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Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power plants produce heaps of radiation

December 13, 2007

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity. Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky. Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts.

The Science Behind Why Power Naps Help You Stay Productive and Creative

Even if you don't work in a job where napping is acceptable, there's a very clear reason why the best naps are the ones that are usually around the half-hour mark.

The video above, from ASAP Science (worth subscribing to on YouTube if you dig videos like this) explains how sleep cycles work, and how power naps—or those naps that do the most to boost cognitive function during the day—take advantage of the first two phases of your sleep cycle: stage one, where you're probably "dozing," or feel relaxed but if someone woke you you probably wouldn't even notice you'd been asleep, and stage two, where your brain starts to consolidate memories, organize its biological bookshelves, and shuts the brain off from external, non-dangerous stimuli. If you're the type who says "It takes me 10 minutes just to fall asleep," that 10 minutes is probably leading you into stage one—after that, you're in stage two. The trouble comes in stage three, or the part where we're sleeping deeply, and waking is difficult. That's when you start to feel groggy, and hate the idea of getting up. If you hate mornings, you're probably waking up during this phase. So the key to getting all of the benefits of naps without the drawbacks is to sleep only for about a half-hour, or the time it takes your brain to go through the first two stages, but not enter the third.

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Advocates of 'cliodynamics' say that they can use scientific methods to illuminate the past. But historians are not so sure.

Turchin has been taking the mathematical techniques that once allowed him to track predator–prey cycles in forest ecosystems, and applying them to human history. He has analysed historical records on economic activity, demographic trends and outbursts of violence in the United States, and has come to the conclusion that a new wave of internal strife is already on its way1. The peak should occur in about 2020, he says, and will probably be at least as high as the one in around 1970. “I hope it won't be as bad as 1870,” he adds.

Cliodynamics is viewed with deep scepticism by most academic historians, who tend to see history as a complex stew of chance, individual foibles and one-of-a-kind situations that no broad-brush 'science of history' will ever capture.

Finally, countless Americans are, by world standards, vastly over-paid and have been found out. There is nothing a laborer in Manhattan can do that someone just as competent but living in El Salvador cannot do for perhaps one-fifth the price. It should be no surprise that 6% of the world's population can no longer enjoy 25% of the world's output -- there was no place to go but down.

Normally, the lack of a middle class would preclude a nation from being a world power, but the Anglo-American establishment was able to pay for American industrialization by borrowing British capital; from America’s inception until World War I, it was a debtor nation.

Unlike England, which prior to the welfare state of 1909, really did have a large middle class (roughly 40% of the population) America never did; for most of its history the middle class have never been more than 6% of Americans (probably less the 3% today). Middle Class values were the preserve of the WASP establishment, a small elite of German Jews, an even smaller elite of African-Americansand an assortment of assimilated white “ethnics”, but for the most part the American population was working class; focused on today, consuming all they produced.

o Mr Stiglitz, this inequality is the result of public policy being captured by a

To Mr Stiglitz, this inequality is the result of public policy being captured by an elite who have feathered their own nests at the expense of the rest. They have used their power to distort political debate, pushing through tax cuts to favour the rich and adjusting monetary policy to favour the banks. Many of the new rich are not entrepreneurs but “rent-seekers”, he says, who use monopoly power to boost profits. Mr Stiglitz's views are representative of clever, leftish America and Mr Stiglitz is (mostly) skilled at making his argument. Imagine, he says, what it would be like if the world had free movement of labour, but not of capital. “Countries would compete to attract workers. They would promise good schools and a good environment, as well as low taxes on workers. This could be financed by high taxes on capital.” The result would be a much more equal society. Mr Stiglitz's argument would benefit, however, from a better sense of history and geography. He points to the period between 1950 and 1980 as one where inequality was much reduced. But that was a highly unusual time. For much of recorded history there has been a huge gap between a wealthy landowning class and the rest; the Rockefellers and Carnegies were much richer (in real terms) than any modern plutocrat. Mr Stiglitz also views the housing boom and bust as another result of misguided American policy, but Spain and Ireland had property bubbles too—and they are much more equal societies.

When it comes to solutions to the inequality problem, Mr Stiglitz wants a top income tax rate of “well in excess of” 50%, targeted fiscal stimulus and greater bank regulation. Here, perhaps, he might have been more open about the trade-offs. Controls on bank leverage, caps on interest rates and greater protection for bankrupts are all likely to reduce bank lending at a time when there already is a credit squeeze. He admits that the 2009 fiscal stimulus was “not as well designed as it could have been”, but blithely hopes that the convoluted American budget-setting process will result in much better stimulus packages in future. Whether or not he has the right answers, Mr Stiglitz is surely right to focus on the issue. Across the developed world, the average worker is suffering a squeeze in living standards while bankers and chief executives are still doing very nicely. This dichotomy is bound to have social and political consequences.

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Stay on top of what’s important in your own network. Wisdom gives you unprecedented insights into your own Facebook friends and makes sure you get to the content that means the most to you. Never miss another party or important update. And stay in the know about your friends’ favorite restaurants, movies and more! 

In economics and contract theory, information asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other. This creates an imbalance of power in transactions which can sometimes cause the transactions to go awry, a kind of market failure in the worst case. Examples of this problem are adverse selection,[1] moral hazard, and information monopoly.[2] Most commonly, information asymmetries are studied in the context of principal–agent problems. In 2001, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph E. Stiglitz "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information."[3]

Information asymmetry models assume that at least one party to a transaction has relevant information whereas the other(s) do not. Some asymmetric information models can also be used in situations where at least one party can enforce, or effectively retaliate for breaches of, certain parts of an agreement whereas the other(s) cannot.

In adverse selection models, the ignorant party lacks information while negotiating an agreed understanding of or contract to the transaction, whereas in moral hazard the ignorant party lacks information about performance of the agreed-upon transaction or lacks the ability to retaliate for a breach of the agreement. An example of adverse selection is when people who are high risk are more likely to buy insurance, because the insurance company cannot effectively discriminate against them, usually due to lack of information about the particular individual's risk but also sometimes by force of law or other constraints. An example of moral hazard is when people are more likely to behave recklessly after becoming insured, either because the insurer cannot observe this behavior or cannot effectively retaliate against it, for example by failing to renew the insurance.

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Prescott Bush and son George: a family fortune made from financially supporting Hitler's rise to power.

Olympic transport bonus strike

nions say the latest TfL accounts for the financial year 2011/12 show a budget surplus of £759m, while new government figures show the London Olympics is set to come in under its £9.3m budget with £476m of contingency funding remaining.

“These TfL staff will be as busy as anybody else and the attempt to bullying them into bans on annual leave and unilateral changes to working conditions for nothing in return is a disgrace.