Berkey Water Filter Question
March 31st, 2011[Update] It’s Much Less Turbid Than I Indicated Initially
In email and through the story suggestion form, I’m being flooded with pre-filter related stuff. Ok, I gave the wrong impression in my initial description.
A pre-filter isn’t going to do anything with this water. I poured a glass of steam distilled water and set it next to a glass of the spring water and they’re visually identical to my eyes. So, thanks for the pre-filter info, but it doesn’t apply here. If we were talking about the water from our dam, a pre-filter would definitely be necessary.
However, when I steam distill a gallon of the spring water, there’s about a quarter tea spoon of dirt/clay/scale left in the boiling chamber. The boiling surface of the electric kettle also fills up with this stuff.
Also, since I have access to all the rain water I want, I may just put that through the Berkey and re-mineralize it separately to make the filters last longer.
So, let’s change the question to just:
Is it true that the white ones physically hold up better for cleaning than the black ones?
And thanks for all the responses! Although I can’t respond to all of you individually, I appreciate your input.
—End Update—
I’m going to buy a Berkey water system, but I’m not sure which filters to get: White ceramic/Supersterasyl or Black Berkey filters?
Which would be better for somewhat very slightly turbid spring water?
Is it true that the white ones physically hold up better for cleaning than the black ones?
Spain: One in Five Under 30 Still Looking for That First Job
March 30th, 2011Via: Guardian:
At 43%, Spain’s youth unemployment is the highest in the EU by far, and more than double the average. For those aged 16 to 19 the rate is 64% – an 11% increase on the previous year. One in five of those under the age of 30 are still looking for their first job, and almost half (46%) are on short-term contracts of less than 6 months.
Youth unemployment here is higher than in Tunisia and Egypt. It’s so high that many young people have to look long and hard to see past it.
When I asked a class at an unemployed training centre who would be prepared to leave the country to find a job they all raised their hands. All said that the majority of their friends were also unemployed.
Japan: Greenpeace Finds High Levels of Radiation Outside of Exclusion Zone
March 30th, 2011Update: IAEA: Evacuation Zone Zone Should Be Extended
Via: Reuters:
Radiation measured at a village 40 km from Japan’s crippled nuclear plant exceeded a criterion for evacuation, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday, the latest sign of widening consequences from the crisis.
The finding could increase pressure on Japan’s government to extend the exclusion zone beyond 20 km (12 miles) around the Fukushima power plant, which has leaked radioactive particles since it was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
Criticized for weak leadership during Japan’s worst crisis since World War Two, Prime Minister Naoto Kan has said he is considering enlarging the evacuation area to force 130,000 people to move, in addition to 70,000 already displaced.
—End Update—
Via: Japan Times:
Radiology experts from Greenpeace urged the government Wednesday to expand the evacuation zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant after they found high levels of radiation outside the 20-km mandatory no-go zone.
Jan van de Putte, the radioactivity safety adviser of the NGO, said the survey, taken on a road between the villages of Iitate and Tsushima in Fukushima Prefecture, saw a radiation level of 100 microsieverts per hour, despite being outside of the evacuation area.
One would reach the annual legal limit of 1,000 microsieverts — or 1 millisievert — of radiation in about 10 hours in such an environment, van de Putte said, adding that it is likely the people living in Iitate, about 9 km outside the no-go zone, “have surpassed that level” of exposure already.
Ireland: Banking Wreck Much Worse Than Previously Thought
March 30th, 2011Via: BBC:
Ireland’s central bank and new government will confirm on Thursday that the hole in the country’s banks is even wider, deeper and darker than seemed to be the case last November, when those bust banks forced the country to go with a begging bowl to the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 67.5bn euros (£59bn) of rescue loans.
Regulators at the Irish central bank have conducted a review of how much extra capital – as a buffer against future losses – is required by Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Bank, EBS and Irish Life and Permanent.
Unless something unexpected happens in the next 24 hours, the total amount of additional capital that will need to be injected into these banks will be a bit less than 35bn euros – including 8bn euros that was supposed to be injected into them at the end of February, but was postponed because of Ireland’s political turmoil.
Anyway, let’s assume that the total amount extra that these banks need is circa 30bn euros. That would take the total quantity of state investment in Ireland banks to a breathtaking 75bn euros (actually a tiny bit more than that).
That is an almost unbelievably large number. When I think about it, I have a small panic attack – because it represents 45% of Ireland’s GDP and 55% of its GNP.
Japan: Radiation Certificates Required to Enter Some Hospitals and Shelters
March 30th, 2011Telegraph states that hundreds of people are affected.
Via: Mainichi:
At the entrance of a sports gymnasium in Fukushima city earlier this month, a doctor wearing a white hat, mask and gloves was seen holding a radiation monitor over the hands of a visiting resident.
