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.
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.
3/18 11PM and 3/19 @1:00AM at the Beach Chalet parking lot-window smash auto burglary of a Ford Explorer. Loss: Computer.
3/18 btwn 1230 & 200 PM-1000 blk Pt. Lobos-window smash auto burglary on Ford Escape. Loss: Laptop computer.
03/18, early AM, 400 blk Euclid, 2500 Calif, 3000 Pacific, window smash on autos, cameras, I-pods, laptops, I-phones taken.
03/17-3:45pm to 8:50pm, 700 blk of Parker, window smash on Toyota Sequoia, gym bag with clothing & toiletries taken.
I wonder how many realize that leaving anything of value in sight in a vehicle in San Francisco is a very high risk gamble.
A few months ago I stopped to help a woman and her family in Golden Gate Park after their rental car window was smashed in the middle of the day and all their valuables stolen just 50 feet from where they were standing to admire the Windmill. When she called the police they told her to file a report and there was nothing more that they could do. That is the same area as the above incidents.
Literally every day I have been on a San Francisco street I see an auto with a smashed window like this and safety glass on the sidewalk. The latest news suggests that the scenic area of Hwy 1 near the edge of Golden Gate Park is a particularly high risk (attackers hide in the bushes — if you see a hole in a chain-link fence, don’t park near it with anything visible inside your car. Alternatively, leave your doors unlocked and windows open).
…there were more than 13,000 auto break-ins last year, a trend police say they are aggressively trying to curb.
“The numbers are tremendous,†Supervisor David Chiu said during the board’s Monday Public Safety Committee hearing. “We need to do everything we can to attack the crime.â€
Chiu said he’s so concerned about the auto theft problems in his district, which includes North Beach and Chinatown, that he’s considering drafting legislation that would require parking garage operators to increase security at lots citywide.
That is an average of 36 auto windows smashed a day. If you start your loss estimate with the window replacement itself (~$100) and then add in lost productivity plus missing contents…it’s easy to see how the numbers quickly add up to a serious financial burden.
It makes me wonder if the SFPD Twitter data stream, which could distribute data close to real-time, will inspire do-good vigilantism. Another data stream is from phone apps that relay police scanners. Will this technology lead to masked cyclists riding in the park at night with video to stop attacks? Or will Craigslist build an app to help quietly flag suspected stolen goods (description match) from smashed windows? After years watching the problem grow, SFPD seems open to suggestion.
“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”.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
Captain Richard Corriea of the San Francisco Police Department has a twitter account where you can 