Courtroom quotations

 

The following quotations are taken from official court records across the nation, showing how funny and embarrassing it is that recorders operate at all times in courts of law, so that even the slightest inadvertence is preserved for posterity.

    Lawyer: "Was that the same nose you broke as a child?"
    Witness: "I only have one, you know."

    Lawyer: "Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?"
    Witness: "By death."
    Lawyer: "And by whose death was it terminated?"

    Accused, Defending His Own Case: "Did you get a good look at my face when I took your purse?"

The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in jail.

    Lawyer: "What is your date of birth?"
    Witness: "July 15th."
    Lawyer: "What year?"
    Witness: "Every year."

    Lawyer: "Can you tell us what was stolen from your house?"
    Witness: "There was a rifle that belonged to my father that was stolen from the hall closet."
    Lawyer: "Can you identify the rifle?"
    Witness: "Yes. There was something written on the side of it."
    Lawyer: "And what did the writing say?"
    Witness: "'Winchester'!"

    Lawyer: "What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?"
    Witness: "Gucci sweats and Reeboks."

    Lawyer: "Can you describe what the person who attacked you looked like?"
    Witness: "No. He was wearing a mask."
    Lawyer: "What was he wearing under the mask?"
    Witness: "Er...his face."

    Lawyer: "This myasthenia gravis -- does it affect your memory at all?"
    Witness: "Yes."
    Lawyer: "And in what ways does it affect your memory?"
    Witness: "I forget."
    Lawyer: "You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?"

    Lawyer: "How old is your son, the one living with you?"
    Witness: "Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which."
    Lawyer: "How long has he lived with you?"
    Witness: "Forty-five years."

    Lawyer: "What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke that morning?"
    Witness: "He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'"
    Lawyer: "And why did that upset you?"
    Witness: "My name is Susan."

    Lawyer: "Sir, what is your IQ?"
    Witness: "Well, I can see pretty well, I think."

    Lawyer: "Did you blow your horn or anything?"
    Witness: "After the accident?"
    Lawyer: "Before the accident."
    Witness: "Sure, I played for ten years. I even went to school for it."

    Lawyer: "Trooper, when you stopped the defendant, were your red and blue lights flashing?"
    Witness: "Yes."
    Lawyer: "Did the defendant say anything when she got out of her car?"
    Witness: "Yes, sir."
    Lawyer: "What did she say?"
    Witness: "'What disco am I at?'"

    Lawyer: "Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?"
    Witness: "No."
    Lawyer: "Did you check for blood pressure?"
    Witness: "No."
    Lawyer: "Did you check for breathing?"
    Witness: "No."
    Lawyer: "So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?"
    Witness: "No."
    Lawyer: "How can you be so sure, Doctor?"
    Witness: "Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar."
    Lawyer: "But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?"
    Witness: "Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere."

    Lawyer: "How far apart were the vehicles at the time of the collision?"

    Lawyer: "And you check your radar unit frequently?"
    Officer: "Yes, I do."
    Lawyer: "And was your radar unit functioning correctly at the time you had the plaintiff on radar?"
    Officer: "Yes, it was malfunctioning correctly."

    Lawyer: "What happened then?"
    Witness: "He told me, he says, 'I have to kill you because you can identify me.'"
    Lawyer: "Did he kill you?"
    Witness: "No."

    Lawyer: "Now sir, I'm sure you are an intelligent and honest man--"
    Witness: "Thank you. If I weren't under oath, I'd return the compliment."

    Lawyer: "You were there until the time you left, is that true?"

    Lawyer: "So you were gone until you returned?"

    Lawyer: "The youngest son, the 20 year old, how old is he?"

    Lawyer: "Were you alone or by yourself?"

    Lawyer: "How long have you been a French Canadian?"

    Witness: "He was about medium height and had a beard."
    Lawyer: "Was this a male or a female?"

    Lawyer: "Mr. Slatery, you went on a rather elaborate honeymoon, didn't you?"
    Witness: "I went to Europe, sir."
    Lawyer: "And you took your new wife?"

    Lawyer: "I show you Exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize that picture."
    Witness: "That's me."
    Lawyer: "Were you present when that picture was taken?"

    Lawyer: "Were you present in court this morning when you were sworn in?"

    Lawyer: "Do you know how far pregnant you are now?"
    Witness: "I'll be three months on November 8."
    Lawyer: "Apparently, then, the date of conception was August 8?"
    Witness: "Yes."
    Lawyer: "What were you doing at that time?"

    Lawyer: "How many times have you committed suicide?"
    Witness: "Four times."

    Lawyer: "Do you have any children or anything of that kind?"

    Lawyer: "She had three children, right?"
    Witness: "Yes."
    Lawyer: "How many were boys?"
    Witness: "None."
    Lawyer: "Were there girls?"

    Lawyer: "You don't know what it was, and you didn't know what it looked like, but can you describe it?"

    Lawyer: "You say that the stairs went down to the basement?"
    Witness: "Yes."
    Lawyer: "And these stairs, did they go up also?"

    Lawyer: "Have you lived in this town all your life?"
    Witness: "Not yet."

    Lawyer: (realizing he was on the verge of asking a stupid question) "Your Honor, I'd like to strike the next question."

