yoo hoo

Funny comment on a Foreign Policy (foreignpolicy.com) article on the failure of Obama in Libya written by none other than John Yoo.  Yes.  That John Yoo.

Listening to Yoo talk foreign policy is like listening to Charlie Sheen talk child-rearing. I'm looking forward to your coming expose on the sanctity of marriage by Newt Gingrich.

And while I'm here a counter-intuitive but interesting article from the same source.

aurora

Uh. Wow! The shot with the car with it's lights on and the one with the aurora behind the wispy fast moving clouds. Amazing. You should check out some of his other videos.

scancafe

Like most people I have a box full of photo stuff that sits quietly in a box wondering about its purpose in life. Various photo negatives taken by my parents that came into my possession and have done nothing since. I recently opened up this box. They look like antiques. Memories from a bygone era. I wondered what the photos were of. Most of all I was upset at the amount of space they took up.

So I decided to haul the box up to the nearest photo developing store (yes they do in fact still exist) and get a quote. I then left and put the box back in its final resting spot. It is incredibly expensive to get physical format negatives scanned let alone printed. Wow!

Fortunately I came across Scancafe. They scan your negatives for a fraction of the price. Price list is here. In some cases it was 5 to 10 times cheaper. And if you don't like a photo you don't pay for it (up to a certain limit). How are they so much cheaper?

Turns out your media is sent to India to be scanned. I believe they repackage individual packages into one mega-package in order to save on costs.

So the obvious downside is that it takes a while to get your negatives scanned. And I mean a while! I placed my order January 14 and they were finally scanned for review on March 22. I knew this beforehand and my feelings are who cares how long it takes. These negatives have been sitting in a box doing nothing for years.

It's a nice process.

• Bundle everything up into a box.
• Estimate how many you have and what type
• Get your price, pay, and print out shipping materials
• Take it to UPS and watch online where you are in the process.
• Once they are scanned you review which ones you want and you can order additional services like photo retouching or additional DVDs.
• Then you checkout, pay the difference, and your media and DVDs with digitized photos is sent to you.

I'm not sure what the quality is like. You can see an example of the online low-res scan on my previous post. Even that is fine enough for me. The online scans were low res but to be honest I'm not much of a "-phile" about most things. I have over 1500 albums and CDs and I still have never owned a real stereo system. As far as photos go as long as I can see the picture without horrible distortion or resolution I'm fine. When they sit in a box the resolution is zero so any thing is better than that.

kennedy space center

I'm a certified space junkie. Certified. Being an astronaut was the first thing I recall wanting to do. I don't recall ever being jealous of anyone or anything they had or had done except for two guys I met on separate occasions. Both were Flight Controllers for the Space Shuttle. Awesome!

Anyway we took a  trip down to Disney World recently and spent one day at Kennedy Space Center. I hadn't been there since 1974 or thereabouts (that's me below). There wasn't much. Some items from the Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury programs lying around in a field.

It has changed quite a bit since then. It's a real attraction now run by a private company. The main center has a rocket garden with about 20 rockets assembled. The shuttle and main launch rockets are there and you can go inside. And you can also take a tour around the facilities. This is highly recommended. The tour takes you past the main buildings. You can see the administrative facilities including where the astronauts come out. They take you past the VAB, or Vehicle Assembly Building (the big iconic building). They take you past the crawler tracks and the Shuttle launch facilities (39A & 39B). And if you are lucky like we were there will be a Shuttle (Discovery) on the launchpad. Awesome. Plus alligators everywhere. Double rainbow!

Finally they drop you off at a second center that houses the REALLY cool stuff. You have to go on tour for this. Inside is the full Saturn V rocket (friggin huge!), the Apollo 14 command module, moon rock, actual space suits (e.g., Shephard's suit), and a ton of other stuff. I could have stayed for days.

I learned a few things on the trip.

