Conservative National Public Radio

It’s Sunday evening and I am listening to NPR while driving home. I am neither apologizing for this nor confessing. I listen to FM stations that carry NPR for their music programs. I listen to NPR itself for the story-telling show, “This American Life,” and for “A Prairie Home Companion.” I even listen to political programs that are locally produced and carried by NPR affiliates because it’s good for me to know what the enemy is thinking. The day of the week matters in this story because I am pretty sure the Sunday spots don’t go to stars. I should know, I have a Sunday spot on AM radio myself. (“Facts Matter,” 11 am to 1 pm on KSCO Santa Cruz, 1080AM.) The presenter, whose name I did not catch, is interviewing on air another NPR person, a reporter who did and investigation on the topic: Does NPR have a left-wing bias? Imagine!

The presenter snickers at the sound of the name of the investigation. The reporter reports in some detail on the results of his inquiry. It turns out NPR does not have a left-wing bias at all. In fact, it’s to the right of the Wall Street Journal on some issues, he asserts. The presenter snickers.

I don’t have much of an opinion on the investigation itself. I did not hear much about the methods used except that they involved both self-identified liberals and conservatives keeping a journal. I don’t have much against this soft methodology. It’s used all the time. It’s known to be soft; it does not make it useless. I am a little perplexed by the findings because, of course, I am convinced NPR has a left-wing bias. Yet, it’s not the job of research, it should not be the job of research, to comfort our received ideas. One of the ways you know good research in the social sciences, in fact, is that it shakes trees and allows rotten fruits to fall to the ground.

The reporter asks to put on air an oral interview he had with one of his subjects who had declared unambiguously that NPR had a pro-liberal bias. The presenter snickers but agrees to it. The cultured voice of a very calm man comes on air. The reporter asks him for an example of liberal bias at NPR. The man, I will call the subject, does not hesitate. Now, pay attention. It sounds complicated but it’s not. He recalls an NPR interview of the CEO of Hewlett Packard on the current economic bad times in America with a special attention to high unemployment. Now my own disclaimer: I don’t think that CEOs have any special claim to knowing what should be done at the national level to improve the economy. Some do, others who are not CEOs do too or better.

According to the subject, the HP CEO stated very clearly that if it were his decision, he would give a broad tax vacation for five years to anyone creating a new plant. The presenter snickers. Now, the idea is not new, it’s familiar. You can sometimes induce new business, and therefore, new employment, by offering tax advantages to new employers. The underlying reasoning is simple: Set up shop “here,” rather than say in Brazil, or in Germany, or wherever, because you will save on taxes in the short term. It’s nor clear how often this strategy is effective in creating new jobs but European countries, including Ireland, and some American states, have been using it for years. On the face of it, it’s not absurd. HP CEO, ads several times that this strategy costs nothing. Of course, it does not because you cannot lose revenue from businesses that do not exist. Plants that have not been built and put to work generate neither jobs nor taxes. I think it’s obvious.

Now, I have to introduce a fifth character in this little drama. There is the NPR presenter in charge of the show who snickers, there is the NPR reporter who did the investigation, there is the conservative subject who alleges that NPR is biased; the fourth person is the HP CEO who makes a suggestion to improve employment. The fifth person is the lady reporterette who interviews the conservative subject. The reporterette mindlessly responds to the HP CEO: “But can the country afford it?” On the show, twice removed from the action in place and time, the presenter who hears this snickers.

The subject repeats the HP CEO’s assertion, “This strategy costs nothing.” The presenter snickers. The reporter who is on-air with the presenter makes a slight noise with his throat as if he were embarrassed, bless his heart! He is not so embarrassed however that he intervenes to point out the obvious to her. After all, non-profit, liberal organization care a great deal about hierarchy. (There are good reasons for this I will only go into if someone asks me.) Again, the reporter on air with the snickerer, does not state the obvious: Trying something that is free does not cost anything and therefore, the answer is that yes, “the country” can afford it.

The show ends with the presenter snickering. Obviously, she closes without ever catching a glance of her own illogicality.

So, here, we have it: NPR is a liberal network. It irritates many people because it snickers all the effing time, or almost. Not all liberals, just many, many, many snicker. Second, although capable of interviewing individuals who are knowledgeable about economics, including distinguished economists, NPR is staffed on a day-to-day basis with Liberal Arts graduates who do not understand the first week of Econ 101. They ask stupid questions of talent and when talent gives intelligent answers, it goes right over their heads. Third, NPR staffers are so full of liberal ideology that it makes them deaf and dumb (I mean the metaphorical dumb, not unable to speak). Given an interesting research topic, given good questions within a good research design and well chosen subjects who respond clearly, NPR still does not get it. Or NPR people get it almost never. NPR does promote or cause to happen interesting interviews but it, the entity NPR, learns nothing from them.

