TRUE or FALSE QUOTES and COMMENTS: "For the super rich, money is the universal super powerful detergent, the universal clean all"

TRUE or FALSE QUOTES and COMMENTS: "For the super rich, money is the universal super powerful detergent, the universal clean all"

Let me share some thought raising "pearls of wisdom" quoted from my current passion for Detective and Thriller Fiction.

The present quote is due to Harlan Coben in his novel "Temps Mort" in French-(my interpretation of the french, Original title in English "One false move". There are a number of others in the same work, which I may manage to bring to my readers attention and in doing so encourage bloggers and blog readers to share my taste for Detective and Thriller Fiction such as Coben among others.

Believe it or not, there is no conscious reference to current event in French and International affaires.

Geoffrey West On the Scale and Unity of Life from Cells to Cities

New video added to my vodpod video wall

Just as dimensional analysis [pdf] is a fundamental tool of engineering in getting the right units and checking phenomena so too is scaling fundamental to coming to grips with complex systems.

In this video Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute helps us come to grips with such complex systems as life the ultimate biological mystery.

Join the discussion

The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy - Harvard Business Review

Window to HBR-Harvard Business Review

Let me share this window to HBR, from a publicity banner on Linkedin.

The current link recalls, The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy by Michael E. Porter and figuers an excellant video of an extensive interview with Mike Porter himself.

The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy - Harvard Business Review

Well worth a visit.

Enjoy

Power and corruption by any name?

This Economist article entitled "How to curb your legal bills " gives yet again an enlightening and unflattering view of the US governing and judicial system - a near closed shop system. It gives some basic facts to on which to base ones militant actions. It is a good conversation starter. I for one now understand better how one private individual - a militant lawyer, did far more to protect US consumers than any elected senator or state governor, his name? Ralph Nader

However for readers are seeking recipes to curb lawyers fees, one should consult readers comment at the end of the article.

Value for money - in a recent operation here in France, I would place the following over-rated fees as follows
1. Estate Agencies minimum 5000 euros for lower valued property, increasing with sales price - very little effort involved.
2. Lawyers fee - at least much higher skill level
I placed State agency

Shame on such professions compared to the skill and physical effort made by our father and son micro enterprise team who
A. pulled-out the obsolete electrical wiring and fuse system and put in brand new one respecting modern legislation standards.
B. Transferred a partial but brand new kitchen unit plus completed the missing elements + working surface new modern sink unit pluming+wall tiles-.
C. fully tilled the bathroom and separate WC. Installed new bathroom hand washing unit. Removed ancient wall paper on all rooms and painted walls and woodwork.
Our externally imposed delays-roughly 1 month to get the job done- imposed a very tight schedule on our team which remained unruffled throughout-true professionals!

Price: of the same order of magnitude as the above "Named and Shamed".

Of course my wife and I did some manual labouring support throughout.

This is written in a context where subsidised unemployed persons are finger pointed - Were Banks today not "subsidised, were car manufacturers in France not subsidised..Energy and transport lobbied too. The list is too long.

I trust this wiki will help stimulate some common sense in "value analysis"
in reference to:

"How to curb your legal bills"
- The price of legal services: How to curb your legal bills | The Economist (view on Google Sidewiki)

Iodine-131, Xenon 133, Cesium 137 Northern hemisphere - radiation | FLEXPART: dispersion model_This Above All

Nolonger hearing about the FUKISHIMA radiation cloud on the news in France, I finally got around to looking up the current cloud dispersion data via Internet.

The full chart shows Xenon-133 dispersion 27 March 2011 for the northern hemisphere:

The following charts are from the UK site, Weatheronline and can be followed day by day:

Iodine-131 Northern hemisphere - radiation | FLEXPART: dispersion model

Xenon-133 - Northern hemisphere - FLEXPART: dispersion model

Caesium-137 - Northern hemisphere - FLEXPART: dispersion model


I have also added a video to my wall above my posts.

Learn more on radioactivity via wikipedia:

Radioactivity

Ionizing Radiation

Xenon

Naturally occurring xenon is made of nine stable isotopes, the most of any element with the exception of tin, which has ten. Xenon and tin are the only elements to have more than seven stable isotopes.^[61] The isotopes ¹²⁴Xe, ¹³⁴Xe and ¹³⁶Xe are predicted to undergo double beta decay, but this has never been observed so they are considered to be stable.^[62] Besides these stable forms, there are over 40 unstable isotopes that have been studied. ¹²⁹Xe is produced by beta decay of ¹²⁹I, which has a half-life of 16 million years, while ^131mXe, ¹³³Xe, ^133mXe, and ¹³⁵Xe are some of thefission products of both ²³⁵U and ²³⁹Pu,^[60] and therefore used as indicators of nuclear explosions. Ref Wikipedia 

Caesium

¹³⁷Cs with a half-life of 30.17 years is one of the two principal medium-lived fission products, along with strontium-90, which are responsible for most of the radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel after several years of cooling, up to several hundred years after use. It constitutes most of the radioactivity still left from the Chernobyl accident. ¹³⁷Cs beta decays to barium-137m (a short-lived nuclear isomer) then to nonradioactive barium-137, and is also a strong emitter of gamma radiation. ¹³⁷Cs has a very low rate of neutron capture and cannot be feasibly disposed of in this way, but must be allowed to decay. ¹³⁷Cs has been used as a tracer in hydrologic studies, analogous to the use of ³H.

Iodine-131

Iodine-131 (half-life 8 days) is a beta-emitting isotope, which is a common nuclear fission product. It is preferably administered to humans only in very high doses which destroy all tissues that accumulate it (usually the thyroid), which in turn prevents these tissues from developing cancer from a lower dose (paradoxically, a high dose of this isotope appears safer for the thryoid than a low dose). Like other radioiodines, I-131 accumulates in the thyroid gland, but unlike the others, in small amounts it is highly carcinogenic there, it seems, due to the high local cell mutation due to damage from beta decay. Because of this tendency of ¹³¹I to cause high damage to cells that accumulate it and other cells near them (0.6 to 2 mm away, the range of the beta rays), it is the only iodine radioisotope used as direct therapy, to kill tissues such as cancers that take up artificially iodinated molecules (example, the compound iobenguane, also known as MIBG). For the same reason, only the iodine isotope I-131 is used to treat Grave's disease and those types of thyroid cancers (sometimes in metastatic form) where the tissue that requires destruction, still functions to naturally accumulate iodide.

Materials Science and Engineering Defined: Topics for discussed_Renewable Energy in India, 5th May 2011 - Step towards achieving Climate Change Goals

Materials Science and Engineering Defined: Topics for discussed_Renewable Energy in India, 5th May 2011 - Step towards achieving Climate Change Goals

Materials Science and Engineering Defined: Who's Who in Renewable Energy in India, 5th May 2011 - A step towards achieving Climate Change Goals

Materials Science and Engineering Defined: Who's Who in Renewable Energy in India, 5th May 2011 - A step towards achieving Climate Change Goals