As you have probably noticed, this page does not have a lot of updated content.   Sorry about that, but the fact of the matter is that I’ve been spending the vast majority of my time running for the US Congress.   Right now is an important time.   On May 18, delegates from town committees in my district will cast their votes in the state party convention.   How many votes I get will determine if I am the candidate or if I can move onto a primary.   As it stands now, I believe there will be enough votes for a primary but not enough for a win outright, so that means there will be a primary in August.

Each town in the district has a committee and those committees pick delegates to go to the convention.   I have to get out to town committee meetings and speak to the members and delegates in order to secure their votes.

I have to admit that I don’t expect to do as well as I’d like in the convention for a number of reasons.  One is that I started as a novice and really didn’t know how to go about the process for the first month or so.  I’ve got it down now, but my opponent has a head start.  He already managed to get a number of town committees to endorse him.  In these late days my opponent has been on a blitz of events in many towns across the district.   It’s important that I do the same.

After the May 18 convention, I should have a little bit more time to post, at least until we get closer to the primary, but I certainly won’t have as much time as I have in the past.

My Site Can Be Found Here

There are several things you can do if you support my candidacy:

1. Contribute money - I cannot stress this enough.  It’s critical.  I’m not asking for a handout for nothing here, because I’ve already just about broke my bank account spending money on this.   The money goes to a campaign committee and it’s not something I can use for just anything.  Campaigning is VERY expensive and contrary to popular belief, I am not rolling in big corporate donations.   If you donate $100, it will make a BIG difference right now.  If you donate $50 it will make a significant difference.   If you plan on contributing, please don’t hold off for some future date.  I really need it now.  Even if you can only contribute $10, it’s going to help.
2. “Like” My Page on Facebook - You can do this regardless of whether you are a US citizen or not and it’s very important and very helpful, so please do so and ask your friends and family to do so.  The page  can be found at www.facebook.com/Packard2012.   The reason this is important is that the convention and delegate votes are based heavily on a popularity contest.   They want to vote for whomever they think has a greater base of support.   A high number of likes on Facebook helps show that I do have that support.
3. Volunteer – Really, I need people in Connecticut for this, but at this time, volunteers for events and other functions are very very important.  Please contact me ASAP if you are in the area and can help out.
4. Get the word out - Please, talk about this on Facebook, post about it in your blogs, link to my stuff on sites like Digg and Reddit.   It helps get the profile up and, again, boosts the profile.

I’ve gotten a lot of contacts from people who live outside my area and want to help, but either don’t have any money to contribute or can’t contribute because they are not US citizens and who want to help out anyway.   Unfortunately, while I really appreciate that sentiment, aside from liking the content on Facebook and helping get the word out, there’s not much in terms of volunteer activities I can offer to those who are not physically close by.  As we move toward the general election, there might be more chances for those who want to contribute content or editing services to do so, but right now, that’s just not what we have to focus on.

For campaign-related contacts, please send email to Steve@packard2012.org

If there’s one thing I don’t care for, it’s political correctness:  the forbidding of certain words, concepts or ideas because they might offend or the forcing of topics to be dealt with in a manner that attempts to sugar-coat them to whatever extent necessary to stop people from being upset.  Granted, it’s wrong to use overtly offensive terminology or derogatory practices, but sometimes you have to deal with the fact that reality is not as everyone wishes it was.

It’s always been a problem in education, but recently it’s gotten way way out of hand, and it seems to be happening around the world.

In the UK, schools are now banning children making “best friends.”

Via the Sun:

TEACHERS are banning schoolkids from having best pals — so they don’t get upset by fall-outs.
Instead, the primary pupils are being encouraged to play in large groups.

Educational psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni said the policy has been used at schools in Kingston, South West London, and Surrey.

She added: “I have noticed that teachers tell children they shouldn’t have a best friend and that everyone should play together.

“They are doing it because they want to save the child the pain of splitting up from their best friend. But it is natural for some children to want a best friend. If they break up, they have to feel the pain because they’re learning to deal with it.”