    Lawyer: "Do you recall approximately the time that you examined the body of Mr. Eddington at the Rose Chapel?"
    Witness: "It was in the evening. The autopsy started about 8:30pm."
    Lawyer: "And Mr. Eddington was dead at the time, is that correct?"

    Lawyer: "What is your brother-in-law's name?"
    Witness: "Borofkin."
    Lawyer: "What's his first name?"
    Witness: "I can't remember."
    Lawyer: "He's been your brother-in-law for years, and you can't remember his first name?"
    Witness: "No. I tell you, I'm too excited." (rising and pointing to his brother-in-law) "Nathan, for heaven's sake, tell them your first name!"

    Lawyer: "Did you ever stay all night with this man in New York?"
    Witness: "I refuse to answer that question.
    Lawyer: "Did you ever stay all night with this man in Chicago?"
    Witness: "I refuse to answer that question.
    Lawyer: "Did you ever stay all night with this man in Miami?"
    Witness: "No."

    Lawyer: "Doctor, did you say he was shot in the woods?"
    Witness: "No, I said he was shot in the lumbar region."

    Lawyer: "What is your marital status?"
    Witness: "Fair."

    Lawyer: "Are you married?"
    Witness: "No, I'm divorced."
    Lawyer: "And what did your husband do before you divorced him?"
    Witness: "A lot of things I didn't know about."

    Lawyer: "And who is this person you are speaking of?"
    Witness: "My ex-widow said it.

    Lawyer: "How did you happen to go to Dr. Cherney?"
    Witness: "Well, a gal down the road had had several of her children by Dr. Cherney and said he was really good."

    Lawyer: "Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?"
    Witness: "All my autopsies have been performed on dead people."

    Lawyer: "Were you acquainted with the deceased?"
    Witness: "Yes sir."
    Lawyer: "Before or after he died?"

    Lawyer: "Mrs. Jones, is your appearance this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?"
    Witness: "No. This is how I dress when I go to work."

    The Court: "Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present information and prejudice from your minds, if you have any."

    Lawyer: "Did he pick the dog up by the ears?"
    Witness: "No."
    Lawyer: "What was he doing with the dog's ears?"
    Witness: "Picking them up in the air."
    Lawyer: "Where was the dog at this time?"
    Witness: "Attached to the ears."

    Lawyer: "When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with him to the station?"
    Other Lawyer: "Objection. That question should be taken out and shot."

    Lawyer: "And lastly, Gary, all your responses must be oral. Ok? What school do you go to?"
    Witness: "Oral."
    Lawyer: "How old are you?"
    Witness: "Oral."

    Lawyer: "What is your relationship with the plaintiff?"
    Witness: "She is my daughter."
    Lawyer: "Was she your daughter on February 13, 1979?"

    Lawyer: "Now, you have investigated other murders, have you not, where there was a victim?"

    Lawyer: "Now, doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, in most cases he just passes quietly away and doesn't know anything about it until the next morning?"

    Lawyer: "And what did he do then?"
    Witness: "He came home, and next morning he was dead."
    Lawyer: "So when he woke up the next morning he was dead?"

    Lawyer: "Did you tell your lawyer that your husband had offered you indignities?"
    Witness: "He didn't offer me nothing. He just said I could have the furniture."

    Lawyer: "So, after the anesthesia, when you came out of it, what did you observe with respect to your scalp?"
    Witness: "I didn't see my scalp the whole time I was in the hospital."
    Lawyer: "It was covered?"
    Witness: "Yes, bandaged."
    Lawyer: "Then, later on...what did you see?"
    Witness: "I had a skin graft. My whole buttocks and leg were removed and put on top of my head."

    Lawyer: "Could you see him from where you were standing?"
    Witness: "I could see his head."
    Lawyer: "And where was his head?"
    Witness: "Just above his shoulders."

    Lawyer: "Do you drink when you're on duty?"
    Witness: "I don't drink when I'm on duty, unless I come on duty drunk."

    Lawyer: "Any suggestions as to what prevented this from being a murder trial instead of an attempted murder trial?"
    Witness: "The victim lived."

    Lawyer: "The truth of the matter is that you were not an unbiased, objective witness, isn't it? You too were shot in the fracas."
    Witness: "No, sir. I was shot midway between the fracas and the naval."

    Lawyer: "Officer, what led you to believe the defendant was under the influence?"
    Witness: "Because he was argumentary, and he couldn't pronunciate his words."

Doctor’s comment on patient chart.

