New Posts Will Resume Soon
July 18th, 2009
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It’s been almost a week since TAM-7, which I may add, was pretty awesome, and it therefore might seem a bit strange that I haven’t posted anything about the trip or for that matter, posted anything new at all.
Unfortunately, despite being a complete blast, TAM was also a bit of a burn-out weekend. Way too much time awake and not enough asleep, a bit too much drinking and way too much time crammed into coach class seats on aircraft really does not lend itself to optimal health. Coming back from the event I was jet-lagged, overtired, dehydrated and just not in the best condition in general. It’s been my experience that when I allow myself to reach the point of total burnout, I often will find that I have contracted an illness due to my immune system operating at bellow its normal capacity.
That seems to have happened on this occasion as well. Upon arriving home I found myself with a mild fever, achy joints, fatigue and some very swollen glands. My doctor tells me it’s probably a viral infection (which one he does not know, because there are dozens that can cause these symptoms). He also told me that there is little medicine can do for me, and I just have to wait this one out. Perhaps I should have gone to a homeopath, because I’m sure they’d tell me they could cure me – whether or not they actually could, but since real doctors are forced to tell the truth, they have to admit sometimes that they don’t have much to offer for a given condition.
That being said, I feel better today than I did yesterday and I felt better yesterday than I did the day before. Assuming this trend continues at its current rate, I should be back to 100% capacity either tomorrow or the day after. (hopefully)
I could certainly post more today. I’m not so deadly ill that I can’t manage to crank out a few pages of text, but I’d rather just rest and drink fluids, because that’s generally the best way to get over this kind of thing.
If this post has any spelling or grammatical errors in it, then just deal with it. I still have the tail end of a low grade fever and I’d rather just get some rest tonight than worry about that kind of thing.
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Amazing Meeting, Announcements, Misc, Website. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 19th, 2009 at 9:23 am
I hope it’s not the Swine Flu…. I hear it’s almost as deadly as the plain old flu
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July 19th, 2009 at 9:53 am
The00mikearvi said:
No it’s not the flu. Obviously Dr.Buzz0 is suffering from overexposure to low-level electromagnetic wave sickness. That or or the DU he owns is finally giving him radiation poisoning.
(don’t push yourself Steve, get well soon)
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July 19th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Just glad to see you back.
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July 19th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
I have had similar health incidents before. After burning the candle at both ends for a few days, I end up with a fever or a stomach bug. I’ve since gotten too old to spend several days burning out. I shouldn’t have when I was young either. The immune system is constantly battling invaders and it doesn’t work very well when you don’t have enough rest or don’t get enough fluids and descent nutrition.
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July 20th, 2009 at 12:17 am
The00mikearvi said:
I once had a problem with the flu. I had to call a chimney sweep.
thank you thank you, I’m here all week!
[it's funnier when you say it because the fact that it is spelled differently doesn't get in the way]
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July 22nd, 2009 at 12:27 am
Maybe you could make a post about this:
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/big-alaska-looks-to-small-nuclear/
It strikes me as proof that this kind of small nuclear power generation is irresponsible now that someone like Palin is latching onto it. This is the same Palin that wrote an Op-ed saying the cap and trade bill was stupid.
Is there any way small nuclear like that could be remotely safe? It just doesn’t seem possible to me.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 3:23 am
It’s actually easier to make small reactors inherently safe than big ones (and big reactors with the exception of the RBMK do have a very good safety record so there’s really not anything to worry about).
Oh and just because an idiot likes an idea doesn’t discredit the idea (a stopped clock is right twice a day, just like even Sarah Palin gets things right from time to time (and yes, cap and trade is every bit as stupid as abstinence only sex education).
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July 22nd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Bruce,
To misquote the mothers of most of those here:
“If Sara Palin told you NOT to jump off a bridge, would you jump off?”
I find your shortsighted, shallow, identity politics increasingly tiresome.
In fact, it’s one of the thing’s that has gone horribly wrong with America.
The truth doesn’t matter, does it Bruce? What’s far more important is whether or not the one delivering the message has the endoresment of your idiological masters right?
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July 22nd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Bruce said:
Yeah… Palin likes it therefore it must be bad.
Also, I hope you’re sure to smoke as much as possible. Adolf Hitler was really big on quitting smoking and talked about how bad it was for one’s health. We all know what a bastard Hitler was, so I figure smoking must be really good for you, just because Hitler said it was bad.
Bruce said:
Believe it or not, people live for months at a time next to small nuclear reactors.. They do it in sealed tubes, sharing their atmosphere with the reactor, while immersed under hundreds of feet of ice cold sea water.
Some other people live on decks located between a couple of small (by commercial standard) reactors and a fully functional combat airport above them.
And yet… somehow this is safe.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I find your shortsighted, shallow, identity politics increasingly tiresome.
