Category Archives: History

Energy, History, Security

The Risk of Radiation Dosage, Illustrated

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xkcd has a dry wit and usually a good sense of how to fit humor with technology. The radiation dose chart on the site is a great idea but it lacks cartooning and jokes. Is that because of sensitivity, fear and feelings associated with radiation exposure?

He points out, for example, that a CRT over one year will expose you to more radiation than an x-ray of your arm. Maybe I should put that the other way around. It’s kind of funny.

The giant green box area on the right side of his chart is the maximum annual dose allowed a radiation worker, while the itty bitty green box to the left of it is the maximum external dose from Three Mile Island. Wow, assuming his boxes are accurate, good illustration on risk.

xkcd Radiation Dose Chart

The BBC offers a more dramatic version. They list the levels in numeric format, but the chart gives a very “red” heavy impression of exposure. I noted in their chart that the annual dose level allowed a radiation worker has been reduced by more than half. This suggests that these charts are not an accurate representation of known risk — they are an estimation still subject to change.

Radiation Dose Level Risk

Of course photos of radiation victims probably have the most profound effect on our risk thermostat, as they tend to give us a sense of accurate representation (7 million affected by Chernobyl fallout, half of them children instead of just the 50 officially recorded).

History, Poetry, Security

A Brief History of the Bohemian

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The BBC, in an investigation called “What is bohemian?”, quotes Puccini’s character Rodolfo in La Boheme

I am a poet!

What’s my employment? Writing.

Is that a living? Hardly.

I’ve wit though wealth be wanting,

Ladies of rank and fashion

All inspire me with passion;

In dreams and fond illusions,

Or castles in the air,

Richer is none on earth than I.

Those who embrace the identity of the bohemian may in fact be capturing the essence of “outsider”, which has the most profound effect on fashion and fad, or other industries that favor constant change:

“Everyone has a view of what the bohemian is,” says [writer Virginia] Nicholson. “The bohemian is an outsider, defines themselves as an outsider and is defined by the world as an outsider… A lot of people regard them as subversive, elitist and possibly just a little bit immature.”

In other words, they are less likely to follow tradition and may express an ability or a want to live beyond the confines of localized control. That could be seen as immature if a viewer associates the ability to easily change and adapt around standards to a lack of maturity. The OED is also quoted. It emphasizes a male identity and uses the terms “irregular” and “vagabond” instead of “immature”, which reveal that the terms to emphasize an outsider may be dated.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition mentions someone “especially an artist, literary man, or actor, who leads a free, vagabond, or irregular life, not being particular as to the society he frequents, and despising conventionalities generally”.

History, Security

Visualizing American Tax Inequality

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Stephen Von Worley has an interesting graphic posted in a blog entry called “Shifting Burdens” that illustrates how the American tax burden has changed over time at different levels of income:

…Reagan entered office and…rich were now on tax vacation, at the expense of the poor and middle class.

[…]

…the people at our economy’s core – the full-time workers earning between $20,000 and $150,000 a year – still pay at up to double the rate of the ultra-wealthy, relative to what history suggests they should.

About this, I’ve got mixed feelings. More than a few of my friends have hit the dot-com-Web-2.0 jackpot, and every spring, they enjoy a fresh tax windfall. And why not?

[…]

On the other hand, so that the American Dream doesn’t degenerate further into a have-or-have-not nightmare, perhaps some social pragmatism is in order. Via a small dose of fiscal self-sacrifice, the fat cats can maintain their grip on the reins. Or, they can stay the course – and keep on partying like it’s 1999 – until an angry mob bursts through the front door, drags them down to the town square, and lops their wealth off.

US Tax Inequality

What I see in the graph is that those who make over $200,000 a year saw a sharp decline in tax in the 80s, which continues to today. There also is a blue blip for tax relief for those earning around $10,000, but that was gone by 1981. More red at the bottom of the chart would make more sense if the current deficit problem, or even critical infrastructure, is meant to be a shared burden.

A lack of constant color is the signal of inequality.

The government today thus leaves high income earners (blue on the right) with a lower share of taxes. While taxes are not high for most people today compared to prior levels, those who earn over $1 million now have the lowest burden of anyone relative to history. Those who earn $50,000 to $150,000 — the middle class — carry the highest burden.

The wave shape suggests to me that the middle class have been affected first by tax changes. It is a prediction wave. Their level of burden eventually spreads to higher and lower income levels…perhaps that’s what Stephen Von Worley meant by “until an angry mob”.

History, Sailing, Security

Lessons From the Great Wave

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A documentary by BBC4 explores views of risk in terms of cultural clues and imagery. It interviews numerous experts to reveal the origins of The Great Wave off Kanagawa print, and shows how it has represented very different things to different people.

Great Wave

The Japanese viewer apparently sees groups of men set together in harmony with nature to achieve success — possibly a spring-time catch of bonito fish for a hard-working crew returning as quickly as possible to a market. The huge, towering wave is not an image of despair but of power and collective effort. Toshio Watanabe, a Japenese Art Historian, explains:

(1:14/10:04) “It’s depicting, basically, speedboats like DHL or FedEx.” […] (9:14/10:04) This is an image of courage and perseverance because the oarsmen have a job to do. “There are so many rowers because they need speed and they are not worried about the waves at all. They are taking it in great stride.”

Dr. David Peat, a Physicist at the Pari Center in Italy (among several others) suggests a very different effect for a viewer from the West. He sees the Great Wave as a moral lesson for an individual, which centers around mortality, anxiety and a fear of the unknown (based on chaos theory):

(5:40/8:25) It’s telling us something about being on the edge of chaos; something about how we live our lives. We have to have regularity and order. But if we have too much then we become dead. So it’s telling us where life lies. It’s telling us something about ourselves. We have to learn how to live on the edge of chaos.

Although it is easy to split the views and categorize them among Far East and Western views, following the BBC’s narrative, it could be split a different way. Those who live in and around water and on small boats may look at the Great Wave as familiar and controllable; while those who spend all their time on land may look at the wave with fear of the unknown — “surf’s up” versus “run”. Which are you?