 

• "Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year."
• "On the 2nd day the knee was better and on the 3rd day it disappeared completely."
• "The patient has been depressed ever since she began seeing me in 1993."
• "Discharge status: Alive but without permission."
• "Healthy appearing decrepit 69 year-old male, mentally alert but forgetful."
• "The patient refused an autopsy."
• "The patient has no past history of suicides."
• "Patient has left his white blood cells at another hospital."
• "Patient's past medical history has been remarkably insignificant with only a 40 pound weight gain in the past three days."
• "Patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch."
• "She has had no rigors or shaking chills, but her husband states she was very hot in bed last night."
• "She is numb from her toes down."
• "While in the ER, she was examined, X-rated and sent home."
• "The skin was moist and dry."
• "Occasional, constant, infrequent headaches."
• "Patient was alert and unresponsive."
• "She stated that she had been constipated for most of her life, until she got a divorce."
• "I saw your patient today, who is still under our car for physical therapy."
• "The patient was to have a bowel resection. However, he took a job as a stockbroker instead."
• "Patient has two teenage children but no other abnormalities."
• "Skin: Somewhat pale but present."
• "Patient was seen in consultation by Dr. Blank, who felt we should sit on the abdomen, and I agree."
• "By the time he was admitted, his rapid heart stopped, and he was feeling better."
• "The patient was in his usual state of good health until his airplane ran out of gas and crashed."
• "When she fainted, her eyes rolled around the room."
• "Patient was released to outpatient department without dressing."
• "The patient will need disposition, and therefore we will get Dr. Blank to dispose of him."
• "The patient expired on the floor uneventfully."

25 Ways to Love Your Liver

 

October is Liver Awareness month and the American Liver Foundation has put together this list of 25 things you should know to help you live a healthy, happy life. For more information, you can contact us at info@liverfoundation.org

1. Avoid taking unnecessary medications. Too many chemicals can harm the liver.
2. If you are a baby boomer, get tested for Hepatitis C today.
3. Don’t mix medications without the advice of a doctor. Mixing medications could be poisonous to your liver.
4. Drink alcohol responsibly.
5. Never mix alcohol with other drugs and medications.
6. Be careful when using aerosol cleaners. The liver has to detoxify what you breathe in. Make sure the room is well ventilated or wear a mask.
7. Bug sprays, paint sprays and all those other chemical sprays you use can cause harm as well. Be careful what you breathe.
8. Get vaccinated for Hepatitis A and B and make sure your children are vaccinated as well.
9. If you get a tattoo, make sure you only use single needles and ink pots. No sharing!
10. Exercise regularly – walk a little further, climb the stairs.
11. Don’t share personal use items such as combs, razors, and manicure tools.
12. Teach your children what a syringe looks like and that they should leave it alone.
13. If you received a blood transfusion prior to 1992, you may have hepatitis C. You should talk to your healthcare provider about getting tested.
14. Use caution and common sense regarding intimate contact – hepatitis can be transmitted through blood.
15. Eat a well-balanced, nutritionally adequate diet. If you enjoy foods from each of the food groups you will probably obtain the nutrients you need.
16. Keep your weight close to ideal. Medical research have established a direct correlation between obesity and the development of fatty liver disease.
17. Do not smoke.
18. If you have any body piercing, check that the instruments used are properly sterilized or used only once
19. Increase your intake of high-fiber foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain breads, rice and cereals.
20. At your annual physical, ask your doctor to do a complete liver blood analysis.
21. Take the right dosage of medication – too much can cause trouble.
22. Help someone else – sign an organ donor card.
23. See your doctor for regular check-ups and share any information about health problems.
24. Make a contribution to the American Liver Foundation to help further the work of the Foundation, including research.
25. Remember liver disease can happen to anyone – from infants to the elderly. Do your part to stay healthy.

About cooking…

 

Cooking tips

 

Picture of the Day: Neuschwanstein Castle

 

 

Photograph by Taxiarchos228 on Wikimedia Commons

Neuschwanstein Castle is a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace (i.e., a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th and 12th century Romanesque architecture) on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany.

The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as a homage to Richard Wagner. Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, not with Bavarian public funds. The palace was intended as a personal refuge for the reclusive king, but it was opened to the paying public immediately after his death in 1886.

Since then over 60 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with up to 6,000 per day in the summer. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies and was the inspiration for Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle.

via Taxiarchos228 on Wikimedia Commons

DDT, other Environmental Toxins Linked to Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease

 

Scientists suspect that, along with genetic factors, toxins and pollutants may increase the risk of developing this debilitating disorder

