A new paper was published on 10 August regarding LHC safety which proposed a further frightening scenario. Supposing Hawking radiation does exist - will its effects be benevolent? German physicist Rainer Plaga suggests that the collider could start a chain reaction which would resemble an ongoing nuclear explosion in its locale. The results as best I am able to tell would be the reduction of Switzerland and part of France to slag plus the somewhat slower death of the rest of us from irradiation and or nuclear winter.
This insanity is due to start in a few days. Let's hope someone has the good sense to pull the plug.
Plaga's input is mentioned here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_of_the_Large_Hadron_Collider
For the scientifically able, his actual paper is here
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.1415v1.pdf
Saturday, 30 August 2008
Saturday, 16 August 2008
Ban the car
A pet opinion of mine - one of many I shall be airing here.
I'd like to totally ban private cars, vans, trucks. Why do we have them? They are patently unnecessary. I don't drive and I get to work by train and bus. Any function of personal transport not fulfilled by train and bus can be fulfilled by taxi.
Take a few years, redeploy the auto workers on rebuilding our railways and we would need no more freight lorries either. Imagine the quiet, the tranquillity, the fresh air. No more traffic jams, no more road rage, no more RTAs. Numerous social evils wiped out at a stroke. Jobs on the railways for hundreds.
I'd like to totally ban private cars, vans, trucks. Why do we have them? They are patently unnecessary. I don't drive and I get to work by train and bus. Any function of personal transport not fulfilled by train and bus can be fulfilled by taxi.
Take a few years, redeploy the auto workers on rebuilding our railways and we would need no more freight lorries either. Imagine the quiet, the tranquillity, the fresh air. No more traffic jams, no more road rage, no more RTAs. Numerous social evils wiped out at a stroke. Jobs on the railways for hundreds.
Saturday, 2 August 2008
Taking the fall
Barry George is free, and we the taxpayers get to give him some compensation for his unearned jail time. I said the day he was convicted that this was a nonsense case and things would end as they have. Someone out there knows who did it - but it's always more expedient to put away some harmless weirdo for a few years and then give him a pay off. So the citizenry is cheated twice over - first we get no justice, then we pay for getting no justice.
Meanwhile in the US, a scientist's suicide is met with an almost audible sigh of relief by the authorities. Killed self - must be guilty - file closed. OK, the first one they tried to pin it on fought back a little too hard but it worked the second time - they found someone weaker who'd crack.
Compensation was paid to the tougher party, who had brought a lawsuit. The US citizenry were duly cheated. First they got no justice, then they paid for getting no justice.
Meanwhile in the US, a scientist's suicide is met with an almost audible sigh of relief by the authorities. Killed self - must be guilty - file closed. OK, the first one they tried to pin it on fought back a little too hard but it worked the second time - they found someone weaker who'd crack.
Compensation was paid to the tougher party, who had brought a lawsuit. The US citizenry were duly cheated. First they got no justice, then they paid for getting no justice.
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