China Plans To Build 32 New Nuclear Plants

[StillILearn]

With a bit of effort, couldn't we find safe ways to store the energy from these intermittant sources for when the wind picks back up or the sun comes back out?

 

[StillILearn]

Still haunted by Chernobyl

New York Daily News, NY - 4 hours ago
... the New York area, about 20%, some 200,000 people, were affected by exposure to radiation from Chernobyl. "This includes women who were pregnant at the time, ...

Go ahead and Google today's NYT article.

 

[Sitaram]

The best laid plans of mice and men aft glow in the dark.

I remember some gossip about the name Chernobyl, meaning wormwood, and being mentioned prophetically in The Book of Revelation

As usual, Wikipedia is an excellent resource

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl

Name origin

The city is named after the Ukrainian word for mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), which is "chornobyl". The word is a combination of chornyi (чорний, black) and byllia (билля, grass blades or stalks); hence it literally means black grass or black stalks -- though no parts of mugwort or wormwood are black. The plants are pale green, and wormwood has a whitish tinge from a fine fuzz on the bottom of its leaves.

On occasion, Chornobyl has been translated controversially to mean simply "wormwood" (which most commonly refers to Artemisia absinthium), with consequent apocalyptic associations, that spread as far as Poland before Serge Schmemann of the New York Times published "Chernobyl Fallout: Apocalyptic Tale", July 26, 1986. The article quoted an unnamed "prominent Russian writer" as claiming the Ukrainian word for wormwood was chernobyl.

In fact, there are over 160 kinds of Artemisia, and the terminology is not generally accepted. Some sources refer to Artemisia vulgaris as "common wormwood", while other claim that "common wormwood" is Artemisia absinthium.

Wormwood is a different (but related) plant, Artemisia absinthium, Полин (Polyn). "Polyn" has no English equivalent, but corresponds to the botanical genus Artemisia. Botanically, mugwort is "Common Polyn" (Ukr. Полин звичайний); while wormwood is "Bitter Polyn" (Ukr. Полин гіркий).

Still more confusion comes from the fact that the word "wormwood" is used in the English text of the Apocalypse, whose usage as the name of a plant does not necessarily match that of the original Greek.

Chernobyl bears poetic connotations in folklore, for a number of reasons. Its strong smell is evocative of the steppe, as various species of Artemisia are widespread there—though the town of Chornobyl is in the wooded and swampy Polissia region, quite far from the steppe. Chernobyl roots were used in folk medicine for deworming and to heal neurotic conditions, although an overdose could lead to neurological disorders, including memory loss. In Ukrainian folklore, it is used to banish the mischievous water nymphs called rusalky.

The word "Chernobyl" is also sometimes used as slang to describe certain nuclear installations as well any grossly oversized food (i.e. a very large tomato), jokingly implying that radiation affected its growth.

The late Rev. William Sloan Coffin, during a television interview (shown recently in memorial of his passing), quoted Einstein saying: "Mankind has only the power and ability to destroy the planet, but not the right to destroy it." (paraphrased).

As I move my cursor to the Submit Reply button, the word planet catches my eye. The root meaning is "wanderer" because the ancients would see planets such as Mars and Jupiter "wandering" in the heavens in a motion erratic in comparison with the motion of the stars. Ptolemy termed these as "motion of the same" and "motion of the other."
We did not realize until relatively recent times that we live upon one of those "wandering planets." That same Greek word for "wander" was used by the authors of the Philokalia as "planemenos" or one who has wandered from the path of truth in is in deception of false values. The Russians translated that word in Slavonic as "Prelest". The poetic irony is that we see the potential madness for the destruction of our planet as planamenos.

I once wrote something about "All who wander wonder, but not all who wonder wander."

As Abraham Heschel wrote: "We must learn to understand what we see, and not merely to see only that which we understand."

 

[StillILearn]

Another thought-provoking and informative post by our multifaceted Disney character. Thank you, Sitaram.