Oops, I almost forgot: What excuse is there for a nation-wide broadcast system that receives any government subsidy at all and directed at free American citizens? I ask because the potential for abuse of our democracy with this arrangement is so obvious. NPR liberal supporters of government funding are so certain of their intellectual superiority it turns them into cretins. Like cretins, they never ask the obvious: What would happen at an NPR dependent in any measure on the good will of Congress if the country experienced twelve solid years under a conservative Republican president working with conservative Republican majorities in both houses?

Radiation and Health: Contrary Evidence (or Maybe Not). Updated.

Update 4/28/11: More links in a Comment below, from an American who lives in Japan.

Update 4/8/ 11   Questions and answers on safety from the serious journal “Nature.” Link at the end of this post. More from the Wall Street Journal, referenced also at the end.

In my previous posting entitled “Radiation Danger, Seriously,”I promised that I would post anything contrary to my impression that there is little quantitative evidence regarding the ill effects on human health. of light and casual exposure to radiation Again, I specified that the evidence had to be quantitative, not merely impressionistic or anecdotal. In the posting, I referred explicitly to the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine. Since it was and is, as of this writing (03/29/11), the worst nuclear accident ever, this reference was tantamount to inviting everyone to show evidence of trailing illness attributable to the accident.

Since the original posting, 14 days ago, this posting has been opened 234 times. Of course, I don’t know how many people actually read it. I assume it’s a large percentage because of the topicality of the piece and because of underlying anxiety. I speculate, probably pessimistically that it was, perhaps 60% or about 140 people. In spite of what I think is the counterintuitive thesis in the piece, I have received not a single contradiction satisfying my simple request for numbers, not one. Instead, I got a cryptic response from one of the listeners to my radio program, “Facts Matter” (Sundays, 11 am to 1 pm, KSCU Santa Cruz 1080 AM). During the show, two days ago, an anonymous listener sent a fax directing me to an article in the Journal of Radiological Protection. I am sure it’s a serious, respected scientific journal. Although the referenced given to me was complete, I was unable to open the article itself. I only gained access to its abstract. The abstract does not described the methods or design of the study except that it appears to be a conventional epidemiological study of a very large exposed population ( more than five million people).

The summary of the study findings is couched in technical terms that I do not understand and it appears to be a translation from Russian, possibly by someone who did not understand the technical terms himself. The abstract seems to allege an increase in thyroid cancers among those exposed to radiation as children. From the abstract, I am unable to judge whether the presumed effect is credible. More importantly, assuming that it is, I was not able to assess how large it was or whether it was even statistically significant. The size of a statistically significant effect matters a great deal: 1 part arsenic per million in my drinking water does not bother me, 10,000 part would probably make me unhappy.

So, I have not much reason to change my perception at this point. This is not to say that the study itself does not comprise striking evidence that casual and light exposure to radiation has major deleterious consequences. I just don’t know much more than I did before my listener called my attention to it.

Again, I realize that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Yet, I am intrigued by the fact that hundreds of thousands of opponents to nuclear energy have not located this study and trumpeted its findings all over the world. After all, some of them are literate. In fact, I am so surprised that I wonder if the study does not show negative evidence. I mean by this that the study may demonstrate that the real ill effects are minuscule. Again, I don’t know this. I am just wondering aloud.

Below is the study’s full reference. Perhaps you will have better luck than I. Please, let me know.

“Dynamics of thyroid cancer incidence in Russia following the Chernobyl accident.”

Ivanov VK, Gorsky AI, Tsyb AF, Maksyutov MA, Rastopchin EM.

Medical Radiological Research Centre of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Obninsk.

Comment in:

• J Radiol Prot. 1999 Dec;19(4):291-2.

Here:    http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=experts-on-japan-nuclear-crisis-ans-2011-04-06&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_ENGYSUS_20110407

David J. Brenner has a piece on the dangers of low doses of radiation in the 04/11/11 Wall Street Journal. Dr Brenner is the director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center. His opinion piece: ” Fukushima Radiation Fallout,” does not in any way contradict the remarks I made minimizing the dangers in the two relevant postings. My call for contrary evidence has gone unanswered after more than two hundred and fifty presumed viewings of these posts. (I have to say “presumed  because I only know how many open the postings not how many actually read them.)