Feb 10, 2014 |By Annie Sneed

Credit: Borya/flickr

Alzheimer’s disease is now the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S., but researchers still do not know what causes the degenerative neurological disorder. In recent years they have pinpointed several genes that seem largely responsible for those cases in which the disorder develops early on, prior to age 60. They have also identified about 20 genes that can increase or decrease risk for the more common late-onset variety that starts appearing in people older than 60.
But genetics simply cannot explain the whole picture for the over five million Americans with late-onset Alzheimer’s. Whereas genetics contribute some risk of developing this version of the disorder, no combination of genes inevitably leads to the disease.
Scientists are now urgently searching for the other missing pieces to explain what causes late-onset Alzheimer’s. Some researchers have shifted their attention from genes to the environment—especially to certain toxins. Their studies of pesticides, food additives, air pollution and other problematic compounds are opening a new front in the battle against this devastating malady. Here’s a roundup of some of the possibilities being studied:
DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane)
Scientists have already found a strong potential link between pesticides and Parkinson’s disease. Now, a preliminary study released in January suggests that the pesticide DDT, which degrades so slowly that it continues to linger in the environment more than 40 years after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned its use in the U.S., may also contribute to Alzheimer’s.
Jason Richardson and his team at Rutgers University tested blood samples of people with and without late-onset Alzheimer’s. They found that most participants with the disease had levels of DDT and DDE (a metabolite of DDT) four times greater than the control group. Researchers also observed that participants with the most severe cases of Alzheimer’s had both a genetic predisposition and high pesticide blood levels, indicating that DDT/DDE may interact with genes to trigger the disease.
Richardson doesn’t have a definitive mechanism for how DDT exposure might lead to Alzheimer’s, however. But he speculates that DDT/DDE somehow encourage growth of the amyloid proteins that make up the plaques associated with the disease. He emphasized that his study is preliminary and his results will have to be replicated by future research on a larger scale.
In addition, some of the findings seem to contradict the study’s main conclusion. “The people I find most interesting are the ones who have really high levels of DDT and DDE, but don’t have Alzheimer’s,” Richardson says, “Maybe we’re a little early on those guys and they’ll ultimately end up with the disease. Or what would be more interesting is if their genetic makeup or lifestyle protects them from the disease.”
Nitrosamines
Another possible culprit for Alzheimer’s comes from the modern American diet. Researcher Suzanne de la Monte of Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School believes there is a connection between the rising number of Alzheimer’s cases and the greater amounts of nitrogen-based chemicals added to our food over the past few decades. Along with nitrogen-based fertilizers they include nitrates and nitrites, which are used to preserve, color and to flavor processed foods (as well as those added to tobacco products). In acidic environments, such as the stomach, or at high temperatures, as those reached in cooking, these compounds transform into toxic nitrosamines.
De la Monte’s study showed that nitrosamines damage cells’ energy-producing mitochondria and block insulin receptors in rats. Both of these factors, according to de la Monte, appear to cause neurological damage and encourage the development of insulin-related diseases, including diabetes, as well as cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s, in animal studies. Other research in humans also points to insulin resistance as a risk factor for Alzheimer’s. “All the diseases that have changed over the past forty or fifty years are related to insulin resistance and they track really nicely with changes in our food,” de la Monte says. “And nitrosamines, I tend to think they have a huge, huge role.” She is now searching for a biomarker that will allow her to measure nitrosamine exposure in people and see whether her study results translate from animals to humans.
Air pollution
Alzheimer’s researchers have also begun to subject air pollution to scrutiny. Soong Ho Kim reported in the journal F1000Research that mice rapidly developed Alzheimer’s amyloid plaques after exposure to aerosolized nickel nanoparticles, a component of air pollution. A 2004 study of thickly polluted Mexico City autopsied brain tissue of lifelong residents and found amyloid plaques and inflammation spread throughout their brains. Several studies have also found a possible link between dementia and particulate matter, a by-product of combustion already known to damage the cardiovascular system.
Air pollution does not just exist outdoors. In China, whose population is the world’s largest consumer of tobacco, researcher Ruoling Chen of King’s College London studied the effects of secondhand cigarette smoke on the country’s cognitive health. His research team assessed almost 6,000 people over age 60 in China’s cities and rural areas for their exposure to secondhand smoke. Chen reported in Alzheimer’s & Dementia that participants with the most severe dementia had been subjected to high levels of secondhand smoke. Chen interviewed people to assess their exposure, which is a standard study method but may be unreliable because participants may not accurately recall their exposure.
A difficult road ahead
Researchers acknowledge that it’s extremely difficult to discover links between environmental toxins and Alzheimer’s. Unlike DDT, most toxins do not persist in the body, which makes it hard for researchers to gauge a lifetime of exposure. If an environmental toxin does prove a risk factor, it will be only one part of a complex equation that includes genetics, lifestyle and possibly other environmental exposures that increase the chances of developing Alzheimer’s with age.
Alzheimer’s researchers have also been led astray in the past when they attempted to link environmental pollutants to the disease. In the 1970s and 1980s it was widely believed that aluminum caused Alzheimer’s because scientists discovered aluminum collected in amyloid plaques. But most researchers no longer accept this theory because subsequent studies showed that it was merely an innocuous coincidence that occurred due to the attraction between aluminum ions and amyloid plaques.
Richardson says that the claims about aluminum “likely poisoned the well” for later research on environmental factors. But this kind of research has become increasingly urgent as more people develop late-onset Alzheimer’s and no current treatment exists to prevent or even significantly delay to disease. According to Professor Steven DeKosky at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, it would make a huge difference if researchers found a way to even just postpone Alzheimer’s. “If you could delay onset of the disease by five years, you could cut down on about 50 percent of the cases,” DeKosky says. “If you could delay onset by 10 years, you could virtually wipe Alzheimer’s out because you’d have people live to the end of their lives without getting the disease.”

Is Radioactive Hydrogen in Drinking Water a Cancer Threat?

