Thursday, November 15, 2007
Susan L. Shirk, China: fragile superpower, Oxford University Press, 2007.
This is the only English-language analysis of the US-China relations in connection with the Chinese internal politics, which is not written in “anthropomorphic” terms—states as actors with coherent character and traits, personified by their leaders—typical for Anglo-Saxon political science. Her analysis is very interesting but proposals are pedestrian and do not go much beyond lecturing Chinese leaders on the advantages of Anglo-Saxon style democracy, a rotten lesson after the “Bush doctrine.”
Friday, November 2, 2007
Cesium scare
When the firemen become too numerous, they take to arson.
Oriental proverb
When we created a $50 bn. plus a year, 200,000-staff monster called Department of Internal Security, it was clear to everybody who has any understanding how bureaucracy works that they would work tirelessly to expand their sphere of competence. One of the well-treaded methods is to circulate sensational new threat, usually through a strategically corrupted Brit, then let Government officials to ward off angry questions by the media and the Congress when they do something about it until public hysteria reaches such proportions that they will be “compelled” to take resolute and very expensive action. Works every time. Worked for Bush Sr. and Kuwait (“babies thrown onto the bayonets”), Clinton in Kosovo (still remember “stopping the genocide?”), Bush in Iraq (“mushroom cloud in 45 minutes”); Iran (another mushroom cloud) and Sudan (another genocide) are the cases still pending.
Now new threat, namely Cs-137 in medical devices is posed to take over public imagination. This isotope of cesium is typically used as a salt crystal(s) packed into hard ceramic pellet. By itself, Cs-137 (half-life 30.2 years) decays through a normal β-channel. Its medical use is based on the by-product of the decay: a metastable isotope Ba-137 (half-life 2.6 sec.), which emits energetic γ-radiation. Collimated, this radiation kills tumors.
Dr. Zimmerman, Professor of King’s College in London, a well-known national security guru suggested in his op-ed piece in “New York Times” that the malefactors using only the isotopes in available medical radiation devices can contaminate pretty much the entire United States. Though, Zimmerman is a highly educated expert, my single personal contact with him suggested of someone capable of rush and unfounded judgments. Lately, he seem to have lost his mental stability completely over the polonium poisoning accident in London, inserting his ramblings about it in everything he writes or talks about.
Metallic cesium is highly reactive (can conflagrate in open air) and technically applied chloride CsCl is well-soluble in water. These properties are in sharp contrast to, e.g. uranium and plutonium and their oxides, which are rather neutral and can exist in the environment in the form of dust for millennia. High reactivity of cesium means, for one, that rain provides a fair degree of decontamination. Stuff going through rivers into water treatment plants is likely to be immobilized in mud, again due to the extreme ease, with which Cs as all other alkali metals form stable salts. Its relatively short half-life (30 yrs. vs. 24,000 years for Pu) makes contamination of the ground water table a remote threat.
Of course, Cs-137 is a highly dangerous substance if ingested or inhaled. Dismantling of sources containing radioactive isotopes must be performed by trained and competent personnel and not by every London-based fugitive from the Russian justice or junkyard bum hunting for the rare metals. I would abstain from using even ordinary cesium chloride as a dietary replacement for table salt: diarrhea and vomiting may ensue. But it is not lethal in practical quantities as suggested by Zimmerman, unless you are force-fed by it through enema somewhere at Abu Ghraib. Yet, because of the same solubility issue and affinity to natural salt, simple increase of water intake already provides a workable method to mitigate exposure, before professional help becomes available. In the case of attack by the Cs bomb, I would recommend drinking enough water and not to consume unknown substances, picked from the ground or technical devices, nor use them as components for body washes and paints. And do not wallow in the mud naked.
Oriental proverb
When we created a $50 bn. plus a year, 200,000-staff monster called Department of Internal Security, it was clear to everybody who has any understanding how bureaucracy works that they would work tirelessly to expand their sphere of competence. One of the well-treaded methods is to circulate sensational new threat, usually through a strategically corrupted Brit, then let Government officials to ward off angry questions by the media and the Congress when they do something about it until public hysteria reaches such proportions that they will be “compelled” to take resolute and very expensive action. Works every time. Worked for Bush Sr. and Kuwait (“babies thrown onto the bayonets”), Clinton in Kosovo (still remember “stopping the genocide?”), Bush in Iraq (“mushroom cloud in 45 minutes”); Iran (another mushroom cloud) and Sudan (another genocide) are the cases still pending.
Now new threat, namely Cs-137 in medical devices is posed to take over public imagination. This isotope of cesium is typically used as a salt crystal(s) packed into hard ceramic pellet. By itself, Cs-137 (half-life 30.2 years) decays through a normal β-channel. Its medical use is based on the by-product of the decay: a metastable isotope Ba-137 (half-life 2.6 sec.), which emits energetic γ-radiation. Collimated, this radiation kills tumors.
Dr. Zimmerman, Professor of King’s College in London, a well-known national security guru suggested in his op-ed piece in “New York Times” that the malefactors using only the isotopes in available medical radiation devices can contaminate pretty much the entire United States. Though, Zimmerman is a highly educated expert, my single personal contact with him suggested of someone capable of rush and unfounded judgments. Lately, he seem to have lost his mental stability completely over the polonium poisoning accident in London, inserting his ramblings about it in everything he writes or talks about.