Obama’s War

President Obama did the right thing, in the nick of time and under pressure from America’s traditional allies, and under pressure from the Arab League, (Go figure!) At least he did. Attacking Ghadafi is one of those cases where our national interest and common decency converge. Can’t let them go to waste! We couldn’t very well let the Libyan rebels get massacred. We couldn’t very well let me Ghadafi put his threat into action of going house to house to murder his opponents. Yes, I know that we don’t know which of the rebels are seekers of liberty and which are Jihadists. Again, I have to refer to the dog that did not bark. The Islamists seem remarkably absent from rebel-held areas. After all, the western press had free rein there to look for them, to find them, and to interview them live on television. That’s for common decency, for humanity, for morality.

As I keep saying, I wish there were another sheriff in town but the fact is that there isn’t. My position here may sound exotic because I come from a different ethical tradition. Under French law, there is actually a crime called: “non-assistance to a person in danger.” The underlying doctrine is that if you can help while running only a reasonable risk, you are obligated to help. That’s pretty much where we are with respect to Ghadafi’s decrepit air force and his obsolete air-defense system.

Now for our national interest in the anti-Ghadafi operation. It comes in two forms. First, we owe Ghadafi for years and years of terrorism. Almost certainly, we owe him for the deliberate assassination of 300 over Lockerbie . If we were not sure, it would be easy enough, it’s still easy enough to execute an international arrest warrant against him and to try him in the Netherlands. We can always apologize if he comes out innocent. If he does not comply with the warrant then, of course, we can kill him while attempting to arrest him.

The second package for our national interest is the spectacle of irresoluteness America gives under Obama’s guidance. With respect to any tyrant, you can say nothing or if you say something, it cannot be just an opinion as long as you are, like it or not, a superpower. Obama declared almost a month ago that Ghadafi had to go then, he sat on this hands. If the French had not pressed the issue, it’s not clear he would have done anything at all. It’s not a matter of swaggering like 20-year old on Red Bull. It’s just that others who are actually dangerous to us are watching. That would include the insane leadership of North Korea and of Iran. That would include also the thoroughly corrupt, unprincipled, ever-opportunistic Chinese Communist Party of China. I don’t even put it past the Kremlin gangsters to try something a little daring against us if they sense that we are weak.

And then, there is Arab opinion, the “Arab street” that was high on the list of liberals’ concerns when President Bush initiated the liberation of Iraq. Either you care about the street or you don’t. I think it’s reasonable not to care although it’s cynical. If you profess to care – by making a big speech in Cairo, for example – then, you cannot reject an opportunity to show friendship. And you cannot allow a situation where Arab opinion, the segment of Arab opinion you care about, democrats, says thing such as, “The French are the real friends of the Arabs; the Americans only pretend to like us, sometimes, for our oil.” Incidentally, the revolutionaries and the Ghadafi partisans alike seem to credit French air strikes for stopping the imminent offensive against Benghazi. It’s not surprising given our dithering and the Brits’ silence. And maybe, the French did it all by themselves, I mean that raid that destroyed tanks on the edge of the city. They had an aircraft carrier in the vicinity.

Speaking about oil: A reminder to liberals and progressives who have not yet apologized for screaming that Bush went into Iraq to steal the oil (“No blood for oil!”): There is still little oil coming from Iraq. The first two licenses for exploration and for exploitation to be approved by the democratically elected Iraqi government went to a Chinese company and to a French company, respectively. American oil companies are notably absent. I am not suggesting the Iraqi government discriminates against them. Whatever the reason, their absence surely undermines the Left’s simplistic slogans of 2003.

President Obama’s piousness about not exceeding the UN mandate appears sillier by the day. Someone bombed one of the places where he might have been in Tripoli, twice, I think, as I write. In fact, everyone believes that his whole fascist regime will dissolve when he dies or flees. Then, the parties will sit together and cobble something approximating a representative transitional national union government. The final truth is that, like a rabid dog, Ghadafi is too dangerous to be allowed to live. It’s not just my opinion, it’s a description based on his past. Would he blow up civilian planes over the busy Mediterranean skies if he had a chance? Well, he did it for a much smaller threat to his power. Here is an intriguing thing about the man I don’t hear discussed: When he took power in 1969, he was 27 and quite handsome. He is almost exactly my age. I am well aware of the ravages of age on a handsome guy’s face. I know I would not win that many beauty prizes today. But look at Gadhafi: He has become spectacularly ugly. Simple aging might not explain the transformation. I keep wondering what medication he is on that causes the repulsive swelling of his face. Medication might help explain his madness.