 

The EPA plans to reevaluate standards for tritium in water

Feb 7, 2014 |By David Biello

Tritium leaked into water from the Braidwood nuclear power plant. Courtesy of Exelon

Add two extra neutrons to the lightest element and hydrogen becomes radioactive, earning the name tritium. Even before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 regulators worried that this ubiquitous by-product of nuclear reactors could pose a threat to human health. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was only seven years old when it put the first rules on the books for tritium in 1977. But a lot has happened in the intervening decades, and it is not just a longer list of nuclear accidents.
The Chernobyl and Fukushima meltdowns let loose plenty of tritium, but so have a seemingly endless series of leaks at aging reactors in the U.S. and elsewhere. Such leaks have prompted the EPA to announce on February 4 plans to revisit standards for tritium that has found its way into water—so-called tritiated water, or HTO—along with risk limits for individual exposure to radiation and nuclear waste storage, among other issues surrounding nuclear power.
The agency’s recent announcement in the Federal Register notes that tritium levels as high as 3.2 million picocuries per liter (pCi/L) in ground water have been reported to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at some nuclear facilities. (A curie is a unit of radiation emission; a picocurie is one trillionth of a curie.) That is 160 times higher than the standard set back in 1977 by the fledgling EPA—and the NRC has made measurements even higher at some nuclear facilities. "Because of these releases to groundwater at these sites, and related investigations, the agency considers it prudent to reexamine its initial assumption in 1977 that the water pathway is not a pathway of concern," the EPA stated in its filing.
This new evaluation is likely to prove challenging, however, as tritium is difficult to get a grip on from both a radiological and human health perspective. On the one hand, there is evidence that the risk from tritium is negligible and current standards are more than precautionary. On the other, there is also some evidence that tritium could be more harmful than originally thought.
Or, as a health physicist who has studied tritium for years observes, in the 1970s, the EPA did not rely on any health studies in setting its original standards. Instead, the EPA back-calculated acceptable levels of tritium in water from the radiation exposure delivered by already extant radionuclides from nuclear weapons testing in surface waters. "It's not a health-based standard, it's based on what was easily achievable," remarks David Kocher of the Oak Ridge Center for Risk Analysis, who has evaluated health risks from tritium and spent 30 years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The standard of 20,000 pCi/L of drinking water made compliance easy. "No drinking water anywhere was anywhere close, so it cost nothing to meet."
By the EPA's calculations, the 1977 standard should result in an extra radiation dose of less than four millirems, or 40 microsieverts per year, about the amount from a chest X-ray.  (A rem is a dosage unit of x-ray and gamma-ray radiation exposure; one sievert equals 100 rems.) But the standard begs the question: is tritium safe to drink ?
Natural background
The EPA will have to take into account complex but sparse data about tritium exposures in formulating new standards. Calculations of exposure levels must take into account not just the levels in waters around nuclear plants but also how much drinking water exposure there is, as well as radiation from natural sources.
High in the atmosphere cosmic rays produce four million curies worth of tritium each year. This atmospheric tritium rains out into surface waters. Nuclear power plants the world over produce roughly the same amount annually, although production (and releases) vary among facilities. For example, the Beaver Creek nuclear power facility in Pennsylvania is the biggest producer of tritiated water in the U.S., per NRC records , churning out roughly 1.5 curies worth per megawatt of electricity produced. Even more escapes in steam from power plants like Palo Verde in Arizona, whose three reactors combine to billow out more than 2,000 curies worth of tritiated steam per year.
But both nuclear power plants and cosmic rays are outweighed by orders of magnitude by the legacy of nuclear bomb testing . Using tritium triggers to explode thermonuclear bombs aboveground produced copious quantities of atmospheric tritium. For every megaton of nuclear blast, roughly seven megacuries of tritium resulted. Despite an end to aboveground testing, leading to a peak in tritium production in 1963, bomb-made tritium lingers, decaying away over a half-life of 12 years. For tritium levels to reach under 1 percent of the original amount released by nuclear weapons testing will thus take seven half-lives, or 84 years. "Setting off all those hydrogen bombs aboveground sent a tremendous pulse into the atmosphere," notes Kocher, who is also a member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement . "It's basically everywhere."
In fact, everyone drinks tritiated water. "People are exposed to small amounts of tritium every day, since it is widely dispersed in the environment and in the food chain," as the EPA notes in its public information on the radionuclide .
That bomb-made tritium will eventually decay away completely (presuming the test ban holds ), leaving power plants and cosmic rays as the major sources, along with minor contributions from the tritium in photoluminescent signs and the like. But nuclear power plants have not done a good job of containing tritium, whether from steam or water leaks at U.S. plants. In 2005 a group of farmers in Illinois successfully sued utility Exelon for tritiated water escaping from the Braidwood nuclear power plant that had contaminated their wells, even though the levels were below those set by the EPA.
And there is at least 400,000 cubic meters of tritiated water now in storage at Japan’s wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex, which suffered multiple meltdowns after the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. A suite of technologies there filter out 62 different radioactive particles created by the Fukushima meltdowns—leaving out only tritium, largely because it is difficult and expensive to separate water from water. Companies such as Kurion, which already helps filter out radionuclides like cesium, suggest that they have a solution if the Japanese want to eliminate the tritium as well. "It's up to TEPCO [the utility] and the Japanese people to decide what they want to do with that water," says materials scientist Gaetan Bonhomme, vice president of strategic planning and initiatives at Kurion. "It is a radionuclide and it does cause public concern."
