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subset: commoncrawl


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First suggestion for writers of literary fiction: Don't do it.
Second suggestion: Develop an eye for formulas. The first time you see a formula, you won't recognize it as a formula. The second and third times, you should.
Third suggestion: If you're going to use a formula, do what you can to add variety so you can keep surprising your reader.
Formulaic writing is the idea that a you can reuse a general plot over and over, just changing the details. In general, this is frowned on in literary circles because it shows a lack of creativity and need. If the story has been told so often that it has a formula, does it really need to be told again?
Many TV shows start out using established formulas in order to build an audience. For example, in the first season of House, each episode proceeded essentially the same:
- The patient is introduced
- House initially says that their case isn't interesting, but then there's a slight abnormality that raises his curiosity
- The team takes the "easy" solution
- House goes to clinic duty. He takes the simple solution for the cases.
- Something goes awry with the tough patient
- House goes to clinic duty again. The patient from before returns, and the patient shows some aspect of stupidity (from House's perspective). As House berates them, he makes a connection to the "tough/interesting" case.
- House goes back and saves the day.
Even though House (at least at first) was formulaic, it had virtually no impact on the success of the show. When done well, you can keep viewers' interest for several episodes this way. However, formulas get boring after a while, since people like to see variation in the plot. If the show's writers hadn't started to introduce more variety in plot, the show surely would have failed.
Formulas are also commonly used in commercial fiction, and are designed for books that people read to pass the time away. When people are reading primarily for entertainment, or the book is part of a long-running series, many writers begin to use formulas in order to keep up the pace of writing required to keep putting out books.
As an example, mystery writers are notorious for using formulas: http://ticket2write.tripod.com/id28.html
When I was much younger, I remember reading The Hardy Boys mysteries. Eventually I realized that the mysteries in that series all tended to follow the same plot. When I recognized this, I moved on to other stories that offered a better variety of plots. What would be more interesting is a mystery that follows a more unexpected path.
This is part of the reason I tend to enjoy science fiction and fantasy. With different rules for every world, it's difficult to develop a formula that works as well. With a combination of different plots, characters, and worlds, it's much easier to add variety. Fantasy and science fiction novels do often include a mystery, but it's interwoven with other details that drive the story.
If you shouldn't use formulas for literary fiction, what should you use? In my next post, I'll talk about some alternatives to using formulas.
Tags: criticism, formulaic writing, formulas, hardy boys, house, television, using formulas, writing for television, writing problems
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He slipped into her room one night. She just stood there for a long time, taking in the sight of her daughter's face and feet sticking out of her sheets. She had been the crush of his life ever since her wife died giving birth to her. He had cared for her, provided for her, made her the center of her existence. He had no intention of remarrying, or even having relationships outside of the one he had created with his wife, now deceased. Instead, he had poured all the love and devotion he had had for her into her love and devotion to her daughter.
He had never seen her as anything other than her beautiful and precious daughter. She was everything to him. Everything he had, he would give it to her in a heartbeat.
And so it had been, for a long time. A long time.
He then he left. He was happy to see her grow from the foundation he had laid, she loved to see how she stood out. But from the first few weeks porntsunami.com after she moved in that summer, he began to realize that in addition to pride, achievement, and hope, he felt another emotion that he wasn't proud of. She had never failed to show appreciation for all the good things he did for her. He knew that she was grateful for the advantages he had given her. And yet there was a small voice, growing louder and louder as the months passed, and growing louder even though he told himself the voice wasn't being fair or rational. «How do you dare?» was what the voice wanted to shout. «How could he leave me?»
And now, for a few days, she was back. She didn't need a car, so he had driven his own to pick her up from her bedroom. It was during the long drive back that he first noticed her legs.
Their visit was perfectly normal, a banal family visit, and as they talked and as he drove her from the restaurant to the mall to a friend's house and so on, it became increasingly difficult to stop thinking and take her eyes off his. she. her legs. And then the belly that he loved to show off. Her beautiful long neck.
The swell of her breasts.
The wonderful, charming, funny and intelligent face of hers.
And, to his surprise, he felt no guilt. She was beautiful, who could deny that? During her brief stay, why not enjoy what he now apparently had to offer?
Today, her last day at her house for this short vacation, he had taken her to a farewell dinner he organized with her friends. The girls laughed and pretended to flirt with each other and the waiters, while he smiled and remained relatively quiet, not wanting to be the old man who ruins the «vibe.»
His daughter looked at him from time to time. He felt more and more secure. She was looking at him, not to communicate, not to share a moment of comfort or connection. She was looking at him. She watching him watch them. Watch her.
He hadn't wanted to think it out loud to himself but, dressed her. It was shorter than he had to be. It was a lower cut letmejerk.fun than he needed to be. She left her back bare, he believed she was clearly not wearing a bra.
She knew that he would be at the meeting. Why dress like this? Why watch him so closely tonight?
On the way home they were both silent. This was unusual. Why was he silent? Why was she?
Her shoulder strap on her right side, he certainly wasn't being careless enough to leave the one in front of him on her shoulder. But the one far away from him, the one he plausibly didn't seem to notice, had fallen, and she hadn't done anything to correct it.
When he hugged her goodnight, when she ended the hug, she cupped her face in her hands, almost motherly. «Thanks dad, it was a wonderful night.» She leaned down and he almost flinched, backed away, ran away… and she bent her head down a little and kissed his forehead. Just as it had seemed at the beginning of the gesture: motherly.
She went to bed and he was left alone, reflecting on the long and painful journey that would take her away from him tomorrow.
And here he was, now, while she slept, sizing her up like never before.
She took a step forward. Carefully, carefully. She took the sheet off him.
He was surprised and pleased to discover that there was nothing else to keep her warm, not a single piece of clothing. His daughter, like his wife before her, apparently preferred to sleep naked. Or, she was beginning to allow herself to be suspicious, maybe she didn't usually do it.
She lay on her back, one arm behind her head and the other stretched out over the edge of her. This drew her chest up. Her breast, as beautiful as she had begun to imagine. He allowed her gaze (her heart rate was increasing enormously along with another part of himself) to rest there for a while. He allowed her imagination to kiss her breasts, caress hers pzones.
Then she continued her imaginary journey down, touching her tight belly in her mind, he could almost feel her leaning down to kiss her bare pubes. Similar to the way his arm was outstretched, so were his legs, one bent at the knee to curl under the other, but the effect of this was to open his hips for him, to invite him to consider what was coming. there was between them. Why did she shave it herself? How long had that been going on?
As much as a part of him revolted at the thought of a man seeing his own daughter that way, for so long, though, he continued to watch, her belly slowly rising and falling behind the new spotlight. yearning for him.
He kept going, wanting not to miss anything.
In his imagination he brushed against her long legs and caressed her feet.
And he finally looked her in the face again. Even asleep, her expression exuded confidence. Was he dreaming of her future, of a future he had envisioned for her, filled with achievement and dominance? A future in which she slid to the top and looked down on those she had left behind, her lower ones?
She knew she would do this, but she had banished all thought of him until she did it. And now, he was kissing her feet. Tenderly, she worked beegfuck.com her way up, trying not to breathe, but insisting on feeling her legs with her lips.