The president did the right thing in my opinion, which is surprising, even if he hesitated a lot. It’s surprising because he has spent so much of his adult life paling around with American terrorists and with his black racist pastor Wright. From them, he learned that American is the greatest source of evil in the world and possibly, at least indirectly, the only source of evil. Thus, there was nothing in his simple-minded leftist playbook from 1968 about what to do against a self-evidently greater evil than America, and you have the power to stop it, and probably, no one else will. Well, as I said, at least he did. And though I am skeptical, I am not against letting the Europeans take the lead in determining what goes on on their back doorstep.

I see one big danger in the way President Obama handled this affair and it’s not a major escalation. I am pretty sue it’s not going to happen. There will be no American occupation, and no direct attempt at state-building. The Europeans will be forced to hold the bag if this does not end quickly. The big danger is of a political and ideological nature. By insisting on waiting for a Security Council approval, Obama has taken a significant step toward having the UN appear like a world government. I believe this is completely unacceptable, of course. I don’t want to live in a world where policy is made and/or implemented by dozens of banana dictators and where China and Russia have equal influence with the US and the United Kingdom.

It’s hard enough living in a country whose laws and policies emanate partially from the likes of Chicago and New Orleans.

And, by insisting also on approval from the buffoon Arab League, the president lent more legitimacy to it than he received. And, predictably, the Arab League began whining within twenty-four hours that the coalition was going too far anyway. As I write, only one member of the Arab League out of 20 member states, most armed to the teeth, Qatar, has promised four planes to help the coalition. No other member state has offered a tank, or two, or even a mobile kitchen, or a single ambulance. The Arab League is the organization that gave the dictator of Sudan its official blessing in the middle of the Darfur on-going massacre. President Obama made them look more real and purposeful serious than they are, another gross step against the progress of democracy in the world.

With all this, we have almost forgotten Israel. For years, I gave the PLO that runs the West Bank the benefit of doubt. Two weeks ago, one of its affiliates cut the throats of four Israelis settlers. One “settler” was two months old. There is no doubt left for me unless the assassin is caught and executed by the PLO. Nevertheless, I am optimistic about that corner of the Middle East. For one thing, the insane hatred of Israel among Arabs can’t get much worse. For another thing, democratization never fails to bring a circulation of ideas and of facts. It’s like airing a room. More Arabs will come to realize their madness in this matter. More Arabs will be slightly more willing to admit that they don’t hate Israel day and night, that they have a life too. I have yet another hypothesis. For the past thirty, forty years, many Arabs felt deeply ashamed about their abject subjection, about their cowardice. To avoid hating themselves they threw all their frustration at the scapegoat Israel that was continuously being offered by the same tyrants responsible for their subjection. With tyrants gone and preferably hung, some Arabs, at least, are liable to begin acting like free men.

Radiation Danger, Seriously! (Updated 4/2/12)

There have been several explosions in several nuclear reactors in Japan. There may be more. There may a meltdown or two. I don’t know. I am not even sure I understand what a meltdown is. I am definitely not seeing the world through rose-colored lenses. I am not saying there will not be meltdowns. I am ready to consider the worst-case scenario in this respect.

In the meantime, a real nuclear disaster has already happened. The beginning of a slow rehabilitation of nuclear power in Americans’ minds that was taking shape, even with some positive words from Pres. Obama, will grind to a halt. Perhaps, it has already ground to a halt. People like me who favor nuclear power will never again be able to say: “The Japanese have been producing nuclear energy in vast quantities for fifty years with not a single incident.” I fear that, because of phantom fears, we will continue to burn coal that is demonstrably noxious to human health. We, as a nation, will also continue to show an unhealthy interest in bad neighborhoods of the world that produce both fossil fuels and tyranny. We will continue to do this because we are afraid of what may hardly exist.

I am convinced the opposition to nuclear energy production is deeply rooted in exaggerated information and in downright false information. (How often have you heard me or seen me use the words: “I am convinced”?) In particular, many people believe that radiation from nuclear plants has already killed thousands, or even millions of people. The belief is so widespread that I hear public figures who are in favor of nuclear power refer mechanically to such deaths. So, I am doing my bit here because facts matter.

