A Handy Radiation Dose Chart From XKCD 392
An anonymous reader points out Randall Munroe's latest contribution to public health awareness, a "chart of how much ionizing radiation a person can absorb from various sources, compared visually. 1 Sievert will make you sick, many more will kill you, however, even small doses cumulatively increase cancer risk." It's a good way to think about the difference between Chernobyl and Fukushima.
IODINE TABLETS (Score:2)
DELICIOUS.
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I prefer hyronalin myself. Iodine is such an old school treatment...
Yeah, whoosh and all - but Iodine is not a treatment, its prophylactic.
Re:IODINE TABLETS (Score:5, Funny)
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Bananas (Score:5, Informative)
Fascinating, the mention of bananas was smart, since there's something known as Banana Equivalent Dose [wikipedia.org]
Re:Bananas (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bananas (Score:5, Funny)
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Sadly, your average Slashdot reader will instead have to settle for the bananas.
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Frozen bananas work better. Regular bananas just mash up.
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Inform the news: 1 girl + 2 bananas = radioactive disaster!
Re:Bananas (Score:4, Interesting)
So, eating a banana is as radioactive as a threesome?
Only if you three like to cuddle, or are really horny - it says sleeping next to someone (presumably for 8 hours or so). Make it a gangbang.
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So, eating a banana is as radioactive as a threesome?
Like anybody here would have any experience with either.
Re:Bananas (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, if God made bananas easy for humans to eat [youtube.com] and bananas are radioactive does that mean God's trying to kill us ?
Re:Bananas (Score:4, Funny)
Wait, if God made bananas easy for humans to eat [youtube.com] and bananas are radioactive does that mean God's trying to kill us ?
No, it means that radiation is God's pure love. In order to get closer to Him, all the truly religious should get as close as possible to the hottest source they can find.
WALK INTO THE LIGHT.
(note : I am joking - I don't really want the faithful to die of radiation damage. I'm not Dawkins, ffs.)
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radiation is God's pure love
This idea exists in Greek myth: "[Semele] then demanded that Zeus reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood. Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she persisted and he was forced by his oath to comply. Zeus tried to spare her by showing her the smallest of his bolts and the sparsest thunderstorm clouds he could find. Mortals, however, cannot look upon Zeus without incinerating, and she perished, consumed in lightning-ignited flame" You should not ask the Godhead to reveal itself in its pure
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Re:Bananas (Score:5, Insightful)
... does that mean God's trying to kill us?
What to you mean "trying"? Last I checked life was still a terminal affair and has been one for a long time.
Re:Bananas (Score:5, Insightful)
Definitely a really nice chart. It's good to see something so easy to read and quantitative that helps people debate with some level of knowledge. The main problems for me with it are that it doesn't really do a good job on the time axis, spacial axes and the probabalistic risk. For example:
What makes this all difficult is that it seems the mechanisms are random. E.g. most of the time a particle of radiation does nothing. It dissociates a water molecule which soon after re-associates. Even if it does cause a mutation, that likely doesn't cause cancer because the body copes with mutation all the time and genetic codes self correct. However, if two or more mutations happen in close together / related genetic material in the same cell, that is reasonably likely to cause cancer as the cell is no longer able to self-correct. Now of course, this means that the "Lowest one-year dose clearly linked to increased cancer risk" is actually incorrect; that minimum ("clearly linked to increased", not to "noticeable") is about two particles of radiation where clearly is defined as "we clearly understand that this is so and "increased" is defined as "greater than would be otherwise. However, the minimum yearly dose "linked to a worrying increase according to a reasonable probabalistic model" is what we really want to know and is completely missing from the chart.
Since the location of radiation damage is entirely random, that can mean that millions of particles could cause no damage to one person whilst just three could damage another very unlucky person. This risk gets higher the more concentrated in space and time a dose of radiation is. When you think about it, the reason is obvious. The chance of a repeat strike in the same cell goes up quadratically as the volume shrinks and factorially as the dosage increases. These are the crucial things which mean that radioactive iodine and back scatter scanners are likely to be much more dangerous than e.g. cosmic ray exposure at altitude or through body X-rays. They are also mean that having a back scatter X-ray just before or after travelling is (I have no idea exactly how much) worse than having the X-ray on its own.
