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Comment Re:pander to republicans?!?!?!?? (Score 1) 391

Except Obama is actually a pretty good president. Exhibit A: Visiting a nation to reflect on the deaths of the 150,000 people we killed there.

And Bush was a pretty fucking horrible one. Exhibit A: Invading Iraq under false pretenses.

Well, to be fair, Bush visited Japan as well, but his most memorable moment was throwing up on the Prime Minister

Comment Re:radiation compared to what? (Score 2, Informative) 144

Its even worse than that. They claim they can distinguish between background and Chernobyl radiation, but that is impossible to do with a radiation detector. What they erroneously assume is that background radiation is steady, and that all that changes while you walk around are due to Chernobyl. This demonstrates the ignorance of the author, because background radiation varies as you move around, and probably accounts for all of the measured radiation they show. Evidence of their ignorance is even further shown in the schoolhouse, where they assume there is no background radiation. Basically, they just arbitrarily decided what to call Chernobyl radiation. They have no clue.

Actually you can distinguish natural and man made isotopes with a gamma-ray spectrometer. There are various energy peaks associates with each radioelement that can be easily identified. For instance Cs-137 is what is usually measured to map areas of contamination from things like Chernobyl. You are right about the background radiation varying everywhere, and with no scale these 'charts' are useless.

Comment Re:Nice geography lesson (Score 2) 55

At precisely 10:08 am on the morning of June 30, the four twin-spool Olympus 593 engines under the Concorde’s sweeping white wings powered up to full afterburner and launched “001” down the runway of Tenerife’s Las Palmas airport. Thousands of miles to the east, the shadow of the moon was already racing across the Atlantic at over 1,200 mph, as the eclipse shadow sped westward from South America toward the African coast.

I didn't realize that Africa was westward from South America. I mean, I guess it is if you go the long way, but I don't think that's what happened here.

It's not a geography lesson. It's an astronomy lesson! The path of the moon's shadow is travelling westward.

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