Theoretical Solution to Nuclear Waste - Self-Sinking Storagte

A friend shared with me the July 2010 issue of Popular Science magazine because it featured a series of articles on "The Future of the Environment" and I'm a known treehugger and science nerd. One little snippet of an article about Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University, who foresees a nuclear revival. What caught my eye was a very intriguing method of dealing with the resulting radioactive waste.

Ausubel cites Russian and British research into “self-sinking balls” of nuclear waste with shells most likely made of tungsten and heated by their radioactive contents to the point where, once disposed of in deep holes in the Earth’s crust, they would melt the surrounding lithosphere and bury themselves several miles deep. “Nuclear waste is hot and heavy,” he says. “The idea of self-sinking capsules takes the heat and gravity as positive attributes. The idea is quite straightforward.”

While the capsules remain theoretical for now, Michael Ojovan, an engineer at the University of Sheffield in England who has published extensively on the concept, says that in addition to removing waste, acoustic monitoring of the capsules could reveal data about the structure of the Earth’s interior. “The [scientific] importance of launching such a capsule is on the order of an expedition to Mars,” he says.

Wow. It buries itself miles underground. That's stinking cool.

I'm not certain of the legality of reposting PopSci's concept drawing of the process, but I figure if its linked via URL, properly cited (Kevin Hand), and accompanied by a pleasant and honest recommendation (PopSci is seriously an awesome magazine, go check it out) then they may not mind too much.

It's a Problem . . . so Somebody Fix It for Me

I'm encouraged to see the reaction of a number of friends to the tragic oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: vehemence towards BP, solidarity with those (people and animals) who are suffering, calls for a "BP boycott" to punish the at-least-negligent-at-most-malevolent corporation that is to blame (at least partially--let us not forget other parties involved, namely Transocean). Yet while well intended, these actions are ineffective and pointless in the long run.

A boycott of BP gas stations will do little. The gasoline from a given BP-branded station may or may not have come from BP. Similarly, a gas station under another brand may be selling BP gasoline. Regardless, sale of gasoline directly to everyday citizens to fill up their cars amounts to little of BP's overall revenue. Instead, the individual owners of boycotted stations will likely suffer. Ron Lieber describes how to have a real impact. Basically, use less gas (i.e. drives less), use less plastic, conserve energy, buy less stuff. Each of these actions have have a much larger effect than just switching to the gas station across the street.

But far more frustrating is the general attitude towards the issue: it is my problem, but I can't (read: won't ) do anything about it. A recent poll by the NY Times & CBS News finds

"Overwhelmingly, Americans think the nation needs a fundamental overhaul of its energy policies, and most expect alternative forms to replace oil as a major source within 25 years. Yet a majority are unwilling to pay higher gasoline prices to help develop new fuel sources." (emphasis mine)

 It would be fallacious to extrapolate this attitude towards an increased gas tax to include all taxes, fees, or other sources of revenue to fund necessary R&D. But I'd bet my hat on it. My only hope is that those unwilling to sacrifice monetarily will do so by changing their behavior instead. I'll end on an excellent Letter to the Editor by Mark Mykleby in the South Carolina Beaufort Gazette:

      I'd like to join the blame game that has come to define our national approach to the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. This isn't the fault of BP or Transocean. It's not the government's fault. It's my fault. I'm the one to blame and I'm sorry.

     It's my fault because I haven't digested the world's in-your-face hints that maybe I ought to think about the future and change the unsustainable way I live my life.

     If the geopolitical, economic, and technological shifts of the 1990s didn't do it; if the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, didn't do it; if the current economic crisis didn't do it; perhaps this oil spill will be the catalyst for me, as a citizen, to wean myself off of my petroleum-based lifestyle.

     "Citizen" is the key word. It's what we do as individuals that counts. For those on the left, government regulation will not solve this problem. Government's role should be to create an environment of opportunity that taps into the innovation and entrepreneurialism that define us as Americans. For those on the right, if you want less government and taxes, then decide what you'll give up and what you'll contribute.

     Here's the bottom line: If we want to end our oil addiction, we, as citizens, need to pony up -- bike to work, plant a garden, do something. The oil spill is my fault. I'm sorry. I haven't done my part. Now I have to convince my wife to give up her SUV.