It would be really great if xkcd could do something which did a comparison of the dangers of different kinds of radiation exposure in different circumstances. Very important would be to leave in the ares of doubt where we actually don't know.
additional (Score:5, Informative)
An additional useful chart can be found here, in a slightly more readable and intelligible format:
http://eq.wide.ad.jp/files_en/110315houshasen_mext_en.pdf [wide.ad.jp]
Not as all-inclusive as Randall's work, but still good.
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http://twitpic.com/49mm4l [twitpic.com]
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It's incorrect (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but the link above on the equivalent yearly radiation in Tokyo would only be correct if you were outdoors 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
Re:additional (Score:5, Interesting)
Average doses in the world due to fallout: 0.11mSv
Average doses in Japan due to fallout: 0.012mSv
Isn't it ironic how the only country that was attacked with nuclear weapons actually has less fallout than the rest of the world?
Re:additional (Score:5, Informative)
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the only country that was attacked with nuclear weapons
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No. They absorb that shit and transform it into Hello Kitty and hentai.
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Average doses in the world due to fallout: 0.11mSv
Average doses in Japan due to fallout: 0.012mSv
Isn't it ironic how the only country that was attacked with nuclear weapons actually has less fallout than the rest of the world?
It might be if these two events happened a few decades more recently.
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0.012 < 0.011?
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Nice catch.
Verizon would be proud ;)
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Except that it was .11 and .012...
Re:additional (Score:4, Interesting)
Atomic bombs are designed to consume as much of the fissionable material as possible.
That's actually a common misconception. Many bombs built in the cold war era had the design goal of maximizing radioactive fallouts as opposed to maximizing the yield. The rationale was that the blast waves can't cover the entire enemy nation, but the radioactive fallout can.
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Research (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you are saying is that XKCD did more research and analysis for a web-comic than the 24 hour news networks do for a story?
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We are shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!
Not too hard (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Research (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently xkcd did do more research. Read this article about how the US coverage from nearly all outlets (not just Fox) is sensationalist, late, and often just wrong.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/JNlPwKP6WAs/taking_stock_3.php [google.com]
Re:Research (Score:5, Informative)
Randal does research for some of his comics.
IPv4 map. [xkcd.com]
Map of the Online Communities [xkcd.com]
2010 Update of the Map [xkcd.com]
Gravity Wells of the Solar System [xkcd.com]
The observable universe from top to bottom (on a log scale) [xkcd.com]
It probably doesn't hurt that he used to work for NASA and is a programmer.
Re:Research (Score:4, Interesting)
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You forgot political interests, corporate interests, religious interests, etc. Facts tend to come in pretty near the end of the list. The only thing that consistently ranks lower is corrections.
Units (Score:5, Informative)
There are so many radiation units out there and people keep using them without regard to what they really mean. It's nice that you've got your Sieverts covered. Now you'll have to learn about Grays, Curies, Becquerels, Rads, Rems, and Roentgens. Here's a handy conversion chart. [stevequayle.com]
Re:Units (Score:4, Insightful)
Because there is no such thing as "radiation". A bit like there is no such thing as "cancer". It is a whole bunch of phenomena all packed together because of historical reasons.
When unstable isotopes decay, they can emit protons, neutrons, neutrinos, photons, antineutrinos, etc., etc. The stuff emitted, depending on its nature, its speed, its energy, interacts (or not) with the environment in very different ways. Since a measure is a measure of an interaction, there are necessarily many units.
And then you have those units used to have an idea of the health effects. And again, this is an amazingly complicated issue: damage from "radiation" will come from cells dying or genetic material being altered and not repaired. Killing cells is easy to understand, but DNA damage is much more complicated.
It may have no consequence at all.
It may have beneficial consequences.
It may trigger a chain of events which will eventually lead to illness.
It may start a cancer right away.
Re:Units (Score:5, Informative)
Any idea why there are so many different units of measure for radiation?
Some are historical and SI unit conversions (Rem/RAD and Gray/Sievert); others deal with how does effects what absorbs it. The Roentgen is a measure of gamma energy, the RAD is the measure of energy transferred and is an acronym for Radiation absorbed Dose, which them must be adjusted for a quality factor do to the difference in energy transfer, which generally is referred to as REM - Roentgen Equivalent Man which corrupts for different quality factors so that 1 REM is the same no matter the source of the dose. For practical purposes, Roentgen RAD and REM are equivalent since gamma is generally the radiation of concern.
