at that.

Oh, and religion turning a blind eye towards sexual abuse is not strictly confined to the Catholics...just look at what self-proclaimed Christian prophet Tony Alamo was doing. The transportation of grossly underage girls across state lines for sexual purposes is hardly befitting for a man who claims holiness in his actions.

Here we see him claiming that this is some sort of government conspiracy against him as well as "Jesus" by extension...



Tony Alamo is found guilty on all ten charges...



Suffer the little children indeed.

My Long Silence is Over

I apologize to my readers for the prolonged absence of new posts. I have been extremely busy this semester and have also had some serious issues with my right eye developing endophthalmitis. It resulted after a minor injury involving a two millimeter long shard of corningware becoming lodged in my right eye after an old pot I was boiling ramen noodles in exploded on my stove. Corningware, because of its partially recrystallized structure, tends to shatter with explosive force rather than merely break when it fails.

I had gotten somebody to drive me to the emergency room where the shard of corningware was removed from the right side of my right eye where it had narrowly missed my lens and cornea. However, a few days later my eye had become infected by bacteria that had probably been introduced into the interior of the eye when it had been punctured. I had been taking some perscribed tobramycin eyedrops as a preventative measure until my eye healed but the strain of bacteria that infected my eye was apparently resistant to it. I went to a clinic where I had to have an antibiotic called polymixin B injected directly into the interior of my eye and had to apply polymixin B eyedrops to the eye three times a day in addition to taking an antibiotic called Zyvox orally. Towards the beginning of the infection, I felt miserable and my eye looked very ghastly indeed. At one point the physician that I was speaking to at the clinic said that if the treatment with the polymixin B and the Zyvox was unsuccessful, I would seriously have to consider enucleation (eye removal) to control the infection.

Thankfully, the treatment worked and my vision in the eye has returned to normal with no apparent permanent loss of vision. I am fortunate that I did not suffer any permanent injury to the eye as I was not sure how I would handle having monocular vision. Everyday activities such as driving a car, reading, or even drawing and painting for my studio art classes became a major challenge as I did not have any depth perception while wearing a patch over my right eye. It was only for four weeks yet I could barely stand it. I do not know how people who have only one functional eye can manage their disability for the long term.

Despite my apparent abandonment of my blog, I have done my best to keep up with the news regarding my fellow nuclear bloggers as well as reading the recent posts on my blog roll. I could not attend the last two AREVA conference calls as I have been extremely busy but I am sure that Dan Yurman over at the Nuke Notes blog can fill me in on the details. I will have more time during the summer so I hope to put up at least two posts per week again.

It Is Christmas Once Again

I would just like to take the time to wish my readers a nice Christmas and hope that they got all that they asked for on their lists. I also hope that they get plenty of good food to eat and that their guests do not become too much of a burden. Finally, while you are making sure that everybody is having a wonderful time, do not forget to enjoy yourselves as well.

Although I am an atheist, I celebrate Christmas because the true meaning of Christmas which is happiness and celebration during the dreariness of winter is something that we could all appreciate. All of the religious trappings such as the legend of the birth of Jesus and Solstice celebrations are merely window dressing obscuring what is important, which is to have a good time. Christmas was never originally a Christian holiday because the idea had been stolen lock stock and barrel from the Roman holiday of Saturnalia as well as borrowing extensively from the Yule celebrations of the Germanic tribes. The legend surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ was added much later by early Christians as part of an adaptation of the pagan holiday.

This could be said to be similar how the tradition of Halloween was adapted and eventually secularized from the Celtic tradition of Samhain. Few people who go out trick or treating know the cultural origins of Halloween and how it originally became established. I know that some people have started branding Halloween as a pagan holiday as of late and are therefore refusing to celebrate it, but if that is the case, than Christmas is guilty of that offense as well.

In fact, during the Cromwell rebellion of Great Britain during the 1600's; the celebration of Christmas was banned by Cromwell because he correctly thought that it was pagan by nature and wanted to set a good example for the Puritans to follow. Needless to say, Christmas was immediately reinstated with the reestablishment of the British monarchy during the reign of Charles II.

So keep in mind that the tradition of Christmas is as pagan as holidays come. To all of those people who are saying that non-Christians are ruining the holiday, step back and consider who's holiday it was to begin with. Very few things including religious ideas are truly original, as they are merely adaptations of the things that came before them in history. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Rick Warren? Give Me A Break!

I guess Obama decided to once again curry favor with the Religious Right by picking a staunch fundamentalist to give his Inauguration Day speech. Rick Warren is openly against atheists, homosexuals, and is a Young Earth Creationist to boot. Why do slimeballs like this always get into power?

I hope that we will not have to put up with leftwing theocrats during the Obama presidency like we have had to stomach rightwing theocrats during Republican rule. America was NOT founded on religious principles, but a clearly stated separation of church and state. By choosing people like Warren to represent our political leadership, we are dragging ourselves to the bad old days of that 'ol time religion of intolerance and bigotry. Is this what we really want?

Some Suggestions, Please...

This is still a fairly new blog, so I am not sure if I have enough of a reader base to get many comments on this post. However, I am looking for some suggestions or feedback for reading material or things to take note of or pay attention to when it comes to environmental awareness. Please note, that although I frequently chastise the "Green movement" on my blogs, I do so not because I do not care about the environment. It is because I care about it enough to realize that most of the sorts of things that "environmentalists" waste time staging protests over are not the things that they should be worrying about.