Russell Hobby, of the National Association of Head Teachers, confirmed some schools were adopting best-friend bans.

First, I’d like to know how you can ban kids from having a “best friend,” although I can see how you could force them to drive their unacceptable relationship underground. I wonder what the punishment is for making a “best friend” or not spending equal time with all. And what if you’ve already established a friendship before entering the school?

This is the height of absurdity on every level. It’s perfectly natural for some kids to gravitate toward a play buddy or have a friend who is closer than the rest. Most people have a small inner circle of close friends who they associate with more than the rest of their peers. Clearly some of these relationships will end, either because kids drift apart or because they have an argument or falling out. That might or might not be unpleasant, depending on the circumstances, but really, that’s just life.

I’m not entirely surprised by the policy, however. It seems to be perfectly in line with where society is going.

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I just got back from the Reason Rally, a massive gathering of secularists on the National Mall in Washington DC.   The event was intended to show support for separation of church and state and solidarity amongst non-believers.   In general, it went quite well, but there were definitely a few things that I was a little put off by.

Some might think it a bad idea to attend something like the Reason Rally when running for political office.  After all, atheists are not generally well received, especially in the Republican party.   I certainly considered this, but in the end I decided it was worth the risk.   I really need to raise money for my campaign badly and the Reason Rally was an opertunity to see a lot of politically active people with similar concerns for the nation.   I also saw a number of people I’m acquainted with.   I handed out campaign flyers and hopefully this will translate to some contributions.

As for whether it will hurt me with the more conservative members of the party back home, that is certainly a concern.   I don’t intend to make a big deal of my attendance of the rally when I’m at more conservative committee meetings, but I certainly won’t deny it if I am asked.  I’m not going to lie to win, so the fact that I’m a non-believer is not something I can really hide.   As far as I am concerned, it’s really not a valid campaign issue.

The Good:

The rally went quite well overall.  Despite rain, over 20,000 people attended.   There were many great speakers, each of them offering a slightly different take on the importance of reason and maintaining a secular government.   I didn’t entirely agree with every speaker on every point, but most of them I could stand behind.  There were also a lot of people of different ages and backgrounds, which is great to see.  Some had traveled a long distance to make the rally.   Overall, I don’t think there’s any denying it was a huge success.

It was a very enjoyable event in general.  The speakers were great, the attendees were generally in very good spirits and it was a lot of fun to walk around and meet people from all over the country and a variety of backgrounds.   There wasn’t any bickering over who had the better seat or who might have cut in line to get refreshments or any of the other scuffles common at big public events.

There were some Christian protestors, as one might expect.  They kept to the side.   There were not many of them, perhaps a dozen.   Their presence seemed to be larger than it really was because they all had very big signs proclaiming the need to worship Jesus, obey the bible and so on.    They openly asked rally attenders to come over and talk to them and many did.   The protestors were quickly surrounded by atheists from the rally, who took them up on their challenge ton debate.

There were no incidents at all.  Some of the debates became spirited.  On occasion voices were raised.   I never heard any unrestrained name-calling, just a few arguments that got slightly loud, perhaps out of frustration.  Nobody was threatened and nothing even approaching violence occurred.  In most cases, the exchanges were entirely civil.

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Here are some of the latest measurements of radiation levels in the Fukushima region of Japan, these were made just last month.

There is something very striking about this image even at first glance.  Notice that the no-entry zone has absolutely no correspondence whatsoever to radiation levels.  It’s simply a circle drawn around the nuclear plant.   Much of the area has quite low radiation levels and some of the area outside the exclusion zone has higher radiation levels than the area within it.  Since there’s now no real danger of the reactors being further damaged or experiencing uncontrolled discharges, there’s absolutely no reason to enforce a no-entry zone based on such a blind method of drawing the map.   If a no-entry zone is to exist at all (which it really, at this point, does not need to)

Actual Doses experienced:

Few areas exceed 20 uSv per hour by very much.  The red area signifies areas with higher than this level, but most of this area is only slightly above 20 uSv/hr.  Areas with 20 uSv/hr or more exist in a relatively narrow strip running northwest from the area of the nuclear plant.