It's not that different than the measurements - foot meter; slug kilo; punned newton, with the added medical impact measurement.
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This is like having three units of measurement for the weight of the pie, the weight of the pie you have eaten, and the weight you gain by eating the pie.
No (Score:2, Informative)
It's a good way to think about the difference between Chernobyl and Fukushima.
No. It is not a good way to do that. It would have been if it had included measures like "Ten minutes next to the reactor core of Fukushima after partial meltdown" or "Dose from spending an hour on the grounds at the Fukushima plant in 2036". I'm not saying Fukushima is anywhere near as bad as Chernobyl, but if you want to compare them this chart is not what you need.
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It would have been if it had included measures like "Ten minutes next to the reactor core of Fukushima after partial meltdown" or "Dose from spending an hour on the grounds at the Fukushima plant in 2036".
It tried; it includes "Extra dose from one day in an average town near the Fukushima plant". Not the same as 10 minutes next to the core, but I guess Randall was using what he'd got.
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"Ten minutes next to the reactor core of Fukushima after partial meltdown" or "Dose from spending an hour on the grounds at the Fukushima plant in 2036"
I really don't see how you can come up with those figures, considering that 1. no one is standing next to the reactor core and 2. you can't predict the future.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
12mSv/h is slightly more than one red square, no where near an orange one. This makes the highest level of radiation detected, in the cloud of vented gas from inside the containment vessel about 30,000 times less than those at chyernobyl, and only for a very very brief period involving very short half life elements.
The radiation level has since fallen back way down, especially since managing to resubmurge the spent fuel. The reaction has also slowed to about 1/2000th of it's original rates in the reactors, making a melt down extremely unlikely at this point.
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
That was a peak reading. It must have lasted in the order of a second. And then decreased exponentially. Chernobyl, on the other hand sustained its rate for hours, days, years...
There is a good graph of the readings on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents [wikipedia.org]
Media sensationalism no doubt (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Media sensationalism no doubt (Score:5, Interesting)
>>Maybe I'm wrong but I'm vastly annoyed with the media, given how they talk you'd think people were losing their hair and growing skin lesions.
You're absolutely right to be annoyed at the media for getting it so wrong.
But even the Slashdot summary is disingenuous:
"1 Sievert will make you sick, many more will kill you, however, even small doses cumulatively increase cancer risk."
There's no evidence for the LNT (linear no threshold) model for radiation exposure, other than people doing math and plotting a line down into the low-exposure ranges. All the epidemiological studies have shown much lower cancer incidence rates than the LNT would predict, indicating that there is a thresholding effect at work at low doses.
This actually makes a *huge* difference when it comes to cleanup of radioactive material. Something like $200 billion worth of difference.
That's why I'm interested in people actually, you know, testing this sort of stuff in the laboratory, like these guys: http://www.orionint.com/projects/ullre.cfm [orionint.com]
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That statement is more than slightly disingenuous. Data a higher doses than a proposed threshold has no power to distinguish between a linear no-threshold model and a model linear above that threshold. Thus it is not evidence for either one over the other.
Cute, but not accurate (Score:4, Informative)
The Sievert is a measure of ACCUMULATED dose. Time is a factor. Therefore being exposed to 1 Sievert for a second (the real unit behind the sievert is the J/s, which is equivalent to Watts) is the same as being exposed to 1 milisievert for 1000 seconds, or 1 microsievert for 10^6 seconds.
This is also why many measurements are done on a "per hour" basis. 400 milisieverts per hour (near the pool between reactors 3-4) is not harmful to you if you are going to be there for 5 minutes. If you stay there for 2.5 hours, however, you could experience signs of acute radiation sickness.
I find it laughable, however, how the press a) fails to understand this and b) has obvious trouble converting between micro and mili.
