Half life is the time it takes 1/2 the atoms of a sample to decay and lose its mojo. 

The half life of uranium-235 is 713,000,000 years.  That’s 713 MILLION years.

The half life of uranium-238 is 4,500,000,000 years.  That’s 4.5 BILLION years.

Only six percent of the fuel rods at the plant’s Unit 3 were a mixture of plutonium-239 and uranium-235 when first put into operation. The fuel in other reactors is only uranium, but even there, plutonium is created during the fission process.

When the pellets of uranium dioxide inside the thin fuel rods are split to create energy in the reactor, they release neutrons that, in turn, create highly radioactive plutonium-239. This is the same type of plutonium used to make nuclear weapons.

If plutonium did get out, it wouldn’t disappear quickly. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 25,000 years, meaning it takes that long to lose half of its radioactive potency. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years. And cesium, which tends to go airborne much more easily, has a half-life of 30 years. read more…

No matter how you cook it, this shit is going to be around for a while.  Whether it be falling into the ocean or carried away on the wind, it WILL get into the food chain. 

The Japanese govnerment is telling people that are within 12 miles of the exploding nuclear plants to stay in their houses???  If that were me, I’d get the hell out of Dodge.  The radiation doesn’t penetrate any material IS ABSORBED BY THE MATERIAL.  read more…

Ok, so I just saw on the 5:00 news tonight that on a scale of 7, Japan has updated the nuclear gravity (seriousness) from a 4 to a 5.

California HAS detected radiation fallout today, but “it’s so diluted”.  LMMFAO  Yea, but unless those fuel rods are cooled down soon, IT’S GOING TO KEEP COMING, YOU ASSHOLES!

BUT IT’S SOOOO DILUTED!!!!

UPDATE MARCH 19, 2011

BUT IT POSES NO IMMEDIATE HEALTH RISK

“Though radioactive iodine has a short half-life of about 8 days and decays naturally within a matter of weeks, there is a short-term risk to human health if radioactive iodine in food is absorbed into the human body,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.

Earlier Japanese officials said radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex exceeded government safety limits.

The food was taken from farms as far as 65 miles from the stricken plants, suggesting a wide area of nuclear contamination.

The tainted milk was found 20 miles from the plant, a local official said.

The spinach was collected from six farms between 60 miles and 75 miles to the south of the reactors.

Tests on the milk done Wednesday detected small amounts of iodine 131 and cesium 137, the latter being a longer lasting element and can cause more types of cancer.

While the radiation levels exceeded the limits allowed by the government, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano insisted the products “pose no immediate health risk.” Read more here…

I don’t see anyone else coming up with ideas to stop the gravy train that some state employees having been riding for far too long.  Case in point, cell phones.  Brown wants to round up a good half of the 96,000 state issued cell phones.  These so-called political ANALysts call it a “symbolic” gesture.  Check it out…

“In the face of a multibillion-dollar budget deficit, a cell phone may not seem like a big expense,” Brown said in written comments. “But spending $20 million, and perhaps far more than that, on cell phones cannot be justified.

“We’re facing a budget crisis in California and I want to achieve all possible, reasonable savings,” said Brown, who pegs the savings at $36 per month for each phone – or $1.7 million per month.

Political analysts described Brown’s executive order as largely symbolic but important in sending a message to voters as he pushes for extension of temporary tax increases that would raise about $11 billion in the next 18 months.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/12/3317750/browns-countdown-day-3-governor.html#ixzz1BzuToYNW

$1.7 million is not chump change.  Symbolic, my ass.  How many teachers’ jobs would be saved with that kind of money?

Now today I see another article in today’s paper about how some online retailers are skirting the collection of CA sales tax, or so CA says.  The Board of Equalization estimates the total to be around $150 million a year.  Amazon’s a big one that doesn’t collect CA sales tax.

So check this out.  If a business is in WA and a customer from CA, or any where, for that matter, walks into that business and makes a purchase, the customer will be charged WA sales tax.  And so they should.  If it’s an online business, I don’t think that should matter.  Every customer should be charged WA’s sales tax if they make a purchase from that company.

