Hence the statistic where 1/3 of your lifetime medical expenses come in the last year of life.

There's always friction between covert and overt operations.

For another elucidating example (and another Hillary situation), look at the CIA vs State Department in Benghazi.

I thought convention in SI units was to drop down a level when at less than 1 of a unit..?

A pretty common approach (at least in Canada) is to use prefixes at intervals of 1000 - mm, m, km and then larger unit to one decimal for large values - 700m as 0.7km, 0.9l instead on 900ml, and so-on.

you'll rarely see cl, dg, or hm used here.

How much of a dose do you actually get from the scans?

The best numbers I can find seem to point to something in the 0.015 μSv to 0.88 μSv range. At cruising altitude, you get 0.04 μSv per minute from cosmic radiation.

I don't think the radiation from these machines should be the biggest concern.

The radiation may not be that much, relatively speaking. But it's all focused on your skin.

Plus, this kind of radiation exposure hasn't been tested on humans for long. I'd feel better about being scanned had these scanners been in use for 20 years without many adverse effects reported. As it stands, the jury's still out. And I'd personally rather wait a little longer in line and get a pat down than take a chance with my health.

It also depends on whether the machine in use (different airports use different machines) are millimeter wave or backscatter x-ray. Millimeter wave machines (the majority of installations), if I am not mistaken, do not emit ionizing radiation, whereas the backscatter machines do. You can tell which type of machines are in use at your airport by the informational posters displayed in the queue, the brand and physical appearance of the machines themselves, or by checking online. My policy has always been to ask for a pat-down when they use backscatter (to avoid the unnecessary radiation), and go through the machine if they use millimeter wave. The dose of radiation may be small (relative to normal amounts of cosmic radiation or black lightning or bananas or ...), but they don't really know if the machines are out-of-spec until, well, they do. I'd like to avoid becoming 'that person' who was severely over-radiated right before they decommissioned a malfunctioning machine.

Do you drive to the airport?

EDIT: Driving to the airport will expose you to far more risk than walking through the machine, however you define that risk.

A significant benefit is derived from driving. No such benefit exists from AIT scanning.

What is you confidence level regarding the maintenance and calibration of these machines?

I have no idea. I do know that driving is far more dangerous how ever you define danger.

Most people hear radiation and automatically think "Chernobyl 2.0" without looking into the details. I love using the banana equivalent dose as a way to help people understand that not all radiation is created equal.

> At cruising altitude, you get 0.04 μSv per minute from cosmic radiation.

All the more reason to minimize it every chance you get, wouldn't you say?

radiation is some sort of valid strawman argument. it's purpose is to get all the stupid sheep concerned who just blindly submit to anything some clown tells them to.

Are you safer with or without the radiation? Without, obviously, so why not ignore it?

"Just a little higher chance of cancer" is not a comforting observation.

It's not germane to this discussion. The previous poster only brought it up to draw parallels between a straight person being for allowing gay marriage and a non-smoker being for legalization.

E85 is usually cheaper because of the subsidies.

I've found the more rural gas stations stock 100% gasoline. I assume it's because the older engines in farm and sporting equipment don't take kindly to E85 (different valve timing needed, it's rough on old seals, etc).

If we're going to keep the analogy going...

The teacher has had students over before, and unlocks his/her home by grabbing the key out of the fake rock sitting on the doorstep. The student uses that key and wrote something obscene with the fridge magnets.

It's not quite breaking and entering, but it's more than trespassing.

i like that version, and the "lasting" consequences are the same. move the letters back to spell "i love teaching", aka change your background back to whatever cat picture was there before.

If she had her own mail server, it's probably fair to assume she could have set it up as her outbound mail server and to use TLS of some sort when connecting to it.

I've heard east coast (US) coal is dirtier than west coast (US) coal, particularly in sulfides. The acid rain fix known as the Clean Air Act of 1990 was heavily lobbied by the east coast coal producers and bears some marks to show for it. Burning so called "Clean Coal" has to do with how much gross weight of sulfur you pull out of the coal, which makes sense for coal heavy in sulfides, but less so for west coast fuel. As it stands, to burn west coast coal in the US requires the addition of sulfides to the coal so it can then be pulled back out.

As for other impurities... there are a lot of radioactive crap in coal that is aerosolized during the combustion process. The most notable of these is uranium, which is carried away with the rest of the fly ash. There's a "shadow" around coal smoke stacks where such fly ash ends up accumulating. If it makes it into the water table or onto arable land that is used to grow crops, BAM, you've irradiated a small chunk of your population.

Depending on the source of the coal, there are various other heavy metals that can end up in your fly ash.