The Naoto Matsumura Experience (Take a walk on the wild side)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOvLIf39xO0

I respect his decision to live free, but i think his call to decontaminate such a large area is hopeless and wasted effort. Time will deal with it. People should leave. Farmers should be compensated with new farms elsewhere, as the population is falling and the countryside is being abandoned. Then they can farm without compromised produce or stigma. (As it is now, the government buys contaminated rice grown anywhere outside the prohibited zone and charges TEPCO, so all consumers pay the cost of continued attempts to farm in Fukushima prefecture.) Contaminated soil should be covered with less contaminated soil brought in from elsewhere. Cover 120μSv/hr soil with 37μSv/hr soil brought in from less contaminated areas, and so on. 

Post-human invader

Octopus Walks on Land at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjQr3lRACPI

We come in peace. To occupy your land.

Off the Pigs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVzW3OGq7kM

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…

Radioactive Beef School Lunches

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/07/beef-from-fukushima-to-be-tested.html

Strontium and strange animals

("Now They Tell Us" Series) Strontium Was Detected 62 Kilometers from Fukushima I in April and May
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/06/now-they-tell-us-series-strontium-was.html

東日本大震災と原発事故: Mutant Rabbit Born Near Fukushima Daiichi

A new-born rabbit without ears is seen in Namie City which is located just outside the 30km exclusion zone of the Fukushima Daiichi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLgcP9A2D3o

Cat gets caught barking by a human and resumes meowing

v=aP3gzee1cps

You as a Dog
http://www.doggelganger.co.nz/

Hot Schools in Fukushima

http://atmc.jp/ has added a national radiation map to their existing database which includes air, soil, rain, food. They have also added a map of radiation at Fukushima Prefecture schools, http://atmc.jp/school/ as measured by the Fukushima Prefecture Disaster Office over three days, at present.

Bad news in this map is that schools in Fukushima City and elsewhere with numbers up around 4 to 6 microsieverts per hour are far above the 20 MILLIsieverts per year the govt is setting as an evacuation threshold. Do the math: Anything over 2.3 MICROsieverts an hour will accumulate to more than 20 MILLIsieverts a year. They should err on the side of caution considering: the intl standard for added dose is 1 millisievert annually, not 20; these are children, not adults; there is a possibility of ingesting and inhaling radioactive particles; and emissions and deposition levels are continuing and accumulating. They should evacuate.

One argument against evacuation is that these levels may be temporary, and go down soon, but that is doubtful. Even if so, I think they should temporarily evacuate the cities of Fukushima (290,000ppl), Nihonmatsu (61,000ppl), and Sukagawa (80,000ppl), or, if that is impossible, evacuate at least the children. Note that our levels down here in Chiba are 0.055 microsieverts per hour today, only 1% of what is measured at some of those schools. (compare to 5.5)

If the govt keep to their stated standard of evacuating places with a risk of accumulating over 20millisieverts/year, then they will announce an evacuation. If they keep to their established precedent of moving slowly (and erring on the side of radiation), the announcement will come in about 2 weeks (and allow another month to take effect).

Using the slider on the school map also reveals wider investigations done on previous days. I guess they are not cumulatively added to the map because yesterday's measurements may have changed by today. There are 2 measurements: at 1cm (above the soil, I assume), and 1 meter.

Measurements of the known VERY radioactive areas were done mostly on the first day.

Eels: Tomorrow Morning

I ran across this new interview with E about a week ago.



Tomorrow Morning is something to look forward to. By the way, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives has become available again on YouTube after having been taken down sometime after I last referred to it. ("This video has been removed due to a copyright claim by the BBC.")You may want to DLHelper yourself to those mp4s before they get taken down again, because the price of buying the dvd ($40.49!) is a ridiculous price to pay for not recording it when it was broadcast on TV.

Just for the hell of it, here's an NPR interview from June 2009.



...and an official Eels video from April 2009.

Kujira Katsu くじらカツ

Kujira Katsu くじらカツ, or Whale Cutlets, in the cafeteria of a university where I teach. You can see the dark beefiness of the meat compared to the lighter-colored chicken cutlets on the left. The price is right. Add a ¥31 bowl of negi-tofu miso-shiru and a bowl of rice for ¥100 and you're set for under ¥400. I wouldn't order it but I have tasted whale before.