Metallic cesium is highly reactive (can conflagrate in open air) and technically applied chloride CsCl is well-soluble in water. These properties are in sharp contrast to, e.g. uranium and plutonium and their oxides, which are rather neutral and can exist in the environment in the form of dust for millennia. High reactivity of cesium means, for one, that rain provides a fair degree of decontamination. Stuff going through rivers into water treatment plants is likely to be immobilized in mud, again due to the extreme ease, with which Cs as all other alkali metals form stable salts. Its relatively short half-life (30 yrs. vs. 24,000 years for Pu) makes contamination of the ground water table a remote threat.
Of course, Cs-137 is a highly dangerous substance if ingested or inhaled. Dismantling of sources containing radioactive isotopes must be performed by trained and competent personnel and not by every London-based fugitive from the Russian justice or junkyard bum hunting for the rare metals. I would abstain from using even ordinary cesium chloride as a dietary replacement for table salt: diarrhea and vomiting may ensue. But it is not lethal in practical quantities as suggested by Zimmerman, unless you are force-fed by it through enema somewhere at Abu Ghraib. Yet, because of the same solubility issue and affinity to natural salt, simple increase of water intake already provides a workable method to mitigate exposure, before professional help becomes available. In the case of attack by the Cs bomb, I would recommend drinking enough water and not to consume unknown substances, picked from the ground or technical devices, nor use them as components for body washes and paints. And do not wallow in the mud naked.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
W. Langewiesche, The atomic bazaar: the rise of atomic poor
W. Langewiesche, The atomic bazaar: the rise of atomic poor, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2007, ISBN 0-374-10678-2
Throughout the 90s, “The New York Times” and WSJ entertained their readers by stories that in Russia one can buy nuclear bombs on the flea markets and that generally, the Russians are the source of all evil on this planet. By the new millennium the readers of respectable newspapers got bored and the torch was passed to others, such as this “Vanity Fair” columnist. His interviews with unnamed “experts” contain such technical absurdities and his description of Russian nuclear facility is so generic a picture of a provincial Russian town in the Western press that I have little doubt that his main (if not the only) interlocutors were drug-addled members of the Moscow press core and their prostitute friends. Or he could have lifted the descriptions from tabloid web sites sitting pretty in his upscale NYC or LA condo.
To be completely fair I must remind the reader that the only WMD arsenal which leaked was the US biological weapons research complex. This resulted in the “anthrax scare” and the death of one tabloid journalist.
Throughout the 90s, “The New York Times” and WSJ entertained their readers by stories that in Russia one can buy nuclear bombs on the flea markets and that generally, the Russians are the source of all evil on this planet. By the new millennium the readers of respectable newspapers got bored and the torch was passed to others, such as this “Vanity Fair” columnist. His interviews with unnamed “experts” contain such technical absurdities and his description of Russian nuclear facility is so generic a picture of a provincial Russian town in the Western press that I have little doubt that his main (if not the only) interlocutors were drug-addled members of the Moscow press core and their prostitute friends. Or he could have lifted the descriptions from tabloid web sites sitting pretty in his upscale NYC or LA condo.
To be completely fair I must remind the reader that the only WMD arsenal which leaked was the US biological weapons research complex. This resulted in the “anthrax scare” and the death of one tabloid journalist.
Victoria Finlay, Jewels: A Secret History
Victoria Finlay, Jewels: A Secret History, Ballantine Books, NY 2006.
ISBN-10: 0-345-46694-2
Amusing travelogue. Wittily organized according to Mohs hardness scale of jewels (which are not necessarily minerals: amber, pearl, jet and opal all involve organic processes in their formation). Discussion of artificial corundum gemstones— ruby, sapphire— is outdated and superficial: the requirements of laser technology caused production of synthetic rubies of arbitrary size, etc. Industrial applications of diamonds are also missing. To a pity, like the Nazi Germany, in which no printed material could come out without anti-Semitic rants no matter how tangential to the subject, these days any piece written by the Britisher must contain racialist abuse of the Russians (Chapter “Amber”).
William Butcher, Jules Verne. The Definitive Biography
William Butcher, Jules Verne. The Definitive Biography. Thunder’s mouth press, NY 2006
ISBN-10: 1-56025-854-3
The author calls it “a definitive biography.” There is nothing definitive in it, except for meticulous reconstruction of Verne’s home addresses throughout his life, financial affairs—containing unfounded allegations of Hetzel of cheating the author—, and lugubrious allegations of Verne’s homosexuality. The analysis of his books is substituted by brief retelling of the plots, the inquest into science and technology in his stories is perfunctory. There is precious little in this biography concerning Verne’s political beliefs and social attitudes apart from conventional platitudes describing a run-of-the-mill upper middle class Victorian gentleman, which indeed he was.
Most interesting part of the book deals with his childhood and youth. The author put a significant effort to reconstruct Jules Verne’s own travels. But these are entirely mundane given his station as a modestly wealthy Victorian. The author rejects the “prophetic” quality of his work. Forget his 1960s world divided between US and Russia, Americanized Western Europe ruled by unprincipled media magnates, in which people travel in gas-powered vehicles, US lunar module fished out of the Pacific by the Navy ship and one of the last, non-fiction, novels dealing with ethnic tensions in Latvia! Forget raising a question of moral responsibility of the scientist for the fate of his invention, etc. etc.
The author raises a well-researched issue of the literary quality of his writing. Good, but that’s was not what his novels were famous for, in his lifetime and thereafter, especially in bad English translations. Call, charitably, modern world outlook “realism,” but also “universal cynicism.” Jules Verne personified, for the later generations, the mid-to-late XIX century world view with its unbounded optimism in technical and moral improvement of humanity, which our times are sorely lacking. His books were stories of vision and perseverance and still are.
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