1. The shuttle undergoes a "nod" or "twang" (in NASA parlance). About 6 seconds before the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) are lit the three main engines on the shuttle itself are lit. This sudden thrust is off the center of mass of the entire shuttle construct and thus produces a torque. This torque forces the shuttle to nose down because the entire construct is being bent. The displacement is about two meters and is quite noticeable if the camera is reasonably close. When it snaps back the SRBs are lit. You can see it clearly the movement in this video. If you keep an eye on where the tip is in relation to the clouds you can see it roll nose down and then when it comes back to center the SRBs are lit and it takes off.
   
   
2. For the early shuttle missions the entire shuttle construct was all white. Later the main center fuel tank, known as the external tank, became orange. The reason for this is that NASA stopped painting it white to save 600 lbs of weight. It's orange to save weight.
3. The space shuttle down-throttles the engines when it hits a spot in the atmosphere (about 35,000 ft) referred to as Max q. "q" is just the dynamic pressure on the hull and is a function of both air density and vehicle velocity (q = f(air density, speed). At launch the velocity is zero so the dynamic pressure is zero. In space the density is zero so the dynamic pressure is zero. Somewhere as the velocity increases and the density decreases q hits a maximum point. This down-throttling is to alleviate pressure differences on the external tank hull that would cause it to collapse. Less thrust means more internal pressure so it keeps "inflated". After passing this spot it thrusts back up. This is when the Columbia disintegrated.
4. The reason the SRBs are recycled and the external tank isn't is because the SRBs come off first. The fall into the ocean near the launch site. The main tank is released much later and comes down in the Indian ocean. Too far away to collect and send back for processing.
5. Also this is kind of obvious but the external tank (the orange part) is just that; a tank. There is no engine at the bottom. It feeds the 3 main engines on the shuttle. It's a disposable gas tank.
6. The Saturn V rocket (the one used in the Apollo missions) used 5 F1 Engines in the first stage of launch. One F1 engine has more thrust than all 3 main engines on the space shuttle combined. It however has less thrust than the solid rocket boosters. Those things are propulsion beasts. Only downside is SRBs can't be turned off.
7. The Saturn V rocket was tested only twice (Apollo 4 and Apollo 6, both unmanned) before a fully manned flight was made (Apollo 8). Apollo 6, the second test, the one before they put people in it, was filled with serious problems. Stage 1 had serious pogo oscillations and Stage 2 had 2 (of 5) main engines shutdown.
8. All the spacesuits are disintegrating. The plastic parts are made from PVC softened by an agent. The agent seeps out and becomes brittle. At KSC Alan Shepard's suit is kept in a dark room to minimize decay. Eventually they will all disintegrate. There is no way to stop it.
9. When the Space Shuttle takes off you can see sparks being sprayed under the three main engines on the shuttle. I always thought this was how they lit the fuel mixture. But it is actually to burn up any stray hydrogen or oxygen that may accumulate around the engine.

movie locales

Awesome. A map with locations from 100 years of movies. It looks pretty good. I checked for movie I know were shot in our neighborhood and they all showed up.

leaking into the sea

Bloomberg has an article out titled, "Nuclear Plant's Fuel Rods Damaged, Leaking into Sea" (no I'm not linking to this piece of shit article). WTF people. What a disingenuous article title. Have we not progress over these last few days to get our basic fucking physics correct or are they being purposely obtuse. If the fuel rods were "leaking" into the sea they'd have to be rolling down the hill or melted corium dripping down the hill. TEPCO said fuel rods were damaged and releasing material that is contaminating the air and sea. That's different from what "leaking" implies.

No. What's happening is the volatile isotopic elements are coming out in either the steam, smoke or both. That stuff is settling into the ocean and they are picking it up in their readings. The concern here is that it gets on a piece of algae and then a small fish eats that algae and next thing you know your hamachi & hirame chirashi is fucking glowing. Not good.