--Mark Mykleby

FOOD!

Update: As of May 20, 2010 I'm still going strong! A more appropriate label might be "extreme vegetarian" for various reasons, but I'm happy and proud to day I've maintained my pledge to go meatless. This post contains some of my reasoning behind my decision to go vegetarian. I realize it's a bit long, but it could be worse--I held back. ; ) All the best.


*Originally written Sept. 9, 2009 - Imported from Facebook Notes*


This is not a lecture. I am not preaching, entreating, chastising, challenging, or encouraging. This has nothing to do with you; this is about me. This essay is explicitly my thoughts, my views, and my conclusions. The purpose is to inform those who may care about how and why I reached these conclusions and to explain my reasoning to those whose opinions I care about.

I'm going vegetarian. (Strike that. I am vegetarian. I actually wrote this weeks ago, but never finished it. If you excuse a slip-up, I'm going on three weeks.)

I take pride in being a thinking person; Socrates said “An unexamined life is not worth living” and I agree. I've had the great luxury of time this past summer, and so I've put a lot of effort into analyzing this issue. Following is a summary of the primary reasoning behind my decision to no longer eat meat. I have tried to balance specificity for the sake of clarity with respect for any readers; there are a lot of gruesome realities when contemplating this subject and while I did not like reading or watching some of the things that I did, I forced myself to do so. Facing ugly truths is necessary when the truth itself is your ultimate goal. If I tagged you in this note, don't feel obligated to read all or any of it. It's simply because I thought you might be interested to know about my decision or that you have some related interests.

(On second thought, this is really long. And I've repeatedly cut chunks of it out, too. I don't expect anyone to read it entirely, but maybe just skim it? But w/e, I'll put it out there so it's there.)

(Final thought: it took WAY too long to write this and revise it multiple times. So split it into chapters if you have to, I don't care, but at least look at it so that it's somewhat worth my inexpensive and oh-so-abundant free time)

Humanity:
There are 800 million people in this world who are starving. 40 million people die each year from starvation-related causes. A couple facts sum up the whole point: 16 lbs of grain are required (on average) to produce 1 lb of meat. 1 lb beef requires 5200 gallons of water to produce, while 1 lb wheat requires 25 gallons. Another way to look at that: 4,000 gallons water required in one day's food for a meat eater; 1200 for vegetarian (300 for vegan, if you're curious). 38% of the world's grain is fed to livestock, which in turn provide humans with less nutrition than the grains themselves (70% of grain in the U.S. goes to livestock). I simply can't knowingly live to inefficiently. I just can't.

Environment:
I'm a treehugger, duh. This was what made me starting thinking about the topic in the first place. Again, I'll try to be brief.
A 2006 UN report concludes that livestock is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” Livestock is the largest anthropogenic source of methane, a greenhouse gas 20-25 times as potent as carbon dioxide. 1/3 of all fossil fuels in the U.S. Are used to raise and process livestock for food. A leading reason for rainforest destruction is for grazing space for cattle; another is for agriculture, much of which is specifically for consumption by livestock, not humans. Deep-sea trawling destroys reefs and millions of tons of unwanted sea life, “by-catch,” each year. By 2050 (some estimates say sooner), only 10% of all large fish species will remain; fisheries worldwide are expected to collapse.
Simply put, not eating meat is a hell of a lot “greener” (that word is becoming abused). And all of this harm for nothing; there is no necessity or benefit (aside from taste, of course) to eating meat, which brings me to:

Health:
No major nutritional body recommends a meat eating diet over a non-meat eating diet. The American Dietetics Association and World Health Organization both agree that vegetarian and vegan diets are perfectly healthy and if done right, can be healthier. Of course a vegetarian can still eat like shit and be unhealthy. But someone conscious of their diet can be perfectly healthy not eating any meat or animal products. Some things that helped to convince me further:
Vegetarians have less of the following: heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, cholesterol, blood lipids, and obesity.
An NIH study found that a vegan diet halted the progression of Type-II (adult-onset) diabetes and began to lessen its severity; the who stuck with it long-term eventually stopped needing medication. Basically, the adult-onset diabetes reversed. It un-onset (my term).
Dr. Esselstyn of the Cleveland Clinic has a 100% success rate in taking patients in “advanced stages of heart disease, most of whom were told by cardiologists that their condition was terminal,” and placing them on vegan diets, completely halting the progression of the disease.
A Cornell study placed local elementary students on a vegan diet. The principal reported more energy, better moods, and better grades on average.
The EPA reports 95% of dioxin exposure in humans comes from eating meat, eggs, and dairy, averaging 22-times the “acceptable” level.
Oh, and higher nutritional value and lower calorie content mean I can eat more without feeling guilty. : )

Religion:
I've heard the occasional religious argument, that God gave man dominion over animals, etc. I can't speak to this specifically, but does any religion say we have to eat animals? Or even that we can or should? Honest question, I don't know. However, “dominion” does not imply exploitation and abuse, which sadly is reality. Religion teaches compassion and mercy, does it not? So religion allows the consumption of meat, but what religion requires it? Numerous religions exist, such as Buddhism and Sikhism that forbid the consumption of animals. Also, on the idea that God places humanity in situations to test our goodness, perhaps God wishes humans to “rise above” the act of eating meat, to discover that it's morally wrong? If there is a reference in a religious text that explicitly declares it wrong to be vegetarian or vegan, I will immediately concede. In any case, we do not live in Biblical times. We do not stone adulterers. But to me the whole argument of religion is moot: maybe religion is not a reason to go vegetarian, but it certainly is not a reason not to. Oh, and Pope Benedict XVI condemns factory farming. (Funny thought: Christianity ironically does support cannibalism, in the form of eating your savior's flesh. And vampirism. Yes, it's symbolic, I'm only joking. But Jesus did say bread, coulda said T-bone steak)


Animal Welfare, Humane Behavior, and Morality:
The issue gets more difficult here. While in regards to my health, world hunger, and the environment the answer is clear to me, the issue of animal rights is more open. Humans are conscious beings, fully capable of thinking through everything we do. As we are highly intelligent, I believe we have a moral responsibility to attempt to decide what is right and act by that. We are thus obliged to do what is right if we can. The curse and blessing of our intelligence is that we get to decide what is morally acceptable behavior. So I must consider the ethics of eating meat.
Focusing solely on the argument of morality towards animals, if, for example, a chicken were born, lived a happy and healthy life, and was killed in a painless and humane manner for my consumption, I may have to reconsider my position. However this is not the case, so it is a moot point. What practices do take place are far from this. Animals, including fish, feel both pain and fear. This is not an idea, it is scientific fact demonstrated in legitimate studies. Furthermore, some of these animals are surprisingly intelligent. Cattle have sophisticated social structures and social interactions, pigs perform better on cognitive tests than 3 year old humans, chickens perform better than cats and dogs. But intelligence aside, these animals do suffer from pain and fear, and the following are a few exemplary practices that regularly occur:
castration and mutilation (such as grinding and searing beaks to minimize fighting and of course branding) without any sort of painkillers
animals being entirely conscious and able to feel pain while slaughtered, which is typically done by slitting the throat.
Workers and veterinarians have testified that many animals are fully conscious when the process of butchering is begun, including cutting off limbs and beginning to remove their skin from their body.
Pigs are routinely forced into scalding water to hair their hair burned off; similarly chickens are subjected to the same process to de-feather them.
In the dairy industry, male calfs are often used for veal, which consists of tying the calf down so it cannot move
Most dairy cows are forced to stand in stalls for the entirely of their life
In the egg industry, male chicks too small for meat are discarded. This process is often done by tossing them, still alive and conscious, into grinders.
Most chickens are kept in battery cages, so that they cannot move; after two years they are typically too poor quality to be used for meat and so are killed and discarded.
The abuse of antibiotics contributes to bacterial resistance; the unnaturally close-quartered conditions of factory farms breed viruses and diseases. While still contentious, there is respectable support for the theory that factory farming may have led to the H1N1 virus (aka swine flu) having mutated and spread.
Many animals are bred and injected with hormones to be unnaturally large in a very short time—including animals that are so large they cannot walk.
Fish, which can also feel pain and suffering, are surprisingly intelligent with complex social structures and a long-term memory (not the 3-second myth) typically die by decompression, crushed by the weight of other fish, or suffocation. Decompression's a fancy word, think about what it means.