A person lives in an area where the external radiation dose rate is 20 uSv/hr.    Of course, this is really only outdoors and inside there will be less contamination, but for the sake of argument, lets assume the worst:  They get 20 uSv/hr and they stay in that are all the time.  There are 8760 hours in a year, so if they spend all their time outdoors in the 20 uSv/hr area, they receive 175,200 uSv per year or about 175 mSv per year.

This is still a bit unreasonable for what a person would actually be exposed to because it assumes they are always outdoors and standing over ground that has not been in any way cleaned of contamination.  Indoors, the level will be a lot lower.  If they travel outside the area of highest radiation, their dose is also reduced.   As time goes on, both radioactive decay and natural weathering and erosion will reduce levels further.   Therefore, after a year in such an area, it’s more reasonable to expect a total exposure of something like 100-150 mSv and maybe quite a bit less.

Most of the no-entry zone is far bellow this.  The yellow areas would produce only about half the dose of the highest regions and the areas shaded green would result in an annual dose of only about 10-30 mSv her year.  That’s hardly a lot of radiation.

How much radiation a person is exposed to in a year from background sources varies greatly depending on things like location, diet, travel and things like whether they happen to cook with natural gas, live in a granite structure or have radon seeping into their home’s foundation.   About 3 mSv is a normal average for those living at sea level in much of the world.   Of course, it’s quite common for it to be much higher than this.   Areas with background radiation in excess of 10 mSv per year are quite common.  A few areas have much higher.   In the Guarpari region of Brazil, background levels can exceed 175 mSv per year due to local deposits of uranium and thorium.  Residents of Kerala India experience doses of over 70 mSv per year.   Ramsir Iran is famous for having some of the highest levels in the world at over 260 mSv per year.  Locations across Africa and Australia may produce levels above 40 mSv per year.

Studies have been done of the populations of these areas and no ill effects have been documented as a result of the high radiation exposure.   Of course, the expected radiation exposure from living in such an area for an extended period of time would be much higher than for those in the Fukushima area.   Since the radioactivity in the Fukushima region is mostly limited to the surface and includes many relatively short-lived radioisotopes, it will diminish significantly in the years to come.   Natural sources, on the other hand, are constantly replenished.  So a person who lives in an area with increased radiation levels as a result of the Fukushima incident will not experience the same dose next year as they will this year.  It will be less.

And no, there have been no calls that high background areas of the world be evacuated and declared off limits.

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My appeal to those who have the authority and credentials to refute some of the idiocy and harmful policies that have followed the incident at the Fukushima Dachi nuclear power plant nearly a year ago.

To the health physicists, radiation safety officers, radiologists, reactor operators and other radiation safety professionals of the world:

In most circumstances professionalism and a desire to remain impartial to political matters dictates that those who art part of highly scientific professions exercise a great deal of restraint while addressing pressing policy concerns.   Research scientists especially tend to be very tight lipped about policy matters and are not prone to engaging the media directly.   In many circumstances, there is no direct response from professionals, or if there is, it comes in the form of highly moderated and subdued official statements from organizations.

There is certainly good reason for this.  Science professionals must remain impartial and not risk having their loyalties called into question.   Strong statements about pressing issues of policy can result in criticism which degenerates to mudslinging.  Some experts would simply rather not have to engage non-professionals who are likely to respond with a frustrating lack of understanding of their fields and believe their talents are better utilized in the world of scholarly journals and professional research.  There is, of course, some risk to ones reputation and to the integrity of ones work that can come from becoming heavily involved in issues of advocacy and direct engagement of the government, media and public.

That said, there exists a humanitarian crisis that is only getting worse due to a combination of unjustified fear of ionizing radiation and pressure to exploit this fear to advance a political or social agenda.   The result has been a enormous unnecessary human suffering.  Those with professional credentials and credibility in the field of radiation safety are in a unique position to help bring this crisis to an end, and, as such, have an ethical duty to do so.