The doctor then held it over the person’s forehead, abdomen and back. The resident was then asked to raise their heels to check the back of the shoes at the end of the procedure to get a reading on the monitor.
After the series of problems at one of the country’s largest nuclear power plant, these radiation screenings have been conducted at the entrance of shelters in Fukushima Prefecture since March 13, two days after the devastating quake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. They are intended to check if a resident has been exposed to radiation.
“Certificates” are then issued by the doctors to those who have been declared free of any abnormality.
But these certificates have come to be an unexpected function in the community that has become nervous about anything radioactive. Some shelters have started demanding that certificates be presented before any residents evacuating from the nuclear disaster are admitted.
Some officials in the central government, however, are raising their eyebrows about such documentation while demand for them appears to be growing.
Research Credit: EB
NSA Investigating Cyber Attack on NASDAQ
March 30th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
The National Security Agency, the top U.S. electronic intelligence service, has joined a probe of the October cyber attack on Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ) amid evidence the intrusion by hackers was more severe than first disclosed, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The involvement of the NSA, which uses some of the world’s most powerful computers for electronic surveillance and decryption, may help the initial investigators — Nasdaq and the FBI — determine more easily who attacked and what was taken. It may also show the attack endangered the security of the nation’s financial infrastructure.
“By bringing in the NSA, that means they think they’re either dealing with a state-sponsored attack or it’s an extraordinarily capable criminal organization,” said Joel Brenner, former head of U.S. counterintelligence in the Bush and Obama administrations, now at the Washington offices of the law firm Cooley LLP.
Food Inflation Kept Hidden in Tinier Bags
March 30th, 2011Via: New York Times:
Chips are disappearing from bags, candy from boxes and vegetables from cans.
Nabisco’s Fresh Stacks package of saltines, top, contains about 15 percent fewer crackers than the old package.
As an expected increase in the cost of raw materials looms for late summer, consumers are beginning to encounter shrinking food packages.
With unemployment still high, companies in recent months have tried to camouflage price increases by selling their products in tiny and tinier packages. So far, the changes are most visible at the grocery store, where shoppers are paying the same amount, but getting less.
Cost of War in Libya: $600 Million for First Week
March 29th, 2011Via: ABC News:
One week after an international military coalition intervened in Libya, the cost to U.S. taxpayers has reached at least $600 million, according figures provided by the Pentagon.
Spanish Ghost Towns
March 29th, 2011Via: Guardian:
Sightseers come to Spain for the Alhambra, the Gaudis, the beaches. But Spaniards talk about a new set of landmarks, a kind of tourist anti-attraction. You can find them clustered on the outskirts of big cities and around holiday resorts, in Madrid and Valencia. They are half-completed housing estates, often vast areas of empty flats and foundations and property-developers’ hubris. Now they are nearly deserted. The Spanish call them ciudades fantasma: ghost towns.
Anyone who wants to understand the challenges facing Spain – and by implication the rest of the eurozone – should visit one. Take the route I did, to a place called Valdeluz in Guadalajara. It’s easy enough: board the fancy high-speed train from central Madrid to Barcelona and get off half an hour later. If my experience is anything to go by, only a handful of passengers will spill out on to what is a nearly new station. And there, beyond the bored security guards and the metal railings is … nothing. Another platform for cheap commuter trains, completed but never used, and then acres of red dust and weeds.
Valdeluz was meant to be a dormitory town, with 9,500 houses for nearly 30,000 residents. But the lead developer hit the rocks a couple of years ago, with only around 1,500 units completed and 700 people moved in.
Secret X-37B Space Plane Spotted Again by Amateur Skywatchers
March 29th, 2011Via: Space:
After an intense search, a crew of amateur satellite sleuths has spotted the U.S. Air Force’s second X-37B space plane – a robotic spacecraft that launched into orbit March 5.
The mission of the unmanned X-37B space plane, which is known officially as the Orbital Test Vehicle 2 (OTV-2), is shrouded in secrecy. The Boeing-built spacecraft is believed to be involved in reconnaissance — perhaps testing powerful sensors for a new generation of spy satellites. It looks much like a small version of NASA’s space shuttles and blasted off from the Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
While its mission is secret, the OTV-2 itself has attracted the eyes of dedicated skywatchers hoping to spot it in orbit just as they saw its predecessor – the first X-37B spacecraft, OTV-1 – during the OTV-1’s months-long flight last year.
A new video, recorded by amateur Canadian skywatcher Kevin Fetterof Brockville, Ontario, shows the OTV-2 as a bright point of light soaring across the night sky.
Fetter was successful in getting video of the OTV-2 gliding past the binary star Eta Serpentis on March 24. The OTV-2 and the star can easily be seen with the naked eye, shining at a magnitude 3 on the scale astronomers use to measure the brightness of sky objects (with the lowest numbers representing the greatest brightness).
