Mayo Clinic to the Bike Path

My workout was unremarkable. I walked for 1:34 or so (just over 10 km) and followed the bikepath for much of it. But I wandered around neighborhoods prior to getting to it. It turns out that it is only .4 miles away from the clinic via Center street.

It was partly cloudy and slightly breezy; the footing was pretty good with most of the snow gone. They had done a good job of plowing the paths.

This is a rough approximation of what I walked:

Not Good: Reactor Situation in Japan

I’ve noticed that the reporting has gotten better. The situation in Japan is grim.

Evidently containment has been breached in one of the reactors.

No, this isn’t a “oh, we are all going to die” situation or “thousands will die” situation. But it is still cause for concern.

I’ll note that these are 40 year old reactors using 45-50 year old technology.

15 March 2011 noon

I’ll make my regular post later; I hope to get in a medium walk (60-90 minutes) on my own later today.

This was my anniversary present from my wife (15 years today).

We are at Mayo’s clinic for a few days; my wife is dealing with a non-life threatening but “quality of life” issue (chronic cough which has been checked out by others).

What I’ve noticed is that people at the hotel (the other guests) are very friendly to one another; people make eye contact with each other, smile, offer assistance, etc. I suppose this is a way for people to pull together; after all no one is here because things are going really well in their lives. True, there are some who are here because of quality of life issues. But sadly, many are here because of life threatening issues and life hindering issues.

So, it might be natural to offer support to one another in various manners. The hotel does have a decent (for a hotel) gym so evidently this is set up for the families of those visiting the clinic as well.

14 March 2011 PM

Posts
Politics: Mr. Pawlenty may be boring, but he tries to bore all of the Republican constituencies:

Many aspiring Republican presidential candidates are going to great lengths to avoid the spotlight, but not Tim Pawlenty. He is doing whatever he can to step into it.

Few audiences are too small for Mr. Pawlenty, who turns up at Tea Party rallies, church forums and beer and pizza parties with College Republicans. He even hit the ice to play hockey here, with a local television crew following closely along.

Mr. Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota, is trying to make equal appeals to the diverse constituencies of the Republican Party as he introduces himself as a potential candidate. He stands out among the major contenders in trying to assertively court all factions that will help select a nominee to challenge President Obama.

“I want to be every person’s candidate — that’s my goal,” Mr. Pawlenty said. “The notion that you can’t do more than one thing at a time, I think, is a flawed premise.”

At a recent Tea Party Patriots rally, he pronounced, “The government’s too damn big!” To an evangelical audience, he declared, “The Constitution was designed to protect people of faith from government, not to protect government from people of faith.” And to Republicans in New Hampshire, he closed with a gentle plea: “Please leave with hope and optimism.”

It is an uncertain gambit for Mr. Pawlenty, who rose through the ranks of state politics over nearly two decades and now faces the tumult of a Republican presidential primary in which the path to the nomination is far from clear. And seeking to keep a foot in all Republican camps, rather than concentrating on a more targeted slice of voters, could leave the impression that he is trying too hard. [...]

Other Republicans see Sarah Palin as having a possible path to the Republican nomination, even though she might not win that many states:

“A candidate who runs second or third in a great many primaries could go into the convention with a sizable block of delegates,” writes Gregg in an Op-Ed in The Hill newspaper Monday. “Who would this favor? Does Sarah Palin come to mind? Although she is not viewed by most as strong enough to win, she is viewed by many as a person worth voting for to make a statement.”

While it’s unlikely Palin (should she run) would win that many primary contests, placing second or third might be enough – especially this time around when delegates will be awarded a proportionate basis instead of the winner-take-all system that has previously been the rule in Republican primaries.

“Finishing second and third isn’t really a big deal – until you get enough delegates to be the nominee,” writes Gregg. “And picking a nominee who it seems would be easily defeated by President Obama might not be the best statement.”

I think that she is the perfect nominee for a party that openly embraces anti-intellectualism.

Japan: nuclear reactor: here is an an article from Scientific American.

14 March 2011: afternoon

Workout notes
Hotel treadmill: 4 miles in 38:20. Started off slowly (10:30 mpm for the first 10 minutes), then increased by .1 mph every 2 minutes (5.7 mph is 10:30 mpm); I was finally at a sub 10 minute per mile average by mile 3 (29:45) and then finished in 38:20. Then I did rotator cuff stuff; the right deltoid muscle is a bit sore (rotator cuff?)