Since the tragic earthquake and tsunami struck Japan almost a year ago, hundreds of thousands of Japanese remain in limbo due to unnecessary evacuations and continued restrictions on habitation or even visitation to the area around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.   The earthquake and tsunami killed tens of thousands and left whole communities devastated.   In such circumstances, the survivors want nothing more than to recover what property they can and begin to rebuild their lives.  Yet this has not been allowed to happen.  Despite the fact that the radiation exposure in the exclusion zone is well within any reasonable safety limits, many have been bared from even visiting their homes.   In the time after the disaster, domestic animals needlessly starved, property that could have been recovered was lost and serious chemical and biological hazards were allowed to fester.   This continues to happen even as the reactors have been stabilized and the most worrisome isotopes have long decayed away.

In addition to this tragedy, the Japanese government continues to spend enormous amounts of money in the cleanup of areas where radiation “hot spots” would result in only the most minimal of exposure and in a policy of idling most of the country’s nuclear power plants, resulting in huge economic losses.   What the people of Japan sorely need is to have the damaged regions of their nation rebuilt.  Every Yen spent on the unnecessary removal of soil is one more Yen that cannot be spent on the necessary rehabilitation of the areas effected by the quake and tsunami.  The message being given to citizens is that they are in grave danger, especially their children.  Inconsistent information, panic and confusion have resulted in enormous psychological stresses to those who have already suffered from the terrible natural disaster.

I therefore ask all radiation safety professionals of the world to stop biting your tongues and speak out loudly and in no uncertain terms, engaging the public, the media and the Japanese government as directly and candidly as possible.  The Japanese people need to be told the truth, without the fear-based spin that politicians often use to try to scare their way into office or special interest groups try to exploit.   The Japanese government must be urged to begin a far more measured and scientifically consistent approach to resettlement and repair that is based on the anual exposure from living in a region as compared with normal background in locations around the world.   Resources should not be wasted in the removal of small “hot spots” which are no more radioactive than clusters of uranium-bearing rock.   All areas should be made accessible to visitation and most to resettlement.    Repairs to local infrastructure and economic assets must take precedent over concerns of radioactivity that have little or no basis in science.

As experts in this field, you are the only ones who can challenge these policies and overrule them by virtue of the authority you have gained through education and experience.   Doing so may well open you to the mud-slinging of certain groups, who would rather not face the truth.   Yet in the face of such suffering, caving to the fear of being attacked by dishonorable interests is the height of cowardice.

In conclusion, I once again ask that all professionals in this field take individual initiative to take a stand against these harmful policies and messages and that groups like the Health Physics Society and others step up to the plate and pull no punches in defense of the well being of the people of Japan.  Your field stands for the furtherance of human understanding and for improved human safety and health.  These ideals demand that you step up to the plate and fight for the refugees of fear who continue to suffer in Japan.

Respectfully,

Stephen M. Packard
depletedcranium.com

A lot has been made recently of a plan by the European Union to assess fees on airlines landing in EU airports for the carbon dioxide emitted by those aircraft.   Many countries outside the EU are not taking kindly to the proposal.   The US is one of them, but Russia, China and a few other Asian countries have gone even further in calling for an end to proposals of carbon fees on airlines. Officially the fees took effect on January first, though not all EU countries are expected to begin enforcing them right away.

Via the BBC:

Countries rally against EU carbon tax on airlines
Delegates from 26 countries opposed to a new EU carbon tax on airlines are meeting in Moscow to consider possible retaliation, amid fears of a trade war.

China, India, Russia and the US are among the countries opposed to the EU fee, which took effect on 1 January.

Critics say the EU has no right to impose taxes on flights to or from destinations outside Europe.

But in December the European Court of Justice ruled that the EU tax on CO2 pollution from aircraft was legal.

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) creates permits for carbon emissions. Airlines that exceed their allowances will have to buy extra permits, as an incentive to airlines to pollute less.

“Nobody has fought harder than the European Union over the years to get a global deal”

The number of permits is reduced over time, so that the total CO2 output from airlines in European airspace falls.

