10. I know the difference between good radiation and bad radiation
It's quite important to know this, but it's a secret that many government agencies and shadowy organisations have tried to cover up over the years, so I'll whisper it really quietly.
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. IT'S JUST RADIATION, DUMBASS
Radiation isn't something that you can attach normative properties to. It's the same thing, regardless of whether it was spewed out by the sun four minutes ago, or oozing through a cracked shield on a Magnox.
(OK, there are differences between alpha and beta particles, and gamma rays, but there isn't a good kind of alpha particle and a bad kind too)
And the same goes for a lot of other stuff, no matter how you might like to believe otherwise. You can drown in 6 inches of Evian just as easily as six inches of dirty bathwater.
Now pay attention at the back. If you're going to start ranting about how bad irradiated food is, because of the radiation, then you clearly think there's this bad radiation out there. In point of fact, there isn't. Irradiating food to kill the bacteria is probably bad, but not of itself; it's more the trouble that when the kit's installed at the abbatoir or the meat warehouse or wherever, they probably get the YTS kid to put down his broom and operate it, rather than maintain the damn thing properly.
posted by Mr Cushtie @ 10:01 AM
5 Comments:
I am uncertain of your definition of radiation. I see an argument to say it means that which is radiated, be that sound, electromagnetic waves or whatever. However for the purposes of this I shall assume that you mean Alpha, Beta and electromagnetic radiation.
Also assuming that by "bad" and "good" you are meaning "detrimental to health" and "non detrimental to health", rather than trying to attach some moral quality to them.
In which case I feel there is still quite a lot of differences between standing holding a lump of plutonium and warming myself standing near the radiator in my bedroom, despite the fact that both are giving off radioation, after all.
I refer the learned gentleman to Reason 12.
Ah yes, Of course! Picking holes in other people's spelling / typing / etc..
The great bastion of people on the Internet desperate to distract from the substance of the argument.
I rather thought you were above such things, but it appears I am better than you.
Surely though there is "good" i.e. useful and "bad" i.e. not useful radiation.
Radio waves of certain frequencies are extremley useful whereas as a general rule the radiation given off by nuclear waste for instance is not especially useful, plain irritating in fact.
This would indicate you have the least concept of what radiation is and I am in fact better than you
Yours
Dr Brehmstraulang
Sigh. Doctor, I hate to go back over old ground, but (a) Reason 12; I can also spell "extremely", whereas you can't. Then again perhaps (b) Reason 2 should have made this clear; one of those A-levels was in English, and attests to the fact that I can spell.
But more importantly, you're just not paying attention. "...as a general rule the radiation given off by nuclear waste is not especially useful, plain irritating in fact" - well, useful to who? You've just made a normative judgment about something which is a feature of nature. (You've also assumed there's such a thing as nuclear waste, when it should be clear that the phrase doesn't pick out a particular thing in the world, and thus you fall down on verificationist principles - perhaps you're rebelling against your Teutonic heritage?)
Or maybe you're Bruce Sterling. The point you've failed to grasp is that radiation isn't good or bad, it just is. Yes, it may be bad or good for me, but that's a matter of relation, not an intrinsic quality of the radiation itself. Or (let me use an analogy here, in case it's just too hard to grasp) do you think that the water that comes in Evian bottles is Good Water, and the two inches of bathwater required to drown a person is Bad Water?
And finally, remember the laws of thermodynamics: you can't break even, you can't get out of the game and most certainly of all, you can't win. Even if you had been right about reason 10 (and you're not) there are still 99 other reasons that I'm better than you.
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