I've feeling a big stretched out these days, often wondering how I'm going to get everything done. In the midst of this, I noticed this article by Heidi Grant Halvorson in the Harvard Business Review. She offers nine things that successful people do differently, and I do like this list.
There are a few news media figure who are taking principled stands regarding the the horrific way that the United States government is treating Bradley Manning, who has not been convicted of any crime. Glen Greenwald is one of the few with scruples. Other principled voices can be read at Alternet, including Lynn Parramore, who (rightfully) suggests that we'd be outraged if we viewed a fictitious movie of someone being treated as badly as Manning, but since it's happening in real life we don't give a shit. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has admirably covered the story. Andrew Sullivan has weighed in. Barack Obama has fully earned the title of America's Second Modern Torture President. This is not hyperbole. Bradley Manning is being tortured by the United States. We are enthusiastically treating Manning the way we treated the (mostly innocent) prisoners at Gitmo. We are doing to Manning what we criticize when other countries do it. Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC has also presented the story with energy. The torture is bad enough, but the silence by mainstream Democrats is infuriating. We're running a great country, aren't we? No need to speak out about Wall Street corruption, massive problems with health care "reform," the right to assassinate U.S. citizens, government spying on its own citizens, and not blatant torture.
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Yesterday, I was trying to get some work done in a tall office building in downtown Saint Louis. In the early afternoon, I was distracted by lots of crowd noise and drum beating outside. It was March 12, which somehow means that it was time for the downtown Saint Patrick's Day parade (St. Louis also has an 
annual Hibernian parade on March 17). I decided to grab my camera and go down to street level to see things up close. I'm posting a dozen photos with this article.
I'm somewhat of a introverted non-drinking semi-misanthrope, which gives me a special perspective whenever people gather for merriment. Whenever I notice great energy being funneled into big social gatherings, I am immune to being swept up myself. Some would consider the way I am to be a curse, but I disagree. On these occasions I put on my armchair-anthropologist hat and I enjoy the opportunity to get to work. I ponder why it is that human animals so 
often burn such energy for reasons that almost always escape me. For instance, at Christmas time, very little of the energy is spend pondering Jesus. On the forth of July, very few Americans seriously consider whether we are better off not being part of the British Empire. We are people of food, drink, presents, fireworks and being groupish. We are also prolific excuse-makers.
How would a first rate scientist or historian size up yesterday's big parade? I believe that the answer is instructive regarding the issues raised here and here).
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Scientific American reports, Radiation leaking from Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant as part of the devastation in Japan from the record setting earthquake. Sure, four out of five nuclear facilities immediately shut down safely. But of one unit at the fifth, they say
The blast raised fears of a meltdown at the facility north of Tokyo as officials scrambled to contain what could be the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl explosion in 1986 that shocked the world.
Uh, yeah. Actually, this looks more like the Three Mile Island "disaster" to me. Chernobyl used a reactor technology that was considered too unstable outside of the Manhattan project or the U.S.S.R. that involved a big pile of carbon graphite to regulate the reaction. Graphite burns. Chernobyl burned. Chernobyl also exploded wide open. People stood miles away touristically looking directly into the reactor core, and then dying from the gamma ray exposure. The G.E. reactors in Japan are water filled steel containers. They don't burn.They didn't burst. The reactor was idled within hours. The quake broke the outer concrete containment structure (but not the inner steel one) and also interrupted all three safety backup systems. So the reactor overheated before they got it under control, and they had to vent some probably radioactive steam to prevent the inner containment from also rupturing. I say "probably radioactive" because the cooling water certainly contains tritium (Hydrogen-3) and traces of other isotopes. But so far there are no reports of measurable radiation beyond the reactor premises. I'm sure there will be. Personally, I take this as a sign that we really need to move beyond the 1970's style Cold War reactors to the 1990's style ones now being specified in Europe. These are designed to fail safe even if all the active safety systems fail. Sure, they cost a little more to build. But they are pretty much proof against flood, earthquake, and bomb attacks short of nuclear warheads releasing radiation. I have also advocated building next generation fast neutron reactors that can use depleted uranium, thorium, and most current generation reactors waste as fuel. A past post of mine: Whatever Became of Thorium? These reactors are also inherently safer, because they are using less volatile fuel. This should be an opportunity to discuss the future safer implementation of this inevitable successor to coal power, rather than to propagate, "Gee whiz, isn't noocular power dangerous?"