Are_grits_groceries
Are_grits_groceries's JournalNE SC did have a nuclear bomb dropped on it. Luckily the PU core was stored elsewhere on the plane.
(The first few paragraphs are a riff about soybeans? Whatever. The part I posted is where the story really begins. It is long, but it is fascinating. Don't stop before you read about the geiger counter and a piece of a pig.)
A Perfectly Understandable Mistake
The true story of the albino raccoon, the pig farmer, and the only NUCLEAR BOMB ever to be dropped on America
<snip>
The collisions were about to begin. The prototype of the Mk-6 device sat on top of a three-hundred-foot-tall tower in the Enewetok Atoll. It was 6:34 on the morning of April 8, 1951. A few shakes earlier, someone had sent a signal to the Mk-6, and sixty panels of high-energy explosives inside it had detonated around a hollow sphere of uranium and plutonium. People who study really fast things define a shake as a hundred millionth of a second. The shock waves from the high-energy explosives began collapsing the hollow sphere of uranium and plutonium until it was no longer hollow. Then they collapsed it some more.
At the very center of the sphere was the "initiator"--a tiny piece of beryllium. As the walls closed in around the beryllium, it reacted by spitting out neutrons. One of those neutrons collided with the nucleus of one of the atoms in the crushed sphere. The nucleus split, releasing a tiny jolt of pure energy and a few neutrons of its own. These neutrons flew off into the dense atomic forest. There were more collisions.
And so on.
A man who watched what happened next described it like this: "The predawn darkness was rent with a brilliance greater than noon, and the islands of the atoll shook with the force of the blast."
Beryllium, the metal seed that initiated the spectacle, is named after beryl, a mineral. Beryl takes its name from an ancient Greek word, beryllos, from which we also derive the English word brilliance.
<snip>
Newsreel about bombing:
http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0505BOMB_122
"Oh! My little sweetums isn't going to get into Harvard* because of you!" Teaching "the entitled."
"Oh! My little sweetums isn't going to get into Harvard* because of you!"
*Insert any college or university here.
I heard this all the time when I had Parent/Teacher conferences because 'little sweetums' had been punished or had not gotten an A+++++++++++++++.
I remember one meeting which was held because I had given 2 students ZEROES for cheating. One was showing the other his answers. It wasn't even close, and they both admitted it. The parents of the 'show-er' didn't think he was cheating. I never heard from the parents of the 'show-ee.'
They refused to believe it was cheating. I refused to debate the semantics of the situation. They could call it 'out of the goodness of his hearting' for all I cared. He got a ZERO. This didn't compute in their universe because ZERO was a temperature or a nickname for a Japanese plane in WWII, but not a grade.
I was told ad nauseum about what cheating was and wasn't. I was also told I would be held responsible for his failure to get into Harvard or Oxford or whatever ultra-elite school that was the flavor of the month. I told them he was in the NINTH grade and that it was the FIRST month of the school year. He had plenty of time to pull the grade up and make an A. He wasn't doomed, and I didn't require ZERO to be written on his forehead in indelible red magic marker like some educational version of Hester Prynne. They wanted to know if she had gotten a ZERO also.(facepalm ran through my mind)
This was the opening of a new play at Hawthorne High School. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was a major character in this offering. I was hounded for weeks about giving the poor, bedraggled little person a retest. His counselor told me that they did that all the time at the middle school he came from. She didn't agree with it, but that's where a lot of it started.
I finally got so fed up with the almost daily conferences with somebody about it that I told the principal it had better stop. I gave her my written resignation and said that I was leaving if I heard one more word about it. I told her that I didn't have another job, but I thought that blowing grass clippings off medians was preferable to this torture. She said to keep teaching and she would take care of it. I thought she should be able to because she was responsible for 99% of it.
I wasn't sure what the parents thought. I wasn't going to send out a form letter to every school about the incident so the child wouldn't be accepted. Nor did I keep a calendar to remind me in 4 years to find out where he was applying so I could haunt the committee that considered possible enrollees.
These types of children were doomed IMHO. The parents refused to let any type of punishment be given because it would spoil the record of their child. I thought it was better to let them suffer the consequences now which were minor rather than bail them out all the time. They wouldn't be able to bail them out of life later on.
When this topic came up as it inevitably did when parents were running interference, I always wanted to tell them to save up because if they weren't using that cash for Harvard later, they might be using it to post a bond somewhere.
(I know people will now jump in to tell me how their child was unfairly treated in some situation. I'm not against a parent coming to the defense of a child when necessary. I'm dealing with kids who are never wrong no matter what.)
Man diagnosed with brewing beer in his stomach. (Wait! Wut!?!?)