Ironically it'd be best if they were rolling down the hill into the sea because you know what the sea is? A giant spent fuel rod cooling pool that will never boil dry. Plus water is so good at shielding radiation that that stuff wouldn't emit an iota of radiation (to people or fish) until they went back in there to fish them out. And I'm pretty sure the fish aren't interested in big long fuel rods as an appetizer. Rolling into the sea would be a best case scenario.

fast

Kids seem preoccupied by the most of something. The biggest number, the biggest thing, the tallest building. Currently my daughter is fixated on fast things. Here they are.

The fastest things in the world....

Man - (Usain Bolt) 27 mph
Land Animal - (Cheetah) 70 mph
Fish - (Sailfish) 70 mph
Bird - (Peregrine Falcon) 242 mph
Production Car - (Bugatti Veyron) 269 mph
Boat - (Spirit of Austrlia) 317 mph
Train - (TGV) 357 mph
Car - (ThrustSSC, Jet) 763 mph
Jet Plane - (Blackbird) 2,242 mph
Rocket Plane - (X-15) 4,519mph
Fastest thing - (Light) 670,616,629 mph

Apparently that wasn't good enough.

Eater - (Joey Chestnut) 330 hph (hot dogs per hour)
Bat - (Mexican Bat) 40/80 mph (horizontal/diving)

kindle typos

Typos on the Kindle are infuriating. It's not that normal books don't have them. They do. It's just that they don't need to be on the Kindle. It's an eminently solvable crowd-sourcing problem. But there's no way to highlight errors on the Kindle. All the Kindle would need to do is provide a simple "Typo" option when you highlight text, send this data back up to Amazon/Publishers or send it to Mechanical Turk to get solved. Amazon, you don't have millions of readers. You have millions of proofreaders. Fix this please.

same guy

radiation and its effects

Nice talk here by a professor on radiation, isotopes, and radiation effects.  I'll just caveat that the guy who answers some of the Q&A at the end with an accents says things that are just dead wrong.  The main speaker seems tight and says he doesn't know stuff when he doesn't know it.

things are looking up

Things have been kind of quiet on the news front lately with respect to Japan. But that's probably a good sign that our disaster happy media doesn't have much to write about.

• Power regained at reactors 1 & 2. This should allow them to gain full measurement and control capabilities and then focus on cooling.
• Sprayers doused reactor 3's cooling pool, the temp is below 100C and they noted a decreasing dose rate near that reactor. However the reactor is not fairing as well and it is likely they will need to vent to reduce pressure.
• Holes were made in the outer buildings of reactors 5 & 6 to reduce likelihood of hydrogen explosions and cooling of the spent fuel pools is back online. Temps are around 60C.
• Unclear what is going on with 4. But clearly power is available nearby. Perhaps the spent fuel pool cooling system is intact in that building and can be operated soon.

If things keep progressing like this hopefully Japan can soon focus on the real disaster. 7,200 deaths, nearly 11,000 people still unaccounted for, many homeless, and in many places nonexistent basic infrastructure.

for the birds

Wonderful New Yorker cover. Reminiscent of Chris Ware's New Yorker cover for Halloween.

hydrogen leaks

There's an interesting theory over at All Things Nuclear - Link - about the hydrogen explosions. Most have been portraying the explosions as part and parcel of the venting process. But the question being ignored is why the fuck would you vent it inside the building? Some have said the operators did it to lengthen the time the off gas lingered inside (and thus amount of radionuclides that decay) before going into the atmosphere. Perhaps.

But what ATN thinks happened is that the top of the reactor known as the drywell actually lifted off its moorings enough to open a small gap to allow steam (and hydrogen) to escape. It happened during a test at a US power plant under much safer conditions. It's a little bit frightening to think the primary container on the reactor could really be breached that easily. But if it's true it allows the operators to vent safely in the future. Namely don't let the pressure get as high as it did before.

