Reading List and Funny LtoE
My relative silence here is attributable in large part to starting several new reading/learning projects including: reviewing my old copies of Access to Energy (now available online), deciding to go through the entire archive of Going Private in an effort to gain some grasp of private equity and its impact on the markets (more on that in a future post), listening to Ayn Rand's lectures thanks to ARI making so many of them available for free (navigation a bit confusing, turns out they're available only on the registered user page), and reading the updates to Dr. Peikoff's Q&A section on his website (HT Diana).
So I'm not sure when I'll resume blogging more regularly, but in the meantime I thought I'd share a letter to the editor reproduced in the July 1987 issue of AtE including Dr. Beckmann's intro:
And more vintage Brucer, in the Tuscon Arizona Daily Star, 6/5, in reply to scare-mongering about radon. Note the brevity of the letter (which gets it both published and read); to adapt it to your own needs, note that 1 newspaper sheet (2 pages, New York Times size) has an activity of about 0.04 pCi. This is a general unit of activity, not necessarily due to radon."To the Editor:
The average issue of the Arizona Daily Star contains, by measurement, approximately 1 picocurie of radium and associated elements.
With your circulation, you are the most widespread unnatural and unnecessary source of radon in Tuscon.
Marshall Brucer, M.D."
posted by Amit Ghate at 7:32 AM
1 Comments:
I love Petr Beckmann and his Access to Energy. I read it for years and was heartbroken when he died.
In particular, I loved the insights I learned from him regarding radiation, such as hormesis. Hormesis is the counter-intuitive phenomenon whereby poisons and radiation, while harmful in large quantities, actually benefit life in very small doses.
For all those who denied the truth of hormesis (which has been biologically established), he points out that all humans are very slightly radioactive due to the presence of radioactive isotopes in our own blood.
Because humans exhibit auto-radioactivity, he offered the following warning to the hormesis deniers. Sleeping with one woman is okay but, because all women (and men) are radioactive, sleeping with two women at the same time can be very, very dangerous.
Of course, I accept the validity of hormesis, so a little extra dose of intimate radiation from an extra special friend presents no problems whatsoever. In fact, because of hormesis, I suspect that sleeping with two women at the same time is quite good for me.
Thank you, Dr. Beckmann! :-)
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