Sandbox ban, go.jp document hunt, & To-Dai Prof Tatsuhiko KODAMA

Schools in Tokyo ban use of playground sandboxes over radiation fears - The Mainichi Daily News
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20110830p2a00m0na015000c.html
When sandboxes are banned, only criminals will play in sandboxes.

http://www.s.affrc.go.jp/docs/press/pdf/110830-06.pdf
=Aug30 radiation map from MAFF.

http://radioactivity.mext.go.jp/ja/distribution_map_around_FukushimaNPP/0002/11555_0830.pdf
one from MEXT -- see pp 10, 11, 14, 15

http://www.s.affrc.go.jp/docs/press/pdf/110830-06.pdf



Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlf4gOvzxYc
Click on "cc" button to show English subtitles.


Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDlEOmcALwQ
Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama is the head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo. On July 27, he appeared as a witness to give testimony to the Committee on Welfare and Labor in Japan's Lower House in the Diet. (At the end, Prof. Kodama was able to elaborate only three of his "four requests" probably due to the time constraint.)

Digital Man

Cuban man '24' proud of his 4 extra fingers, toes
http://news.yahoo.com/cuban-man-24-proud-4-extra-fingers-toes-202739807.html
They call him "Twenty-Four."

Who moved my climate?

Climate warming accelerates Arctic migration for some species
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/climate-warming-accelerates-arctic-migration-some-species?page=full
"These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the Equator at around 20 cm per hour,” added Thomas, Prof of Conservation Biology. “This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of this century.”
Call it the Goldilocks syndrome. Animals and plants are moving both higher in latitude and elevation much faster than previously thought in response to climate warming. They're chasing that "just right" sweet spot, but it keeps moving.

Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/1024.abstract
The distributions of many terrestrial organisms are currently shifting in latitu...de or elevation in response to changing climate. Using a meta-analysis, we estimated that the distributions of species have recently shifted to higher elevations…

A houl in dha baatam av dha sii (kraekt)

Cracked Sea Floor

RHCP in Japan

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS live in Japan
8.14.2011
Charlie

Komatsu Sakyo (Japan Sinks)

Death of a sci-fi pioneer | The Japan Times Online
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20110814a1.html
On July 26, Komatsu Sakyo, a pioneer in Japanese science fiction, died at the age of 80. Born in Osaka in 1931, he witnessed firsthand the devastation of World War II. After graduating from Kyoto University with a degree in Italian literature ...
By chance, the announcement in the book by an American geodesic group of a massive shift in the earth's crust centered on the Japanese archipelago takes place on March 11, with Mount Fuji erupting the next day.

Too hot to burn

Fire festival bans radioactive wood
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110813002954.htm
The Kyoto municipal government has announced that firewood from disaster-hit Rikuzen-Takata, Iwate Prefecture, will not be used in an annual bonfire festival in Kyoto, due to the detection of radioactive cesium in its bark. Rikuzen-Takata is located about 200 km north of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Sunflowers (Asahi Shimbun)

Sunflowers in full bloom in Kyoto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4TTHa50JGQ
About 150,000 sunflowers grown in resting rice fields are in full bloom in the town of Yosano, Kyoto Prefecture, attracting many tourists.

Asahi: Education Ministry's radiation map

Weather, deteriorating reactors exacerbated disaster
By HIROSHI ISHIZUKA
Staff Writer of the vernacular Asahi Shimbun
The education ministry measured the accumulated amount of radioactive cesium in areas within a 160-kilometer radius from the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant through the use of aircraft in late July.
Details of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan panel's findings will be published on the society's website.

Daibaek '11

Japan's Population Shrinks in FY 2010: Ministry Data - JIJI PRESS
http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2011080900696
Japan's population decreased 827,235 from a year earlier to 126,230,625 as of the end of fiscal 2010, registering a fall for the second straight year, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Tuesday. The latest aggregate figure, based on residency registers nationwide, excludes residents in 22 municipalities in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, three northeastern prefectures hardest hit by the tsunami.

Nuukliyur eksplouzhans 1945-1998

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).
Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing"the fear and folly of nuclear weapons." It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.
http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/

Boil the ocean!

The government of Minami-Soma has revealed a plan to decontaminate all radiation-polluted areas of the city in cooperation with a University of Tokyo laboratory, with the exception of places inside the no-entry zone.


http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110807002708.htm

Chatbot Dr C

http://marsdata1.jpl.nasa.gov/DrC/
Chat-bot for Mars Rovers: Dr. C. is based on a real Mars scientist, Dr. Phil Christensen.
Dr. C.
He's awfully stupid, even for a chatbot

The Book of Faces

Profile pics on social media sites pose privacy risk, researcher warns
Imagine walking down a street and having a total stranger being able to instantly pull up your name, date of birth, Social Security number, your last blog item and other data on their smart phone.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9218903/Profile_pics_on_social_media_sites_pose_privacy_risk_researcher_warns
It's getting easier for strangers to identify people and infer detailed information about them from their publicly available pictures on sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, a researcher said at Black Hat.