These methods do not always occur, they do not represent every single animal that is raised and killed for consumption. But they do represent the majority. And I cannot be entirely certain where my meat comes from and whether the animals were subjected to behaviors such as this. Which brings me to a convincing argument to me: I could not take part in any part of the process of preparing meat and if I had to in order to eat it, I would not. Denial is a greater sin than ignorance. Turning a blind eye and allowing others to do things for me that I would not do myself for unnecessary convenience is a mark on my integrity. And Integrity is the last thing a man has.
I have the ability to get all the nutrients my body and mind need, to be entirely healthful, without consuming meat, which makes killing an animal for consumption entirely unnecessary. And in another's words: “intentionally inflicting suffering because of tradition, custom, convenience, or a palate preference is unethical.”
I had to ask myself: instead of wondering why not to eat meat, why should I eat it in the first place? There is no nutritional need to eat meat. The argument that it is 'natural' is fallacious on several levels (in brief: humans do not do much of that is “natural” and we do many things that are not natural--this argument is illogical and a double-standard on the basis of convenience). As a tradition, there is more sense in the Masai custom of a young man killing a lion as rite-of-passage than there is in for the sake of taste or pleasure.

Role Models:
What's more, I look to others for influence and guidance. I can turn to those I admire to learn from them. Don't give me some list of of pointless celebrities of actors (Brad Pitt's a vegetarian? Whoopdie-fucking-do), athletes (last I checked, I'm not good at sports anyway), and singers (and their opinion is worth more than someone else's because...). I don't give a damn if Alec Baldwin is a vegetarian. I do give a damn that Natalie Portman is a vegetarian (recently converted to vegan, as a matter of fact), because she's Natalie Portman, simple as that. So here are some of the people I've come across who were either vegetarian or vegan, and whose opinions and views I can legitimately respect:
Superman / Clark Kent (yeah, he counts)
Abraham Lincoln
Charles Darin, Issac Newton, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan
Leonardo da Vinci
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Deepak Chopra, Rousseau, Kant, Pythagoras, Voltaire.
Trevor Allen (just saying)

In fact, Albert Einstein said the following: “Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” One of his primary reasons was feeding the world's hungry.


Conclusion:
So for me, there are a ton of reasons not to eat meat. There's one to eat meat: taste. Will I miss it? Yes. Will I relapse? Almost certainly. A cheeseburger will come my way one day. In fact, I grabbed a turkey sandwich from Grab-It purely our of habit. But I strongly support that anything effort is better than none; going meatless just one day a week was easy. And I cut out red meat, and then pork, months ago. It was a slow process, and taking it a step at a time made it pretty easy, actually. The hardest part was the getting past the turkey sandwich... my turkey sandwich's are glorious and I've eaten them for years (the one-time fetus sandwich was not such a hit). But fact of the matter is, tastes are entirely changeable, and I have no shortage of options without meat.
Quickly, I have to touch on veganism. It has a bad reputation. Sometimes deservedly, sometimes not. I fully support medical and scientific animal testing, and I mean wholeheartedly. I think the default punishment for crazy people raiding animal labs needs to make those nuts be the guinea pigs instead—mandatory sentence. And as a scientist, I can tell you that even things that don't sound like they make sense, in fact do—basic research is hard to understand unless you in the field itself. Green-glowing fluorescent monkeys, cats, and mice seem senseless until you realize they've led to some of the most promising methods of fighting cancer. GMO's too. Fucking brilliant stuff. (Note: The military uses animals for medical training, but in the worst ways: as in take a goat and break its leg just so Random Soldier can make a splint. Same for burns, gunshot wounds, etc. That's just stupid and wrong. Shoot a Chinese government official instead, they're worth far less than goat. Or a televangelist, but that's another story for another time.)
There are also holier-than-thou vegans and vegetarians; and they're assholes. If I ever get arrogant about being all “eco friendly” and shit, smack me, seriously. I know I do it, but it's not cool and I need someone to call me out on it. But before you do, just make sure I'm not right.
One day, I'd like to say I'm vegan. Maybe it's something I'll work towards, I don't know right now. Or a reasonable vegan, maybe. I don't think I'll ever give up honey (it's honey, wtf?). I'm not sure how I'd ever move past eggs.... I gave up cheese months ago, though, and that was pretty easy. Now I eat it on occasion, sure. Milk? Replaceable. Milkshake? Irreplaceable.

