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Saturday, August 13, 2016

Reason #33 Why I Love To Blog -- How Do We Know How Low Is Safe? -- August 13, 2016

Are North Dakotans living longer because of a bit of radon? Because of a few socks of radioactive waste lying (laying?) around? Who knows? Maybe.

In response to a comment to a post, I posted this little gem just a couple of days ago (as a comment):
Absolutely. In addition, when anyone says that something is not "safe" at any level (no matter how little), I would ask, "How do you know if something is not safe at a very low level?" 
Now, here it is, only a couple days later, and we get this huge story in today's Wall Street Journal: "Is A Little Dose of Radiation So Bad?"

I can't make this stuff up.  
The scientific basis for this view is known as the linear no-threshold model, or LNT, which holds that any amount of radiation increases someone’s cancer risk, with the danger rising along with the dose.
But Carol Marcus scoffs at the LNT model. As science, it’s “baloney,” she said, essentially in the same category as “the Earth is flat.” The white-haired, 77-year-old professor of nuclear medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, with both an M.D. and Ph.D., is on a campaign to change the way America treats radiation.
In a pending petition, she is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to abandon the LNT model, which her filing, quoting another critic, calls “the greatest scientific scandal of the 20th century.” Two similar petitions, signed by about two dozen academics and others, are also under NRC review.
She must have ties to North Dakota. LOL. She has too much common sense to be from elsewhere.

John Hands in CosmoSapiens opened up a lot of critical thinking for me.

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Meanwhile, Back To The Coen Bros Inside Llewyn Davis
 
The real-life figures who inspired the Coen brothers' movie.  

The Last Thing On My Mind, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner 

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