Help Japan poster

This is making the rounds on the interweb. I'm not sure of the source, but it's a great poster for Japan.  I tip my hat to the creator and hope it gets adopted.

Video: Man has 82 tattoos of Julia Roberts

I like Julia Roberts. In fact, I just watched Mystic Pizza, her break-out movie, for the fifth time.  But I am proud to say that I have exactly zero tattoos of her anywhere on my body.  On the other hand, Miljenko Bukovic, a Mexican-born newspaper vendor has spent roughly $4,000 over the past 10 years tattooing his body with 82 images of the silver screen godess. Here's his story:

Remembering the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown

Image by Allie's.Dad via Flickr

This is a good time to reflect on the U.S.'s worst nuclear disaster: Three Mile Island. This accident happened in 1979 and inspired the disaster movie "The China Syndrome". It resulted in a release of radioactive gases after a partial meltdown of its core. The accident began at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, with failures in the non-nuclear secondary system, followed by a stuck-open pilot-operated relief valve in the primary system, which allowed large amounts of nuclear reactor coolant to escape. The mechanical failures were compounded by the failure of plant operators to recognize the situation because inadequate training and other human factors, such as industrial design errors relating to ambiguous control room indicators.

The reactor was finally brought under control, although full details of the accident were not discovered until much later, following extensive investigations by both a presidential commission and the NRC. The Kemeny Commission Report concluded that "there will either be no case of cancer or the number of cases will be so small that it will never be possible to detect them."

Maps: Japan and USA nuclear power plant locations

Japan is fighting to contain the situation at two of its  earthquake damaged nuclear power plants. Here's an interactive map of all of Japan's nuclear reactors, followed by one of the U.S.

Here's a look at nuclear power plants in the USA:

What's really deep down inside the earth

And here's the real thing from the American Institute of Physics.