To sum up: you just spent (how long?) reading this when you coulda done a million better things. Or I coulda just said “I'm going veg. I got my reasons.” But I didn't say that and you chose to read this. Because I think my reasons are valid and important and want them to be out there for anyone to question. And you read this because you give a damn. Something made you interested enough to at least listen to my rambling. I welcome all comments, criticisms, questions, praise and scorn. Be it public or be it private. But I'd like to end on an important and pleasurable note: milkshakes. 


Thank you. 

Docket 08-205 - Goliath Wins

In light of my recent decision to pick up blogging again for whatever reason, I thought I could go back and re-post some previous things I've written (mostly on Facebook), at least to have them in a single location. So for starters, this is basically just stolen from Maddow's rant on the Citizens United case a few months back. In brief, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court declared limits on corporate spending in political races to be unconstitutional, citing the First Amendment and identifying corporations as "persons," an absurd idea by many measures. 


*Originally written January 22, 2010 - Imported from Facebook Notes*


Regardless of whether or not you like her, Rachel Maddow summarized the recent Supreme Court Ruling as follows. While I'm hesitant to cry 'doomsday for democracy', I do in essence share those views as expressed here:

"And now, a bolt of lightning has struck the entire American political system. . . .

The Supreme Court today swept away rules that go back more than a century—rules that have constrained the way that corporate interests can influence the American political system. In 1907, Congress passed a law banning corporations from donating money directly to politicians. Over the next century, Congress passed a number of laws aimed at stopping corporate money from completely controlling America‘s political debate.

They‘re laws that have been upheld multiple times by the Supreme Court. Like in 1990 when the Supreme Court ruled it was constitutional to restrict corporate political spending. Or 2003, when the Supreme Court ruled specifically that the McCain/Feingold corporate campaign finance rules were OK.

Well, today, in one of the most radical Supreme Court actions in years, Justice Roberts and Alito and their five-member conservative majority overthrew at least a decade of settled law and congressional action and multiple Supreme Court precedence to wipe those laws away. Corporations are free to inject unregulated billions, absolutely unlimited money into the political system now.

If you are a regular person who‘s ever made a campaign donation before, forget about ever having to do that again. What‘s the point in individual people trying to influence politics with donations if Exxon or some other company can quite literally match and therefore cancel out the combined donations of every single individual donor in the nation whenever it wants in one check? And it can do it every year, in every campaign, in every state, in every race.

Going forward, corporations will be able to use unlimited money to support or oppose candidates in federal office. This isn‘t CEOs, individual rich guys using their private money. It isn‘t people forming political associations to do political work. It is big business being allowed to use its profits to flood the airwaves with ads against one candidate or for another.

So, if you‘re, say, a giant health insurance company who doesn‘t want the current system to change because you‘re making a killing, there‘s now nothing stopping you from tapping into your company‘s millions of dollars of profits to try to defeat a candidate who will vote against your interests. And you can do it without limit. If you have $2 billion in your company bank account, and you see stopping health reform as an existential (ph) issue for your company, you can and your shareholders probably think you should spend all $2 billion of those dollars running ads against health reform directly. Feel free.

This ruling rolls back decades of protections against corporate interference and control of governance. Justice John Paul Stevens read from the bench his scathing 20-minute dissent of the court‘s decision today. He said, “The court‘s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation. It‘s a rejection of the common sense of the American people who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

Today‘s ruling affects everything going forward. If this ruling is not curtailed somehow through legislation, I personally think it is impossible to overstate the impact this will have on American politics. Every major issue that our government deals with will change because the field has just been dramatically tilted, like 90 degrees tilted toward corporate interests.

