Actually what all the reports are saying is OVER 1,000 :p so your doubts are correct.

There actually was a story about that. The drinking water levels of radioactive iodine in MA DID exceed the EPA limits. However, the EPA limits are calculated for a level that is suitable over the lifespan of a human (in 1974 I might add...making this calculation almost as old as the Fukushima reactors themselves), not a temporary exposure . The EPA stressed that in no way would this have any health effects.

Actually you don't have to ingest it, BUT you have to be pretty much right next to it to receive the full dose. "Measurements showed the air above the radioactive water in the pit contained more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour of radioactivity. Even just two feet (60 centimeters) away, that figure dropped to 400 millisieverts." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110402/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake_587

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding what you are trying to say. Are you suggesting that if the explosions didn't take place that everything would be fine at Fukushima? The reactors would still be overheating, explosion or not explosion. Thus, Japan would still have a nuclear crisis. "International"? In what way is this an international nuclear crisis? I could see the argument that this is an international economic crisis because of the lost output of Japan for companies abroad and the contaminated food not being sold to international markets etc, but the nuclear effects are limited to around 30 - 40 km outside the plant (I live about 200 km southwest of the plant and if it weren't for the news I would never know that anything was wrong). Yes I am aware that they found minute amounts in 15 states of America, but until they are enough to cause any kind of effect at all, I don't think this can be considered a catastrophe for any country besides Japan.

There was not a steady stream of hydrogen coming out of the reactor, so by your own example when the stream from the reactor stopped being vented, wouldn't the flame have been sucked back in like the can with the hose disconnected? Yes, the hydrogen came from the overheated zirconium oxidizing, and it was vented along with the steam inside the reactor (unknowingly at first) into the reactor building to relieve reactor pressure. It then subsequently was ignited by something unknown (to me at least). You say air must have been "pulled in"? It sounds like you think the explosion happened inside the reactor, which it didn't. There is already air in the reactor building. If I am misunderstanding what you said, then I apologize.

I saw that too, but the wording is a little vague. It says two things: highest values in a small are in the northwest, and IAEA operational criteria for evacuation exceeded in Iitate. That could possibly mean that the highest value was found in Iitate, but that is not necessarily the case.

Burn it off with a controlled burn? How do you suggest that they do that? Light a match next to where it is coming out? It's not like they had a lot of options for the hydrogen gas with no power whatsoever on site. Also I don't know what you mean by "build the reactors along the fault line" You do realize that the fault line is in the ocean right? Not directly under Fukushima. By that reasoning, Tokai and Onagawa should not have been built either. "far lower than the historic tsunami wave-heights" where did you get this information? I can't find any data on historic wave heights of Fukushima. Don't just say "Oh there was such and such a high wave in Hokkaido" either, because the geography of the sea floor and the coast makes a big difference. They had a wall ready for a 5.5 meter tsunami, which is still a huge wave. The earthquake sunk the Japanese coast by about 1 meter AND it was hit by a 14 meter tsunami. This is documented in NOVA's documentary on the subject: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/japan-killer-quake.html . Salvage the reactors? They wrote off the reactors the minute they injected them with seawater. They have publicly said that reactors 1 - 4 will never run again. There is a good deal of information out there if you speak Japanese. Otherwise, you have to wait for someone to translate it which doesn't always happen. If you don't speak Japanese then you are in no position to comment on the amount of information that is or is not coming out.

I own a $600 graphics card (though I bought it in 2006) and I happen to do a lot with my computer besides playing games. I spend a lot of time playing them when a new one I like comes out, but I wouldn't even say the majority of my time overall is spent playing games. Youtube eats up much more of my time.....

Yes there are people who are like you say, and there are people who are casual gamers, but there are more types of people than just two.

What's the newest game you have played using emulation as of 2011? As hardware power increases, the cost of emulating older software becomes a non-issue, I agree, but I was referring to newer games. Perhaps I should have made that clearer...

And yet another, which goes somewhat higher than that chart

http://twitpic.com/49mm4l

Adding one more level of abstraction always hurts performance. So the answer to your question "Does the game run?" is usually no. Not in a playable form anyway.

Thank you for dividing the world into two types of people: casual gamers and losers (/sarcasm)

What's wrong with enjoying the latest games? Nothing....your sad attempt to turn anyone who plays a game that is newer than 7 years old into some kind of waste of life is pathetic and offensive.

So are they implying that they'd rather develop a game for a very specific set of hardware? Seems like an awful business model to me. Two of the reasons console games look good with lower specs on their hardware is because they are designed solely for gaming, and their specs do not change throughout the life cycle of the device so there is no need to develop for a broad base of hardware types. On the other hand, PC hardware is constantly evolving and multitasking is always going on. Scrap the API and develop directly for hardware, and see what it gets you. A lot of angry customers once they upgrade their card and it doesn't work anymore.

Hmmm because nuclear plants *never* have to worry about something like RISK......I would think that a risk manager would be the one to evaluate the procedures used to contain a crisis, which is what he is describing.

It takes a little more power to push water into a high pressure container than to power a hot dog stand......