First a vigorous disclaimer: I am not a nuclear expert. In fact, I am pretty sure I flunked high-school physics (not bragging, confessing). Over the years, however, I have become a kind of expert about the dogs that did not bark, about things that you would expect to find if certain views were correct and that just aren’t there, or not with the requisite force. Radiation illness from minor exposure is one of those things. I am also a pretty qualified epidemiologist. That may sound strange but the statistical techniques of those who study disease in the large numbers are the same I used when I was a social scientist. So, I put this modest expertise to work with my natural skepticism to assess the dangers presented to us, here in America, by a possible Japanese meltdown, or two, or three. Note again that I am not saying there won’t be meltdowns. I just don’t know, so I am evoking below the worst-case scenario.

First, I do the obvious, the obvious that media commentators don’t seem to have done: I go to Google, including Wikipedia. It’s not much but it’s enormously better than doing nothing or worse, nothing, plus intuition, plus anecdotes, plus half-remembered rumors. I go to the most severe nuclear accident in my life (so far). I look for concrete, numerical statements about radiation illnesses (plural). It’s the 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine, of course. Below is what Wikipedia has to say.

Technical notes: I don’t ordinarily swear by Wikipedia but you can be completely sure that Wikipedia on radiation sickness is being updated feverishly right now. I lift directly from the sources named. I don’t alter anything unless duly noted in bold.

The issue of long-term effects of the Chernobyl disaster on civilians is very controversial. The number of people whose lives were affected by the disaster is enormous. Over 300,000 people were resettled because of the disaster; millions lived and continue to live in the contaminated area. On the other hand, most of those affected received relatively low doses of radiation; there is little evidence of increased mortality, cancers or birth defects among them; and when such evidence is present, existence of a causal link to radioactive contamination is uncertain.

There is no doubt that workers who capped the defective plant at Chernobyl all, or almost all, died. The above statement concerns populations in the immediate area who were exposed to accidental radiation leaks before they were evacuated and to those who remained.

Then, I move to the single nuclear plant accident in the US, an accident that did more to stop nuclear development in this country than anything else, I think. I refer to the 1978 Three Mile Island event, of course. Here is the statement from Wikipedia on the health effects of that accident:

Based on these low emission figures, early scientific publications on the health effects of the fallout estimated one or two additional cancer deaths in the 10 mi (16 km) area around TMI.[38][unreliable source?] Disease rates in areas further than 10 miles from the plant were never examined.[38] Local activism in the 1980s, based on anecdotal reports of negative health effects, led to scientific studies being commissioned. A variety of studies have been unable to conclude that the accident had substantial health effects.

The Radiation and Public Health Project cited calculations by Joseph Mangano, who has authored 19 medical journal articles and a book on Low Level Radiation and Immune Disease, that reported a spike in infant mortality in the downwind communities two years after the accident.

The only evidence of ill-effects to neighbors of the plant by someone who was not obviously and crudely prejudiced came from Joseph Mangano. I looked at the report of reference. It presents some disturbing evidence especially regarding an increase in thyroid cancer in four counties close to the plan in a period of several years following the accident. (The report is available on-line. Follow the Wikipedia reference.) Mangano is obviously an anti-nuclear activist. This does not condemn his report, in my book. He appears as the sole author. That’s not bad but it’s unusual. Research scholars like to have back-up. He does not have the normal doctorate that provides obvious qualification as a researcher. This fact does not make his report erroneous either. It’s just unusual. Nevertheless, the Mangano study seems well-designed.

I read it as I would read any scholarly article in which I was interested and I did not find any flaws in it. However the study I saw on-line does not seem to have ever been published in a scholarly journal. That’s a problem because it means that this piece of research was not subjected to normal scientific scrutiny. That’s more important than performing the research itself as far as credibility is concerned. I wonder why it was not published. I am sure there is no conspiracy involved here. If there were one, it would favor publication because academics are wusses and mostly liberals. It’s inconceivable that the piece was submitted to several journals and rejected by all because of pro-nuclear bias. I suspect Mangano never submitted it for publication, If he had, and his study had been rejected for the wrong reasons he would have got a lot of mileage just telling the story of this suppression. It would have given him and his cause huge publicity.

Other sources proposed by Google have this one thing in common: No one seems to be eager to offer quantitative estimates of sickness cause by radiation to people casually exposed. Obviously, I do not claim to have made an exhaustive search. I will present here any serious sources that does this.  The serious sources have to include numbers or they must lead directly to numbers. Statements such as “Many more cases…” are useless. On a personal level, I am ready to turn on a dime on the issue of the health hazards of casual radiation exposure.