But CA Board of Equalization wants these online merchants to collect CA sales tax when a CA resident makes the purchase.  How can they when the business isn’t located in CA?  Just because it’s in cyberspace, BOE thinks it’s an opportunity to skim some scrilla from the transaction.  There’s always a physical location.  The person or the company behind the website has a physical location.  Just because they don’t have a brick and mortar business, that shouldn’t matter.  If the seller’s origin is in a different state, CA should NOT be entitled to ANY sales tax just because the customer is a CA resident.  How fucking ass backwards can CA get?  Sales tax should be based upon the same premise that income tax is based on.  The federal government and the state of CA Franchise Tax Board don’t seem to have any problem figuring out state of domicile, but the BOE is all the way fucked up.   

That article mentions that Schwarzenegger and some state legislatures blocked the online tax collection efforts in 2009 and 2010.  I do recall that one to be a tad bit different.  CA wanted to collect sales tax if the referring partying is a resident of CA.  It was called the affiliate tax.  Affiliates are online marketers who promote other people’s products or services and get paid a commissions.  So if I’m an affiliate living in CA and I promote jack-off pills to some guy in WV and he buys them from the company located in FL, CA wanted that FL company to collect CA sales tax because I, the affiliate, live in CA.  How fucking jacked up is that!  Other states actually did that and now those companies will no longer allow affiliates living in those states to promote their products.  Yup, those states got God-smacked.

Get the shovel.  The BOE needs to be 6′ under.

Philadelphia is assessing a business privilege license on bloggers. 
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100824/D9HPINSO4.html

If a blog takes money for advertising, or sells photographs or other goods, it’s a business and must pay for a license – no matter how little it makes – plus taxes on profits.

Bullshit.  Not according to the IRS, you dip-dots.  Read IRS Is Your Hobby A For-Profit Endeavor? 

So to all of you Philly bloggers…and by the way, why do these dumbasses think that everyone who’s online with a site is a blogger?  What about old school websites?  You see, already they don’t know wtf they’re talking about.

As I was saying…to beat this bullshit “business license”…

1. Register your domain name with NameCheap /" target="_blank"> NameCheap and take advantage of their FREE privacy manager called WhoIs Guard.  It will protect your name and address from prying eyes.  The ONLY ones that can pierce the veil of privacy is law enforcement or some asshole with a court order.  WhoIs Guard is free for the first year and only $2.88/yr after that.  Do NOT use goDaddy.  They suck and will charge you around $9/year, plus, you can’t temporarily turn it off if you need to.  NameCheap lets you turn it off and on as many times as you like.
2. Write all of your articles with a pseudo name.  Authors do it all the time.  Case in point, Stephen King used Richard Bachman.

How about this, they need the money because they’re broke enough to work for a dumbass company like yours. 

Things have a way of “happening” around me.  I’ll be in a situation where I think there’s no way out then suddenly a new door opens for me.  Take this credit check thing, for instance.  Just this morning I was reading yet another article in the paper about illegal discrimination against job applicants and the thought occurred to me – what they really need to make illegal is doing credit checks, especially in this economy where people are losing their jobs, cars, homes and are in way too deep with the credit card companies.

Low and behold, not 15 minutes ago, I noticed an email message from Workforce Week, an employment newsletter I subscribe to.  So I go to the site and my jaw dropped to my chest, much like my tits lay there, sticking to it in this CA heat.  Fucking FINALLY!  Someone’s decided to take action against employment credit checks.  Illinois Bars Job Discrimination Based on Credit History.  It’s about damn time.

“A job seeker’s ability to earn a decent living should not depend on how well they are weathering the greatest economic recession since the 1930s,” Quinn said in a statement. “This law will stop employers from denying a job or promotion based on information that is not an indicator of a person’s character or ability to do a job well.”

I hope more states are not far behind.