The only potential flaw in this theory that I can see is that at the test plant the pressure stabilized (because the reactor was leaking).  If the containment pressure stabilized I would think the operators would not vent.  That they would wait for it to hit some predetermined point.  And it seems unlikely that those two points would be the same.  Interesting nonetheless.

funny if it wasn't sad

I don't watch TV but this is an example of the shit being spewed on it.  This guy is so hopelessly wrong about so many things it's ridiculous.  And he's an ex-nuclear engineer!  Ugh.

cutaways and other data

Cutaway of the TEPCO BWR Reactors.
Linkie

This is a nice cutaway but its of a different reactor.  However it's useful to get a better sense of the layout of a nuclear reactor.  This is an ABWR which is a better and more recent design.
Linkie

Some decent sources for reading and news report verification.

• MIT Nuclear Information Hub.  Active blogging going on.
• Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA).  Relatively readable updates from Japan's nuclear agency.
• Japan Atomic Indusrial Forum.  Also has readable updates but admittedly potentially more biased as it's a non-profit promoting the nuclear industry.

Debunked

Debunking a viral blog post on the nuke threat. So Salon has a nice piece out basically outing the author of that viral post "Why I am not worried about Japan's nuclear reactors" as Dr. Josef Oehmen, a, get this, value chain risk management researcher. That's business-speak for a guy who researchs how to order parts. He is neither a physicist nor a nuclear engineer. I don't really blame him. He wrote it as an email to his family in Japan. His cousin posted it on his blog and it went viral from there.

But lots of other news organizations picked it up. The bloggier news organizations that generally regurgitate, well, viral stuff. Discover Magazine, Business Insider, TheEnergyCollective.com, UK Telegraph. TheEnergyCollective.com was the most linked to site as it fluttered around my digital universe. Turns out they are a site run by Siemens AG! Siemens of course makes parts for the nuclear industry. You'd think that site would have cleaned up the errors. That's truly scary.

MIT's Dept of Nuclear Science and Engineering was nice enough to clean it up removing the title and the obviously incorrect statement that there was no chance of a radiation release.

It was that last statement that made the article so questionable in my mind. I think rule #1 in engineering is never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. But rule #2 is never say something is impossible or will never fail. Always couch it as it won't happen unless these things occur. The fact that he was so sure of himself in the post suggested he wasn't an engineer. It should have been obvious he was a business guy.

corium

Add corium to your Scrabble arsenal.  It's basically a lava-life fluid comprised of very hot fuel rods, control rods, and other parts of melted reactor vessel.  It's a potential end game for the Japanese reactors.  In the case of Three Mile Island the corium did not ultimately breach the reactor vessel.  In Chernobyl it did.  Or more correctly it got "outside" the reactor core because it, well, blew up.

Here's a picture of it as it oozed out of a pressure release valve in Chernobyl and then solidified.

not so much

The Energy Collective article that was sent around as an accurate description of the Japanese nuclear reactor situation has now been modified. The original author was an economist. Not a nuclear engineer. This wasn't originally clear. The modified and now presuambly accurate post is still in the same location. Here.

In other news the plant has been abandoned due to radiation levels. It's unclear what the endgame is now. It is possible the primary containment vessel may hold the fuel rods as they heat up. It's also possible the vessel could explode from pressure. It's also possible that it may just burn through the bottom without an explosive event and be contained by the concrete bowl built beneath it. Or it could go through that. We'll just have to see how much cooling was accomplished. Or it's possible the workers return. That seems to have happened. Good news.

spent fuel pools

Add this to your reading list. A new potential issue in Japan has arisen base on the spent fuel pools. To be brief, after fuel rods are spent they are transferred to the spent fuel pool to further cool. To do this the rods are arranged in a specific manner and cooled to avoid going critical. Critical in the fission sense, not the atomic bomb sense.

