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Comment A different experience.. (Score 1) 265

The comment from slashdot.jp are fairly positive, but reports from family there are not as rosy. Last night (US time) we talked to my wife's aunt who lives in Saitama, just north of Tokyo proper. They have electricity but no tap water. She has to walk to a local distribution site and carry water home. She reports that the grocery stores are empty and the stores are not getting the supplies they would normally get. This includes staples like rice, milk, and yes, toilet paper. They are unable to buy gasoline. Her daughter is bicycling 45 minutes each way to work when she would normally drive.

We also have family in Koriyama, just 60km west of the nuclear plant. They want to leave but are unable to get gasoline.

-molo

Comment Human cloning (Score 1) 471

If it were perfect, that would be fine. However the prospect of creating people with birth defects or disabilities due to flaws in the cloning process is horrific. Considering the recently published studies showing incresed risks surrounding IVF treatments, there must be many factors we are not controlling for. I imagine this would be far worse with cloning.

-molo

Comment Re:ham radio (Score 1) 840

It takes a significant amount of infrastructure in order to do HF direction finding. I believe the FCC has one facility to do it. The US military probably has a few in different parts of the globe. Egypt might have a facility or two. But the accuracy of these things will only give you city-level precision. Tracking it down further requires driving around the city with a receiver and looking at the signal strength. Not quick.

The thing with ham stations is that you don't necessarily need a big antenna on a tower or anything. You could communicate with a wire antenna in a palm tree. You could go out into the desert and raise some 10m masts. Either way, these are low-infrastructure requirements and can easily be raised and town down in a matter of an hour. It should not be difficult to relocate after every communication session, even without running mobile (on a vehicle).

Running mobile is also an option, and can be done on HF without much difficulty. A "hamstick" type antenna for the 20m band (14 MHz) is able to reach hundreds of miles, even with today's low sunspot numbers.

-molo

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