The Kurion process concentrates the radionuclide in a small volume of water. A proprietary material then captures the tritium and stores it—and will not release it until heated above 500 degrees Celsius. "It's stable in an accident," Bonhomme notes.
The technology could be applied wherever tritium is produced, including aging nuclear reactors in the U.S. It is the hope of Bonhomme and others that by offering a solution for tritium and other nuclear wastes, they can help ease fears of fission as a source of electricity. But any treatment will be more expensive than simply dumping tritiated water. "If it was really all about science, we would be releasing most of tritium from nuclear power in the water stream, because that's the best way to dilute it," Bonhomme admits.
So the question becomes: Is treating for tritium worth it? And that answer depends on the risk.
The big C
Cancer is the main risk from humans ingesting tritium. When tritium decays it spits out a low-energy electron (roughly 18,000 electron volts) that escapes and slams into DNA, a ribosome or some other biologically important molecule. And, unlike other radionuclides, tritium is usually part of water, so it ends up in all parts of the body and therefore can, in theory, promote any kind of cancer. But that also helps reduce the risk: any tritiated water is typically excreted in less than a month.
Some evidence suggests the kind of radiation emitted by tritium—a so-called beta particle —is actually more effective at causing cancer than the high-energy radiation such as gamma rays, even though skin can block a beta particle. The theory is that the low-energy electron actually produces a greater impact because it doesn't have the energy to travel as far and spread its impact out. At the end of its atomic-scale trip it delivers most of its ionizing energy in one relatively confined track rather than shedding energy all along its path like a higher-energy particle. This is known as density of ionization, and has been shown with the similar form of radiation called an alpha particle .
Ionization is what makes radiation dangerous for human health. Essentially, the radioactive particle smashes into the atom or molecule and pushes out an electron or other particle, leaving that atom or molecule in a charged or ionized state. These charged molecules can then cause other damage as they interact with other atoms and molecules. That includes damage to DNA, genes and other cellular mechanisms. Over time this DNA instability results in a higher chance of cancer. As a result, scientists work under the assumption that any amount of radiation poses a health risk .
Density of ionization suggests tritium exposure may have an increased risk of causing cancer. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health calculates compensation due energy workers who develop cancers that may have been caused by exposure to ionizing radiation with such enhanced biological effectiveness of tritium in mind as does the fund for the 200,000 or so personnel who served at nuclear test sites, the atomic veterans (although few had any tritium exposure).
But there is no definitive epidemiological study to assess the true risk of tritium, and animal studies are also lacking. The cancer rates in Japanese survivors of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki can reveal little because they were not exposed to tritium either. "You need huge study populations to have any chance of seeing anything," Kocher notes, and that money is simply unavailable. "There is no compelling need to spend the money required to do this."
To make matters even more tricky, tritium's radioactivity is difficult to detect. Because the electron tritium spits out is not a penetrating or high-energy particle, it is hard for radiation monitoring devices to even detect. That makes measuring the radiation dose from tritium difficult. "Dosimetry has been a problem," Kocher notes. "I think a definitive epidemiological study is probably impossible."
In fact, the current National Research Council effort to determine cancer risk from living near a nuclear power plant in the U.S. will not examine the specific risk from tritium leaks. "Our study will not be examining the cancer risks from the leaks as separate events, so it will not be a useful source of information for the purpose of linking cancer occurrence or death from cancer with tritium ingestion," noted Ourania Kosti, director of the ongoing study and a senior program officer at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, in an e-mail response.
This lack of data may complicate the EPA’s new rulemaking. Federal regulators might choose to maintain existing standards (as has been done after re-evaluations in the past) or look at what individual states have done, although everywhere the picture remains clouded by uncertainties.
Some states, such as Colorado and California, have set lower goals for the tritium in drinking water. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy has agreed to clean surface waters surrounding its former nuclear weapons production facility Rocky Flats in Colorado to the level of 500 pCi/L. By comparison, the levels of tritiated water found in a monitoring well near the leaking Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey reached 4.5 million pCi/L, although no tritiated water has been detected off-site as yet.
At Braidwood in Illinois the tritiated water had spread via leaks in a plume, reaching levels of 1,600 pCi/L in the groundwater under nearby farm fields. If consumed for an entire year, tritiated water at that level would result in an extra dose of radiation of roughly 0.3 millirem. That is 1,000 times smaller than the amount of radiation from natural sources absorbed by the average American in a year and 12 times smaller than the dose absorbed during a single flight across the U.S. For comparison, one chest x-ray, which also falls into the class of radiation that appears to be more biologically effective, results in a dose of four millirem.
The potential innocuousness raises the question of whether more stringent standards are really needed—which is the determination the EPA made the last time it revisited these standards at the end of the 20th century. "I think the levels of tritium in drinking water today are low enough that I wouldn't worry," Kocher says. "The good news about tritium is that: even if you inhale or ingest an awful lot, it is going to flush out of your body." He adds: "Just have a few beers and you're done."

