Hanford 177

The Hanford Site, near Richland, WA, is where they refined uranium into plutonium for atomic bombs.  Its 625 square miles contained several manufacturing plants, housing for 45,000 workers, 8 reactors and numerous supporting structures.  It was deactivated in 1989 after 46 years of operation.  What remained were the byproducts, the most deadly radioactive chemicals and sludge ever created, stored in 177 huge underground tanks, many of which have leaked.  It's estimated that the tanks held 56 million gallons of waste, nearly 3 cups of glow-in-the-dark soup for every man, woman and child in the US. 

To my knowledge, no colored photos have been taken inside the tanks, at least none that have been released to the public.  So, we don’t know what those cauldrons of seething deadly brew look like.  They might look something like this.

 

Hanford 177

Acrylic on Canvas 16" x 20"

Mike Delaney  December, 2012

 

Given the season and the colors, another possible name comes to mind:

'Oops, I Dropped Christmas'

       

The Itch

HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS ITCH RUNS RAMPANT!

 

Nearly a Billion Infected!

The good news is that a cure has been discovered.  Without fail, the infected masses have found that joining a social network brings long lasting relief.

I've avoided the infection somehow, could be I'm immune.  I did join a social network though, because I was curious, "What's all the buzz about?"  What the hell, join up and find out.  So I did.  And, I'm glad I did - my curiosity is satisfied and I'm slightly less out of it than I would otherwise be.

Being uninfected means I have no desire to Tweet.  Nor, as I so subtly implied in my last post, am I the least bit driven to Like.  Being Linkedin is great for transporting convicted criminals but is otherwise unappealing.  Okay, enough badmouthing.  For now.  Linkedin is, at least conceptually, a great tool.  It's for professional networking, rather than social, and networking to find employers and customers and so on makes a lot of sense.  I've been out of the workforce for 20+ years and have no intention of getting back in so have no need to professionally network.

Fed up with being email-pestered by friends, I did finally join Linkedin a few months ago.  Now, I'm even more fed up by Linkedin emails announcing that, "Dan Delines is linkedin with Cherie Pitts."  Whoop do doo!  Although I wish Dan and Cherie all the best, I never met 'em, never even heard of  'em, the announcement of their freshly minted linkage a non-event of the first order.  Yesterday, I got another one of those emails.  The last one.  Today I Linked -out!

I remain on Facebook because it's my online Scrabble vehicle and I do love that game.  Unfortunately, the FB version freezes up every few seconds and irritates me no end, been waiting in vain for several weeks for the FB dipsticks to fix it.  Methinks it's time to find another Scrabble purveyor.  Oh yeah, sometimes when it's a really slow day - we're talking snail, turtle and slug slow here and those days are rare indeed - I scan the FB friend comments and become underwhelmed all over again.  I've been known to show my artwork on FB also.

Having now aired my highly jaundiced personal take on social networks, it's only fair to acknowledge that, having provided all that itch relief, social networks may have some merit.

The Epitome of Stupidity

The epitome of stupidity is the 'Like' feature on Facebook: 713 people like this!  Who gives a rat's ass?  The number of Likers might be of interest if we knew how many people didn't Like it.  Do all of the 7 billion people who didn't say 'Like', dis-Like?  I am the self-appointed spokesman for those 7 billion people, and I say "We're sick and tired of being discriminated against!  We demand equal rights!  We demand a 'Don't Like' option." 

No, no, no.  Cancel that.  We don't like 'Like', and by extension, we don't like 'Dislike' either.  The word 'like' has become one of the most hated words in the English language, thanks to its misuse, overuse and just plain abuse in Valleygirl-speak.  Talk about stupid!

Let's deep-six 'Like' altogether and go with something different: yea/nay, hurrah/boo, cool/yuck, love/hate, yes/no, for/against, +/-, smiley face/frown face.

It'll never happen, though.  You've heard the phrase 'follow the money' yes?  With popular websites, the money comes from advertising and there's tons of it.  Build yourself a website that gets a million hits a day and the ad people will flock to you like locusts, clutching bags of $ in both hands.  But - those ad people won't pay you a single penny if your website allows people to express dissatisfaction for their product or service.

So, we have to live with it.  But that doesn't mean we to have to Like it.