Different Kinds of Smarts

 I begin with a triumphant note, received on a glorious day. The day was last Friday, April 30. The note was an A.
Last semester I had a certain professor for my Thermo/Static Mech physics course (P313), and he was tough but fair. Thermal Physics & Stat Mech involves generally simple math, but an enormous range of concepts.

I was fortunate enough to have this very same professor this semester for Electricity & Magnetism I (P324 - electro/magnetostatics, not dynamics). With a 53% on my first exam and a C at the midterm, I was determined to struggle my way up to a B by semester's end. With enough work and dedication, I averaged 3/4 on all subsequent problem sets (4/4 on two of the last three psets), a 97% on the second exam, and topped off with an 85% on the final. I landed an overall A course grade. Combined with several other magnificent and deserved outcomes that very day, I went to bed damn proud.


I finish with a somewhat embarrassing sequence of events, caused by confusion, with a humbling outcome. 
I start an internship in downtown Cleveland in the next week or two, so I, being the responsible "give myself plenty of time, cover my tracks, just in case, redundant fail-safes, etc." kind of guy, decided to "practice" my commute. I've had little experience with Cleveland's public transportation (just the Red Line rail, aka. "the Rapid," a few times freshman year, plus a few poorly-planned bus trips with generally bad outcomes), so I spent an hour the night before looking at possible routes to get from A (my apartment*) to B (Galleria @ East 12th & St. Clair Ave. NE).

I was incredibly confused. The University RTS Loop is large and, at first glance, terribly confusing; mostly because that whole intersection (including Cedar, MLK, Carnegie, Stokes, Stearn, Euclid, River Styx Blvd., etc.). Maybe take the Red Line to Tower City, but it's a decent walk from there, unless I go a block southeast and take #246, or cross Superior to take #1 . . . or just the HealthLine down Euclid to Public Square, then a 4- or 5-block walk from there. I could even hop the 32 down to the RTS loop if I were really lazy! But instead, why not take the most convenient route, #9, that stops right at my destination!

Turns out the 9 only runs downtown a few times in the morning and not all in the evening (wtf?)! I only found this out by hopping on the 9 and the nice lady saying "You know I'm not going downtown, right?", "Wait, what?", "I said I'm not going downtown." "Oh, sorry. . ." -slowly turn and step back off the bus.- So my morning consisted of two hours of walking around local streets to sit and watch buses drive by to figure out what stops where and when. Somehow I handled the D.C. metro without any problems for a week, but I suppose buses are inherently more complicated due to their structure.


The Upshot. My grades include Thermals Physics & Statistic Mechanics: B, Electro-magnetostatics: A, Public Transportation: F. Cheers.


*Yes, it is somewhat unwise to publicize that my apartment is around here, but I'm moving within a month anyway.

While the latest outbreak of scandals surrounding sexual abuse in the Catholic Church system is only the most recent of a long line of such atrocities, stemming back decades. Specificities of the many incidents aside, the Catholic Church has demonstrated an attitude and behaviors of significant consequence in their response. Alleged abuse is handled internally; even priests who turn themselves in, admitting guilt, go to their superiors, not the police. Why is this? It's because these people believe their preferred sacred book is of higher authority than the 'the laws of man.' In their eyes, they are responsible to a 'higher power' than the authority of our civilian law and government. Such thinking is detrimental and a threat to society. Possible consequences for this mindset are far-reaching, but we can already point to two macabre results: conspiratorial sexual abuse & terrorism. 

Faith in itself is not necessarily responsible for this arrogance, nor even is organized religion. While I have my qualms with both, it's important to recognize that neither requires this superior mindset. But we can point to individual systems and persons as guilty of malfeasance, and the Catholic Church and Pope are front and center. 

The Pope's claimed infallibility and rule by divine right is equivalent to a monarch's "above the law" status. It is anti-democratic (not that the Catholic Church makes an efforts to be democratic) and immoral, in particular by claiming such status on the basis of his own belief. At least an old monarch was placed above his/her own laws within his/her own domain. But for the Pope or any part of the Church to claim any authority whatsoever over the laws of sovereign nations is not only unfounded, but unenforceable to the extent of any individual or group making claim to whatever divine authority they have based on whatever fantastic system they choose to believe. 