The EU’s Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard, said the opponents should work with the EU to create a global scheme to cut aviation pollution.

“Nobody would be happier than the EU if we could get such a global deal,” she told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This is just a bad idea. If you’ve concerned about pollution and especially greenhouse gasses, don’t go after aviation. It’s the smallest, highest hanging of the fruit you can pick from. Well under 1% of human generated greenhouse gases come from aviation and yet that relatively small percentage comes with enormous benefits to mankind.

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The other day I was thumbing through an old USA Today newspaper. I don’t usually read USA Today and if I did, I wouldn’t usually read an old one, but I was in a waiting room. There was one thing that really caught my eye and put into perspective how poor the government can be at prioritizing spending.

Here it is:

In 2011, the government will spend about $502.5 million on research for Alzheimer’s and related dementias. About $450 million of that will come from the National Institutes of Health. By comparison, NIH is expected to spend $521 million on complementary alternative medicine and $823 million on obesity.

Lets first get some context here. Alzheimers is a debilitating condition that affects more than 26 million people, mostly those over 65, although it can occur much earlier. It’s a progressive degeneration of brain tissue. Once it begins, it will only get worse. Early symptoms include difficulty with memory, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. As time goes on, it slowly eats away at all mental function, leaving the sufferer, at first confused then increasingly incapable of doing anything. In highly progressed cases, the individual is really just not “there.” They can’t talk, can’t feed themselves, can’t recognize family and don’t know their own name. It’s really more of a slow death than anything else, although sufferers can live for years before dying, usually from an infection or some other secondary cause.

The implications of the disease are quite bad for society. The US alone spends over one hundred billion dollars a year caring for Alzheimers patients, many of whom need constant intensive care. There are ethical issues too, because it is difficult to draw the line at where a person is no longer capable of making their own decisions.   When first diagnosed, many sufferers have enough mental capacity to understand the horrible implications of what is happening to them.  It tears families apart and puts enormous burdens on care givers.  Long term care in nursing homes is extremely expensive and those who have no relatives or other means to pay for such care may end up in public institutions, which are becoming increasingly burdened by Alzheimers patients.  The problem will only grow as the population ages.

There are no known treatments for Alzheimers.   There are medications that do reduce the symptoms slightly, but none that will truly slow the progression.   There’s no known way to prevent it from happening and the cause remains elusive, although it is known to be at least partially genetic.  There may be other factors.  Some studies have found that the occurrence of Alzheimers may relate to everything from alcohol to exercise levels, but the relationship is small and does not account for most cases.

The thing about Alzheimers that is striking is that, based on everything we know, it *should* be possible to prevent it from happening.   Plaques form in the brain, but it’s not clear if this is the cause or the result of the destruction of brain tissue.   Brain cells die, toxins accumulate and the disease progresses.   Something is happening in the brain, some biochemical reaction is either occurring when it should not or is not occurring when it should.  It does not occur in everyone.  There should be a way to introduce a drug or chemical that will either suppress the destructive process or restart the renewing process that has stopped.  Having a better understanding of the genes that are involved can help a lot.  If that can be determined, then it might be possible to suppress those genetic effects.   First, the exact mechanism must be determined and understood, and there’s no reason to think that can’t be done.

Alternative medicine is nothing more than treatments and preparations that have already been tested or evaluated by science and rejected.  Most alternative therapies have no basis in science, have no plausible mechanism of action and have absolutely zero evidence of effectiveness.   As a general rule, they have all been extensively tested already.

If the government is to fund scientific studies, shouldn’t it spend more on the ones that actually have the potential to make an important difference than the ones that are just rehashing things that are already known to not work and are not even scientifically plausible?    That seems rather obvious to me.  Tell me I’m not alone on this.

Recently US presidential candidate Newt Gingirch has been getting a lot of flack, especially from skeptics, because of a statement he made stamens implying that the US could and should establish a permanent lunar colony and do so by the end of his presidential term.  That means there would be about eight years from start to finish.

Crazy?

Well, whatever you think of Gingrich, I have no problem with this idea.  Hell, I’d love to see the country run with it.