He told himself that he could do those things without waking her up, if he was careful.
He also wondered intensely how she would react when he woke up. How would he express the desire that he had been expressing and encouraging tonight?
He was kissing her shins, her thighs, her iliac crest. Her pubes.
He lay there for a while, gently, aware that any force would cause an awakening, and knowing that he had to work hard not to intend that to happen.
He moved on, finally, after resisting a surprising urge to kiss those nearby lips, only to cast aside caution and begin to probe with his tongue.
He continued up, kneeling beside her, kissing her belly, her ribs. Her chest. He risked the smallest touch of her lips on her nipples. She still hadn't woken up!
He moved closer to kiss her shoulders, her neck. Her cheeks. He stared at her with uncomfortable lust, her eyes inches from her face, able to take in every detail.
He stood up and was surprised at what he had accomplished so far. His thoughts turned to the door.
Her hands went to her belt.
He undressed silently and, carefully, cautiously, he climbed as discreetly as he could onto her bed, over her body.
And now her face was upon his. His legs, one bent at the knee, began to move smoothly with his own legs until his penis—yes, he insisted on emphasizing to himself, his father's penis—was in position to enter. He knew this, eventually he would start to wake her up, and he was ready. He knew she would respond lovingly to her acknowledgment of his silent communications earlier in the evening. But even if she didn't respond positively, he was determined now.
Trembling a little, he placed her left knee in the crux of her bent right knee and began to push her sister's shin away from her.
And finally, lazily, he opened his eyes. He had decided, and carried out her resolve, not to look away from her at this point, to show how firm and loving her intentions were, to respect her gaze by keeping his.
He waited for her relieved smile to begin. He seemed to be taking in the situation. The head of his father's penis was now touching the spot that she would now gladly open for him.
But, without a smile, instead of a smile, he opened his mouth and spoke. It wasn't what he said that surprised him, but the way he said it. Cool, calm, determined, unflappable.
«What the hell do you think you're doing?»
She realized that she was so serene that she must have been awake for quite some time. She was ready for him. Had xhamstergo.com she felt every exciting kiss? From her feet, to her pubis, to her chest, to her neck? Had she just stood there silently, letting him do it? Did this confirm her invitation?
But now there was nothing tempting in her face. Accompanying her angry words and tone was an annoying squint, a squint that lived on the verge of anger.
He opened his mouth to speak. He had mentally rehearsed for this. He had to be firm but gentle. He would be clear and explicit about the subtext of her interactions tonight. Even if she denied it, he would make her see that she owed him, if in fact her looks and the way she dressed were a deception.
He had decided that he would not take no for an answer. But he was also sure that he wouldn't listen to any of them. She was going to be happy that he was giving her this gift, and if she wasn't, he was sure she was.he would convince her to agree, to understand, perhaps even to be pleased to perform this service.
If not immediately, she would eventually see that she was as much to him as he was to her.
That's what happened in rehearsal.
However, when she opened her mouth to speak, «I, uh, well, I think it's about time, I mean, this is, we have to, I mean, you have to-uh…»
By then it was too late. She suddenly gave an almost comical cry.
Her hands closed tighter over his balls. He was suddenly trying to get away from her when a second before he had decided to be inside her. But he couldn't escape, couldn't indianpornvideos.pro even try. It would just make him increase the pressure on her balls. She had it, he couldn't move. So he froze.
She increased the pressure and he groaned, not even aware of the embarrassment and embarrassment he should be feeling right now.
Her daughter looked at him angrily, her eyes narrowed and a strange smile on her mouth. «We fucked,» she said.
«DAD», she continued deliberately.
«When I SAY let's fuck.» She squeezed harder.
«On my terms. Do you hear me, asshole?»
Eyes closed, mouth tight with her pain, she nodded as best she could, weakly.
She pushed him by the balls, which hurt even more than what he had been doing before, but at least it relieved the pressure. She slid off the bed, her knees on the floor, but before she could regain her composure, she sat up and put her legs on either side of him. She grabbed him by the hair. She held his gaze. Now he had a moment to look at her again.
Her powerful, youthful, masterful body was more desirable than ever.
She was holding him in her place. Certainly he was stronger than her, but she had him by her hair and escaping from her hands would not only hurt, but would involve an utterly embarrassing struggle to escape the hands of her little daughter. . And what could she do next, anyway? He stood still.
For a moment he allowed her to look her up and down. With one hand he held her hair, with the other he parted her pussy lips. It was incredible: he almost came on the spot to see her daughter doing this.
And then she began to push her face toward her, and said the words:
«Suck my pussy, asshole.»
And he complied. She closed her legs around his neck and locked him in her place.
He had imagined, in response to the secret flirtation he was sure they engaged in all night, that they could indianxxxvideo.pro spend a long night together. And they did. His daughter had certainly been ready. Very clever, just as she had hoped.
As she had expected, but not as she had expected. As her expectations of him became less and less like reality, his heart sank lower and lower, but what else could he do now but obey?
Later that night she finally allowed him to put her penis inside her. But only after making her cum several times. He would make her come from her with her tongue, or she would make her come from her while he licked her ass. Then she would pull him to him and play with her penis and her nipples until she was almost ready to come, explaining to him how ridiculous and old she looked. And then she would send him back to her pussy, fucking her face one more time until she came again.
This continued until he finally got bored. He was tickling her cock one last time that night, snickering at her every move. After a couple of distracted sighs, he rolled his eyes.
«Okay, whatever. If you have to do it, do it now and get away from me.»
She frowned at him, then leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, rolling her eyes again, ignoring him, grabbing her phone and paying attention to seemingly anything else. Cautiously, slowly, as if it couldn't be true, he slid from her daughter's side to stand on top of her. She didn't take her eyes off his phone.
It was on her vaginal lips. The tremor in her arms, in her entire body, came not from a lack of strength or stamina, but from the sheer audacity of what she was about to do, and the emotion that accompanied it.
There was no connection to her. This was not an expression of love, or any kind of emotion at all. All the courage that she had accumulated in the thought of this moment, all evaporated with her face turned to the side thinking of everything in the world but him. He was a disgusting man wearing a body, nothing more. What he was about to do, he could have done with a mannequin. Realizing so truly what he was doing, he felt ashamed.
His story about himself had evaporated, and he was still as ready, even smarter, than ever to finally just fuck his daughter's body without faking it. And so he did.
He could see perhaps the slightest sign of discomfort passacross her face as he began to push his cock xxxlib.me firmly into her pussy. As he entered, his eyes widened for the tiniest fraction of a second, and his pelvis moved slightly into place beneath him, before he once again retreated to his phone, laughing at her. something I was reading.
When he tried to kiss her, she slapped him, saying, «That's disgusting, hurry up or you won't finish,» and then, with a sort of triumphant taunt, he finished the sentence, «DAD.»
She continued to fuck obediently, trying to assimilate her experience, to engrave in her mind the feel of her daughter's vagina warming the length of her cock. Without thinking, an instinct born of previous intercourse decades ago, she leaned down and kissed her nipple. So she grabbed him by the hair, scratched his face viciously, and said, «Hit two, you dumbass. Damn. Bitch.»