Most of the time, environmentalist protests are mere publicity stunts that only accomplish in pissing people off without doing anything useful for the environment at all. The average "environmentalist" seems to be somebody who protests about issues that are a threat to a philosophy governed by neo-luddism; i.e. scaling back production and consumption because modern technology is "evil". This as opposed to a true environmentalist who is concerned enough about the environment to identify what the real problems are as derived by credible scientific research and suggests practical solutions to them, instead of wanting to drag everybody back to the middle ages.

I care about the environment not just because I am a biologist and I like plants and animals. It is also because from a pragmatic standpoint, you cannot isolate humanity from the natural environment. Whatever heavy metals leak into the water table or poisonous substances drift into the air, you and I will eventually ingest or inhale. There is no running away from that fact. Other species may long be affected before humans are by this phenomenon, but a dirty environment would not do anybody any favors. I also admit that for me, there is a bit of a sentimental dimension to this as well. I would much rather look at a beautiful forest or a rustic coastline, rather than miles of solar panels or wind turbines.

Anyway, the reason for this post is that I want to know what would be the best sources of information for credible environmental news or research? I do not consider myself an expert on this subject by any means. However it is often hard to determine what "big" issues are based on valid evidence and what are not as you read the daily news, as even otherwise intelligent leaders are buying into pseudoscience. The government mandated wasting of money in the form of subsidies for wind, solar, and ethanol across the world is a prime example of this. None of these three sources of energy are economically feasible. All they are doing is driving up costs for food and energy, in addition to destroying valuable or beautiful land just so the Greens and various politicians can feel good about themselves. The fact that even otherwise intelligent people have bought into this fiasco hook, line, and sinker disgusts me to no end.

I have been recommended a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjørn Lomborg during a conversation with a friend of mine who is a respected geologist. I have not had a chance to read it yet. Has anybody else who is currently reading this blog read this book? What other recommendations would my readers make?

Scotch Tape Emits X-Rays! OH NOES!!11

Just when you thought that you were safe from radiation by boycotting the evils of nuclear power, along comes a report detailing how scotch tape actually produces a fairly large amount of X-rays when peeled. One of the researchers had successfully produced an X-ray image of his index finger using the emissions produced by this unusual phenomenon. So, to all of you Greenpeace lurkers out there, here is one more thing to add to your boycott list!

Well, okay, there is a limitation to generating X-rays using this method. Scotch tape only produces X-rays when peeled in a vacuum. This means that unless you have a vacuum chamber set up at your house, you will not get any X-ray exposure from peeling Scotch tape. So fear not, Christmas shoppers; you can now breathe a huge sigh of relief. Of course some of you (...cough, cough, Greenpeace members!..cough, cough) are still going to be boycotting Scotch tape after reading this anyway because of the paranoia surrounding radiation.

I should have posted this earlier, like on Halloween. Oddly enough, this was known for quite some time by Soviet researchers, but it sort of got lost in the shuffle. The interesting thing is, that this might have some useful scientific applications such as building disposable X-ray machines.

Stupid Child Tricks

I had a vasectomy last year at 23. I do not have any children, and I have never wanted any. Ever. Many people said that my decision was premature and rash, but I do not have any regrets about it. I will be quite frank, children make me cringe. I have neither the patience or the temperment to deal with one on a daily basis. Especially when something like this happens...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article4874657.ece

I am sorry, but this sort of behavior is INEXCUSABLE even from a child. In order for a child to do this even at such a young age is a sign of some sort of mental pathology. The child might be too young to face criminal charges but I do think that the child should be given a psychiatric evaluation, and be forbidden to go within 50 feet of anybody's pets or zoos. This sort of wanton destructive behavior on his part might eventually extend to other people around him if his mental condition is not diagnosed and treated now instead of waiting until something like this happens to his classmates.

Mother 3 Translation Project

The Mother 3 translation project is almost complete. Mother 3 is the third installment in the Mother game series (Earthbound in the US). Earthbound 0 was for the NES and a translated cartridge was made by Nintendo but never released in the US until a group of rom hackers copied the rom file from the Earthbound 0 cartridge that had been bought by a collector. Earthbound 1 was the only game in the series that saw a US release on the SNES system. Earthbound 1 was a huge loss for Nintendo as it only sold a few hundred thousand copies and Nintendo had poured a lot of money into the advertising. Because of this, it is probably why Nintendo refused to release Mother 3 into the US as Earthbound 2 in 2006.

Fortunately, there was a group of rom hackers on the Earthbound fan website http://www.starmen.net/ who decided to translate the game themselves. At first they were reluctant to do so, but this changed after seeing Nintendo practically abandon any attempt at releasing Mother 3 into the US. The hackers of the Mother 3 rom officially stated that they would abide with any wishes by Nintendo if their translation project was thought to be a violation of copyright law. However, Nintendo has yet to send a Cease and Desist order or threaten the translation team with any sort of legal action. Frankly, it almost seems as if Nintendo could really care less about the Mother 3 franchise at all.

The hacking part of the translation project is now complete today, and all that remains is the testing phase. This will probably take around a month as Mato checks the translation patch to see if there are any remaining issues. For all of you Earthbound/Mother fans, I would probably estimate a release sometime in October. Read the Mother 3 translation blog for further details.

http://mother3.fobby.net/2008/09/26/all-hacking-complete/#comment-21324

Atheist Blogroll

N^4 has been added to the atheist blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, please visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.