In fact, it’s one of the thing’s that has gone horribly wrong with America.
Well, it’s clear who is responsible for that with the previous administrations politicization of the justice department and CIA. They should stand trial and then maybe there’d be some faith restored in our government. Thats another topic, though. Also, its the other way around, it’s people like you who fail to call out groups of people on their errors that allowed things to continue for so long as they did under Bush that are the problem. We need more indentity politics, because identity politics is all about identifying the people who are the problem and marginalizing them.
I hope that this break in posting by Dr.Buzz is giving him a chance to reflect on whats important. Even if Obama is not perfect on energy policy – why is energy policy so important? It’s just one part of his political platform. There are a lot of other things like Education, refocusing NASA’s priorities, saving american jobs and so forth. Also, maybe there will be advances in technology that allow us to make it work really well, such as the advances that allowed the apollo program to be succesful.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I suppose you mean nuclear submarine reactors. Yeah right, they are safe, what about the Kursk?
http://archive.peacemagazine.org/v05n3p18.htm
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July 22nd, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Bruce said:
There was nothing wrong with Kursk’s reactors.
The men in her engine room lived for nine days after the explosion while the authoritarian Russian government dithered.
Eventually, they ran out of air to breathe.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Bruce said:
Wasn’t a reactor problem. Nor was it a reactor problem that caused the loss of the two US nuclear submarines (the Scorpion or the Thresher). Operations in deep waters are dangerous and nobody is going top claim that they’re not. However, the US Navy has a spotless safety record when it comes to nuclear reactor operation.
It’s not just submarine reactors that demonstrate that small reactors can be built with extremely good safety. Some of the highest regarded reactors in the world, when it comes to safety include small reactor designs like the SLOWPOKE and TRIGA designs.
Bruce said:
I’m not so sure that would be a good idea. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a big fan of Bush’s policies, but it’s generally been regarded as a bad precident and a problem with moving forward when an administration starts considering wholesale prosecution against the previous administration. It can very quickly turn into a nasty situation which will only result in more reprisals down the road.
Ford was faced with a very sticky situation like that. With the hindsight of history, he seems to have done the right thing.
Bruce said:
“Control a country’s energy and you control that country” – Henry Kissinger
“Energy is the ability to do work. Once you come to grasp with the implications of that statement, you will understand why this is of such vital importance” -me
The reality of things is that we have a pretty good idea what we need to do things. The Apollo program didn’t really involve any one day that suddenly an amazing technical discovery made it all possible. We knew back in the 1950’s and earlier we could go to the moon. We knew doing so would need a huge rocket and we even knew roughly how big it would need to be. The engineering of all the valves, gas regulators, communications relays, thrusters, sensors and so on wasn’t really all that revolutionary. A huge project, yes, but nothing we didn’t know we could do.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Bruce said:
What about doing it the other way around: identifying bad things and preventing people from doing them, instead of creating an arbitrary standard of who is “good” and who is “bad” and preventing the “bad” people from doing anything, even if the “bad” people have some good ideas?
Bruce said:
The Kursk’s reactor was recovered in one piece and operable. The Titanic wasn’t an indictment of the safety of reciprocating steam engines running on coal; it sank when it hit an iceberg, and that didn’t have anything to do with the engines–what does the Kursk have to do with the safety of turbine steam engines running on nuclear fission?
Also–about the linked article–what they’re talking about when they say it’s the best place for the reactor to be is the literal physical impossibility of a meltdown. With the reactor shut down and surrounded by cubic *miles* of literally ice-cold seawater (as in 28-32 degrees, which is lower than the freezing point of fresh water, but saltwater is still liquid at those temperatures, which is why salt melts ice), you couldn’t ask for a better cooling system.
Do you know how these reactors work? That’s not a rhetorical question–do you?
Bruce, I think you’re trying to be a good liberal instead of following your conscience. Why do you have to prove your loyalty to some “movement?”
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July 22nd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Stewart Peterson said:
Because following an ideology is easer than thinking for one’s self. It’s the sign of a lazy intellect.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 8:16 pm
DV82XL said:
No DV82XL. Not the sign of a lazy one. It’s the sign of a missing one.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Bruce said:
Uh.. Do you have anything other than Palin supporting it to dispute that reactor design? I remember reading about it a whole ago. It looked pretty sweet to me.
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July 22nd, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Chem Geek Gregor said:
No, no, no. Don’t you get it?
Palin supported it! I mean it MUST be bad! [/sarcasm]
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July 23rd, 2009 at 2:09 am
KLA said:
Indeed – I consider myself very “left” in the sense that I’m implacably opposed to Social Darwinism (either plutocracy at home or imperialism abroad) but I disagree with many of the positions of the movement-left. I hate tribalistic politics with a passion.
By the way, on the Climate Resistance blog I mentioned your Energy from Thorium post on the biased WWF/Allianz report…
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