It is not to a bishop or archdiocese to judge and punish priests. That is the duty of a civilian court. Every alleged case of abuse by a priest in the US should be investigated by DoJ and handled accordingly. These men are NOT outside of the law, regardless of whatever claims to be responsible only to some higher being.

This inevitably relates to the Pope's supposed "diplomatic/legal immunity" within certain states. Geoffrey Robertson outlines the absurdity of this idea in The Guardian:

"The anomalous claim of the Vatican to be a state – and of the pope to be a head of state and hence immune from legal action – cannot stand up to scrutiny. . .

. . . In 2005 a test case in Texas failed because the Vatican sought and obtained the intercession of President Bush, who agreed to claim sovereign (ie head of state) immunity on the pope's behalf. Bush lawyer John B Bellinger III certified that Pope Benedict the XVI was immune from suit 'as the head of a foreign state'."

And Hitchen's on the origin of the Pope's supposed immunity: 

"The UN at its inception refused membership to the Vatican but has allowed it a unique "observer status", permitting it to become signatory to treaties such as the Law of the Sea and (ironically) the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and to speak and vote at UN conferences where it promotes its controversial dogmas on abortion, contraception and homosexuality."

I strongly agree with both Hitchens & Dawkins in their supporting Robertson's and Mark Stephens's efforts to have the Pope arrested for "crimes against humanity" during his visit to Britain. Rather than point you to the UK's Sunday Times's misleading article, I suggest Richard Dawkins's clarification of the matter here. 


Here's a very good NPR story (~9 min) on the handling of a US case. 

Here is a BBC article on campaign to arrest Pope Benedict XVI. 

Post Script: I'm hopping on the bandwagon

I've decided that I'm no longer beholden to the U.S.'s Muggle laws, for I am a wizard according to my belief in the 7 Holy Texts. I am only responsible to the UK MoM's American counterpart: The U.S. Department of Magic. 

Sustainable Value - WSOM, CWRU, NEO, and Beyond

*Originally written April 9, 2010*

At this afternoon's Public Affairs Discussion Group, organized by the Center for Policy Studies at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), Dr. Roger Saillant was to speak about Business and Sustainability. In the end, the discussion encompassed far more. centering around his vision for the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value, Weatherhead School of Management (WSOM), Case Western Reserve University, the Greater Cleveland Area, and beyond.

Dr. Saillant spoke hopefully about efforts to incorporate sustainability into all of its offered courses. The University itself is worker on a similar goal to coordinate curricular and research activities on sustainability. Meanwhile, collaboration on ideas abounds, from the city-wide Sustainable Cleveland 2019 vision, to  region-wide cooperation with Oberlin College, to larger efforts to exemplify a sustainability-centered system of values for the nation as a whole.

The talk was riddled with interesting information, views, and issues. Particularly striking was Dr. Saillant's metaphor for changing today's societal mentalities as a critical long-term goal. He described how centuries ago, when beginning work on a massive Cathedral, the lead mason knew he likely would not live to see the final building in all its glory. But he nevertheless dedicated himself to building the best quality foundation he could. Because without the proper foundation, the entire building could not survive, and no generation could enjoy it.

Short term goals of the Dr. Saillant and the Fowler Center include significantly raising Weatherhead's rank of #33 in the Aspen Institute's Global Top 100 business schools and boosting Case Western Reserve's grade of B- on the College Sustainability Report Card, which he believes can largely be accomplished by re-organizing the endowment information that CWRU already makes available (CWRU's Endowment Transparency grade was an F, two years running).

A good Q&A session followed, with recommendations to read Slow Death by Rubber Duck and to watch Janine Benyus's TED Talk on "Biomimcry in Action" (careful, TED Talks are addictive). The event ended with a poignant reminder of the stark truth: that the Earth's changing climate is already past tipping point. But Dr. Saillant's aim is to motivate through a positive focus, one of an achievable sustainable world. And he does a good job inspiring others to believe (and to act), too.