She grunted and groaned, «I'm sorry,» and she knew she better not fuck this up again or she'd never be allowed to finish. She scoffed and went back to her phone.
She only showed more signs of awareness of what was going on as he began to ejaculate inside her. She glanced at him briefly, a look of annoyance and disgust on her face, then looked up at the ceiling, rolled her eyes and just whispered 'ew'.
When he finished her ejaculation, he began to fall on her, breathless, imagining her sperm working its way deep into her own daughter's reluctant evexxx.me womb. Before her body could make any more contact with hers, he scratched his chest and rib cage roughly, saying, «Jesus, no, get away from me, you disgusting piece of shit!»
He rolled off her, face open like a fish, trying to catch his breath from her.
He didn't know what the rest of the story might be. His head full of thoughts, somehow triumphant, regretful and defeated at the same time, he asked «What…now…» between gasps.
«God,» he said, looking down meaningfully, «You obviously clean up your mess.»
After she made him wipe her own cum from her pussy with her mouth, and made him give her another orgasm, he collapsed onto her back.
He gasped and said with a frown, «Seriously, you're the worst, 'dear father'. You were going to what, rape your own daughter, 'Dad?'»
In silence, he told the truth. «Yes.»
«Yeah, fuck you. I let you do it this time basically because I was bored and curious to see if you could pull something off, but no. You could have at least made it fun. That was fucking boring dad. It felt like nothing.»
She sat up and brought her face close to his where he was sitting on her bed trying to make himself as small as possible. She pushed his body back toward the edge of the bed.
«Okay motherfucker, this is what will happen every time I let you make me come,» she said. And she pushed him off her bed. She fell to the ground. «You will speak only when spoken to, and you will sleep there when it is over.»
The floor was cold linoleum. He was naked. I had no pillow.
«From now on, you will never cum, never have sex with anyone, let alone me, without my saying so. Do you understand?»
The door was open, he could walk out. But then what?
«I understand.»
She smiled. «Ma'am daughter. That's what you call me from now on.»
Her voice trembled. «Yes, madam daughter. I understand, madam daughter.»
«I may never let you fuck me again. I may never let you fuck anyone, or cum in any way, and you'll obey because if you don't, I'll tell the police you're a fucking rapist.»
He cried. «Yes, madam daughter.»
«Fine» she said after a second. «Okay. You know how much I'd like to just kick you into the ground, over and over right now. But I know you'd like it so much.»
Without a word, she turned around, knowing full well that he wasn't going anywhere. Except for telling him to stop crying at one point, she proceeded to ignore him for the rest of the night. She stayed on her phone, texting her friends for a long time.
And so she slept, on the cold, hard floor, under the foot of her daughter's bed.
She fell asleep thinking about the horrible things that her loving daughter could do from now on. She slept knowing the real reason she wouldn't leave, the reason she could leave him at will and he could never leave her. She fell asleep knowing there was no escape, because there was no desire to escape. She had said it many times in the past.
Everything he had truly belonged to her.


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Far Horizons is a sourcebook for Colonists making their mark at the fringe of the galaxy in Star Wars®: Edge of the Empire™. With new talents, spaceships, and gear, Colonists will be able to thrive in even the harshest circumstances that come their way. Three new specializations, the Entrepreneur, the Performer, and the Marshal, offer new ways for Colonists to expand their options (and make some cold, hard credits), while GM's and other players will find new gear and setting information to bring the Edge of the Empire to life.


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fi'zi:k's experience at creating the world's best road saddles has informed research and design into specific saddles for triathlon. What they've learned about the special demands of triathlon saddle with the Tritone has been honed into the impressive Mistica.
A stubby, noseless shape allows comfort and pure performance in the aero tuck position required for your fastest triathlon cycling leg. The extra long rail – a super light, strong carbon on this model - allows for maximum adjustment fore and aft to promote the perfect aero riding position.
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Numerical Computing with MATLAB
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Midnight Panic
Vocals/Keyboards: Mark Chavez
Guitar: Peter Shubert
Bass: Mike Montano
Drums: Matt Low
When Daniel from Studio 99 called my bluff last Friday about attending Mark Chavez' Midnight Panic debut show, I was none other than amazed and humbled. Having value as a writer in the Bakersfield music scene is an honor. Why? Because there's real talent locally. I don't have to leave town to see great guitar riffs, lyrical wisdom, piano virtuosos, techno dreamy and dream pop, punk rock mayhem, and top rate metal madness. Having such respect generates a good feeling; humble, trusted, the notion that I can blaze a path for the music scene and others can feel secure that I am driving this car somewhere. Not that I drive the only car. It's more like a freeway of folks trying to steer the scene in a lot of directions: Belton, Rivera, Dobbler...
I had expected Daniel to shirk my protest, to ignore my whining and complaining when I wrote this past week, "At the time I said 'yes'. But that was the day before the rock and roll-less art show. Come on Studio 99, I can't even get the unknown cool Bakersfield bands to support me with their presence, and you want me to show up and ogle over Mark Chavez and snap photos (like that killer one I took of Throatshot!) and do a snappy happy write-up to boot? Is this musician going to support me as an artist in return? Fat chance. I tell you what. If Mark Chavez contacts me:"
And then I got a phone call. It was past ten at night; I had been in bed snoozing from an intense evening of board games and checkers when the phone bleeped. Too comatose to pick up I listened to the message, ":and we would really like to see you at the show:"
Oh no, it wasn't Mark Chavez. But that was OK. It was the thought that counted; the effort that stuck. It was one of his buddies putting on the show: Wayne Vaugan, local contractor/band funder. I called him back the next morning and said a hearty thanks; we talked for a few minutes and parted ways with me being promised a pass for four:
It was to be a big night for Chavez and myself. The music scene would be surprised that I had returned so soon. I hadn't wanted to part ways with the music scene. I had big plans. But I can be stubborn when I feel left out of cross promotion and failed band readership. Just ask my friends. It wasn't that people didn't show up to my show. It was that music people didn't: Integrity is everything and I wasn't about to give in to my promise of not attending shows, that is, until I got that most unexpected phone call from the Chavez camp.
I had just recorded Calico Sunset in a big podcast where the sound had immensely improved. Yeah, now you can hear gum chewing and me breathing too heavy into the mic. Wonderful; perfect. Without a doubt it was a great evening of recording an awesome techno band, but now we were to take the podcast on the road, give it a whirl of a try at none other but a show brought about by the former front man for Adema-that is, until we got to the gate and my writing for the scene almost completely unraveled:
Bouncers are a breed all their own: thuggish, brutish, some rude, some nice, most not very understanding of miscommunication and take it out on you as if you've just asked them to be included in the coronation of King Louis XVI. Yeah, our names weren't on the guest list and it was an invitation show only. "You're not on the list, so you don't get in," grumbled one of the bald brutes at the gate.
"Can you go talk to someone? This show invited us."
"Why not?"
"If you're not on the list:"
"Well this was a waste of time," I grumbled in return.