The water does a number of things:

1. It shields the radiation from the spent fuel from harming anyone.
2. The water is recirculated to keep the fuel rods in a cooling mode

There are some reports that the pool in #2 and/or #4 are damaged (leaking water) or that they were neglected and the water boiled off (partially or otherwise).  There's no verification of this however.  Ultimately this could be a much bigger issue than the core reactor because recooling them could be difficult (too hot).  These pools contain a lot of spent fuel rods and if they heat up they can melt.  If they melt they'll sink to the bottom of the pool and be in such a dense, close packed configuration that they could go critical and start generating heat again.  This would be bad.  But as of yet I don't see any confirmation other than some reports that #4 had a fire that some are suggesting was started by the spent fuel rods igniting and/or producing hydrogen and detonating.

units 1 and 3 differences

The explosions on the reactors are quite different in magnitude.

Here's unit 1 on 3/12/11:


Here's unit 3 on 3/14/11:


This sat shot show much more damage to unit 3 with obvious steam leakage.  A hydrogen explosion is not big deal (apart from the people there).  It's possible something else happened at Unit 3.

interesting obit

Owsley Stanley

• Chemist (Made LSD in quantity for Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and others and made the acid used by Ken Kesey for his Acid Tests)
• Has a high quality LSD named after him ("Owsley")
• Financial backer for Grateful Dead
• Co-designed the Grateful Dead's skull and lightning bolt logo
• Both the Grateful Dead (Alice D. Millionaire) and Steely Dan (Kid Charlemagne) wrote songs about him.
• Sound engineer praised for developing hi-fi sound at live concerts
• Moved to Australia to avoid what he thought would be an apocalyptic ice age in the Northern Hemisphere
• Professional ballet dancer
• US Air Force member
• Father was a congressman, governor of Kentucky and US senator (who fought Prohibition)
• Expelled in 9th grade for furnishing alcohol to other students
• Early Atkins adherent - Only ate meat (no vegetables, fruits, or anything else)
• Spent 2 years in jail for drugs
• Learned metalwork and jewelry making in prison

just the facts ma'am

Some notes I'm taking because no fucking reporting organization sees fit to put any of this shit in perspective:

The best source of discussion I've seen so far (largely free of pro/anti-nuclear discussion and politics is here. It's up to 16 pages as I write this but it's worth reading through because there are some nuclear engineers or at least people with nuclear experience in the mix.

Radiation Dosage Nomenclature:

• Gy - Gray = an absorbed dosage amount
• Sv - Sievert = an "effective" dosage amount
• Rem - Rontgen = Same as Sv but different measurement system

Sv = Q x Gy

where Q is a function of the type of tissue that absorbs the radiation, the type of radiation, and other factors. Sometimes it is written as two variables Q & N. It can vary quite a lot depending on the type or radiation (photons = 1, alpha particles = 20), the organism and the organ/tissue of the organism.

Keep in mind that absorbed dosage (e.g., Grays) is a specific and real measurable quantity. Effective dosage (e.g., Seiverts or Rontgens/Rems) is more wishy-washy but is more relevant when considering biological effects.

1 Sv = 100 Rem

Sv and Gy have the same units (Joule/kg)

Dose Impact:

• < 0.5 Sv or < 50 Rem - Nothing serious
• 0.5 - 2 Sv or 50-200 Rem - Illness (nausea) but rarely fatal
• 2 -6 Sv or 200-600 Rem - Serious illness (hair loss, hemorrhage) and fatality possible
• 6+ Sv or 600+ Rem - Generally fatal

Think of it this way. Most reports have been in microSv or milliRem:

• 1,000,000 (1 million) microSv would cause mild illnesses but not be fatal.
• 100 Rem (100,000 milliRem) would cause mild illnesses but not be fatal.