Finally one must bear in mind that radionuclides will decay over time (Iodine-131 being the main culprit here, has a half life of 8 days). So in 5 half lives (40 days), most of it will be gone. And also that the chronic health risk of radiation is usually overestimated, especially for such small doses as currently seen in Japan. It's statistical roulette, just like smoking. It just takes one cigarette to unleash the chain of events that will eventually lead to cancer. However the odds of it being the cigarette you are currently smoking are quite small. But if you smoke all your life, you're likely to buy the winning ticket eventually. The same with radiation. There are still living survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and these people were exposed to far more (and more harmful) radiation - gamma rays vs. beta particles. And yet not that many of them have "grown a third arm". Yes, there have been cancer deaths, but considering the population exposed, it wasn't all that much.
Re:Cute, but not accurate (Score:4, Informative)
(the real unit behind the sievert is the J/s, which is equivalent to Watts) is the same as being exposed to 1 milisievert for 1000 seconds
True mathematically, but not medically [wikipedia.org]
Re:Cute, but not accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cute, but not accurate (Score:4, Interesting)
"However the odds of it being the cigarette you are currently smoking are quite small."
"(Radioactive) Po-210 is also present in cigarettes. The actual mechanism by which the polonium arises in tobacco leaves is still disputed. It can arise through the decay of radon gas in the air directly onto the tobacco leaves or directly from the uptake of radioactive decay products of uranium in the earth in the roots of the plant. As cigarette burn, the radioactive polonium on the surface volatilizes and enter the lungs through inhalation. It has been claimed that radioactive polonium-210 is responsible for more than 90% of all smoking related lung cancers "
http://www.nucleonica.net/wiki/index.php/Polonium_210 [nucleonica.net]
Re:Cute, but not accurate (Score:4, Insightful)
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Most of the chart measurements have times given in the description (through the year, in a day, in an hour, etc.). The accumulated dose is still an interesting metric and the comparisons are valid as they give you an idea of how small/large a Sv actually is. 0.03387 uSv/hour wouldn't have the same impact as 17 mSv in a year (pulled numbers out of my hat here, not valid calculations).
The measurements that do not have a time given are also very easy to determine (how long does it take for you to eat a banana?
Re:Cute, but not accurate (Score:5, Informative)
This is actually completely wrong. The Sievert is based on the Gray, which is defined in terms of J/kg. For a fixed mass, it's J, energy. It makes no sense to say "exposed to 1 Sievert for 1 second". You would have to say "exposed to 1 Sievert per second for 1 second".
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The second risk is the long term risk of cancers. These show up years later and due to this delay in tim
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No, it's a measure of energy absorbed - Joules per kilogram
http://www.sizes.com/units/sievert.htm [sizes.com]
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The Sievert is a measure of ACCUMULATED dose. Time is a factor. Therefore being exposed to 1 Sievert for a second (the real unit behind the sievert is the J/s, which is equivalent to Watts)....
A point of clarification -- the gray (Gy) is technically the SI unit for absorbed dose, measured in joules per kilogram. The sievert (Sv) is a measure of dose equivalent, which takes the absorbed dose in Gy and multiplies it by a factor that accounts for the relative biological effect of the radiation. Whole-body doses of gamma radiation get a factor of 1; neutrons and alpha particles can have a factor of up to 20. Exposures to only part of the body have weighting factors less than 1; skin, which is par
Why 50km from Fukushima reactor? (Score:3)
This is not an incredibly informative measurement, it would be more useful to learn of the radiation levels in the evacuated areas (10km & 20km, last I heard) as well as the cautioned areas (30km, stay indoors).
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it would be more useful to learn of the radiation levels in the evacuated areas
You can get more info here [iaea.org].
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I just want to known one thing: How many football fields or Boeng 747 is that?
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The peak announced radiation at the plant gate is about 10 milli Sieverts / hour, or 1 REM per hour. If that level were maintained, an exposed person would start to get radiation sickness in a day or two.
CenitSievert = Rem (Score:2)
Anyone acquainted with any of the literature in radiation exposure up through the late-1990s (including classic and still standard works like The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Glasstone and Dolan) will have encountered discussion of radiation exposure in terms of rems, not sieverts. It is useful to know that a centisievert (cSv) is essentially identical with a rem, so expressing doses in cSv terms allows direct comparisons with the large body of older but still relevant literature.
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Correct
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I think you mean, the American literature. AFAIK, the Russian literature never used REMs at all, and some of it is in Becqurels and Curies.
When the Soviet's opened up about Chernobyl they published readings in (IIRC) Becquerels or Becquerels/m^3, causing intense puzzlement in the Western press as to how to interpret what they were saying.