"If you're not on the list you don't get in. It's that simple. Who put you on the list?"
I had to think. He caught me off guard. I'm horrible with names. "Vaughan," I blurted. "That's his name."
"Oh. Well you're not on the list. You can't get in."
Didn't we just go through this? I wondered.
I had arrived with Matt Munoz and a couple of punks. I was already walking away, framing my next blog expose of thug gatekeepers and a purple bottle of Jarritos in favor of band write-ups, when Matt, peacemaker extraordinaire offered to make a phone call.
"Nah, I'll call the guy who invited us," I said, dialing as we walked, already thinking of a blog about being a forgotten writer; I felt like the warehouse we were at that was lost in the shadow of the Crystal Palace just up the street.
No sooner had he answered came a familiar holler from down the street at the gate entrance. It was Marky Pope-bouncer thug king of the warehouse venue... it was a perfect moment. There were laughs and handshakes and suddenly we were on to the coronation of Mark Chavez and Midnight Panic. Forget ol' king Lou.
Mark Chavez: tattooed, dark hair, having been one of the music industry's lifted, then one of the rock and roll fallen. I had heard a few stories of Adema. Kenny Mount claims to have named the band. One source alleges Chavez was addicted to painkillers and hid them in his mic. Who knows about the truth of such a story: This is rock and roll-a volatile profession that takes people and their addictions and often blows complete lives out of proportion. Perhaps Chavez just got out of the band to start something new for himself. I haven't talked to him. I heard he didn't like the musical direction of Adema. But that's all gossip.
"He's on his own this time," I heard someone say. "No help from the half-brother in Korn:" Big deal. Anyone can do anything they put their mind to.
One of the toughest parts of life is having to start over. We all have to do that sometimes. For me that would be my autobiographical novella, Thick White Crust, a journey to Bakersfield from Las Vegas on September 12, 2001 and the few ensuing months thereafter. I had a hundred bucks and a black bag with some clothes and eyed an old baseball field as a bed: that's just reality. You pick up, you leave, you move on and you even wonder where to sleep:
I followed Matt Munoz as he talked to folks from the local music scene. I saw Cesareo, Matt from Myndsick, Matt from Give Impulse, CK, Rocky and Preston Nash, Brett from Endrio, Brad and friends from Throatshot, all the guys from Another Year and a host of others. I listened to stories, to gossip, to young couples unaware that a novelist was in their midst who might write some of what he heard.
But then the show got started. I worked my way to the front of the pack. People let me pass as Mike Montano Jr. strapped on a bass and went right into the action. Mark Chavez' voice had a tinny echo to it. I'd never even heard Adema. The band came out meaning business and weren't about to waste time in between songs or during songs with unnecessary down time or extended show-off moments. They were on a mission to be heard and the crowd didn't turn its back. I snapped photos of Mark grooving hard in the scintillating stage lights; I got into a few of the songs to the point where I paused to focus on the hard rock and roll sounds of the band, to listen to the tightness of the musicians. I heard they had only been together a short while and already had 14 songs in their repertoire. Would we hear them all tonight? Not likely. This wasn't a marathon Mento Buru show where you dance until your eyes bleed and Matt's socks fall to his ankles in mad ska moments.
I saw kids grooving to the music and some of the old timers downing beers and enjoying the songs. There seemed to be several groups criticizing, wondering if Chavez were pretentious; they took in the new music and like experts plotting out Chavez' future. As if any of us know. As if no rock musician is a bit pretentious. Who wouldn't want to have played Oz fest, to have had an opportunity at stardom? So people ask, 'Can Chavez do it again, resurge to the point of a big label?' Maybe the show should have been open to the public. Maybe, maybe, maybe: Didn't matter-Vaughan called it the 'Family Show'. It was the first gig for Midnight Panic and no one ran away, not even the humbled novelist who felt part of the family once again...


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Mark Zielinski knew he was onto something when his mice stopped sleeping. Normally, the animals woke and slept on a 12-hour cycle. When the lights were on in the lab, the mice were active. When it went dark on a timer, down they went. But Zielinski, who teaches psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, had recently tweaked their schedule to keep the mice up past their bedtime.
Zielinski and his colleagues would rustle the bedding in the mice's cages to keep them from dozing off when they started to display the telltale signs of sleepiness—drooping lids, sluggish walk, EEG readings showing their brain activity was waning. But Zielinski noticed that when the mice were left alone to slumber at will after the disruption, they didn't, or perhaps couldn't, fall asleep.
That the sleep-deprived rodents slept less than they normally would didn't really surprise Zielinski. The mice had a genetic mutation that he suspected was linked to sleep problems. More striking were the electrical brain readings showing that even when they did sleep, they weren't getting the deep, restorative kind of rest that doctors say matters most—not just to rodents but also to humans.
In the right conditions, researchers believe, the brain produces a signal that essentially tells the body's major systems—the heart, the lungs, the digestive system, the nervous system, even the muscles—that it's time to call it quits for the day. Zielinski's research has found that, just as with the mice with the mutation, it's likely that in some people with chronic sleep problems, that critical signal isn't firing.
Understanding what's behind some forms of insomnia, an aim of Zielinski's research, is a major step in learning how to fix it. That's a big deal in sleep research, because evidence linking quality rest to good health and longevity has never been more convincing.
Scientists are learning that shortchanging sleep can compromise nearly every major body system, from the brain to the heart to the immune system, making our inability—or unwillingness—to sleep enough one of the unhealthiest things we can do.
Studies of people whose sleep sessions are irregular or short show they are at higher risk of developing diseases that can lead to early death, including heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. Poor sleep may have detrimental effects on the brain as well, increasing the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, as well as mood disorders like depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety. And like smoking, a terrible diet and not exercising enough, poor sleep is now linked to an overall increased risk of premature death.
"I used to suggest that sleep is the third pillar of good health, along with diet and exercise," says Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. "But I don't agree with that anymore. Sleep is the single most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body for health."
Despite the mounting evidence of its benefits, Americans are sleeping about two hours less each night than they did a century ago. Blame the technology-fueled 24/7 workplace, social media or the relentless news cycle, but about one-third of U.S. adults sleep less than the recommended seven hours daily, and 40% report feeling drowsy during the day, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The problem begins early: only 15% to 30% of U.S. teens get the 8½ hours a night recommended for adolescents.
While life expectancy has been inching upward over the past century thanks to advances in medicine and technology, those gains could start to sag under the weight of our collective sleeplessness. Many people still dismiss sleep as something they can occasionally (or even regularly) skimp on, but the biological facts are clear: it is neither safe nor wise to take sleep lightly.
"To me, sleep is like the canary in the coal mine," says David Schnyer, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Texas, Austin. "Changes in sleep can create systemwide changes in the organism, and all of the stages of sleep affect the entire body and brain."
That's why sleep deprivation is so strongly linked to disease and premature death. One recent study even showed that sleep deprivation in mice can cause death faster than starvation can. And yet doctors—those who talk to their patients about sleep in the first place, anyway—report that many people still aren't convinced that their nightly rest is a critical piece of the long-life puzzle. Health obsessives who would never touch a cigarette and pride themselves on avoiding junk food may also boast about how much they get done, and how little they sleep at night.