31 Quotes That Will Give You Chills

 

 

I think quotes have a powerful way of conveying an attitude to you which sometimes resonates so much that you feel ‘chills’ inside. Here’s a list of the quotes which have given me the most of these “chills”. Enjoy!

1. Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75. —Benjamin Franklin

2. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions. Their lives a mimicry. Their passions a quotation. — Oscar Wilde

3. Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. —Arthur C. Clark

4. Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. — Albert Einstein

5. Of all sad words of mouth or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been. — John Greenleaf Whittier

6. I fear not the man who has practised 10,000 kicks, but I do fear the man who has practised one kick 10,000 times. Bruce Lee

7. And when you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche

8. Don’t let schooling interfere with your education-Mark Twain

9. A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. — John F. Kennedy

10. It is no measure of health to be well—adjusted to a profoundly sick society. — Jiddu Krisnamurti

11. Every man dies, but not every man truly lives. — William Wallace

12. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. — Plato

13. Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go. ― Oscar Wilde

14. Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend? — Abraham Lincoln

15. To love is to recognize yourself in another. – Eckhart Tolle

16. Prejudices are rarely overcome by argument; not being founded in reason they cannot be destroyed by logic. — Tryon Edwards

17. If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. —Antoine de Saint—Exupery

18. They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. — Benjamin Franklin

19. Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money. — Indian Proverb

20. And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. –Kahlil Gibran

21. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. – William Saroyan

22. When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. ― John Lennon

23. Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. ― Albert Einstein

24. As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves. ― Mahatma Gandhi

25. The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed. — Ernest Hemingway

26. In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. ― Hunter S. Thompson

27. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. ― Dwight D. Eisenhower

28. Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. – Lao Tzu

29. Dalai Llama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, said: “ Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

30. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off ― Chuck Palahniuk

31. The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are. ― HL Mencken

 

www.arsspiritus.com

Excel–Commonly used formulas

 

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Excel - Examples of commonly used formulas

100 Artists Uniquely Design Phone Booths in São Paulo city, Brazil.

 

 

Pay phones may not be as prevalent as they used to be, but who's to say that they aren't staples of our environments? In the metropolitan region of São Paulo, Brazil, phone booths serve as more than just obsolete stands due to the creative public art project titled Call Parade. The ongoing group exhibition, which is sponsored by phone carrier Vivo, has transformed 100 telephone booths into works of art by 100 different artists.

Each helmet-like booth features the work of an inventive artist's wildest imagination. The public shells are intricately adorned, painted, and illustrated on to depict anything from an elaborate mansion to a vibrant cartoon fish. The concept behind each booth is just as interesting as how the artists choose to fashion both the outside and inside of said shells. How fun would it be to come across one of these phone booths?

Photo credits: suckthislemon , Wally Gobetz

Robin in Brazil

 

 

  by Robin Sparks

They place, one foot in front of the other, causing their hips to sway with exaggeration. I shadow local women at the mall and on the streets to learn the walk. Initially, it takes great effort not to charge forward, leading with my head. But after a few days I too am sashaying like a Brazilian without giving it a thought.

I buy rubber flip flops and a tight pair of low-rise, cropped jeans (that I wouldn't be caught dead in in San Francisco). My dark hair and light eyes, an anomaly at home, are commonplace here, as is the aforementioned abundant bunda. I am on my way to Being Brazilian.

A man in a café speaks to me in Portugese, I reply in bad Portugese, "I don't speak Portugese". Francesa?, he asks. "No". "I am American" "Yes". The Australian man (it turns out), says that he never would have guessed.  I'm going to have to learn to speak Portugese if I hope to blend in.

Portugese is one language I don't mind unscrambling. -­ I love the sound of it - hard consenants are softened into sh's and ch's and odgys. And vowels are elongated.. And all of it is spoken with a melodic lilt as if everyone is singing the same tune. It is similar to Spanish - Differente is pronounced differenchay, dia, gia. Kathy, Kaughtchi, and so on. Add a splash of French to really mix it up ­ Bom, pronounced Bon (good) - and you have the lingua of Portuguese, a mixture of languages, like its residents who moved here over the years.

We are invited to lunch today at Kathy and JhaJha's, neighbors who live across the cobblestone street from Jim and Debbie. At  the top of the hill, I stop to catch my breath and to admire their fairytale-like, hobbit-castle. They built it themselves over a dozen years, using old windows and doors collected from abandoned churches. JhaJha a musician, and Katchi a painter, have day jobs respectively as world history teacher and social worker. Ten year old son, Luan, is a photographer's dream with blonde ringlets, light blue eyes, dark skin, and a love of the camera.

Christiana (Kathy's sister) and her family live in the story-book house on the hill just below Kathy and JhaJha., and below Christiana is the house of Herman, the girls' father. Herman was born in Brazil 80 years ago, shortly after his German parents immigrated here. He eventually married the indigenous Brazilian mother (now deceased) of the girls, which explains why Katchi looks like my Bolivian friend and Christiana, like a tall lanky German, with hints of Brazilian in her hazel-eyes and olive skin.. Each family member  from grandchild to grandfather looks entirely unrelated. Ironically, Brazil was the last of the South American countries to free the African slaves, while today it is the most racially mixed.

JhaJha has laid out a table for us topped with farofa (baked and grated casava from the Amazon), sliced linguisa, cauliflower, white rice, a stew of beans and beef, and a brilliant plate of shredded carrots and beets. There is also Skol beer, and JhaJha's premium cache of cachaca (sugar cane alcohol that is to Brazilians as tequila is to Mexicans and as deadly).