TSA airport security dosage (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to have seen the dosage given by using the backscatter machine at an airport listed.
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Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:TSA airport security dosage (Score:4, Funny)
Re:TSA airport security dosage (Score:5, Interesting)
I was surprised to see the TSA's full-body screening systems didn't make the list ... until I saw the reports of how much radiation it exposes us to. I'm using data from NPR's Scientists Question Safety Of New Airport Scanners [npr.org] (2010-05-17) and TSA's X-ray Screening Technology Safety Reports [tsa.gov] (date unknown, cited on the TSA Blog [tsa.gov] 2011-03-12).
Note, to compare with XKCD's chart, both TSA and NPR state that a standard chest x-ray is 100 uSv rather than this XKCD's 20 uSv. NPR puts a mammogram at 700 uSv while XKCD holds it as 3000 uSv.
The stated radiation from these backscatter scanners is 0.05 uSv (TSA, reported as 0.005 mrem [wikipedia.org]) to 0.2 uSv (UCSF via NPR) per usage. UCSF suggests that measuring this radiation on the skin would result in a larger value. The TSA report includes a disclaimer that they are re-testing these numbers and should have results around the end of this month. Another post here noted 0.09 uSv but had no source (reported as "0.09 Sv" because Slashdot eats the Greek letter mu).
The real danger with respect to the backscatter scanners was to the TSA workers (who had zero protection) and others who work in airports. The NPR piece also cites David Brenner, head of Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research, saying that 5% of the population is especially sensitive to radiation and that "we don't really have a quick and easy test to find those individuals." Fortunately, these machines are not in use any more, though that might change if the TSA's new report doesn't increase those numbers (or it gets trumped by fearmongering on behalf of some news outlet or politician).
What's missing (Score:2)
Metric... (Score:2)
1 Sievert? What is that in feet?
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I think the appropriate units are volkswagens per library of congress
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No, a Siever is a misspelled family unit.
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It's 100 rems.
For extra credit, estimate it in Becquerels.
Shut down coal fired power stations (Score:3, Insightful)
Not Straitforward (Score:2)
A number line would have done so much more.
The thing that very few people are mentioning is:
The exposure occurring over the days and weeks.
Not everyone has an x-ray every day.
The Japanese ministry is suppressing both the radiation figures for Fukushima and the areal photos recently taken.
The atom is an amazing thing because it makes people lie so much?
The main question is... (Score:2)
Will I gain super powers if I visit the reactor?
The curse of measurability (Score:5, Insightful)
I think one major cause of nucleophobia is that doses of a millionth of anything dangerous or less are easily measurable
Negligible doses of most every poison is always around, but are unmeasurable. Radiation radiates its presence and is observed, reported and terrifying.
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I think one major cause of nucleophobia is that doses of a millionth of anything dangerous or less are easily measurable
Negligible doses of most every poison is always around, but are unmeasurable. Radiation radiates its presence and is observed, reported and terrifying.
I was talking about this with a co-worker who is from Ukraine. From near Kiev. We came to the conclusion that the nucleophobia is more from the reality that you really get no physical stimulus to tell you something is harming you until it's too late. Like the poison example you used. I have centuries of evolutionary logic programmed into me to, first, decide if something "looks" poisonous. Case in point, get some organic potatoes and you'll feel like chucking the purple ones. You know not to eat any random
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Meh, at least he/she is not rude about his/her viewpoints. They are at least better at debate then the rest of the ACs
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Uh, not rude? I'm pretty sure calling your opponent a fuckwit [slashdot.org] qualifies as rude. To say nothing of the rest of the comment.
Being rude doesn't matter from a standpoint of factual correctness, but a person can have the facts of their side and still come off looking like a raving lunatic when they write an entire paragraph where every third word is "cock".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Being rude doesn't matter from a standpoint of factual correctness, but a person can have the facts of their side and still come off looking like a raving lunatic when they write an entire paragraph where every third word is "cock".
Surely a limited data set but it seems to me that people who swear a lot when trying to present an argument often miss or lack a lot of information even though the information they do have may be correct. Swearing can be telling as to which part of the brain is being used and how frequently. It can also affect the person reading/hearing the word in the same region. From HowStuffWorks [howstuffworks.com].