"Because we're asleep, we don't see the benefits of it," says Robert Stickgold, a well-known sleep researcher and an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "That's the disaster and tragedy of our current world."
It's been that way for a long time. Benjamin Franklin famously quipped that "there will be sleeping enough in the grave," and today, sleep is still misperceived as one of the most duty-driven and unproductive parts of the day—the habit that gets in the way of life as opposed to the one most likely to extend it.
Perhaps that's because until very recently, scientists couldn't even agree on the evolutionary reason why animals need to sleep in the first place. But now they know that what happens during sleep, particularly in the brain, is critical to human well-being—not to mention a long life. That's why they also know that the cost of ignoring the latest science on sleep can be dear.
Spending a good third of the day oblivious to the world around you and, by extension, incapable of protecting yourself doesn't seem like a smart way for a species to stay alive. And yet every animal does it, leading scientists to accept that sleep must be nonnegotiable for some reason—and that we must need a certain amount of it to survive.
Following a rigorous, milestone study in 2002 of more than 1 million healthy men and women by the American Cancer Society, experts suggested that the magic amount of sleep for longevity was seven hours a night. People who slept that amount were most likely to still be alive at the end of the study's six years, compared with people who got either six hours or less, or eight hours or more, of sleep each night. To this day, that's typically the amount that doctors and public-health groups recommend for the average adult, though older people can probably get away with a little less sleep than that, and younger people need more.
Another even longer study, which followed more than 21,000 twins in Finland, found that people who were regularly sleeping less than seven hours daily were 21% to 26% more likely to die of any cause during the study's 22-year period than those who slept more than eight hours.
So clearly sleep has some real biological benefit. Could it just be that the brain and body need downtime to recuperate after the activity of the day? That was the most popular explanation for decades, until an inquisitive neuroscientist at the University of Rochester decided to look for the answer inside the brain itself. When she did, Dr. Maiken Nedergaard uncovered what many scientists now agree is sleep's primary evolutionary function: to clean out the brain, quite literally, of accumulating debris.
In 2014, Nedergaard first revealed that while the body appears to rest during sleep, a whole lot is happening inside the brain. Neurons pulse with electrical signals that wash over the brain in a rhythmic flow. The brain runs checks on itself to ensure that the balance of hormones, enzymes and proteins isn't too far off-kilter. All the while, brain cells contract, opening up the spaces between them so that fluid can wash out the toxic detritus that can cause all kinds of problems if it builds up.
"It's like a dishwasher that keeps flushing through to wash the dirt away," Nedergaard says.
Without that nightly wash cycle, dangerous toxins can damage healthy cells and interfere with their ability to communicate with one another. In the short term, that can impede memory formation and the ability to coherently compose our thoughts and regulate our emotions. Over time, the consequences can be more dire. Lack of sleep can lead to faster aging of brain cells, contributing to diseases like Alzheimer's, which is now the cause of death for 1 in 3 seniors.
Nedergaard's research, which was done in mice, prompted a crucial rethinking of not only the benefits of sleep but also its biological function. It turns out the brain and body are extremely active when we sleep—we're just not aware of most of what occurs while we do it.
"Sleep is not just a passive state but a fairly active state on the molecular level," says Dr. Allan Pack, director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. "During the day, the brain is using energy resources to fire neurons. At night, a switch turns on so the sleeping brain can take advantage of the metabolic downtime to do some cleaning up."
The idea that sleep is a time of important biological activity, rather than a period when the body checks out, is transforming how doctors think about another important factor in longevity: mental health.
Scientists have long known that sleep is important for memory. But it turns out that during sleep, especially the cycles of deep dream sleep, the brain doesn't just revisit the events of a day in a more organized way. It also works on processing the emotions attached to these recollections. When a memory is filed away during sleep, it's also stripped of some of the powerful feelings—like fear, grief, anger or joy—that might have clouded the experiences in the heat of the moment.
It wouldn't be healthy, or efficient, to remember every event or experience in its full factual and emotional context. But separating the emotional aspects of a memory—the anger over an argument with your spouse, the frustration at the guy who cut you off in traffic, the dejection you felt after getting a curt email reply from your boss—from its objective parts allows you to recall the experience without reliving it. "We sleep to remember and we sleep to forget," says Walker, the UC Berkeley sleep scientist, of this coping mechanism. "I call it overnight therapy."
This type of processing takes time. It likely happens only during deep, quality sleep, and only over consistent nights of such sleep. That may explain why people who cut their sleep short or experience interrupted sleep may not fully disentangle the emotional baggage from their memories.
In those cases the memory, in its emotionally taxing entirety, continues to resurface every time the brain tries to sleep, in a vain effort to be properly processed. The brain tries to store the memory in a neutral way, but without deep sleep, there just isn't enough time for that triage.
Walker believes these aborted efforts may drive conditions like PTSD, which is well understood to be common among combat veterans but which may be more common among the general population than therapists and researchers previously thought.
"The more nights you sleep, the more soothing the influence of sleep on that memory," he says. "Sleep continues to work on those emotional memories and flatten them out after about a week. Now there's great evidence that PTSD is a disorder in which that process fails."
Walker saw this effect firsthand when he showed a group of people a frightening video. He kept some of the people awake after the viewing and allowed the rest to sleep normally. Those who were not allowed to sleep properly were more likely to remember the negative aspects of the video than those who got enough sleep.
There's also strong support for the idea that insufficient sleep may be a trigger for, and not just a symptom of, a number of mental illnesses, including depression, bipolar disorder and even schizophrenia. Depriving people with bipolar disorder of sleep, for example, can launch a manic episode, while some people with depression report worsening symptoms when they aren't sleeping well.
Fully understanding the role sleep plays in mental illness is a rich area of future research. Already many doctors think consistent, high-quality sleep can have a direct bearing on the health of those with mental illness. "Anyone who suffers from moderate or significant mental-health concerns needs to be aware that sleep may be one of the most important things they can do," says Walker.
Stress, scientists also know, is one of the more potent accelerators of aging, and a body that's not sleeping enough looks similar to one that's stressed out—it's highly reactive to perceived threats, even when those threats don't pose any real risk. Biologically speaking, there's virtually no difference in the way a body reacts to a startling noise in the middle of the night, a rabid raccoon or a stressful work deadline: in all cases, fight-or-flight mode is triggered, blood pressure spikes, breathing gets shallow, and the heart starts to race. That's what happens to a body on no sleep too.
Those stress reactions can be useful, of course: they help you respond more readily to an actual physical threat. But that's not usually what's going on. And staying in an alert mode can trigger a number of unhealthy conditions, the most damaging of which is inflammation.
Inflammation is the body's natural defense system against injury or invading microbes like bacteria and viruses. It's why your toe turns red and throbs when you stub it or when it's infected: white blood cells rush to the area in order to protect it for the short time it's needed to help you get better. But inflammation can also become chronic, and that's when the real trouble starts.