Debbie rings to say she'll be late. JhaJha announces that we will wait for her. "In that case, I say, I'll go back across the street to write until she arrives." I head for the door.

"Tranquila, Tranquila", JhaJha says. "One should not rush through life. Far better that one contemplate life and philosophy with friends over tasty food and drink in the company of beautiful women." Only what he really says, best as I can recall, sounds like this: "Nao bon pasar el tiempo corriente. Tenemos contemplar la vida con nossos amigos, con comidas e bedidas sabrosas, y mininas bellezas".

Ok, so I stay. And make a mental note to slow down. Enjoy what is in front of me in this moment.

JhaJha pours a shot of cachaca  A squirrel scampers into the kitchen. Jaja calls out, "Mi amigo!" and bends down to display  a fresh chunk of coconut in his open palm. The squirrel approaches timidly, takes the treat and scampers back outside. Jaja says, "That one, he is my friend". Then "Robin, Do you have a religion?" He points outside and says, "Mine is out there in the trees, in the animals of the forest." He leads me then into a discussion of politics by asking what I think about the conflict between Bush and Saddam Hussein. JaJa says that Americans think they are free, but they are not. He says it will take South America hundreds of years to recover from covert US activity in their land during the seventies.. Kathy lightens things up saying, "But we love Americans. And the men don't hate all American politicians. They love the story of "Prezedenche Cleentone and Mowneeka Lewinsche". The men guffaw. I mention my continual surprise at the diversity of Brazilians' physical traits. He says that after Holland invaded Brazil they held it for seventy years during which time they intermarried with the former black slaves and Indians. "Muito bonita!". he says about the resultant blue-eyed, chocolate colored Brazilians that came from those marriages. He says about his blonde haired son, "Luan, is a mixture of German, Spanish, Portugese, Indian, and African. We are proud of our diverse make-up. But above all, I am Brazilian".

At 10:30 PM, Debbie and I and a few of the neighborhood women take the bus to town for an outdoor rock concert. We work our way to the front of the stage where the Brazilian pop star is singing into a microphone, while below hundreds of teenagers, middleaged couples, singles, and some elderly folks sing every word to every song, waving their arms high in the air, while those who find space, dance. The teens don't seem one bit annoyed that their parents and grandparents have come along for the evening.

One morning the rain stops.And so we pile into Katchi and JhaJha's car to drive the ten minutes into the national park. Following their lead, Jim and I (Debbie is at the internet café) hop over rocks, under trees, stepping lightly over the spongy ground to the water's edge where a cascade of water meets the creek. Then we are standing under the roaring fall, the sound of crashing water filling our ears. We paddle across the pleasantly cool stream to a massive granite slab. Kathy holds JaJa's ankle, JaJa leans down to offer me a hand and pulls me up onto the rock where we lay on our backs gazing at the azure sky. Suddenly Kathy takes off the blue beaded ring I've been admiring and hands it to me, "Here Robin, I made it for you, my friend." And then we crawl over to the shady side of the boulder, where it is slick with moss, and together we slide down on our backs into the rolling water below.

I've grown used to climbing into bed each night in my unheated cabin fully clothed, with the hood of my coat pulled up around my ears, and three wool blankets piled on top. It is summer in Brazil, but in Tere, the air is thin and offers little warmth once the sun has slid from sight. I'm growing restless for the heat of Brazil's beaches.

Together, Jim, Debbie and I pore over maps and discuss my next destinations. Initially I was drawn to the people, celebrations, and animistic nature of northeast Brazil. But the reality is that no matter how massive Brazil looks on a map, it's even bigger in person and I had only three weeks in which to see it. I'm looking for towns within two hours of a major city, with a sizeable expat population, a bohemian community, with aesthetically tasteful architecture. I decide to spend a week each in Buzios on the Golden Coast north of Rio, and Parati on the Green Coast located half way between Rio and Sao Paulo. And I cannot come all this way to Brazil without going to Rio.

Teresopolis is Jim and Debbie's paradise. For me it has been the perfect launch pad for Brazil, where  until a week ago, I knew no one. Leaving There feels like leaving home - you know your parents are still there to run back to should things get scary. As for my first Brazilians, Kathy and JhaJha? They are artists in love with life, and they are incredibly generous.. I suppose when you live for the moment as they do, it doesn't occur to you to hoard some for yourself. If Kathy and JaJa are a composite of what other Brazilians are like, I'm going to love this country.

Rio is my next stop. My friends back home expressed great concern before I left about me going alone to Rio de Janeiro, reputedly one of the world's most dangerous cities. What they don't know is, that in spite of the fact that I haven't lost my Pollyanna belief that everyone has the same basic need for love and respect, I have developed some street smarts over the past five years. It's called blending in. For instance, in Rio I will heed Jim's advice about dressing as if I'm headed for a day at the beach and carrying no more than 50 Reais in my pocket.

I kiss everyone goodbye in the traditional Brazilian kiss on each cheek, climb on the bus for Rio dressed like a Brazilian and head off to the big bad city in the bus like a Brazilian. And once I get to Rio?, I will walk like a Brazilian.

www.escapeartist.com