A case study details why an unnamed 61-year-old Texas man was often drunk throughout the day, even on days when he insisted that he had not had a drink. He was eventually diagnosed with "auto-brewery syndrome," a rare disease that has only a few confirmed cases in the last 30 years.
"The physicians were not aware of any way that a person could be intoxicated without ingesting alcohol and therefore believed he must be a 'closet drinker.'Doctors — and even the man's wife, who is a nurse — didn't believe him for a long time when he said he wasn't drinking. His wife regularly made him take a Breathalyzer test and he would consistently register a blood alcohol level (BAL) of 0.33% to 0.4%, or 5 times the legal driving limit.
The man was placed on a low-carb diet, given antifungal medication and recovered. The study suggest that physicians consider the possibility of the rare condition if confronted with a case of someone claiming they become drunk without drinking.
http://cir.ca/news/man-brewed-beer-in-stomach
Who knew?
When The NSA built their Star Trek replica they forgot one major item:
@darth
The crew just won't behave.
Photo of President Obama helping a young guest at the White House:
MT @petesouza: Pres Obama writes school excuse note for Alanah Poullard, 5, daughter of wounded warrior
Ha! Great photo!
Pope Bluntly Faults Church’s Focus on Gays and Abortion
Pope Francis, in the first extensive interview of his six-month-old papacy, said that the Roman Catholic church had grown “obsessed” with preaching about abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he has chosen not to speak of those issues despite recriminations from some critics.
In remarkably blunt language, Francis sought to set a new tone for the church, saying it should be a “home for all” and not a “small chapel” focused on doctrine, orthodoxy and a limited agenda of moral teachings.
“It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” the pope told the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a fellow Jesuit and editor in chief of La Civiltà Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal whose content is routinely approved by the Vatican. “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.
<snip>
“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality,” he told Father Spadaro. “I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”
The interview also serves to present the pope as a human being, who loves Mozart and Dostoevsky and his grandmother, and whose favorite film is Fellini’s “La Strada.”
The 12,000-word interview ranges widely, and may confirm what many Catholics already suspected: that the chameleon-like Francis bears little resemblance to those on the church’s theological or political right wing. He said some people had assumed he was an “ultraconservative” because of his reputation when he served as the superior of his Jesuit province in Argentina. He pointed out that he was made superior at the “crazy” young age of 36, and that his leadership style was too authoritarian.
<snip>
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/world/europe/pope-bluntly-faults-churchs-focus-on-gays-and-abortion.html?_r=0
Whoooo! He is doubling down on his message to the hierarchy. The Vatican may correct him, but people are listening to his words not their corrections.
He is not so slowly pushing the Church away from its usual screeds and into areas they seem to ignore. The least, the last, and the lost are now on the top of his agnda.
I realize he has to answer for any previous actions that greatly hurt others. Hopeully that is on his agenda. As it is, his legacy may also include a great change in the Church. That in turn has enormous ramifications in many countries. It will depend on his fortitude and longevity.
Crocodiles Infest Acapulco Mexico Floodwaters
(The first half shows general damage. Then they get to the crocodile)
Residents in Acapulco look on as a crocodile thrashes around on a pavement in the city's centre. Heavy floods have brought the reptiles from their natural habitat to the built-up area after two tropical storms hit Mexico. At least 80 people have died in the recent flooding
I shudder to think what other critters have been flooded out of their homes.
Asking for help- Why and what it does both good and bad.
Last week I asked for help here. Thanks to OneGrassRoot I was able to make a request on Wishadoo and have it posted here too. The post I made is here:
Are Grits Groceries
http://www.wishadoo.org/wishlist/199/money-for-repairing-my-car-new-glasses-other/
The good part is that I may receive some money to alleviate my problems. The concrete results are enormously helpful.
I also experienced some less tangible results. I received a little over $300. Each donation lifted my spirits and made me feel less lonely. I had thought about this before I asked, but the intensity of these feelings surprised me. It was a very welcome effect.
The detrimental effect is that I feel like a loser. That can be reinforced by the negative stereotypes around. After being able to make it for years on my own, I can't anymore. Asking brings a hard-edged reality to my situation. It is deflating.
Am I throwing a pity party? I do go through periods imagining myself in unrealistic future scenarios. "Oh woe is me. I'll have to live thru the snow outside with my 2 cats." Snow? I live in SC. My Grandmama's version was "Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I'm going in the garden and stick worms up my nose." What can I say? It runs in the family.
I am in no way ungrateful for any help of any kind. The act of receiving help is one of relief as opposed to asking. In addition, people on DU can be kind in many ways no matter the situation. I know those here do what they can.
These are my thoughts. I have no idea if anyone has ever wondered about this. I still need help, but I know I will live through the snow.
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: SC
Member since: Tue Oct 7, 2008, 07:35 PM
Number of posts: 17,111