Chronic inflammation, doctors now know, is a leading driver of many diseases, including some cancers, cognitive decline, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes—even chronic pain. And one of the main drivers of chronic inflammation is, of course, not sleeping enough.
Getting a decent night's sleep, then, is good advice for all of us. Americans spent an estimated $41 billion on sleeping pills and other sleep aids in 2015; no matter how much we may boast about our stamina, we know intuitively that we need sleep, even if we don't always know why.
But scientists do. That's why experts are insisting, with increasing frequency and noise, that sleep be a priority—as important or more than what you eat and how much you exercise. We wouldn't dream of skipping meals on a regular basis, so why skimp on sleep?
There's still much about sleep that mystifies scientists—particularly about what goes wrong for so many of us, night after night. But as they chip away at the underlying causes of sleeplessness, they get ever closer to a cure. Harvard's Zielinski, for one, is hopeful that they will eventually find a way to help more people sleep better every night.
When he gave his sleepless mice a drug to fix the mutation that was interfering with their sleep in the first place, they began to slumber anew.
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Sylverino Google Maps and Facts
Welcome to the comprehensive Google Maps of Sylverino (United States). This platform is where sightseeing through Sylverino Google Maps becomes insightful and engaging! Equipped with a thorough destination gazetteer from World Route Planner and Driving Directions to Sylverino, you are empowered to freely explore Sylverino through detailed satellite imagery and Street View - quickly, effortlessly, and at no cost.
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The EMODnet Data Ingestion portal activities are undertaken by a large European network that is geographically anchored in the countries bordering all European marine basins, and covers all EMODnet data themes. The EMODnet Data Ingestion members are national and regional marine and oceanographic data repositories and data management experts. The coordinators of the EMODnet thematic portals are also part of this new initiative.
The EMODnet Data Ingestion portal facilitates submission of sleeping marine datasets for further processing, Open Data publishing and contributing to applications for society. It aims at streamlining the data ingestion process so that data holders from public and private sectors that are not yet connected to the existing marine data management infrastructures can easily release their data for safekeeping and subsequent distribution through EMODnet.
The EMODnet Data Ingestion portal helps to wake up your data so it can serve Blue Society, based on the principle of 'collect once and use many times'. This idea — a guiding principle of the Marine Knowledge 2020 strategy — benefits all marine data users, including policy makers, scientists, private industries and the public, and opens up new opportunities for innovation and growth.
The involved data centres have been actively engaged in data management for many decades. They have the essential capacities and facilities for data quality control, long-term stewardship, retrieval and distribution. They are involved in national research and monitoring activities and have established arrangements for managing the resulting data on a national and thematic basis. Moreover the data centres work together on pan-European and international scales in organisations such as IODE, ICES, EuroGeoSurveys, EuroGOOS, and IHO, and for pan-European marine data management infrastructures such as SeaDataCloud and EurOBIS. The latter are feeding into several EMODnet thematic portals.


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Sean Cody Deron my friend recorded a video of me running around wearing a bikini!
Sean Cody says: "I don't think I've skipped a rock in years," Sean Cody Deron said, his eyes wide like a child's. "This is great."
"You look like you would be a great swimmer with all those back muscles," I said, laughing as he barely escaped an aggressive wave. "Yeah, I was a lifeguard when I was younger," he replied.
"You know, just saving some lives… it was an interesting job." "Why's that?" "Sometimes moms and dads would break the rules while I was on duty," he explained.
"I had to yell at them more than I yelled at the kids." One thing was for sure, though… Deron loved to show off his body for the camera. "I work hard for this." he said.
"I'm aspiring to be a bodybuilder, to show off this wide back." He does have an amazing, muscular back, and a beefy chest. And he's definitely a happy guy who loves to have fun.
"I keep getting myself in awkward situations," he said. "My friend recorded a video of me running around wearing a bikini. I got so much shit for it." "How did you fit your junk into a bikini?" I asked. "It wasn't easy." he said. Get Deron's video at Sean Cody!


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We are excited to release the newest Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo. The beta is now available in the Android Market, which you can find by opening the Market application on your phone and searching for "Mozilla Firefox." The Maemo builds are available for download here . This beta release is not feature or performance complete, but with the help and feedback from our community of testers we're building an amazing browser. (Note: To ensure smooth updates, we ask existing beta users on Android to please uninstall previous Firefox betas before installing this release.)
With Firefox on mobile devices, we aim to offer an effortless and optimized experience, while also solving the pain points of mobile browsing. Based on feedback from beta testers, we made a number of changes to the look of Firefox 4 Beta, made discovery of add-ons easier, added the ability to save websites as PDFs to read later, fixed some keyboard issues and included support for complex scripts such as Arabic and Persian (on devices with the appropriate fonts). You can find more details on the user experience updates from Lead UX Designer, Madhava Enros.
We design Firefox on mobile devices to minimize typing because typing on phones is difficult and time consuming. Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo now has support for "copy and paste" in the URL bar. We also simplified the setup process for Firefox Sync to reduce the amount of typing needed to securely access your browsing history, bookmarks, tabs and passwords from your desktop to your phone, making it easy to get to (and even log in to) any site with minimal typing.
We continue to focus on performance, responsiveness and usability in future releases and have a lot more to come for graphics, JavaScript, add-ons and more.
Feedback from our beta testers is extremely useful in fixing bugs and making improvements to Firefox 4 Beta. We keep a close eye on the feedback people submit and watch the crash report data closely to ensure that we continue to improve stability over the previous betas.
Get involved with this beta release and Go Mobile.
For more information, please visit:


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We Buy Houses In Any Condition & All Price Ranges!
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Fair Cash Offer and a Quick Close
We are one of the area's more active homebuyers and can work around your timeline and goals for selling your property. We can make you a fair, cash offer and are willing to buy your property in its as-is condition. All you need to do is sell and walk away. We will work hard to ensure that the process of selling your property to us is straightforward, fast, and efficient. We understand the paperwork involved in real estate transactions and will work hand in hand every step of the way.
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There are no commissions involved because we represent ourselves as the buyer, and you represent yourself as the seller. Our goal is to find a win-win solution to make the sale of your house a smooth, easy transaction for you. Give us a call and we'll show you how!
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Our company buys, sells, and rents homes. We will not be acting as your real estate agent or broker if we buy your house, sell you a house, or rent you a home. We are excited to potentially work with you directly OR if you are represented by an agent or broker. We are focused on improving neighborhoods and redeveloping areas that we work in. If you have additional questions on agencies please contact your local real estate commission.
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Pope Francis made a surprise appearance at a TED talk conference on Tuesday, urging powerful leaders "to act humbly" and said he hoped technological innovation would not leave people behind.
The 18-minute video was filmed in Vatican City and broadcast to the audience at the annual TED 2017 conference in Vancouver.
"The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly," said the pontiff, while seated at a desk.
"If you don't, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other."
WATCH: Pope delivers TED Talk
The comments echoed Francis' frequent themes to not ignore the plight of immigrants, the poor and other vulnerable people. Speaking in Italian with subtitles, Francis urged solidarity to overcome a "culture of waste" that had affected not only food but people cast aside by economic systems that rely increasingly on automation.
