Radiation Doses

In: Science

21 Mar 2011

An easy to understand chart of radiation sources and the damage they do, from xkcd.

image

Thanks to everyone who emailed me about it!

Ughhh. Type in your zip code and see how close you are to a nuclear plant!! There’s even a red target painted on the reactor!!!  I’m primarily posting this so I have an excuse to link to this excellent article, which explains in detail what’s going on in Japan and why you shouldn’t run out to buy potassium pills and start digging a fallout shelter. I might also point out that we conducted 140+ atmospheric atomic tests in Nevada – I’m not saying that was a particularly intelligent or healthy thing to do, but let’s maintain a little perspective about fallout risks, shall we?

image

(via the always excellent Barry Ritholtz)

Look. Study. Learn. It will be on the test. (via)

image

The NYT lays out the charts and explains why simple aggregate comparisons are not valid.

image

$480 million of revenue. Each box is a Groupon deal. The colors identify the city. Width (price) times height (number sold) equals area (revenue). Roll over any deal to see what it was for — lots of weird stuff in there.

image

I’ve praised Hipmunk’s slick airline reservation interface before. Now they’ve added hotels – and it’s awesome. Besides mapping out locations and allowing filtering on prices and amenities, you can also overlap heatmaps for food, tourism, shopping, nightlife, and “vice”.  The map below is for Washington DC’s nightlife, and is pretty damn accurate.

image

Go chicken! I wonder why pork has such volatility? (related ethical dietary ponderings; Thanks to Patty Gaffney for the link!)

image

Despite media spin, the United States is a long way from getting all of the bailout money back. (via Ritholtz)

image

image image

Useful reading if you are a human being:

image

(via)

The FT has created two maps of the world’s nuclear power plants. The first is a fairly comprehensive collection of information on distribution, types, and history:

image

The second is an interactive googlemaps-based version which locates operating, under construction, planned, and shut down plants. (related article)

image

The ebb and flow of volunteers and regions served.

image

OkTrends has once again produced some interesting analysis of it’s online dating data – many pretty charts analyzing why white people are so popular. The narrative and conclusions are a bit complex, so I’ll let you go read them yourself.

image image

David McCandless aggregated over 15 "top 100" reading lists to see what the consensus is.

image

Amazing video of the wave as it moves across the Pacific.

Want to understand some of the technical aspects of the disaster?

Here’s a NYT interactive explanation of the quake itself:

image

A Washington Post explanation of what’s been happening at the nuclear plants:

image

Interactive graphs of the last 7 days of Japanese earthquakes on the left, historical comparison on the right:

imageimage

And one that really brings home how much bigger this quake was than previous ones:

image