Since the weather outside is again/still frightful we need ...

Beautiful flowers ... 

These are my (and my daughter's) Valentine's Day flowers 

Much prettier than the weather which can't decide if it is showing or raining

A peak into Murder with Peacocks and Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World

This week has been a bit of a train-wreck because of the Presidents' Day(s) Break. I finished a couple of books (Scarlet by Marissa Meyer and Digger by Ursula Vernon) but it did not seem fair to do a post on either a book that I had been semi-picking on in my wondrous words post or on a graphic novel, no matter how much I liked it. However, I have gotten addicted to doing a post that contains both a fiction and nonfiction book.

So for my Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader fiction choice this week I am again going back in time for me and present the first few sentences of Murder with Peacocks by Donna Andrews ...

 I had become so used to hysterical dawn phone calls that I only muttered one halfhearted oath before answering. 

"Peacocks," a voice said. 

"I beg your pardon, you must have the wrong number," I mumbled.


And for my nonfiction selection, here is the opening to Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World by Tom Zoellner ...


The place is called Shinkolobwe. 

Its name comes from the Bemba language of south-central Africa and is the word for a thorny fruit resembling an apple, typically cooked by submersion in a pot of boiling water. The outside of the fruit cools quickly, but the inside is like a sponge. It retains hot water for a long time. Squeezing it results in a burn.

---

For The Friday 56 hosted at Freda's Voice here is something from page 56 of Murder with Peacocks

"What sort of little errands?" I asked. Perhaps it was paranoid of me, but I couldn't help suspecting that, as usual, some of Mother's errands would later turn out to involve major amounts of work on my part.

"Oh, this and that," Mother said, vaguely. "Some things for the house. I don't have a list yet. We're going to make a list over a nice breakfast, and then see how much we can get done by lunch." 

"Wonderful," I said, insincerely. Mother turned loose on the unsuspecting county. I much preferred her indolent. 

For the record, Meg loves her mother and vice versa. The relationship dynamic is important to the story here for reasons that I can't explain without getting into spoilers. Murder with Peacocks is one of my go to books for when I get depressed. It is a hoot to read. 


From Uranium we have ...

Several members of the U-boat crew argued for ignoring the order and hiding out in Argentina or on an island in the South Pacific, using their military cargo as something to trade for food and new clothing. Captain Fehler saw things differently. The sub would be considered a pirate vessel if he did not surrender it at the first opportunity. But to whom? Russia was out of the question. The Red Army was known to be vengeful for all the misery it had suffered at Hitler's hands; its cruelty to surrendering troops was already legendary. Britain was also rejected, due to the ferocious blitz bombings it had suffered earlier in the war and the suspicion that the British would turn submarine POWs over to the French. The United States was seen as the best choice. It had no long history of militarism, and its soil had been unsullied by German bombing. 

New Leak of Radioactive Water at Fukushima Site

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-2625414

I have only sporadically kept an eye on events at Fukushima because frankly it depresses me each time. But, since this was shoved into my face I thought that I would mention it.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) has reported a new leak from one of the tanks holding contaminated water at the disaster site. According to the company, about 100 metric tons (26,400 gallons) of water may have escaped a concrete barrier, apparently because someone left a couple of valves open. The leak was located over 700 meters away from the ocean and officials say that they shut off the flow of water into the tank and are "...now in the process of recovering the leaked water and the earth it has contaminated" so this is different from the massive 300 ton (~72,000 gallon) leak of highly radioactive water that basically went from a holding tank into the ground and out into the ocean last summer.

Reuters reports Tepco officials as saying that ...
"Water is unlikely to have reached the ocean as there is no drainage in that tank area." Tepco said water overflowed from a large storage tank at the site late on Wednesday after a valve had remained open by mistake and sent too much contaminated water into a separate holding area.

The water leaked this time was still highly radioactive, with a beta radiation reading of 230 million becquerel per liter. A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity and international standards place a limit of 10 becquerels per liter in drinking water and 30 becquerels per liter in water released into the ocean.

In case you didn't know, ever since the earthquake, Tepco has been storing radioactive water in large storage tanks on the site. The fuel rods in the reactors still have to be kept cool, so a flow of water must be maintained, but the water comes out radioactive so it is placed in one of these large storage tanks. The site has become home to a collection of 1,000 odd tanks which were at 85% capacity back in August and they were adding around 400 tons of water each day. Goodness knows exactly what is going on now. These tanks are going to be horrible problem if another earthquake or tsunami hits the region.