"How wonderful would it be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation would come along with more equality and social inclusion," he said.
TED Talk lectures have grown in popularity, having been viewed cumulatively over 4.6 billion times since going online in 2006 (www.ted.com).
Other speakers slated to appear at the annual conference this week include tennis superstar Serena Williams and entrepreneur Elon Musk.


text:
Late Thursday, the United States Coast Guard reported that they had successfully scuttled the Ryou-Un Maru, the Japanese "Ghost Ship" that had drifted into US waters after being torn from its moorings by the tsunami that followed the Tohoku earthquake over a year ago. The 200-foot fishing trawler, which was reportedly headed for scrap before it was swept away, was seen as potentially dangerous as it drifted near busy shipping lanes.
Coincidentally, the "disappearing" of the Ghost Ship came during the same week the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released its report on the effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on the US marine environment, and, frankly, the metaphor couldn't be more perfect. The Ryou-Un Maru is now resting at the bottom of the ocean–literally nothing more to see there, thanks to a few rounds from a 25mm Coast Guard gun–and the CRS hopes to dispatch fears of the radioactive contamination of US waters and seafood with the same alacrity.
But while the Ghost Ship was not considered a major ecological threat (though it did go down with around 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel in its tanks), the US government acknowledges that this "good luck ship" (a rough translation of its name) is an early taste of the estimated 1.5 million tons of tsunami debris expected to hit North American shores over the next two or three years. Similarly, the CRS report (titled Effects of Radiation from Fukushima Dai-ichi on the U.S. Marine Environment [PDF]) adopts an overall tone of "no worries here–its all under control," but a closer reading reveals hints of "more to come."
Indeed, the report feels as it were put through a political rinse cycle, limited both in the strength of its language and the scope of its investigation. This tension is evident right from the start–take, for example, these three paragraphs from the report's executive summary:
Both ocean currents and atmospheric winds have the potential to transport radiation over and into marine waters under U.S. jurisdiction. It is unknown whether marine organisms that migrate through or near Japanese waters to locations where they might subsequently be harvested by U.S. fishermen (possibly some albacore tuna or salmon in the North Pacific) might have been exposed to radiation in or near Japanese waters, or might have consumed prey with accumulated radioactive contaminants.
High levels of radioactive iodine-131 (with a half-life of about 8 days), cesium-137 (with a half-life of about 30 years), and cesium-134 (with a half-life of about 2 years) were measured in seawater adjacent to the Fukushima Dai-ichi site after the March 2011 events. EPA rainfall monitors in California, Idaho, and Minnesota detected trace amounts of radioactive iodine, cesium, and tellurium consistent with the Japanese nuclear incident, at concentrations below any level of concern. It is uncertain how precipitation of radioactive elements from the atmosphere may have affected radiation levels in the marine environment.
Scientists have stated that radiation in the ocean very quickly becomes diluted and would not be a problem beyond the coast of Japan. The same is true of radiation carried by winds. Barring another unanticipated release, radioactive contaminants from Fukushima Dai-ichi should be sufficiently dispersed over time that they will not prove to be a serious health threat elsewhere, unless they bioaccumulate in migratory fish or find their way directly to another part of the world through food or other commercial products.
Winds and currents have "the potential" to transport radiation into US waters? Winds–quite measurably–already have, and computer models show that currents, over the next couple of years, most certainly will.
Are there concentrations of radioisotopes that are "below concern?" No reputable scientist would make such a statement. And if monitors in the continental United States detected radioactive iodine, cesium and tellurium in March 2011, then why did they stop the monitoring (or at least stop reporting it) by June?
The third paragraph, however, wins the double-take prize. Radiation would not be a problem beyond the coast? Fish caught hundreds of miles away would beg to differ. "Barring another unanticipated release. . . ?" Over the now almost 13 months since the Fukushima crisis began, there have been a series of releases into the air and into the ocean–some planned, some perhaps unanticipated at the time, but overall, the pattern is clear, radioactivity continues to enter the environment at unprecedented levels.
And radioactive contaminants "should be sufficiently dispersed over time, unless they bioaccumulate?" Unless? Bioaccumulation is not some crazy, unobserved hypothesis, it is a documented biological process. Bioaccumulation will happen–it will happen in migratory fish and it will happen as under-policed food and commercial products (not to mention that pesky debris) make their way around the globe.
Maybe that is supposed to be read by inquiring minds as the report's "please ignore he man behind the curtain" moment–an intellectual out clause disguised as an authoritative analgesic–but there is no escaping the intent. Though filled with caveats and counterfactuals, the report is clearly meant to serve as a sop to those alarmed by the spreading ecological catastrophe posed by the ongoing Fukushima disaster.
The devil is in the details–the dangers are in the data
Beyond the wiggle words, perhaps the most damning indictment of the CRS marine radiation report can be found in the footnotes–or, more pointedly, in the dates of the footnotes. Though this report was released over a year after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami triggered the Fukushima nightmare, the CRS bases the preponderance of its findings on information generated during the disaster's first month. In fact, of the document's 29 footnotes, only a handful date from after May 2011–one of those points to a CNN report (authoritative!), one to a status update on the Fukushima reactor structures, one confirms the value of Japanese seafood imports, three are items tracking the tsunami debris, and one directs readers to a government page on FDA radiation screening, the pertinent part of which was last updated on March 28 of last year.
Most crucially, the parts of the CRS paper that downplay the amounts of radiation measured by domestic US sensors all cite data collected within the first few weeks of the crisis. The point about radioisotopes being "below any level of concern" comes from an EPA news release dated March 22, 2011–eleven days after the earthquake, only six days after the last reported reactor explosion, and well before so many radioactive releases into the air and ocean. It is like taking reports of only minor flooding from two hours after Hurricane Katrina passed over New Orleans, and using them as the standard for levee repair and gulf disaster planning (perhaps not the best example, as many have critiqued levee repairs for their failure to incorporate all the lessons learned from Katrina).
It now being April of 2012, much more information is available, and clearly any report that expects to be called serious should have included at least some of it.
By October of last year, scientists were already doubling their estimates of the radiationpushed into the atmosphere by the Daiichi reactors, and in early November, as reported here, France's Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety issued a report showing the amount of cesium 137 released into the ocean was 30 times greater than what was stated by TEPCO in May. Shockingly, the Congressional Research Service does not reference this report.
Or take the early March 2012 revelation that seaweed samples collected from off the coast of southern California show levels of radioactive iodine 131 500 percent higher than those from anywhere else in the US or Canada. It should be noted that this is the result of airborne fallout–the samples were taken in mid-to-late-March 2011, much too soon for water-borne contamination to have reached that area–and so serves to confirm models that showed a plume of radioactive fallout with the greatest contact in central and southern California. (Again, this specific report was released a month before the CRS report, but the data it uses were collected over a year ago.)
Then there are the food samples taken around Japan over the course of the last year showing freshwater and sea fish–some caught over 200 kilometers from Fukushima–withradiation levels topping 100 becquerels per kilogram (one topping 600 Bq/kg).
