Nebraska, The Good Half-Life; the Stupid Award; Radioactivity; and Religious Fundamentalism

This week's Stupid Award is a tie between that fundamentalist preacher in Florida who burned a Koran for no apparent reason and the enraged Afghanistani fundamentalists who killed those poor UN workers. Like they had anything to do with it. Sometimes I think they should all just be locked in a far away place and have at it......whoa, now that I think about it, that's a bit what's going on.

After ten years of us bombing their country, carpet bombing their mountains, shooting cruise missiles into their dining rooms, installing and keeping in power a corrupted drug infused narco state government, all the while bad-mouthing Islam and harassing Muslim US citizens, you'd think those Fundamentalist Afghanis would be more grateful......

In the Runner-up category of what to do with old newspapers, having already won the Stupid of the Week Award earlier this year for building a nuclear reactor on the world's most active fault lines, 7 tons of highly radioactive water per per hour is leaking into the ocean at that Japanese nuclear power plant. Japanese workers are trying to stuff old newspapers into the concrete cracks of their water containment buildings to stop the leaking. Talk about low tech fixes to high tech problems.

I looked a map of Chernobyl on Wikipedia the other day and 400 sq. KM are still declared "unlivable." No people are allowed in that zone of death. Scientists are studying the wildlife in that radioactively polluted zone. The Japanese will be vacating large portions of the surrounding land for decades......and probably a "no-fishing" sign will be put up along the coast. Radioactive particulates are are being found in the US from coast to coast.

And speaking of old newspapers, The World Herald had coverage of the WWII Japanese Balloon Bomb that exploded above 50th and Underwood in Omaha in 1945. Over 9,000 of these floating wind-driven bombs were released into the atmosphere by the Japanese in their desperation toward the end of WW II, and a woman and her five children were killed in Oregon by one of these devices. In Omaha, the device is reported to have exploded above the ground and there were no Omaha casualties. And there is a plaque somewhere at that famous intersection. Today, untold trillions of these little particulate half-life time-bombs are falling from the skies and landing here from coast to coast. I will also note that the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant just a few miles north of Omaha is on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's list of three sites that need improved monitoring; and in case you didn't know, a 3.3 magnitude earthquake occurred between Columbus and Lincoln on Nov. 18, 2010, five miles underground.

Experts say the levels of radiation from the Japanese meltdown making it to the US in those same winds are extremely low, and that the half-life properties of these particulate sources of radiation are rapidly diminishing their harmful effects. It's too bad the current varieties of Religious Fundamentalism don't have a half-life like this.

Whatever happened to the religious fundamentals of forgiveness, and love your neighbor, and Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and help the sick, and the poor, and the downtrodden? That's the religious fundamentalism I can support and strive to exemplify.