We all know the state the union’s in and we don’t need a fucking speech to blow sunshine up our collective asses telling us otherwise.  The country is FUBAR’d.  Fucking Bush administration and his trigger happy war mongers made sure of it.  Screw you if you think otherwise.  Don’t get me started.

You can watch full episodes of Lost here.

The IRS Version

After sending them an amended return and the scrilla I owed, I got a letter back basically saying that they got my shit and nothing further is needed at this time and if they need anything else, they will let me know.  How do you like that?  No interest.  No penalty.  I don’t get it, but I love it.

The CA Franchise Tax Boad Version

You owe us $458 in interest.  If we do not receive it within 30 days from the date of this notice, we may put a lien on your personal assets. 

1. There was no fucking date on the notice, but I had to believe them when they said 30 days, so I used the postmark date to be safe.
2. I go to mail the money before the 30 days are up and happened to see something that I didn’t see before.  The payment was due on October 13th, or some damn thing like, not the end of the month like I thought and it was already the 15th. 
3. About three weeks after mailing the payment, the check still hadn’t cleared my Wells Fucko account.
4. I called the FTB and checked my balance.  I now owed a few bucks more in interest.  The fuckers never posted the check.  I never got to speak to a real person because the wait was too long.
5. Had to get a stop payment on the check.  That cost me $29.  Oh, and to add insult to injury, Wells Fucko stop payments are only good for 6 months.  WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT?  So WTF am I supposed to do, keep spending $29 every fucking 6 months to keep it stopped?  JHC!  This needs a class action lawsuit.
6. I had to cut another check.

I have learned this horrible lesson at least 3-4 times before.  Things being sent to the government (both the IRS and the FTB) have a way of disappearing.  I am convinced the government is experimenting with black holes.  I now send everything Return Receipt Requested…except this time.  I didn’t even think of it, yet  I know better.  I could kick myself.  I think I was too frazzled when I saw I was already late and that’s why I never thought about doing it.  But once again, they didn’t get it.

I have never, in my entire life, EVER had credit card or utility payment go missing.  It only happens with the government.  And you know what the worst part is?  Having to prove you sent it.  Having to tell them the check really IS in the mail.  The burden of proof lands in the taxpayer’s lap, yet they are the ones fucking losing mail.  fuckers

The government set the stage with the Cash for Clunkers program and in a few months the banks will begin acting out Part Deux of the hit play, “What’s Mine is Mine and What’s Yours is Mine.”  Read what the Mogambo Guru has to say about it.

All you dumbasses who bought into the hype of those ARMs or interest only mortgages, you got what you deserved.  Beats me WTF made you think you could make those payments.  Well, it’s about to be played out again when you find out you can’t make your Cash for Clunkers car payments.  R E P O S S E S S I O N!  I like the way that rolls off the tongue.  Just like M I S S I S S I P P I.  LMAO

Not only can’t you make your car payments, but you can’t pay the insurance on the damn thing.  Bet you kinda overlooked that part when you drove off the lot, huh.

But there is a silver lining to this gray cloud.  Sorta like Dog the Bounty Hunter, you will witness the birth of a whole new kind of entrepreneur – The Repo Man, not to mention all the new country western songs written about them.  If I were you I’d sell that new car and buy a tow truck and go into business for yourself. 

Just like a bounty hunter, the repo man gets paid a reward for bringing it those cars.  It’s going to get cutthroat out on the streets.  They will stalk you.  They’ll hire stakeout artists, or whatever the fuck they’re called, the people who sit in their cars down the street from yours and wait for you to turn out the lights when you go to bed.  Then they’ll text message the repo man that the coast is clear.  Stakeout person gets a few bills and the repo man collects his reward.

Here are some tips for keeping your new car when you can’t make the payments.