Conscientious about probing further the inconclusiveness of the material I have found on the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents, I turn to the most massive exposure to nuclear radiation that the world has ever seen, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That exposure was not accidental. It was deliberate, of course, calculated to inflict as many casualties as possible. I reason that the Japanese health authorities had a vital interest in following through and monitoring residents of the two towns who had no died of the blast or shortly after the blast. If there were widespread ill-effects of radiation to survivors for years after exposure, as most people seem to believe, such ill-effects would be obvious in Japan.

First, I turn to a statement by the World Nuclear Association. This may seem like a strange choice of a source. The association obviously has a dog in this fight. It represents organizations and professions who have a vested interest in showing nuclear-anything as safe. Yet and at the same time, the association possesses to the highest degree possible the expertise to form an informed viewpoint. And the self-same reasons that make it desirous of putting a good face on the nuclear industry should make it reluctant to lie and risk getting caught (forever, I think). Its positions are especially vulnerable to disastrous contradictions when they are couched in numbers that may be verified anytime. Here is the WNA’ startling statement:

In Hiroshima, of a resident civilian population of 250 000 it was estimated that 45 000 died on the first day and a further 19 000 during the subsequent four months. In Nagasaki, out of a population of 174 000, 22 000 died on the first day and another 17 000 within four months. Unrecorded deaths of military personnel and foreign workers may have added considerably to these figures.  About 15 square kilometres (over 50%) of the two cities was destroyed.

It is impossible to estimate the proportion of these 103 000 deaths, or of the further deaths in military personnel, which were due to radiation exposure rather than to the very high temperatures and blast pressures caused by the explosions – 15 kilotons at Hiroshima and 25 kilotons at Nagasaki. From the estimated radiation levels, however, it is apparent that radiation alone would not have been enough cause death in most of those exposed beyond a kilometre of the ground zero below the bombs. Most deaths appear to have been from the explosion rather than the radiation. Beyond 1.5 km the risk would have been much reduced (and 24 Australian prisoners of war about 1.5 km from the Nagasaki ground zero survived and many lived to a healthy old age).

To the 103 000 deaths from the blast or acute radiation exposure at Hiroshima and Nagasaki have since been added those due to radiation induced cancers and leukaemia, which amounted to some 400 within 30 years, and which may ultimately reach about 550. (Some 93 000 exposed survivors are still being monitored.) Bolding mine, not in original report.

I looked on the web for contradictions of the latter figure of 400 additional deaths within thirty years. I found none. I does not mean they don’t exist. I keep an open mind here also.

Finally, and in the absence of concrete figure supporting the idea of harmful health effect due to casual exposure to radiation, I reproduce below a story from Atomic Archive.com. I don’t know what group or organization maintains this site. It’s housed at the University of Chicago. It may well be a federal government site. I don’t know and I will spread any credible information about it as soon as I receive it.

“The second approach to this question was to determine if any persons not in the city at the time of the explosion, but coming in immediately afterwards exhibited any symptoms or findings which might have been due to persistence induced radioactivity. By the time of the arrival of the Manhattan Engineer District group, several Japanese studies had been done on such persons. None of the persons examined in any of these studies showed any symptoms which could be attributed to radiation, and their actual blood cell counts were consistently within the normal range. Throughout the period of the Manhattan Engineer District investigation, Japanese doctors and patients were repeatedly requested to bring to them any patients who they thought might be examples of persons harmed from persistent radioactivity. No such subjects were found.

It was concluded therefore as a result of these findings and lack of findings, that although a measurable quantity of induced radioactivity was found, it had not been sufficient to cause any harm to persons living in the two cities after the bombings.”

I believe that these startling assertions, so much in contradiction to received wisdom, have not themselves been contradicted in any clear or forceful manner.

In conclusion: It seems that almost everyone fears nuclear radiation. It’s clear much of the opposition to nuclear energy is a function of such a fear. Yet, I found it impossible to locate the kind of good evidence on the subject that rational people would expect to substantiate their fear. If harmful effects from casual and light exposure were so well established, the evidence would show up easily on Google, I think. Opponents of nuclear energy have been adamant for years. If they were rational people and comfortable with facts, they would make it their business to supply data to help people like me make up their minds, or to change their minds. Instead, I found another dog that did not bark. If you have something on the topic that escaped my attention, please send it to me. Again, don’t bother if you have no figures to display.