And the beat goes on
This information, and much similar to it, was all available before the CRS released its document, but the report also operates in a risibly artificial universe that assumes the situation at Fukushima Daiichi has basically stabilized. As a sampling of pretty much any week's news will tell you, it has not. Take, for example, this week:
About 12 tons of water contaminated with radioactive strontium are feared to have leaked from the Fukushima No. 1 plant into the Pacific Ocean, Tepco said Thursday.
The leak occurred when a pipe broke off from a joint while the water was being filtered for cesium, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
The system doesn't remove strontium, and most of the water apparently entered the sea via a drainage route, Tepco added.
The water contained 16.7 becquerels of cesium per cu. centimeter and tests are under way to determine how much strontium was in it, Tepco said.
This is the second such leak in less than two weeks, and as Kazuhiko Kudo, a professor of nuclear engineering at Kyushu University who visited Fukushima Daiichi twice last year, noted:
There will be similar leaks until Tepco improves equipment. The site had plastic pipes to transfer radioactive water, which Tepco officials said are durable and for industrial use, but it's not something normally used at nuclear plants. Tepco must replace it with metal equipment, such as steel.
(The plastic tubes–complete with the vinyl and duct tape patch–can be viewed here.)
And would that the good people at the Congressional Research Service could have waited to read a report that came out the same day as theirs:
Radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear disaster has been found in tiny sea creatures and ocean water some 186 miles (300 kilometers) off the coast of Japan, revealing the extent of the release and the direction pollutants might take in a future environmental disaster.
In some places, the researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) discovered cesium radiation hundreds to thousands of times higher than would be expected naturally, with ocean eddies and larger currents both guiding the "radioactive debris" and concentrating it.
Or would that the folks at CRS had looked to their fellow government agencies before they went off half-cocked. (The study above was done by researchers at Woods Hole and written up in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences.) In fact, it appears the CRS could have done that. In its report, CRS mentions that "Experts cite [Fukushima] as the largest recorded release of radiation to the ocean," and the source for that point is a paper by Ken Buesseler–the same Ken Buesseler that was the oceanographer in charge of the WHOI study. Imagine what could have been if the Congressional Research Service had actually contacted the original researcher.
Can openers all around
Or perhaps it wouldn't have mattered. For if there is one obvious takeaway from the CRS paper, beyond its limits of scope and authority, that seeks to absolve it of all other oversights–it is its unfailing confidence in government oversight.
Take a gander at the section under the bolded question "Are there implications for US seafood safety?":
It does not appear that nuclear contamination of seafood will be a food safety problem for consumers in the United States. Among the main reasons are that:
- damage from the disaster limited seafood production in the affected areas,
- radioactive material would be diluted before reaching U.S. fishing grounds, and
- seafood imports from Japan are being examined before entry into the United States.
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), because of damage from the earthquake and tsunami to infrastructure, few if any food products are being exported from the affected region. For example, according to the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, the region's fishing industry has stopped landing and selling fish. Furthermore, a fishing ban has been enforced within a 2-kilometer radius around the damaged nuclear facility.
So, the Food and Drug Administration is relying on the word of an industry group and a Japanese government-enforced ban that encompasses a two-kilometer radius–what link of that chain is supposed to be reassuring?
Last things first: two kilometers? Well, perhaps the CRS should hire a few proofreaders. A search of the source materials finds that the ban is supposed to be 20-kilometers. Indeed, the Japanese government quarantined the land for a 20-kilometer radius. The US suggested evacuation from a 50-mile (80-kilometer) radius. The CRS's own report notes contaminated fish were collected 30 kilometers from Fukushima. So why is even 20 kilometers suddenly a radius to brag about?
As for a damaged industry not exporting, numerous reports show the Japanese government stepping in to remedy that "problem." From domestic PR campaigns encouraging the consumption of foodstuffs from Fukushima prefecture, to the Japanese companies selling food from the region to other countries at deep discounts, to the Japanese government setting up internet clearing houses to help move tainted products, all signs point to a power structure that sees exporting possibly radioactive goods as essential to its survival.
The point on dilution, of course, not only ignores the way many large scale fishing operations work, it ignores airborne contamination and runs counter to the report's own acknowledgment of bioaccumulation.
But maybe the shakiest assertion of all is that the US Food and Drug Administration will stop all contaminated imports at the water's edge. While imports hardly represent the total picture when evaluating US seafood safety, taking this for the small slice of the problem it covers, it engenders raised eyebrows.
First there is the oft-referenced point from nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, who said last summer that State Department officials told him of a secret agreement between Japan and Secretary Hilary Clinton guaranteeing the continued importation of Japanese food. While independent confirmation of this pact is hard to come by, there is the plain fact that, beyond bans on milk, dairy products, fruits and vegetables from the Fukushima regionissued in late March 2011, the US has proffered no other restrictions on Japanese food imports (and those few restrictions for Japanese food were lifted for US military commissaries in September).
And perhaps most damning, there was the statement from an FDA representative last April declaring that North Pacific seafood was so unlikely to be contaminated that "no sampling or monitoring of our fish is necessary." The FDA said at the time that it would rely on the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to tell it when they should consider testing seafood, but a NOAA spokesperson said it was the FDA's call.
Good. Glad that's been sorted out.
The Congressional Research Service report seems to fall victim to a problem noted often here–they assume a can opener. As per the joke, the writers stipulate a functioning mechanism before explaining their solution. As many nuclear industry-watchers assume a functioning regulatory process (as opposed to a captured Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an industry-friendly Department of Energy, and industry-purchased members of Congress) when speaking of the hypothetical safety of nuclear power, the CRS here assumes an FDA interested first and foremost in protecting the general public, instead of an agency trying to strike some awkward "balance" between health, profit and politics. The can opener story is a joke; the effects of this real-life example are not.
Garbage in, garbage out
The Congressional Research Service, a part of the Library of Congress, is intended to function as the research and analysis wing of the US Congress. It is supposed to be objective, it is supposed to be accurate, and it is supposed to be authoritative. America needs the CRS to be all of those things because the agency's words are expected to inform federal legislation. When the CRS shirks its responsibility, shapes its words to fit comfortably into the conventional wisdom, or shaves off the sharp corners to curry political favor, the impact is more than academic.
When the CRS limits its scope to avoid inconvenient truths, it bears false witness to the most important events of our time. When the CRS pretends other government agencies are doing their jobs–despite documentable evidence to the contrary–then they are not performing theirs. And when the CRS issues a report that ignores the data and the science so that a few industries might profit, it is America that loses.
The authors of this particular report might not be around when the bulk of the cancers and defects tied to the radiation from Fukushima Daiichi present in the general population, but this paper's integrity today could influence those numbers tomorrow. Bad, biased, or bowdlerized advice could scuttle meaningful efforts to make consequential policy.
If the policy analysts that sign their names to reports like this don't want their work used for scrap paper, then maybe they should take a lesson from the Ryou-Un Maru. Going where the winds and currents take you makes you at best a curiosity, and more likely a nuisance–just so much flotsam and jetsam getting in the way of actual business. Works of note come with moral rudders, anchored to best data available; without that, the report might as well just say "good luck."
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