Why is nuclear hysteria on the rise in Japan...

...even as the risk of meltdown is falling? New Scientist has the scoop and it proves yet again that it's not the problem you expect that gets you - it's the one that you didn't realize was coming. Or the one caused by a complex series of unlikely events.

The pools are housed on the top floors of the reactor buildings. Spent fuel rods are transferred to them as soon as they come out of the reactor itself, and are kept under water to cool them down and trap the radioactive material within them. Once they have cooled down enough, the rods are then transferred to outdoor pools for long-term storage.

It is the pools inside the reactor buildings that are causing the problem. Two of the reactor buildings - 1 and 3 - have lost parts of their roofs, thanks to the hydrogen explosions that have taken place over the last few days. While these explosions apparently did not damage the reactors within, they have left the pools exposed to the outside air.

Why Microsoft killed the T-Mobile Sidekick

Prior to the iPhone, the best SmartPhone for someone who didn't need Outlook access was arguably the T-Mobile Sidekick. It provided excellent cloud capabilities (all contacts, calendars, photos, etc. were synced auto-magically) back when "the Cloud" was still conceptual to Microsoft and Apple. It was a good phone with strong battery and antenna. It had an excellent screen, a unique design, and an excellent hard keyboard. And it had the cheapest unlimited data plan out there, appealing to low-end users. Then, it was bought by Microsoft who promptly let the servers die, losing customer data, and then turned it into the Kin. Which they promptly killed, in favor of Windows 7 phones.

Why did Microsoft buy such a valuable piece of technology and then abandon it? Insiders claim it was a combination of factors: (1) the psychotic obsession with making every operating system a branch of Windows (pushed by the release by 18 months), (2) the internecine squabbling within the Microsoft mobile division amongst managers, and (3) a complete lack of actual vision for what the behemoth wants to produce for a phone.

Overall, it appears that Microsoft simply never saw the Apple/Google SmartPhone revolution coming. So, every move in the last 3 years - Windows Mobile 6.X, the Windows Phone 7 announcements, the Sidekick/Hiptop/Kin moves, the Microsoft Courier project - are all signs of panic as they try to figure out how to proceed and who to copy. Expect more casualties in the months ahead.

Rest in Peace, Sidekick. You will be missed.

Don't panic over Swine Flu "Pandemic"

Since I was mostly out-of-pocket this weekend, I was unable to post. But it was interesting to watch on my iPhone's browser as the swine flu repots swelled from concern to panic to pandemic in about 72 hours. Currently, the latest news/rumor is that the World Health Organization is ready to declare the Mexican swine flu to be a pandemic. Why, exactly, it is a "pandemic" at this point is unclear, since the spread appears to be moderate.

The WHO raised its pandemic alert level for the swine flu virus to phase 4, indicating a significantly increased risk of a pandemic, a global outbreak of a serious disease.

The last such outbreak, a "Hong Kong" flu pandemic in 1968, killed about 1 million people.

Although the new flu strain has so far killed people only in Mexico, there were more than 40 confirmed cases in the United States, including 20 at a New York City school where eight cases were already identified.

At this point, the unique point about this flu is that there is no vaccine for it. Therefore, your best strategies to avoid infection are the usual ones: (1) try to stay healthy - eat well, get plenty of sleep, (2) avoid people who are known to be sick with the flu, and (3) if you are sick, try to stay home rather than "working through it" in the office, which is likely to spread the virus farther. People are making much of the fact that 149 people have died from the disease, but remember that millions die annually from the flu despite vaccines, and most of those are because people were already in a weakened condition.

Fight the panic with facts, and take care of yourself. Those are your best bets.

Inspired by Banking Bailout, GM Says "Nationalize Us Too!"

Is there no one out there capable of thinking long-term anymore? It was bad enough that the Republican Party lead the charge to nationalize banking by buying equity stakes in the largest banks in the country. Now, GM and Chrysler are asking for the Federal government to buy a stake so that the two companies can successfully merge.

An injection of $3 billion in equity to support a GM acquisition of Chrysler would be roughly equivalent to the current, depressed value of the top U.S. automaker.

It would also give U.S. taxpayers a large stake in the turnaround of a struggling auto industry that employs over 350,000 American workers and is credited with supporting employment for another 4.5 million in related fields...

In addition to its equity stake, the U.S. government is also being asked to provide support for the GM-Chrysler merger by taking over some $3 billion in pension obligations under the terms of a proposal now before the government for review, the first source said.

How long will it be until we face the fact that some companies must be allowed to fail? It is one thing to attempt to stabilize the economic system by ensuring liquidity. It is another to prop up a manufacturing company with a proven history of incompetence. If we keep up these knee-jerk bailouts, we're going to suddenly find ourselves living in a socialist nation where the government sets the amount of our paychecks and decides who to hire and fire.

PhotoRescue Saved My Bacon!

I have a photographer friend who gave me some sage advice. "Don't invest in high volume memory cards for your digital cameras," he said. "Instead, but a lot of smaller cards which add up to the number of gigabytes you need. That way, if one goes bad, you haven't lost a full day of shooting." I noted the wisdom, but thought there was no reason for ME to follow it. After all, I thought, when have I *EVER* had a memory card become corrupted?

Well, last night, it happened! This weekend has been the Districts Quiz for the Bible Quiz Team I coach. I am sort of the unofficial photographer for the whole event, taking team pictures of all of the other teams as well as candids all the day long. I took over 600 pictures with my Digital Rebel XT, and was looking forward to getting them into iPhoto in preparation for uploading to Flickr overnight. Well, I got back to the hotel and had some problems with an old memory card reader (which is now bound for the trash). In a few easy steps, it managed to COMPLETELY corrupt the memory card - my single 4 gigabyte memory card. Suddenly, the whole weekend was lost!

In panic, I went to Google and typed in "rescue photos from a compact flash card" and prayed that there would be something other than the $200/hour data recover services. There was! I found Photo Rescue, which is a piece of software for both MacOS X and Windows which can pull the data off of damaged cards for $29 (one-time registration fee). I was desperate, so I gave it a try. It took HOURS to reconstruct the data on the card, but once it did... IT WAS A COMPLETE SUCCESS!!! It not only recovered the 600+ photos from yesterday, but another 300+ photos previously deleted from the card by my purposeful action! At this point, I highly recommend this piece of software if you wind up with a similar disaster.