Lets consider the precedent.  In 1961 the United States couldn’t send a man to orbit (embarrassingly, kinda like now).  By 1962 we had sent a man into orbit for a brief period of time and were still a couple years away from actually having spacecraft do precision manuvers, dock or stay aloft for more than a couple of days.   In 1968, a spacecraft with three men orbited the moon and in 1969, two men landed on the moon.

Sure, today the US government takes decades to make a decidedly non-revolutionary space capsule, but it was not always that way nor does it need to be.

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Yes, I’m still running for the US Congress and if you’ve noticed that this blog has not been updated as much as it once was, that is why.  It’s taking up a lot of my time, but I will still try to add fresh content to this site.

One thing that certainly needs to be mentioned is that the campaign still is very much in need of donations.   We’ve received a few very generous contributions, but it has proven to be an extremely expensive endeavor.   If you can chip in a few dollars or a few hundred, it will help a great deal.   I cannot take any donations from those outside the United States (unless you’re a US citizen living abroad.)   That is simply federal election law.  There has always been concern that foreign interests could influence US politics, so it is illegal to in any way fund a US campaign.

There is now also a campaign store, where bumper stickers, shirts and so on can be purchased.  Because a portion of these purchases goes to the campaign, they can also only be purchased by US citizens.   If there’s a lot of demand for them from outside the US, we’ll consider allowing foreign citizens to buy them at cost, thus avoiding that problem, but as it stands that’s not currently being offered.  Really, I don’t see much reason why someone outside the US would want the campaign gear, anyway.

There are some things that anyone can do to help out, including foreign nationals and those who might not have a lot of money.  Some of the things that can be done are listed here.

The campaign needs help getting the word out on social media.   We also are trying to get news submitted to various sites to get more attention.  It helps a lot when such submissions come from multiple parties.

One thing we really need is a Wikipedia entry for the candidacy.  It’s really better if that kind of thing is done by a third party, not associated officially with the campaign.  It makes the article more credible and avoids it looking like it’s been written entirely by the campaign for good PR.   If it has multiple authors and editors, that is even better.  I certainly don’t want to write it myself, because that makes it look like little more than a self-produced advertisement.

We also need residents of Connecticut and especially the Third District who can help out in some other ways.

Stories like this really just grind my gears, because the way it is portrayed in the media is simply false.   If you read any of the reports about the recent extension of a moratorium on mining (uranium mining included) in the Grand Canyon area, you’d think that the big bad uranium mining industry was hell bent on destroying one of the world’s natural wonders and was only stopped by the Obama Administration from doing so.

Via the Mail and Guardian:

Obama rescues the Grand Canyon

Barack Obama took a big step towards preserving one of the world’s natural wonders on Monday, banning uranium mining on 400 000 hectares of land around the Grand Canyon.

The move, announced by the interior secretary, Ken Salazar, at a film screening in Washington DC, bans new mining claims around the canyon for the next 20 years. The area is rich in uranium deposits.

“A withdrawal is the right approach for this priceless American landscape,” Salazar said. “People from all over the country and around the world come to visit the Grand Canyon. Numerous American Indian tribes regard this magnificent icon as a sacred place and millions of people in the Colorado river basin depend on the river.”

Environmental groups said the move, which was opposed by the mining industry and some Republicans, would secure the American president’s environmental legacy.

The measure does not affect about 3 200 existing mining claims around the canyon, however. The administration said there would be continued development of 11 uranium mines.

Conservation groups said Obama had shown political courage in going ahead with the ban in the face of opposition. “Despite significant pressure, the president did not settle for a halfway measure,” said Jane Danowitz of the Pew Environment Group. In the final years of the George Bush presidency, when uranium prices were rising worldwide, mining companies filed thousands of claims in northern Arizona on lands near the Grand Canyon.

They also proposed reopening old mines adjacent to the canyon.

Salazar ordered a temporary halt to claims in 2009 after Obama came to office. Government officials proposed the 20-year ban in October last year, after an environmental review calling for the preservation of an “iconic landscape”.

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