Examples of Dose Sizes:

• 1 year of exposure of natural radiation = 300-350 milliRem (1,000 milliRem in 1 Rem)
• X-rays = 10-130 milliRem (depends on what is x-rayed)
• 1 year of working at a nuclear plant = 300 milliRem (so they get 600 millirem total)
• 1 hour airplane ride = 0.5 milliRem
• Radiation levels briefly hit at Fukushima plant on 3/14 via Twitter = 0.8 Rem per hour (still very small doses but don't hang around for long)
• 3/15 - I don't have a first hand source but this seems reliable. "According to TEPCO and other sources, high levels of radiation were detected at multiple locations near the plant--30 millisieverts (30,000 microsieverts) per hour between the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, 400 millisieverts (400,000 microsieverts) around the No. 3 reactor, and 100 millisieverts (100,000 microsieverts) near the No. 4 reactor. These unfortunately are big big numbers. These are spot readings so it's unclear how long they lasted or how far spatially they extended.
  
• Dose the USS Ronald Reagan reportedly ran into off the coast of Japan = 30 milliRem in 1 hour

Plants in Question ("????" denotes I don't really trust the data sources yet or information is presented as a possibility)

Fukushima I (Dai-ichi)- 6 BWR (2 more were planned) varying in size from 460MW to 1,100MW

• Units 4, 5, 6 were already shut down for routine inspection
• Unit 1
• Cooling system compromised
• Radioactive Cesium and Iodine detected (byproducts of fission) (????)
• Radiation levels hit  0.07 Rem/hr
• Nuclear rods exposed (????)
• Reactor building exploded
• Seawater used as coolant
• Primary containment - Intact
• Spent fuel cooling pool - OK
• Unit 2
• Cooling system compromised
• Reactor runs with plutonium mixture (MOX)
• Radiation levels peaked at 0.3 Rem/hr but had dropped to 0.03 Rem/hr
• Nuclear rods exposed and melted (????)
• Reactor building intact
• Cooling system may have been damaged by Unit 3 explosion (????)
• Primary containment - Compromised (????)
• Spent fuel cooling pool - OK
• Unit 3 - 
• Cooling system compromised
• Boric acid/water used as coolant
• Radiational levels peake
• Nuclear rods exposed (????)
• Reactor building exploded
• Primary containment - Intact
• Spent fuel cooling pool - OK
• Unit 4
• Spent fuel cooling pool - Not OK? Fire?
• Reactor building exploded

Fukushima II (Dai-ni) - 4 BWR all 1,100 MW

• All 4 reactors successfully shut down automatically
• Units 1, 2, 4 cooling water pumps damaged
• Units 1, 2, 3 have reached "cold shutdown"
• Unit 4 still being cooled
• No pressure releases have taken place

Also a nice summary here but it may not be updated that often.

nuclear reactors

I don't know about anyone else but the quality of journalism around the Japanese nuclear plant catastrophe has been seriously lame. I have not found a single source document that hasn't been rife with contradictions and errors. The NY Times, NPR, Wikipedia, and yes the Energy Collective blog posting everyone is sending around. It's so frustrating because I know enough to know there are errors (side note: my first presentation in 6th grade was on a nuclear reactor) but not enough to rectify what is true or not. I'm hoping against hope that Richard Rhodes, who wrote three unbelievably well researched books on nuclear weapons, will pick the story up in the future.

If I figure it out before anyone writes a thorough summary I'll post it here.

earthquakes

Amazingly this post won't have anything directly to do with what is going on in Japan. There's enough coverage by people smarter than me on that subject. But the Sendai earthquake did get me interested in the physics of the event and I haven't seen much coverage on that. Basically the Sendai earthquake was what is known as a megathrust earthquake which only happen at subduction zones.  Subduction zones are those regions where two tectonic plates are moving towards each other. One goes over the top and one goes under. All 9.0+ earthquakes have occurred in subduction zones.

This video kind of shows the effect I'm talking about.



This all got me thinking... Hmmmm. Where else do subduction zones exist?

Turns out my old backyard. And potentially where my backyard might be in the future. The Pacific Northwest or specifically the Cascadia Subduction Zone. This picture does a good job of laying out the subduction zone in relation to places you know.

