Bad News Keeps Coming From Fukushima

The problem with nuclear energy is when it goes wrong, it goes horrifically wrong and three years on from the Fukushima nuclear accident, the news is still not good.
Thyroid cancer normally affects one to two people per million among under 18s in Japan. Last month the number of confirmed and suspected cases of thyroid cancer among people aged 18 and below in Fukushima at the time of the accident stood at 75 of the 254,000 children and adolescents tested.
Following the 1986 disaster in Chernobyl the UN Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation reported more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer among exposed children and adolescents living in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
In the case of Chernobyl, it took five years before cancers started showing up in the general population but with Fukushima, cancers started showing up after only two years which means either the inhabitants of Fukishima received a much higher dose of radiation or the amounts of cancers discovered is going to soar in the coming years.
Understandably, nuclear power stations have gone a bit of a rethink since the accident, Germany are planning to close all their nuclear establishments by 2022 while the UK are planning on building more.
As i said at the top of the post, when nuclear power goes wrong, it goes horrifically wrong and leaving aside the threat of leaks and meltdowns, we have a system for generating power that creates tonnes of toxic waste that we don't know how to dispose of and which remains a danger to humans for hundreds of thousands of years.
And the most amazing thing is that we keep producing more and more of it and store it in concrete containers while we look for an answer.
It does make you wonder just why, when the consequences are so disastrous, we don't make a massive push for renewables because to my knowledge, nobody has got cancer from a wind turbine and nowhere has been declared contaminated for a thousand years by a solar panel.

Celebrating Yuri

There has been a spate of Space related programmes this weekend to mark the 80 years since the birth of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.
There have been plenty of interviews with astronauts, and almost all mentioned the wonder of gazing down on the Earth in all its majestic beauty and just seeing our World with no borders, a sight that had a profound effect on them.  
There was one interview, with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who mentioned something that struck him profoundly and something that i never really considered before, the complete silence.
In our World, there is never complete silence. Even in the dead of night there is the tick of a clock, the distant sound of a car, your partners breathing or even the wind outside, never is there absolute silence.
Gagarin is arguably one of the most famous Russians that ever lived, less arguably he left one of the greatest human legacies, the giant whose shoulders fellow astronauts have stood on ever since.
What had me thinking as i listened to the astronauts from all different countries living and working aboard the International Space Station is that when we cooperate, we can achieve so much more. Neil Armstrong's famous words 'One giant leap for mankind' says it all, it isn't for America or Russia, it's for all of us together.
If we can take the approach and work together in Space to such great effect, why is it so hard to do it down here?

Clegg's Pro-EU Message Being Lost

I am very much a Pro-European. To my mind to even consider further detaching ourselves from the EU is beyond folly and if anything, we should be integrating ourselves further.
Being in the EU, we will be part of the Worlds largest trading block and a 'nation' of 500 million people with only China having a larger population.
What the likes of UKIP and some on the Conservative benches are advocating is to take us away from that and become a nation of 60 million, a tiny insignificant voice on the fringes of a globe dominated by the economic and political powerhouses of America, China and the EU.
The case for not only being in Europe but throwing ourselves lock, stock and barrel into the project is frustratingly not being made and as the man who is being wheeled out to put across the point is Nick Clegg, i can't see my fellow Brits changing their minds anytime soon. 
The message is being lost because of the messenger as Clegg has so little credibility left after his appalling behaviour in Government that his appearance in the Pro-EU debates with Nigel Farage is sure to further split opinion.
The bottom line is that despite the recent upheavals, the United States of Europe is going to happen and we can become part of the process and have a strong voice in shaping the future EU or we can stay outside and be swept along with what others decide.
We are kidding ourselves if we believe the anti-EU supporters that we can go it alone and remain a global influence because we won't and that is the message we have to get across. I just fear that Nick Clegg is just too much damaged goods to be of any benefit to such an important decision. 

Can I Call You Hery?

After his success at the Oscars with the mangled introduction of singer Idina Menzel, a new career beckons for John Travolta as the person who introduces heads of state at banquets.
Obama should hire him and invite a select group of countries as i'm sure Travolta would have no problems with introducing the Indonesian head of state, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono or even Qatar's Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Than.
The Bhutan representative, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, would be invited as would Turkmenistan's Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow and Samoa's Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi but pride of place and sure to induce a meltdown in the Travolta brain is the new president of Madagascar, Hery Martial Rajaonarimampianina Rakotoarimanana.

Conclusive Evidence The Earth Is 6000 years old

The Earth is only 6,000 years old and the whole Universe being created by the Big Bang is nonsense. Creation.com has provided a handbook called Refuting Evolution, a guide for students, parents, and teachers to counter the arguments made by those silly people for evolution.  

• Red blood cells and hemoglobin have been found in some (unfossilized!) dinosaur bone. But these could not last more than a few thousand years—certainly not the 65 million years from when evolutionists think the last dinosaur lived^.
• The earth’s magnetic field has been decaying so fast that it couldn’t be more than about 10,000 years old. Rapid reversals during the flood year and fluctuations shortly after just caused the field energy to drop even faster.
• Helium is pouring into the atmosphere from radioactive decay, but not much is escaping. But the total amount in the atmosphere is only ¹/₂₀₀₀ of that expected if the atmosphere were really billions of years old. This helium originally escaped from rocks. This happens quite fast, yet so much helium is still in some rocks that it couldn’t have had time to escape—certainly not billions of years.
• A supernova is an explosion of a massive star—the explosion is so bright that it briefly outshines the rest of the galaxy. The supernova remnants (SNRs) should keep expanding for hundreds of thousands of years, according to the physical equations. Yet there are no very old, widely expanded (Stage 3) SNRs, and few moderately old (Stage 2) ones in our galaxy, the Milky Way, or in its satellite galaxies, the Magellanic clouds. This is just what we would expect if these galaxies had not existed long enough for wide expansion.
• The moon is slowly receding from earth at about 1½ inches (4 cm) per year, and the rate would have been greater in the past. But even if the moon had started receding from being in contact with the earth, it would have taken only 1.37 billion years to reach its present distance. This gives a maximum possible age of the moon—not the actual age. This is far too young for evolution (and much younger than the radiometric ‘dates’ assigned to moon rocks)^.
• Salt is pouring into the sea much faster than it is escaping. The sea is not nearly salty enough for this to have been happening for billions of years. Even granting generous assumptions to evolutionists, the seas could not be more than 62 million years old—far younger than the billions of years believed by evolutionists. Again, this indicates a maximum age, not the actual age.

There it is then, conclusive evidence that the Big Bang never happened, the Earth was actually made by God a few thousand years ago and we can now stop believing all the overwhelming mass of scientific evidence about evolution and the creation of the Universe.

West As Much To Blame For Debacle In Ukraine

The last few days have been interesting with regards to Russia, Ukraine and the West, mostly because Russia is considered to be the bad guy who should have sanctions against it and be ostracised from everything from the G8 to the Olympics committee, but nobody is sure exactly why.
With some gentle probing the case against Russia quickly falls away and it is the West and the EU who end up looking like the bad guys so might be better to not look too hard if we can help it. 
It does all very much remind me of the late 80s when the Cold War was in full swing when Russia was the enemy and we were expected to hate everything it said and did and accept unquestioningly that everything we did was great. 
Seems that view is still being upheld today and it boo at Moscow, cheers for Brussels, Washington and London and let's hide behind the curtain the Wests role in the Ukraine's breakup, this is little Ukraine being bullied by the big bad Russia who has all but declared war on Ukraine.
The West say that Viktor Yanukovich who is the man deposed by crowds of protesters in Ukraine was a dictator imposed on Ukraine by Moscow. Rather, he was elected in 2010 by 49% of the electorate which is more than David Cameron (36%), Angela Merkel (33%) and only slightly less than Obama (53%). What we have in the Ukraine is a situation where the West is cheering the ousting of a democratically elected leader.
As we found out in Kosovo, Egypt, Syria and Libya, the protesters we are backing to become the next Government are not all nice, democratic, Western-leaning individuals. Among the new Government wannabe's in Kiev are more than a few far-right parties such as Svoboda, who controls three ministries in the new interim government a little more than a year after the European Parliament expressed concern regarding Svoboda's growing support, warning that: 'the racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU's fundamental values and principles' and appealed to 'pro-democratic parties not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with Svobod'. A year later we are endorsing the same party as democratic.
Far from storming into Ukraine to prop up Yanukovich, Moscow kept away while conflict brewed there over the past three months. It was Western politicians who were stirring up the tensions in Ukraine, Senator John McCain, EU Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Catherine Ashton and US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria 'Fuck the EU' Nuland and John Kerry all pitched up in Kiev to support the protest camps and telling their inhabitants that theirs was a ‘just cause’ and meet with opposition leaders like Vitali Klitschko and advising them on how and when to form a new interim government to replace Yanukovich’s. It wasn't Russia meddling but the West.
Russia has sent 30,000 troops to the Crimea but apart from a few shots in the air on the 4th March, not a shot has been fired so while Russia should be rightly condemned for marching into another country, it is not only them being the bad guy here and the West has some rather awkward questions about its role in all this and it is doing its best to avoid them by upping the rhetoric against Russia.

Please God, Don't Let Them Draft Me

Ultra-orthodox Jews have turned out in there thousands in Jerusalem to protest against a parliamentary Bill that is set for the first time to draft some of them into the Israeli military.
Not that they are against joining the military on ethical or moral grounds but because they argue that spending all day praying defends Israel as much as the army.
The biggest shock is that they have been able to get away with this obvious blag since 1948.
Join the army or wear a silly hat and talk to an imaginary man in the sky and ask him to keep the country safe. Hmmm, let me think about that one.

Gravity Is Best Of British

It's the Oscars tonight and Gravity is expected to pick up a few statues with 10 Oscar nominations and as it's a British film, so well done us.
Some people are asking how can a film with a Mexican director, two American A-listers and the backing of a major U.S. studio and wasn't even set in Britain (or any country for that matter) possibly be British?
It is all down to the British Film Institute who can claim a film for Britain if there is 'significant British creative involvement'.
A film must score 16 points out of a possible 31 to pass. Gravity passes if you count its Mexican director, Alfonso Cuaron as British because he lives in London and it was produced by Brit David Heyman and was shot at Shepperton Studios hiring British artists and technicians and used a British company, Framestore, for its visual effects.
If that isn't enough British creative involvement' to claim it for Queen and country, Cuaron explained that: 'There's a series of rules that make a film eligible for a British film or not. And 'Gravity' definitely has all the requirements'.
Basically, it's a British film because we said so (and because we counted the Mexican as a Brit) so here's hoping that Gravity, which is actually an amazing film if a little slow paced in places, sweeps the boards and we can make comments about how we remember when America made films like this.
As a strange quirk of twisting the criteria to claim things as ours, George Clooney is now officially English and therefore qualifies to be Prime Minister and is officially allowed to start using the letter 'U' in words.
You snooze you lose America, now ya'll have a nice day and all that.

China's 9/11

It is depressing watching the news most days and although the agenda is dominated by events in the Ukraine, news of horrific events unfolding in China where 10 Xinjiang separatists hacked to death at least 33 people and injured 130 in a train station.
'I saw two attackers, both men, one with a watermelon knife and the other with a fruit knife. They were running and chopping whoever they could' described one eye witness.
Shocking to hear and can only assume how horrific it must have been to witness.
The Xinjiang separatists are the same group who killed two tourists when they ploughed a car into a crowd in Tiananmen Square in October and left six people dead in 2008 when they exploded two buses.
The extremists are from the north-western region of Xinjiang and are trying to seek independence from China.
As with most act of terror, it is always the innocent men, women and children targeted by these kinds of maniacs and not the Government who they have the grievance with.
As with all terror attacks, there is no justification for the killing of innocent civilians no matter how much of a cause you may feel you have and we can only hope that those responsible are caught and dealt with by the Chinese Government to deter any further terrorist acts.
As for those people who are saying that China bought it upon itself, as many people said about America when the Twin Towers were hit or when Israel attack Lebanon or Palestine for firing rockets into Israel, if someone has a grievance with a Government, take it to the Government and not to the innocent people going about there everyday lives because that just makes you an evil bastard.

John Kerry Uses Humour To Ease Tensions

Since his foul up which accidentally saved tens of thousands of Syrian lives, John Kerry has become the man to listen to on international dealings. Not because he is particularly good but because of his humorous ability to put both feet in his mouth in a way that any contortionist would be proud of. 
His latest guffaw inducing comment came in an interview on CBS’s 'Face the Nation' where he accused the Russian leader of: 'acting in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext'.
I didn't see it myself but i assume he kept a straight face when he said it although with all that botox in his face he probably had no choice.
A light hearted moment to make us chuckle in an otherwise terrible situation and William '14 pints' Hague who is the UK version of John 'It's the way i tell 'em' Kerry is on the television looking suitably sombre as he talks about his 'concern over the escalation of tensions in Ukraine' and how he is due to fly to Kiev with Ukraine's new leaders.
Never fear, the Chuckle Brothers Kerry and Hague are on the case and with two such dangerously stupid people involved it can only be a roaring success.