Language processing is a "higher" brain function and takes place in the cerebral cortex.
Emotion and instinct are "lower" brain functions and take place deep inside the brain.
Many studies suggest that the brain processes swearing in the lower regions, along with emotion and instinct. Scientists theorize that instead of processing a swearword as a series of phonemes, or units of sound that must be combined to form a word, the brain stores swear words as whole units [ref]. So, the brain doesn't need the left hemisphere's help to process them. Swearing specifically involves:
The limbic system, which also houses memory, emotion and basic behavior. The limbic system also seems to govern vocalizations in primates and other animals, and some researchers have interpreted some primate vocalizations as swearing.
The basal ganglia, which play a large role in impulse control and motor functions.
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Could bonding play a part in the appearance that blue collar workers swear more than white collar workers?
I think you may have hit the nail right on the head. From my teens until my mid-20's, I worked back and forth between various construction and factory jobs (mason, carpenter, machinist and assembly line worker) until the late age of 26, I enlisted in the Navy and became an Electronics Technician and post-Navy I work as a Systems Analyst/Systems Integration Specialist, anyway, I install and troubleshoot various electro-mechanical systems that are usually connected to PC's/networks or other computing equipme
Re:Anti-nuclear clowns (Score:5, Informative)
Or read this article about how the US coverage from nearly all outlets (not just Fox) is sensationalist, late, and often just wrong?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/JNlPwKP6WAs/taking_stock_3.php [google.com]
Example: "This has not been just Fox News, but also CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and even the New York Times to differing degrees. They get the reactors mixed up or report information that is simply wrong (e.g., writing that the TEPCO workers had fully abandoned the effort to control the plant because of radiation levels when TEPCO had only withdrawn some non-essential personnel). They are perpetually late, continuing to report things the Japanese media had shown to be wrong or different the day before. They are woefully selective, bringing out just the sensational elements ("toxic clouds" over Tokyowhen in fact radiation in Tokyo now is actually less than that in LA on some days). They are misleading (implying for instance that the dumping of water from the air was some last ditch effort to cool the core, when it was just an effort to replenish the water in the spent rod poolswhich are now full in reactor 3 and back to normal temperature)."
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The EPA-dose pertains to exposure to manmade radiation. A third of your yearly exposure can be stuff like X-rays, but no more.
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And the football team ;)
Re:It is and it isn't (Score:5, Informative)
Read your own friggin' articles and stop spreading FUD.
"Yukio Edano, Japan's chief Cabinet secretary, confirmed at a news conference Saturday that milk produced by a farm in Fukushima Prefecture near a crippled power plant and spinach from the neighboring Ibaraki Prefecture were found to be tainted with radiation levels SLIGHTLY [emphasis mine] above that set by the government.
However, Edano said, the contaminated food posed no immediate threat to human health. The public should remain calm, he urged.
Referring to the milk, he said, "drinking it for a year would only expose consumers to the radiation equivalent of one medical CT scan.""
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most of the casualties from Chernobyl (4000 to 8000 fatalities and counting) were from Thyroid cancer.
Check your facts! 4000 cases of thyroid cancer and only 9 fatalities, because it is 99% curable (I think I read somewhere else 15 deaths).
Re: (Score:3)
Apples and oranges. Those complaining that it's too simplified are intellectuals and nerds - exactly the audience this isn't intended for. Those complaining it's too complex are those interested in the graphic actually being useful for education and information.
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Apples and oranges. Those complaining that it's too simplified are intellectuals and nerds - exactly the audience this isn't intended for. Those complaining it's too complex are those interested in the graphic actually being useful for education and information.
Option 3 : those complaining it's too complex are beyond help from a simple chart and need to get a better basic education. A chart that has 3 settings "Panic" "Tremble" and "Pie" would not exactly help educating -- it would just be a command-chart not even giving you the option to come to your own conclusions.
Here's an idea - you're an elitist idiot. You don't want anyone educated because that means they might actually want to take part in our representative democracy. You want to hand this country over to a self appointed body empowered to make decisions for the rest of us.
You love hyperbole, don't you ...
The facts remain, in any given field there are people more qualified than yourself to give advice and implement useful solutions. Good leaders (elected representatives
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And you're the one throwing out the "elitist" accusations?