Knowledge Hoover
Living life by 2 simple rules - 1). Don't be a dick. 2). Don't eat food bigger than your face.
Knowledge Hoover
“Earlier experiments have shown how difficult the task is. Wikipedia mentions a 2003 project that used computer programs to simulate a lot of monkeys randomly typing.
After the equivalent of billions and billions and billions of monkey years the simulated apes had only produced part of a line from Henry IV, Part 2.
Also in 2003, Paignton Zoo carried out a practical test by putting a keyboard connected to a PC into the cage of six crested macaques. After a month the monkeys had produced five pages of the letter “S” and had broken the keyboard.”
“The Fukushima situation has yet to cause any measurable radiological health effects, and workers at the site were far less hard hit by the quake, tsunami and related events than just about anyone in the disaster zone, but nonetheless the nuclear story rapidly eclipsed the tens of thousands killed directly by the quake. TV’s reaction to the crisis shows how at odds it is with a more rational audience, those who know something about radiation, its consequences, and the human body’s capacity to absorb it and recover from it. The crisis for the media is that thanks to the internet, we can now all bypass these conduits for superstition and stupidity.
We’ve given the media’s treatment of Fukushima plenty of attention in the past fortnight, so it’s hardly worth reiterating. The reactors endured a Force 9 earthquake and 15m high tsunami – and three safety systems failed. The ageing plant was never going to explode or meltdown (“like a dirty bomb” we were told); the containment vessels held firm.”
- Andrew Orlowski, ‘Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes’, The Register, 29th March 2011
Really interesting article.
But…
“Apart from a few enclaves of the superstitious, who often have a professional interest in the outcome, the public now greets doomsday predictions with indifference or derision”
As much as I would like this to be true, there’s still a worryingly large amount of a lot of people who read and believe diaster rags (looking at you Daily Mail and The Express)
A lesson in how not to punctuate, c/o BBC News
