In fact, it’s too big a number to think of, let alone eight of them.
So, some perspective:
| Total Amount of Sewage in litres | 8,000,000,000.00 | |
| No. of flushes at 6 litres / flush | 1,333,333,333.33 | |
| Minutes in a year | 525,600.00 | |
| No. of flushes / minute | 2,536.78 |
In other words, twenty-five hundred people flushing their black-water once every minute for a full year. Yes, that’s real pollution, as opposed to the made-up kind.
Related.
Speaking of Secretary Global Test: Kerry’s Israel trip complicated by U.S. diplomatic flub
Iran opens new frontier in pizza delivery;
Iran successfully test fired a new guided long-range ballistic surface-to-surface missile, state TV reported on Sunday. It was the first such a test since Iran and world powers reach a historical nuclear deal.
[…]
This is the first test of a ballistic surface-to-surface missile by Iran since U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 in July, which endorsed a landmark nuclear deal reached between Iran and world powers. The resolution called on Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Iran says none of its missiles are designed for that purpose.
It’s probably nothing.
It’s 13 pages long, grab a coffee.
Aegrescit medendo:
No one has been killed or sickened by the radiation — a point confirmed last month by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even among Fukushima workers, the number of additional cancer cases in coming years is expected to be so low as to be undetectable, a blip impossible to discern against the statistical background noise.
But about 1,600 people died from the stress of the evacuation — one that some scientists believe was not justified by the relatively moderate radiation levels at the Japanese nuclear plant.
Epidemiologists speak of “stochastic deaths,” those they predict will happen in the future because of radiation or some other risk. With no names attached to the numbers, they remain an abstraction.
But these other deaths were immediate and unequivocally real.
“The government basically panicked,” said Dr. Mohan Doss, a medical physicist who spoke at the Tokyo meeting, when I called him at his office at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “When you evacuate a hospital intensive care unit, you cannot take patients to a high school and expect them to survive.”
Iran has discovered an unexpectedly high reserve of uranium and will soon begin extracting the radioactive element at a new mine, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation said on Saturday.
The comments cast doubt on previous assessments from some Western analysts who said the country had a low supply and would sooner or later would need to import uranium, the raw material needed for its nuclear program.
Related: The Iran deal in perspective.
Hope, change, duck, and cover;
When the Cold War ended, people forgot about that stuff, to the point that when I teach Cold War material in my Constitutional Law or National Security Law courses, I find that my law students, except for a few military veterans or emergency-services types, know nothing about basic nuclear weapons facts that almost everyone knew as late as the 1980s. But now it may be time for that knowledge to come back.
Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski announced Wednesday she’s supporting the international agreement with Iran regarding its nuclear capabilities. In doing so, the Maryland Democrat gives the Obama administration a veto override-proof list of 34 Senate supporters, all from the Democratic caucus.
In the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, stories like this were routine.
It was a good 26 years.
The differences in Democrat, Republican, and Iranian negotiating styles
The day we commemorate the nuclear takedown of comedian Jon Stewart.
Secretary Kerry of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz stated that they had not read the text of the side deals with Iran and that Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman “may have” before the Senate Armed Services Committee…
Nuanced: Iranian leader tweets graphic of Obama with a gun to his head.
An interview with Terry Glavin.
The Iran deal in 26 seconds pic.twitter.com/sZRRgrHKTa
— Elliott Schwartz (@elliosch) July 15, 2015
The mullahs may cheat on the agreement, or they may not. They may decide to walk away from the agreement at some point and openly develop nuclear weapons, or they may not. It makes very little difference. There are no undertakings in the agreement that go beyond 10 years (in most instances) or 15 years (in a few). The Ayatollah takes the long view: ten or fifteen years are nothing. In the meantime, what does Iran get?
BREAKING: Jew-hating administration endangers millions of Jews.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 14, 2015
It’s a deal worse than even we imagined possible. It’s a deal that gives the Iranian regime $140b in return for … effectively nothing: no dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program, no anytime/anywhere inspections, no curbs on Iran’s ballistic missile program, no maintenance of the arms embargo, no halt to Iran’s sponsorship of terror.
Lots of links at Drudge.
BREAKING NEWS: PM Netanyahu says Israel not bound by Iran deal and will defend itself. (@IsraelHatzolah) pic.twitter.com/JVxCIyRNG1
— Breaking News Feed (@PzFeed) July 14, 2015
More: this helpful advice for a post-Obama world.
Rather than publicly report this departure from the accord, the Obama administration chose to quietly accept it. When a respected independent think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, began pointing out the problem, the administration’s response was to rush to Iran’s defense — and heatedly attack the institute as well as a report in the New York Times.
This points to two dangers in the implementation of any longterm deal. One is “a U.S. willingness to legally reinterpret the deal when Iran cannot do what it said it would do, in order to justify that non-performance,” institute President David Albright and his colleague Andrea Stricker wrote. In other words, overlooking Iranian cheating is easier than confronting it.
This weakness is matched by a White House proclivity to respond to questions about Iran’s performance by attacking those who raise them. Mr. Albright, a physicist with a long record of providing non-partisan expert analysis of nuclear proliferation issues, said on the Foreign Policy Web site that he had been unfairly labeled as an adversary of the Iran deal and that campaign-style “war room” tactics are being used by the White House to fend off legitimate questions.
Marie Harf promoted to senior advisor, will focus on negotiations with Iran http://t.co/A0qMQvT3fq
— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) May 27, 2015