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Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

nytimes.com

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Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#341

Post by wbl »

ferrumfist wrote: post #281
triggercut wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's good to know, some useful context: tldr: It's going to take a while The search area is immense. People (even locals) fail to understand the incredibly vast distances. Sure, you can think up a comparison from your own context of a few hundred kms... but does your example have nothing, and I mean, literally nothing manmade but the road infrastructure itself in the proximity of the horizon for sometimes hundreds…

> US or the poorer parts of Europe Sorry to nitpick, but I've driven across the USA many times and I've never had much to complain about with regards to our roads (outside of Ohio, fuck that state). Doubly so when comparing our road infrastructure to poorer countries.

The Netherlands is a poorer country with about two thirds the GDP per Capita of the US. Here in Berkeley I see many potholes. I've never seen one there. And that's before we get into the increased road safety.

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#342

Post by arbitrary_name »

plugin-baby wrote: post #287
ferrumfist wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US or the poorer parts of Europe Sorry to nitpick, but I've driven across the USA many times and I've never had much to complain about with regards to our roads (outside of Ohio, fuck that state). Doubly so when comparing our road infrastructure to poorer countries.

Around San Francisco they’re noticeably worse than the well maintained parts of Europe.

Agreed, as someone who has lived in multiple western countries and US states...the roads around the bay area are horrendous. I try to drive in the fast lane to avoid the damage done to the slow lane by trucks.

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#343

Post by BetterGeiger »

N19PEDL2 wrote: post #330
techdragon wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem is going to be if it got embedded in a tire. The hope is that it’s “just on the side of the road”. But there’s a very real possibility that this could get picked up by someone’s car, wedged into the tire tread, and sit in their garage slowly exposing them and/or their family if the garage is used for anything else. Or any other car related exposure scenarios such as part time rideshare driver or w…

The Australian Government should urge all those who travelled that road after the item was lost to inspect the tyres of their car and possibly the garage.

I think they have already done that. I doubt a large percentage of people will both see the request and follow through with it.

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#345

Post by bogomipz »

The article states:

>"The capsule was not lost through cartoonish buffoonery, but through an almost cinematic series of events."

It then goes on to state:

>"Although the truck made the journey from Jan. 12 to Jan. 16, the capsule was not discovered to be missing until Jan. 25."

and

>"It was only when the box was unpacked for inspection for the first time on Jan. 25 that the capsule was discovered missing, he added."

Doesn't that sequence of events constitute buffoonery though? I mean why wouldn't you inspect the contents on arrival given all the special attention paid to packing it for transport? Instead they waited 9 days after arrival before doing so?

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#346

Post by gnad_sucks »

aww_dang wrote: post #280
gnad_sucks wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think I'm not in good faith - that's fine. But surely you have to concede that "I'm just asking questions" make it really easy to insinuate without directly stating, yes?

I'm just admiring the twists here, trying to understand and appreciate the gymnastic talent involved. The triple handspring is when you insinuate that users of that phrase must be insinuating. Perfect 10 - 10 - 10 - 10 Olympic finish is when it is all done out of an abundance of paranoia. I thought the conspiracy theorists were the paranoid and deranged ones, which is why we didn't want their unfounded and nutty comm…

I understand where you're coming from. You're just asking questions.

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#347

Post by berniedurfee »

propter_hoc wrote: post #48

Really scary. For those unaware of how badly this kind of situation can end up, read about the horrific Goiânia incident in Brazil. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

The YouTube channel Plainly Difficult specializes in lost radiation source incidents among other disasters.

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#348

Post by floxy »

h0l0cube wrote: post #324
qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a horror story, but the actual horror is society picking not up on this until its too late for alot of lifes. This is one of the incidents, that a centralized health system with data mining could have picked up easily.

Both of those stories are from the 80s, when hard drives were the size of washing machines and an internet connection was an unlikely thing to have outside the military and larger scientific institutions (e.g., CERN).

The original IBM PC/XT had a 10 MB internal 5-1/4" hard drive in 1983.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#349

Post by h0l0cube »

floxy wrote: post #348
h0l0cube wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those stories are from the 80s, when hard drives were the size of washing machines and an internet connection was an unlikely thing to have outside the military and larger scientific institutions (e.g., CERN).

The original IBM PC/XT had a 10 MB internal 5-1/4" hard drive in 1983. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT

I'm aware that small form factor hard drives existed at this time, they just didn't have the capacity for a medical database.

Re: Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

#350

Post by defrost »

nineteen999 wrote: post #338
defrost wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This capsule has been lost in one of the most remote, uninhabitated parts of the country. And we wonder why Western Australian Aboriginal poet and playwright Jack Davis, OBE, OA referred to kartiya as fringedwellers (clinging in fear to the edges of the continent). A quip second only to Kartiya are like Toyotas. When they break down we get another one.

I had to look up the word "kartiya" because I hadn't heard it before, being from the East Coast. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kartiya Which led me down the rabbit hole of the second quote, which is an interesting topic all on its own.

It was a lure to encourage the curious to look it up alright :-)

Fun questions that might have prompted include: Given the number of lanuages [1] why would a Noongar person [2] from the South West of Western Australia use a word from the Western Desert Group?

To be honest it's something he said in both English (in his work) and Noongar in response to the play | movie The Fringe Dwellers [3] and common usage of the phrase.

Trouble is, like most oral language words, there's no consistent spelling with an internet search hit for the word he did use, however it's similar enough to what I used .. with a harder intial 'G' sound and more of a running hard "ddd" sound in the middle.

My apologies for dragging you down a rabbit hole, I hope you enjoyed the adventure.

[1] https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Davis_(playwright)

[3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091081/

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