Satellite images show how the number of water storage tanks has increased in the past two years. The tanks store contaminated water that has been used to cool the reactors. This image is from a BBC report done in August, 2013 - and things haven't been getting better either.

It became clear in the middle of last year that despite Tepco's claims, radioactive water had been leaking from the site into the ocean pretty much since the earthquake occurred. In addition to the storage tanks, the reactor buildings themselves are leaking, as are the spent fuel storage pools. The earthquake/tsunami did so much damage that all of the structures there are pervasively cracked. There is no easy way to either measure the full extent of these leaks, or to stop them.

The Japanese government now reports that approximately 300 tons of contaminated groundwater seeps into the ocean each day at the Fukushima-Daiichi station. 

To be clear - this is still a small amount of water that is getting into the ocean so the dilution effect is huge. That scary red and orange NOAA image that was circulating the web in August had nothing to do with radioactivity, it was a map of wave heights from the tsunami. And the reactor isn't going to 'meltdown soon' - it has already melted down - past tense - so those internet things are bogus too.

Now this doesn't mean that things are all rosy either. We have been polluting the ocean with radioactivity, chemicals and plastics for decades so we have done lots of damage and contaminated organisms living in the ocean.

Fukushima is still an ongoing disaster and it is going to be a long, long time before we have any good news about the site. 

This Tepco/Getty Images photo shows workers removing nuclear fuel rods from a pool at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on Nov. 18, 2013 in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan. (source)

Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts 2

Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts is a weekly blogging event hosted by Bookishly Boisterous




1. I really, really hate it when a textbook shows the derivation of an equation and then a few pages later is suddenly using a different equation in an example.  Is it some kind of typo?  Did I miss something somewhere (re-read over and over looking) ? Is the author hoping that we don't notice ?  Is the author trying to drive me nuts ? (Eight ball says "All signs point to yes")  This is a terrible waste of time for everyone - why can't they either show the derivation of the equation they plan to use or at least add a couple of sentences explaining why they have suddenly pulled this equation out of thin air.

2. I started watching the second season of Sherlock and, well, I am not loving their version of Irene Adler at all. The primary reason is quite simple - no arguments about the naked or anything - it's just that in the original story Irene Adler is not a villain! Real simple - she was not a bad guy.  The babble claiming that since she was described as "an adventuress" this means she is a courtesan therefore a bad guy - ARGH! NO!

a) she was being described by the King of Bohemia - who by the end even Sherlock Holmes thought was a jerk. The king had a vested interest in making her sound like a horrible person to get Sherlock to work for him.

b) even if she was a courtesan (and there is no real evidence that she was) that does not make her a villain. I don't even understand how you get from point A to point B with that thought. She was also an American, and there was all sorts of baggage implied by that as well.

c) her actions, and the King of Bohemia's behavior at the end of the story, all point to a person who was morally in the right. There was certainly no suggestion of a pattern of bad behavior on her part (i.e. serial blackmail or something). Why do the modern updates keep making her a villain ??

At this point I haven't even been able to finish watching the episode because I keep getting ticked off. (I already know where this is going anyhow).

I also totally disagree that Irene has to be a villain to create conflict. That is just lazy writing. There are many, many legitimate ways to create conflict without making her a bad guy. Sheesh - it is totally obvious even in the episode that you could simply make her an American agent with a different agenda than Mycroft's. Easy!

3. My children have been swallowed whole by Minecraft.  My six year old daughter told me this morning that she is going to create a new world so that she can build a school - it's going to be school world with classrooms and a gym and a lunchroom ... and on and on.  It is both really cute and kind of disturbing.

4. I have been listening to Steam Dreamers of Inverness Part 2 but I just haven't been getting into the story like I have with other Jack Flanders. You with would think a steampunkish adventure involving a Zeppelin would be exciting but so far things have been pretty vague and slow moving.  I hope the story picks up soon - I have been having to re-listen to bits because I have zoned out - if it doesn't get more interesting I might zone out completely.



5. My desk is rapidly disappearing and it is only the 4th week of classes. Eek.

See - it was clean!  Mostly. I should have taken a bigger picture
to show all that lovely clean bare desktop.