In spite of all, I will be very much in favor of solar and wind energy (and tidal energy too) as soon as they are available without artificial support. The fact is that they are not and they are not even in sight. There is a solar panel on the roof of my house. It’s supposed to boost my hot-water heater. When its pump went down last year, the technician I called to replace it told me it did not make economic sense to do it. All the same, my libertarian heart still hopes I will get to go off the grid before I check out.

Update 11/13/11: Still no figures from anyone about death or sickness caused by radiation beyond those attributed to clean-up workers right on the site of the accident. If you know otherwise, please let me know. I will check the source and post right away.

Update 4/2/12. There was a “meltdown,” I hear. Still not a single (1) radiation casualty reported! How long should I reasonably wait for  anti-nuclear organizations and for their hysterical media followers to say, “Sorry,” or even simply, “Ooops!”  ??? How long?

Palin Dumb?

Rush Limbaugh is an astute observer of the American cultural scene. That’s part of the reason for his success. Limbaugh is very good at reading the subtext, the unspoken but solid beliefs of groups.

Limbaugh commented today that even some conservatives are eager to throw Sarah Palin under the bus. He said that it’s an easy way to signal that one belongs to the intellectual tribe, irrespective of political leaning. I think he is right.

I am unquestionably an intellectual myself (although not a falsely humble one, obviously). If you don’t believe me, Google me or activate the link to my (incomplete) vita on this blog. By the way, my intellectual production is in two languages and I read perfectly in a third. So, go ahead, inform yourself and weep!

Here is y contribution to the issue of Governor Palin’s utter intellectual unacceptability. I taught in a MBA program in Silicon Valley for 23 years. Some would say that it was in a second-tier school and I would not argue much about this judgment. Nevertheless, those who graduate from the program have a good reputation in the area. Almost all students were working professionals. Almost all students were in their late twenties and early thirties. Half or more were female.

Though I retired in 2006, I have vivid recollections of – and a few nightmares about – female students’ performances in that program. Here is my comparative assessment of Sarah Palin based on this experience. My assessment is subjective, of course, like all others but it has the merit of being based on an explicit comparison set. That’s more than anyone else can say, I think. So, here it is: In terms of intelligence, Palin would have been easily in the top half of any of my MBA classes. In terms of general level of contemporary information, of general culture, if you will, Governor Plain would have easily been in the top 10% of female students.

If the latter sounds like a gratuitously sexist statement, ask yourself the question below and force yourself to answer it:

When was the last time you saw a woman of any age reading a newspaper? Do you personally know of any woman who regularly watches the news or listens to the news? Think of wife, sister, daughter, roommate, former roommate, former wife, sweetheart. Don’t excuse yourself just because you are female, please!

Here you go: Palin is much better than average in all the respects where I can judge. I can’t say the same of most politicians. Can you?

Since when do we ask politicians to be exceptionally intelligent and super-informed? Please, tell me. I did not notice.

Union Busting!

Governor Walker of Wisconsin is striving to midwife a new legal order corresponding better to present economic reality than the old one does. Union busting was a moral crime in 1911. Today it’s a tool of progress.

Some historical reminders:

In 1911, industrial workers doing painful and dangerous work were also badly paid. They organized in a second wave of labor unions collectively to bargain to improve both their working conditions and their pay. Their adversaries were owners of privately owned companies and stockholders of publicly traded companies. Stocks were concentrated in few hands, ownership of private companies in even fewer hands. Only fairly prosperous to very rich individuals owned stocks. In 1911, labor unions were organizing the miserable and the merely poor to extract from the rich a bigger share of what they produced together. Theirs was largely a fight between the poor and ill-treated, on the one hand, and the rich, on the other.

Reel forward 100 years. In 2011 most union members are public employees, including teachers. They are better paid than workers in the private sector. If you combine all benefits, of all kinds of workers, public sector workers earn twice more than the other guys, on the average. It could be because they, the public employees, are somehow more qualified than their private sector cousins. Somehow, you don’t hear the unions make that claim. Or maybe, they work  longer hours or simply harder!

Most public employees, especially teachers perform work that is not especially painful or dangerous (some do: cops, firemen, prison guards.) In addition, most public employees have tenure in fact: They are extremely difficult to fire. It used to be the case that they had tenure instead of the right to belong to unions and to strike. Now, they have both. It does not look fair. Furthermore, they often have a monopoly in fact: If I don’t like the building inspector who tells me what I cannot do with my own house, I don’t have the option to go to another. Public employees’ performance is unlikely to improve much, whatever they do, because they are protected from the improving effects of competition.

