A friend just bought an iPad. I’m trying to describe to him from memory how to get PDFs into iBooks using iTunes. My stuttering, confused explanation told him everything he needed to know about iTunes’ ease of use. In the end, I suggested he just email the PDFs to his iPad.

Because fuck iTunes.

…the US gets three new models of Kindle, and we (and presumably the world) just get one? The cheapest, least innovative one?

And we have to pay £40 extra over the US price?

I know, I’m sure everyone else will get the new Kindles in a few months too. They can’t launch everywhere all at once. But somehow I don’t think that price is going to be brought into line any time soon.

There’s something pretty interesting in the exclusion zone there.

“Starting in 1976 a new and powerful radio signal was detected worldwide, and quickly dubbed the Woodpecker by amateur radio operators.”

It’s one of three Over The Horizon radar systems used by the Soviet Union. More information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Woodpecker

More photos: http://carbonangel.co.uk/site/chernobyl-series-2010/chernobyl-series-moscow-eye

It’s like it’s still the Cold War, and everyone is afraid of abrupt nuclear explosions and slow death by radiation. People associate “radiation” and “nuclear” with “bomb”, because the only time anything relating to these terms is reported in the news, it is about something bad. Usually either an explosion, or a poisoning.

The recent situation at Fukushima in Japan gave reporters both, of course, which I’m sure they loved. Why, this hysteria practically creates itself*.

*It doesn’t.

As did Chernobyl, although back then, there was no 24 hour rolling news to keep the hysteria level up. Chernobyl is particularly interesting, and I’d encourage anyone to read up on it, there’s plenty of material around the web to start with. What’s most interesting to know, though, is that people seem to constantly expect nuclear-related things to explode, when in fact they just can’t or won’t. Chernobyl was a steam explosion, not a nuclear explosion. Fukushima was some loose hydrogen igniting. The real risk is a leak of radiation, which news agencies also misreport as being lethal/non-lethal, without mentioning the time factor. A lethal dose is only a lethal dose after a certain amount of time. Jamming your hand in a fire for half a second is nothing like as bad as leaving it in there for an hour.

And so to today’s news of a Swedish man attempting to build a nuclear reactor in his house. Here are two of the questions the BBC interviewer asked:

“But the difficulty is, if you had achieved your aim of splitting the atom, you would have killed yourself in the process, wouldn’t you?”

“Do you live with anybody else, any neighbours that could have been affected if you had managed to create this explosion?”

Yes, if it’s nuclear, it has to be about explosions and death. Even if you don’t know much about the topic, the clue is in what he was was arrested for: possessing nuclear material, not trying to cause an explosion.

Germany’s government, a country whose nuclear reactors are at, shall we say, a lesser risk of an earthquake and tsunami, has decided that it’s now too risky to have nuclear power at all. Build them right, Germany, and you’ll be fine. Additionally, is coal pollution somehow risk-free? No problem there? Doesn’t matter, because news-fuelled nuclear hysteria can take hold at any time, and it can lose your government precious votes if you aren’t seen to be having a knee-jerk reaction.

Also, because I’m me, this totally reminded me of that episode of Stargate SG-1 where some guy builds a stargate in Sam’s basement out of bits of old toasters and stuff ordered off the internet.