6. I have finally shaken my cold, but still feel logy and sleep deprived.

7. I learned yesterday that there is such a thing as a timeout in curling. I have been watching curling for years and I never knew this!  I found out yesterday when the Chinese men's team called for a timeout during a match in the Olympics.  I was totally thrown.  I suppose I knew that there was a clock running somewhere, but I have never seen a team run out of time or need a time out before. In a ten round match you have 40 minutes of "thinking time" and I have now learned that time out gives you an extra 90 seconds.

8. Last weekend the doorknob to the stairwell came off in my hand.  They "fixed" it over the break and now there is a new knob but they added a metal plate that makes the whole thing stick in the doorframe.  I almost popped my wrist trying to open the door yesterday.  I am having longing thoughts of taking a sledgehammer to the thing so that we can open and close the door properly.

9. I am not thrilled with Comcast buying TimeWarner.

10. I am also not thrilled with the possible icy sleet that is apparently headed our way. This is being a very long winter. I want it to stop!

Wonderous Word Wednesday 3

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Kathy at the Bermuda Onion where you "can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. Feel free to get creative!"

Here are a couple of interesting words from the books I have been reading lately ...

From The Disappearing Spoon we have ...

"Having no reason to refrain from using lacrimators on its own citizens (the Hague pact concerned only warfare), the French government collared a ring of Parisian bank robbers with ethyl bromoacetate in 1912." page 82 

 

lacrimator (lak-rim-ay-ter) noun 

: an agent that irritates the eyes, causing excessive secretion of tears.

: a tear-producing substance (as tear gas)

Origin of LACRIMATOR

Latin lacrimare to weep, from lacrima tear

First Known Use: 1918

---

And from Scarlet we have ...

"Catching her breath, she examined the carvings – faces grim and beautiful, the chalky busts of men staring down at her, a long balcony missing half its balusters." p 274

"The staircase, carved from red-and-white marble, was missing random balustrades, ..." p 275

I know what she is talking about in general but I wanted to know the difference between balusters and balustrades.

So according to Wikipedia "A baluster — also called spindle or stair stick — is a moulded shaft, square or of lathe-turned form, one of various forms of spindle in woodwork, made of stone or wood and sometimes of metal, standing on a unifying footing, and supporting the coping of a parapet or the handrail of a staircase. Multiplied in this way, they form a balustrade."

bal·us·trade noun \ˈba-lə-ˌstrād\
: a kind of low wall that is placed at the sides of staircases, bridges, etc., and that is made of a row of short posts topped by a long rail
: a row of balusters topped by a rail
: a low parapet or barrier
  
Origin of balustrade French, from Italian balaustrata, from balaustro

Some lovely balusters (source) 

First Known Use: 1644
 

So if I am understanding this correctly a baluster is a single shaft or spindle - like the three lovely marble balusters to the side there ->


and a balustrade is a series of them forming a wall.    

Based on the description from the story then, the balcony on the exterior of the opera house is missing half the individual spindles.  ...

While the staircase inside the opera house is missing 'random' entire chunks of the guardrail and associated spindles.  

So here is an old picture of the interior of the Paris Opera House (technically the Palais Garnier) that is being described in the book. This is basically a close-up of the top of the Grand Staircase, so that you can actually see the balustrades. 
You can see the whole thing on Wikipedia if you are interested.

Which means that we should have something like this happening, where there are gaping holes along the sides of the stairs ? I think I might have put that more emphatically than simply mentioning that the "staircase ... was missing random balustrades" especially since the word balusters was just used on the last page.  The Grand Stairway is huge and made of monstrously long, suspended arches of carved marble. This is not like a spindly wooden staircase where you could pop out a few sections. I am pretty sure we are talking serious explosives if you want to knock out sections of something. 

Since I am throwing up a bunch of pictures, here is the south facade of the Opéra Garnier in Paris, France as well.

Alright, I am just being grumpy and picky, but if I were describing the sorry remains of the most famous opera house in the world, I think I could have come up with other complaints than "a long balcony missing half its balusters." Heck, I think I would be hard pressed to even notice the balusters on this facade - I mean it - they are so tiny!  Unless the author meant that half the columns were missing ? That would make a bit more sense.