Digression: university tenure is completely different: It’s a very competitive process, including in public universities. In public schools, I think all you have to do is hang in there, keep your nose clean for a few years and you become immune to firing.

A lot has changed since 1911. Public employee union claims are always actually a dispute with taxpayers. Union members who make more money are extracting money from those who make less money. The situation has turned around 180 degrees from 100 years ago. From the poor against the rich, it has become the rich against the poor.

In the private sector, unions are still competing with owners, stockholders, but now, the stockholders are Mr and Mrs Everybody, not a bunch of rich people (over 50% of American households hold stock or bond) Interestingly, the largest share-holders of American companies are … labor union pension funds.

The privileges won by union members in the public sector are now great enough to threaten to bankrupt states and cities.

Under these current conditions, union busting has become a public safety duty.

Unions are losing the public relations battle, I suspect. “Union busting” does not inflame as it used to. The words remind you of a historical movie. Similarly their nasty habit of restricting the term “working Americans” to teachers who earn $60,000 a year and to firemen who make $100,000, does not sit well with carpenters and metal workers who earn $30,000 in a good year. Thanks to the Wisconsin confrontation, I, myself, discovered that a lackluster high-school teacher in NY could retire at 55 and die having earned much more than I retiring at 65, and live better in the meantime. (I am a retired university professor. I can’t help but remember that many of those high-paid, spoiled public-school teachers are my former “C” students. I said, “many” not “all.”) The solidarity loaded terms, such as “union busting” and “American workers” used to trigger automatically, does not go far nowadays. I think it’s mostly counterproductive. Nonetheless, they can’t stop, on television or elsewhere. As usual groups are prisoners of their own language. They cannot see beyond it. That’s how they lose, at least, in peaceful societies such as ours.

Many of the union and pro-union demonstrators in Wisconsin are both honest and honestly blind and deaf. Their indignation is not feigned; it’s not cynical. A pleasant-sounding Salinas city worker called my radio program yesterday (3/6/11 on “Facts Matter” on KSCO Santa Cruz 1080 AM, Sundays 11 am to 1 pm.) He told me politely that I was probably mistaken, that I was probably thinking about the overpaid muckymucks, his bosses, not of ordinary city workers like himself. Of course, I asked him a few questions about his situation. I did not ask his name or what his job was, nor his salary. He volunteered that he earned less than people doing the same work on the outside. I believed him. Then I inquired about his retirement benefits. It turned out that he will be a able to retire at 55 with 60% of his pay guaranteed, forever. That’s beginning in his job at the age of 25. He had not thought through the fact that he might likely live off his retirement benefits for as many years as it took him to earn them. He appeared not to have realized that at 55 most people work, that he could take another job and possibly end up with 160% of his current pay, at least for a few years. He did not seem to be aware that private sector workers of all kinds today wonder if they will be able to retire at 67. The guy, again, obviously a nice person, had not thought about the rest of us who pay his salary and his benefits. That’s what happens when you are protected from life and live among others who are equally protected.

A harsh-sounding few words about the teachers: Wisconsin students don’t perform well overall. I know it’s not necessarily the teachers’ fault. Other factors matter for sure. But, I am left with the following inescapable inference: Either, they are not good teachers by and large, or teachers are not very important. Either way, they can join the rest of us and accept some sacrifices.

PS   For all this, I am in favor of the right to collective bargaining, not a right protected by the Constitution, but an important right nevertheless. The reason is that I think one cannot expect an individual, or a small group, to stand up to a large bureaucracy that employs him or it. That’s true whether the bureaucracy is a government entity or a private company. Recourse to the courts is difficult and expensive for everyone, especially for the individual(s) seeking redress. Fairness requires unions although they promote unfairness right now.

Read my essay on this blog: “Karl Marx Was (almost) Right.”

Cougar Extinct!

Big title and evening news announcement in the French media, followed by a torrent of popular emotion, of course. The cougar (exactly the same animal we call “mountain lion” in the west and “puma” in South America) is confirmed extinct, they say.

I guess it couldn’t have been  a cougar, a mountain lion, that stole two goats across an eight-foot fence about a year ago near Santa Cruz.  Some alley cat! You bet!

If the stupidity of  the North American eco-sensitive makes you ill, you are lucky not to know another European language. It’s much worse over-there.