The legend points out red triangles for volcanoes (The Ring of Fire).  This is caused by the weakening inland of the plate by the other plate subducted under it.  The reddish obloid is the area of significant slip and the red line within is the actual boundary where the two plates meet.

Earthquake magnitude turns out to be proportional to the length of the fault line.  I'm not sure why this is so I'm taking it on faith.  The Cascadian Subduction Zone happens to be one of the biggest and therefore will produce extremely large earthquakes. The last earthquake in that region was in January of 1700 (The Cascadia Earthquake). These large earthquakes have occurred every 500 years on average over the last 3,500 years. All 7 earthquakes had evidence suggesting tsunamis. In fact since the area wasn't heavily populated much of the evidence comes from Japan and their tsunami records.

The last earthquake was between 8.7 and 9.2 in magnitude.  Big. The fault ripped pretty much across its entire length and shifted over each other by 20 meters.

Seattle will be somewhat protected because it's inland through many waterways.  But it won't be immune from significant damage when a big one hits.  Also the topology of the Pacific Northwest has extremely steep shores. The recent earthquake in Japan was in a location where the shore was quite level and flat causing waves that weren't massive in height but travelled inland in huge volume.  The steep shores of the Pacific Northwest should create more of a Hollywood tsunami.  Good job we have a condo on the water.  It'll be great viewing.  For a few seconds.

fate

Will modification - done
Health Care Proxy - done
Document Directing Health Care - done
Final Arrangements document - done

If I die today you'll know why.

slope of the slope of the slope of the...

Apparently there are more names for higher derivatives of position than you'd think.  Most people are familiar with velocity (1st derivative of position) and acceleration (2nd derivative), but there are many more.  Although I don't see a lot of secondary verification of these names.

-1st Derivative - Absement (or absition)
0th Derivative - Position
1st Derivative - Velocity
2nd Derivative - Acceleration
3rd Derivative - Jerk
4th Derivative - Jounce
5th Derivative - Crackle
6th Derivative - Pop
7th Derivative - Lock
8th Derivative - Drop

made in the usa

Interesting article in The Boston Globe - "Made in the USA"

Percent of world goods manufactured in the US:

1990 - 21%

2009 - 20%

income inequality

There have been many blog posts and news articles about income inequality lately but I find this one the most amazing.  Since 1971 all income growth realized has been by the richest 10%.  Now we're dealing with averages here and some rich become poor and some poor become rich so it's not exactly an accurate portrayal of individuals but it's still an amazing statistic.

Source

focus

A CEO, a teabagger, and a union member are sitting at a table with 10 cookies. The CEO grabs 9 of the cookies. She turns to the teabagger and says, "That union member wants part of your cookie."

I don't know if it is an inherent problem with humans that they can't stay focused or that they can't process information to come to rational conclusions, but either way the current financial woes are being addressed in the media and by politicians in a way that doesn't have any bearing on facts. Or maybe it's just because the media and politicians are more beholden to corporate interests.

Here is the 2011 estimate for government expenditures.

You can see the breakdown here.

The biggest pieces in the pie are Health Care, Pensions (social security) and Defense.  The media seems to focus on unionized government employees as the source of easy cost cutting.  And I'm sure there is a lot of waste there.  But the reality is the main source of budgetary woes is in Health Care.  Even Social Security which is maybe a second area of concern is not terribly underfunded if you look at the data and is also easily solved with a minor increase in the retirement age.  The problem is Health Care.

The proof of that is here:

What justification is there for US to be spending so much on Medicare?  And yet we never talk about Medicare? I'm sure most people don't even know what Medicare really is? It's medical care for people over 65. And compared to social security it is hideously underfunded.  The costs of the system per user are about 3 times as much as they put in.  Completely unsustainable. And part of the problem is that chart above. And it also suggests that if it is right-sized that 16% of the budget would decrease to somewhere in the area of 8%. A massive savings of about $400B a year. In fact I would suggest that Health Care is the ONLY financial problem the US has right now.

But you'd never know it.