🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <10273@vice.ICO.TEK.COM>, hall@vice.ICO.TEK.COM
(Hal F Lillywhite) writes:

> In article <1992Aug26.195524.25813@athena.cs.uga.edu>
> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
> 
> >Much of the otherwise educated populace views radioactivity in a
> >superstitious way, with numinous awe, as if it were witchcraft.
> 
> Amen!  In fact "radioactivity" and "radiation" are what I like to
> call "witchwords."  They carry such an emotional load that it is

Isn't this one of the reasons they renamed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
to Magnetic Resonance Imaging for medical use?  The had to get rid of
that "N" word... ;-)  Obviously PET and CAT scans are of no danger,
since they don't have that evil "N" word...  (P is for Positron... :-)
Making those nuclei do spin flips is more dangerous than having two
511 keV photons shoot through your head.

> Of course radiation can be dangerous.  However there is a great
> difference between a nuclear weapon and a smoke detector.  I find it

I always found it amusing to see stores where they sell Coleman
lantern mantles right by the cash register.  Everyone's food
cruising along underneath all the Thorium... ;-)  Good thing
many of those meals are from the "Nuke" section...

> ironic that many people get upset about the amount of radiation in a
> smoke detector but are not at all bothered by the possibility of a
> house fire (which is *much* more dangerous).  In fact many of these
> same people then go and sunbathe thus deliberately exposing
> themselves to radiation.

Or live in brick houses...

-- 
Charles Scripter   *   cescript@phy.mtu.edu
Dept of Physics, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931
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With your one remaining eye, please do NOT look back into the laser