"Paul the Octopus" vs "Sarah Palin"

Paul the Octopus is currently leading Sarah Palin in the polls for the preferred Republican Presidential candidate in 2012. Voters are weighing doubts about the candidate's eligibility for the office and a suspected foreign place of birth with the possibility that the other candidate's brain is a sac of water. The creature's "brain", or water-filled sac, is believed to help propel the creature through the surrounding media.

Octoracle

The lyrics as well as I can make out:

Paul the Octopus
by Aiden Ajar

I'm just a cephalopod
I'm only 2 years old
oh--but I'm the 8 legged oracle
or so I'm told

oh wonderful octopus
you're the great prophet of our time
we need a leader to reveal us truth
if I feed you mussels will you please be mine?

all attention will be on your tank
we'll base our lives on the way you behave
be our master, be our saviour
most of all be our slave

I'm just a cephalopod
I've never even seen a tv
oh you think that I control your destiny
oh I don't even know I live in Germany

oh terrible octopus
you're the worst mollusk of our time
we needed you to reveal us truth
--well, I suppose you did but we do not like the truth--
we hold you responsible
off with your tentacles
I will eat you
I will eat you
I will eat you

I'm just a cephalopod
I don't even know what FIFA is!
don't barbecue me
don't cut me into pieces
don't crucify me
I never asked to be your jesus...

(edited 2010¤07·16°)

BP-irates of the Caribbean

BP-irates of the Caribbean: "Dead Man's Deepwater Horizon" -- coming soon to a coastline near you!

Update: Perfectionism kicked in; I wasn't happy with kwik'n'dirty version and edited it.

BRL and beyond

I never used to watch Break Room Live because I listened to it. They had some good video clips that I never noticed until now.

Our poor fallen masters. Give generously.


Sam


Marc's House!


Cats.

Ladybug and Lotus (though not at the same time or space)

Possible wallpapers, formatted to fit my display.





2009 photos taken with my phone. The ladybug was on the grassy hill overlooking Tokyo Bay down by the tetrapod beach at crematorium cove in Narashino in May. The lotuses were in Kyoto somewhere in a temple under some trees in a corner but I don't remember exactly.

Wallpapers on DA

I am trying out DeviantArt. It has a number of annoying features, but I am trying to get used to them. Not sure how I can or will use it, but here are some desktop wallpapers based on some landscape photography from the public-domain USGS photo collection.


Ubuntu USGS "newspaper wall" by ~blues-tea-cha on deviantART


Ubuntu 2010 USGS Petroglyph by ~blues-tea-cha on deviantART


Ubuntu 2010 USGS Lohman by ~blues-tea-cha on deviantART

Up the wrong tree?

BowLingual for the iPhone will have twitter support so that your dog's thoughts can be effortlessly tweeted.

Via Asiajin via Tokyo Mango

3D in the 1800s

There's a collection of stereoscopic images within the USGS Photographic Library, dating from the 1870's to the 1950's.
An example:

Strike dumb this fool, we beseech thee.

Christofascist Buttcasting Nutwerx' 666 Klub host Rat Pobertson pulls some weird racist BS out of his ass. You'll have to listen carefully through his labored heavy breathing to make out what he's saying. This may be his biggest hate-speech hit since he called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, a little fatwa from Jesusland.


An entry at Wikipedia suggests he may be referring to Dutty Boukman. There are reports that a pig may have been fatally injured in the making of the republic.

Members of the reality-based community are urged to send money to Haiti through more reputable channels.

This is your cephalopod tool-using brain with a coconut shell

Research led by Julian Finn as reported at Nat'l Geographic:



The evolving tool-use of the cephalopod community puts increased pressure on the dominant bipedal tail-less fire monkey. To those concerned about homonid civilization being overwhelmed by the rise of the octopi, I recommend ordering an extra dish of tako sushi ASAP or maybe throwing one of them on the "barbee" at your earliest convenience.

Going Local in NM (Back to the LAN)

Apparently, this guy --Doug Fine-- is on NPR (and has been on CNN at least once) but I haven't been listening to NPR for a year or so, so I must have missed him... but I read this reprinted in The Daily Yomiuri. A longer version is on his website.

Here is a 2008 interview in "Smithsonian" and a critical look at the capital requirements of his kind of simplicity from Alternet.