• Do not park your car outside at night.  They WILL repossess it.  True story…years ago a co-worker called into work one morning and said his car was stolen the night before.  Usually he parked it in the garage.  I know, because I’ve been to his house.  Truth be told, the dumbass fell asleep on the couch after mass quantities of beer and tequila and failed to pull the truck into the garage.  Months later he told me the truth of what really happened.  No one stole the damn thing, it got repossessed because the fucker was too busy blowing his green on alcohol and wasn’t making his car payments. 
• Do not drive your car to work.  They know where you work.  They WILL repossess it.
• Do not drive your car to the grocery store.  They will follow you.  They WILL repossess it.
• Leave it parked in your garage at all times.  If they try to steal if from in there it will be breaking and entering.  Don’t know if they can get the cops with a search warrant and I ain’t about to research it for you, dumbass.
• If you don’t have a garage, rent a storage unit and hide the fucker.
• But if there is no hope, leave you car parked outside at night with the doors unlocked and let the bums sleep in it.  That way when they tow it away you kill two birds with one stone – the car and the bums will be gone in the morning. 
• Make your car payments.

And even if they do take your car, your misery isn’t over because you still owe the money!  ROTFLMMFAO  Dude, get a bike.

There’s another side to this whole contractor thing.  I was one of those private contractors for years.  Actually, an employee of a contracting software company.  To make a very long story short, we were hired to build several custom licensing systems for the State of CA Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) because after years and years of failed attempts to do the programming themselves, they couldn’t pull it off.

The State of CA simply cannot and does not pay the salaries required to draw and keep the big talent like programmers, analysts and I.T. project managers.   The state simply doesn’t always have the pool of talent and experience available in house, especially for such complex projects.  We were on that job for over seven years, perhaps longer.  It was a MASSIVE rollout of numerous systems on phases over the course of years.  Prior to 1984, DMV did what HCD does today.  In ’84 HCD was formed and left DMV handling the vehicles, dealers, salesman, and manufacturers.  HCD does…

• Registration and Titling for all mobilehomes and commercial modulars, including title search and escrows.
• Occupational Licensing for all mobilehome dealers, salesmen and manufacturers.
• Employee Housing for farm workers, what used to be called labor camps.
• Mobilehome Parks, RV Parks.
• A cashiering system for the entire thing.
• Much, much more.

“In many cases, they are doing the same work we do and sit right next to us, and yet they are being paid a lot more,” Marie Harder from SEIU said.

I’m sure that’s true of some projects, but it needs a case by case analysis.

In the years that I was on the HCD job, I witnessed a major loss of state talent through retirement, force layoffs, firings, better offers in the private sector, and transfers to other departments.  They’ve had directors that were absolute tyrrants and drove many of the people away because they couldn’t take their political bullshit anymore. Plus, they don’t train new employees and they don’t cross train them.  No where have I ever seen such tunnel vision and narrow minded hiring practices as I have with the state.

“Contractor” is an ugly word in state circles, but it’s sometimes a necessity.  I admired most of the people I worked with, but the gene pool was pretty thin with regards to both experienced employees in the trenches and leadership from management.

Here’s waste for you.  When that project started we were required to spend 2% of the contract on MeBeWeBe’s — minority owned business / women owned business.   Now there’s the deep underbelly of waste to the rotten core and the state required it.  It was that Affirmative Action thing.  We would pay out 2% of certain expenses (office and computer equipment) to this disable vet for doing NOTHING.  He didn’t order it.  He didn’t deliver it.  He didn’t pay for it.  We did it all ourselves.  All he did was come by to pick up his check – 2% of the total bill.  That was his total involvement.

Even the wife of a project manager formed her own woman-owned company.  She’d do software testing and data loading from the legacy system into the new system.  She was damn good at what she did and we needed her.  But the thing of it is, instead of just hiring her as an employee of the company we had to MeBeWeBe her to meet the state mandated 2% of the project.  Needless to say, she got paid way more than any employee would have.

Beats me if that Affirmative Action thing is in place anymore, but the state needs to look deeply at itself when/if it starts looking at the contrators.  Like why are contractors hired to do a job in the first place?  Aside from lack of internal talent, the state needs to investigate its own managers and departments.

That’s sorta like getting your tax refund ganked when you owe back child support.  Never mind the monkey’s teeth, watch out for his tail.