Have a ball

It's too late for the Redneck Olympics, but you can still catch the Turkey Testicle Festival.

And you thought it was just me...

The point to remember is that Environmentalists aren't greens. They are more like watermelons. Green on the outside, but red on the inside. Just about any environmentalist issue, you can track down to being anti-business, or anti-capitalist.

For frustrated baseball fans...

The players really might strike again to advance the cause of proletarians everywhere. And if they do, all you fans who swore you'd never watch again are going to need a new sports fix. Leave it to NWA to guide you to the wonderful world of alternative sports.

How about donkey baseball? mud volleyball? Or for the ladies, jello wrestling (rated PG-work).

I saw something new on Saturday - Slamball. This loosely resembles basketball, but there are four trampolines flush with the court surface at the base of each basket. The result is that everybody can play far above the rim and fouls are spectacular. Just don't bother looking for a court near you.

Here in St. Louis we have "Demolition Ball". It's a trip - two teams in bumper cars catching and throwing a wiffle ball at a goal using a basketlike contraption. The cars are tricky to steer and drive at first, and don't go real fast, so you'd have to try hard to hurt yourself. It can be a lot of fun for a small group, and what can be wrong with a sport that you play sitting down?

Alas, the killjoys of the world are on the march. Animal rights groups are attacking Calaveras County for its frog jumping competitions, and some places have banned dwarf tossing. What's the world coming to?

And who needs baseball anyway? - pro football starts in a week. Go Bears, Chiefs, Colts and Rams!

Sponsor Susanna Cornett today

She'll be running in Manhattan on September 15 in the Race for the Cure for breast cancer.

Of course my engineering mind is constantly pursuing alternate approaches to problems, seeking to leverage knowledge by applying successful practices from other disciplines to new problem domains. So I was thinking...you must have seen these ads for various worldwide save-the-children charities. For donations, they'll send pictures, letters, progress reports, etc, as if your money were supporting a particular kid. Could there be a lesson here?

I'm just trying to help.

Thrills to come

I pledged elsewhere that I would put together some CBO and other figures to compare the budgets and economies of the last several Presidents and Congresses by Tuesday. That's in process, but my schedule has changed and it will probably take until Thursday. The waiting is torture, I know.

Radionuclides in Nature

This PDF has a lot of interesting information on radioactive substances found in nature. I dug it up while researching the previous item.

The most interesting single fact IMO is this "Sea water contains some 4 500 Mtons U". Next to that, Ted Turner's stash (described in the next item down) is trifling. Hmm....

There's also some interesting but highly technical info about radon gas.

In short, if you're trying to rid your life of radiation, you're living on the wrong planet.

Jane Fonda's ex-husband buys highly enriched uranium, sends it to Russians

Glenn Reynolds points us to this interesting article in the Guardian about Ted Turner's latest adventure. It seems that Turner has paid a good chunk of money to buy some enriched uranium from a scientific institute in Serbia to be shipped to the Russians. There it is "to be rendered unusable". (Thank God - the thought of Ted Turner with nuclear weapons is unnerving).

Assuming that Ted isn't really seeking revenge against AOL, the driving idea behind this is that it was "enough uranium to make more than two nuclear bombs", and he wants to deny it to terrorists.

"Stopping terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons boils down to one top priority: stopping them from getting nuclear bomb-making materials," Mr Turner said yesterday as it emerged that his Nuclear Threat Initiative had provided £3.3m to fund the operation.

Clamping down on access to the materials is an important factor, and the claims seem to check out. According to this, "About 50 kilograms of the material is in fresh or unirradiated fuel, and another ten kilograms is in only slightly irradiated fuel. Enrichment of the 60 kilograms of highly enriched uranium remains at 80 percent."

I don't know if you can build a bomb out of 80% enriched uranium or not - this says it takes 90%. So presumably the stuff would require further, very expensive refinement to be useful to terrorists.

Apparently Turner has the 50 kg quantity mentioned earlier, which is consistent with its packaging - "The rods were reportedly stored in their original crates and guarded by only lightly armed civilians." Why not take the rest? - probably because it has been irradiated and may be too hot to transport.

The fuel was transported by plane. I guess Greenpox didn't have time to protest.

Why give it to the Russians? Presumably because it was their uranium in the first place, and because they're probably more flexible in what they're willing to do with it.

Now we get to the really interesting part, where the stuff is to be rendered unusable. Nobody is saying how. Assuming that the Russians aren't going to use it for bombs, the sensible thing to do is to burn it up in reactors as originally intended. Then the consumed uranium is gone forever.

I wonder if Turner violated any federal laws in doing this?

UPDATE: This was in the WaPo on Friday and I missed it (again, via Glenn Reynolds). TT was working in collaboration with the US govt, so one hopes that what he was doing was totally lawful.

GR's nameless source says that 80% was the enrichment of the Hiroshima bomb, so presumably the material could be used as is to make bombs. However, then the quantities required for a bomb are different - according to this, the Hiroshima bomb used 60 kg of U-235, which at 80% concentration would be 75 kg of uranium. Either figure is more than was removed from Vinca.

Wait 'til Anna Nicole hears about this

A Chicago company says it has developed a process for turning cremated human remains into diamonds that can be worn as jewelry.