Posts
Economics Paul Krugman slams the conservative economists for not understanding that shocks on the demand side can damage an economy badly enough to require action; it isn’t “just part of a cycle that will somehow self-correct.”

Science/current events: it is likely that some of the fuel in the Fukushima reactors melted down, at least a little bit.

As far as the reactors go, here is a somewhat long but easy to understand brief of the nuclear reactor situation and what is wrong. If you care about the nuclear reactors, I’d suggest reading this article. I don’t like the title; I am “worried’. But this is NOT a large scale Chernobyl type disaster; that would be physically impossible.

And yes, I feel for Japan. Here are some satellite photos of the damage. This site has a feature where you can move a dividing bar and sweep it across the photo to see the “before/after” photo. Here is but one of the many shots; both a ‘before” and an “after”:

Social
Yes, happiness and money are different things. Yes, you might be happier earning, say, 60,000 dollars a year and having a job that you like than 100,000 dollars a year doing something that you hate. But having no job at all makes it tough to be happy.

A civil liberties issue and my ambivalence

Bradley Manning: yes, his treatment sounds awful. And a high official has been fired due to his speaking out against his detention. But here is my ambivalence, which I held even during the Bush administration: reporters often get things wrong. Example: look at the fundamental, basic mistakes that were made in the media over the Japanese nuclear reactor situations.

Yes, I am sure that President Obama probably succumbs to the same “path of expediency” that President Bush succumbed to at times. Yes, governments sometimes (often?) lie. But I’ve been on the other end of the situation when I was in the Navy and I’ve seen the press get things completely wrong, all the while trying to do their best to be “fearless advocates for the truth”. Upshot: I often don’t know what to believe at times.

13 March 2011 pm

Workout notes 3 mile run (2.5 on grass) prior to leaving. rotator cuff.

Travel: we are in Minnesota.

Newt Gingrich Wants to Screw America – The Colbert Report – 3/10/11 – Video Clip | Comedy Central

ColbertNation.com video – Newt Gingrich only cheated on his wives because he’s so passionate about America.

Newt Gingrich Wants to Screw America – The Colb…, posted with vodpod

There go those “stupid hippies” again….

One of the things I like least about being a liberal is that there are many in our ranks that attempt to speak out about science and technical issues…and don’t know what they are talking about.

Here is a post from Alan Colmes’ Liberalland (a blog that I usually enjoy):

An explosion at the Fukushima Daiici nuclear plant in Okuma Japan seems to have caused a meltdown.

A meltdown occurs when the control rods fail to contain the neutron emission and the heat levels inside the reactor thus rise to a point that the fuel itself melts, generally temperatures in excess of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, causing uncontrolled radiation-generating reactions and making approaching the reactor incredibly hazardous. A meltdown does not necessarily mean a nuclear disaster. As long as the reactor core, which is specifically designed to contain high levels of heat, pressure and radiation, remains intact, the melted fuel can be dealt with. If the core breaches but the containment facility built around the core remains intact, the melted fuel can still be dealt with — typically entombed within specialized concrete — but the cost and difficulty of such containment increases exponentially.

Emphasis mine.

Note: a problem with the control rods CAN lead to a meltdown, but that isn’t the case here. The rods are in and the fissions are not the problem. The problem is that the remaining fission products (atoms that are left over from a split uranium atom) are radioactively unstable and therefore decay; they emit gamma radiation (like an x-ray but stronger) which can generate a substantial amount of heat; depending on the design of the reactor this can be over 10 percent of a reactor’s power. I don’t know what the potential is in this type of design.

The bottom line is that if a reactor, once it has been started up, needs coolant even if fissions aren’t occurring above a background level.

The rest of the above post is ok.

But please, if you are a liberal and you have a concern about a technical issue, find an engineer or scientist to talk to.

New Rule: Television Networks Have to Quit Trying to Put a Happy Ending on America’s Wealth Disparity | Video Cafe

As irritated as I can get with Bill Maher at times and tonight was no exception with him putting one of the embarrassments to my city on his show that rates right in there with The Gateway Pundit for making St. Louisians look like fools — Dana …

New Rule: Television Networks Have to Quit Tryi…, posted with vodpod

Science Smackdown of the Republicans…

Note: a Republican is honest: they don’t want liberals to vote: