Month: March 2011

Which is better for regular international calls: Skype or Google Voice?


An example of why I love participating in Quora. Which is better for regular international calls: Skype or Google Voice?
Which is better for regular international calls: Skype or Google Voice?
In another Quora discussion, I received feedback from a Google sr. software engineer! I regularly see real players in Quora. Pretty cool.

Eat your spirulina, for brain, cardio health; also a complete protein.


Spirulina could be harvested off the surface o...
Image via Wikipedia

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p4njL-53

I’m keeping my bottle of spirulina out where I can remember to eat it. After experimentation, I’ve found that the easiest way to consume it is to shake it in a jar w/ water and down it.

Spirulina is one of the best, cleanest sources of a complete protein. One can get into trouble by not eating meat (well, you have to know what you’re doing) but whether you eat meat or not, spirulina can at least replace some of one’s meat consumption. It also chelates iron, which I’m thinking is especially great for men, who otherwise have little recourse to having too much iron (an oxident). BTW, shedding excess iron is also another great reason for men and post menopausal women to donate blood, IMO. Benefits of spirulina.

Facebook scam fraud alert


Shortlink: http://wp.me/p4njL-4W

Over the last few days several “alumni” who say they attended the same college that I attended have asked to friend me. The tip-off that something’s wrong was that they had no other friends. I then checked them out in the online directory of my college and none of them were listed (I have been approached by four “people” so far).

All four of them had only one other piece of information and that was an additional email address (hotmail or aol accts) .

This may be some kind of new scam. So if you have warm-fuzzies about some institution that you have attended, don’t let that be a reason to let your guard down. Don’t let people that you don’t know into your network w/o checking them out first.

If you have loved ones in China/Japan/Indonesia, SE Asia send them this: “Serious Danger of a Full Core Meltdown”: Update on Japan’s Nuclear Catastrophe.


Shortlink: http://wp.me/p4njL-4O

The only reason my family survived the 20th Century is by escaping the pogroms, then escaping the nazis. MOST PEOPLE DO NOT THINK LIKE MY FAMILY HAS, and they died horribly. If you have loved ones in Asia, they need to be ready in case they need to leave, and need to be in readiness alert.
If this gets bigger than Chernobyl, you'll want to put as much distance as possible between Japan and your family.

From this website, read whole transcript of Democracynow interview , click on “printer friendly version”

“Serious Danger of a Full Core Meltdown”: Update on Japan’s Nuclear Catastrophe

(…)JUAN GONZALEZ: Karl Grossman, you have been following now for decades the claims of the industry, the politicians, about nuclear energy, both in the United States and around the world. Your assessment of what has happened here and what it will mean in terms of nuclear power in the future?

KARL GROSSMAN: (emphasis mine, FP) What has happened here is an enormous nuclear power tragedy, and we’re on the cusp, I fear, of an even more horrific tragedy, with a loss of cool down accident—and we have multiple loss of cool down accidents underway—and, importantly, breach of containment. And as Paul said, that’s quite possible now. Just the most enormous disaster, except for a loss of water accident in a spent fuel pool, where you have tons upon tons of nuclear poisons—no containment, except for some corrugated steel ceiling. That stuff gets out in a loss of water accident, and it would get out explosively, because of the fuel rods being made of zirconium. And I could explain that. It will just burst into the environment, become airborne, affect not only Japan but much of the world.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Karl, in the reporting that you’ve done in the past on the battles over the siting of nuclear plants in the United States, because, obviously, all of the reports are saying, “Well, that’s all happening in Japan; here in the United States, we’re in a much better situation with our plants.” But one of the things that you uncovered was an assessment that the government did back in the 1980s of the potential—the potential deaths and injuries that might occur from a reactor accident and a breach of containment in the United States. Could you talk about that memo?

KARL GROSSMAN: Yeah. They have known the consequences all along. This is a report—it’s called “Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences 2″—done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not Greenpeace, and it projects peak early fatalities, peak injuries, peak cancer deaths, scale cost in billions in terms of property damage, and a large hunk of the earth being rendered uninhabitable for millennia. And just, for example, for the Indian Point 3 nuclear plant, which is about 35 miles from where we sit now in New York, 50,000 peak early fatalities; 167,000 peak early injuries; cancer deaths, 14,000; scale cost of billions, they say $314 billion—in 1980s dollars, we’re talking about a trillion.

As to the likelihood of a severe core melt accident, in 1985 the NRC acknowledged that, over a 20-year period, the likelihood of a severe core melt accident to be basically 50/50 among the 100 nuclear power plants—there’s 104 now—in the United States. They’ve known all along here in this country that disaster could come, and there’s a good likelihood of it coming, and they’ve known the consequences.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You’re saying that the NRC itself estimated a 50/50 chance of a meltdown in our plants here within 20 years?

KARL GROSSMAN: Over a 20-year period. That was formal testimony provided to a watchdog committee in Congress chaired by Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, when he asked the question, “What does the NRC and its staff believe the likelihood to be of a severe core meltdown?” So, you know, when you hear these lines about, “Oh, the chances of a severe core meltdown, infinitesimal,” and if there is, like you’re hearing these reports out of Japan, an accident, “Oh, just some minor effects among the population”—not at all.

Could Dior management truly have been ignorant of John Galliano’s rabid anti-semitism up until Feb. 2011?


Shortlink: http://wp.me/p4njL-4B

RE: Galliano video and Huffington post link

Could Dior management truly have been ignorant of John Galliano’s rabid anti-Semitism up until Feb. 2011? Is it possible that Dior (and other firms that he worked with) did not know about John Galliano’s anti-Semitism until Feb. 2011?

To answer my own question: only if Galliano was having a psychotic break…. and I don’t think he was.

As a sidebar, this is funny, in a dark way, since as a gay man, Galliano would have herself attended said death camp wearing a darling little pink triangle.