"We're building on the simple fact that all living creatures are carbon-based and diamonds are carbon-based," said Greg Herro, head of LifeGem Memorials.

The blue diamonds are the answer to people who think a tombstone or an urn full of ashes is not personal enough.

Getting it together against greenhouse gases

Whether greenhouse gases are a problem or not, the following are simply good ideas for the locals, from this article:

MAPHEPHETHENI, South Africa - In rural South Africa, where getting electricity isn't simply a matter of flicking a switch, Myeka High School is looking to its pupils to supply an unusual source of power.

For several years, the school has only had solar power, but the system's output is erratic and computer classes can be held just two or three days a week. Now the school plans to add electricity produced by burning methane gas from decomposing sewage from the school toilets.

Such innovations could be vital to South Africa, where the government is trying to extend electricity to 300,000 more households each year. About 50 percent of rural families and 22 percent of urban dwellers now lack electricity — a total of 3.6 million households.

And as poor as they are, they won't have Western-style power distribution until the cows come home:

Greg Austin, an engineer who designed the school's biogas system, believes gas generated from cattle dung is also an ideal power source in rural south Africa where more than a half million households keep cattle and rely on fossil fuels to cook.

"With the dung from three cows, you can generate enough gas to run a fridge and cooker," he said.

He's right, I don't understand

Susanna Cornett and a host of others have zeroed in on some asininities by one Charles Barron at Sunday's reparations rally in Washington. It's black hyperbole alright.

And for this achievement in furthering more harmonious race relations I declare Mr. Barron an "Al Sharpton Scholar". Can a Nobel Peace Prize be far behind?

Fighting fire with fire

They're handing out potassium iodide (KI) pills near the nuclear power plants in PA. This tells a bit about why.

It mentions the Chernobyl accident, and 1000 cases of thyroid cancer that allegedly resulted from it (other sources, including the previous link, differ).

Whatever the right number is, it's a shame. If the Russian Communists had given a damn about civil defense and passed out such pills, most of those could have been prevented. Instead, they chose to deny the existence of a problem that was visible from outer space and set off radiation alarms in Scandinavia.

Incidentally, these pills will be radioactive. Never mind the poll.

Hoosier party school?

I'm not Joshing, it's Indiana University.

The source also offered a list of 20 "stone-cold sober" schools, with Brigham Young winning for the 3rd straight year. Now that's a shocker.

Sex and Martha Stewart (?)

I have read odds and ends about Martha Stewart's alleged involvement with insider trading involving ImClone. Basically I've been giving her the benefit of the doubt, figuring that lots of people had their knives out for her. After all, she's guilty of being rich, and I hear she's no treat to get along with either.

But the sympathy is gone as of today. Martha Stewart thinks the Republicans are out to investigate her sex life.

Embattled media mogul Martha Stewart is said to see a political conspiracy behind the deepening investigation into her questionable stock trades, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

"Martha really believes it is the Republicans who are behind this -- and they are chasing her for purely political reasons," a Stewart intimate said this weekend.

"Martha told me that she believes they are doing the very same thing to her, they did to President Clinton. What Ken Starr did. She believes it is nothing short of a witch hunt! They are even digging into her private e-mails! They are demanding to know who she's dated. Martha said to me, 'Can you believe they want to know who I'm dating?' Republicans on Capitol Hill are probing her sex life!"

Alright, I'm a bit morbidly curious, just as I was about hedgehogs a few weeks ago. But really - Martha Stewart? How vain is that? Those Congressmen may be old, but lots of women have given big chunks of money to the Democrats - couldn't they find someone with more potential?

Don't get me wrong. She's well preserved, and I'd rank her well ahead of, say, Hillary Clinton or Janet Reno. But I'm thinking she'd be a bit, uh, particular. No thanks.

I see a David Letterman Top Ten list coming - "Top 10 things heard in Martha Stewart's Bedroom".

UPDATE: the real Letterman fails us, but she's been on his Top 10 lists before. Like this one.

Spin? What spin?

See kausfiles for 8/14/02 for an interesting discussion of "child-only" welfare cases.

After turning both cheeks...

Normally I don't bother to link to something after Glenn Reynolds has - odds are you've already seen it. But for this item, about the "Peace Abbey", make sure you read the comments if you haven't already. There are some choice Gandhi quotes that don't get enough airplay.

Say hello to Ellen Feiss, a Rula Lenska for our time

Oh never mind, you really don't care. But if you must, here's Ms. Lenska and here's Ms. Feiss.

The Ellen Feiss link was from Daniel Pink, who usually has something more profound to say.

Not yet...

Stolen from Rush Limbaugh

Poor Jesse...

Or was it Al Sharpton? Scott Koenig lives to tell.

Right on

You read everything Thomas Sowell writes, don't you? Here's some more wisdom from this column:

Imagine that a genie magically appeared and offered to grant you one wish -- and, being a decent sort, you wished that everyone's income would be doubled. That could bring down on you the wrath of the political left, because it would mean that the gap between the rich and the poor had widened.

Crossing Richard Bennett and Meryl Yourish

I was going to stick my nose in the Richard Bennett/Meryl Yourish exchange, but Diane E. has said most of what I had in mind here.

I don't agree with her totally - I won't say she trivializes abortion, but I think she takes it less seriously than I do.