• Hormesis – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  Hormesis (from Greek hórmēsis “rapid motion, eagerness,” from ancient Greek hormáein “to set in motion, impel, urge on”) is the term for generally-favorable biological responses to low exposures to toxins and other stressors. A pollutant or toxin showing hormesis thus has the opposite effect in small doses as in large doses. A related concept is Mithridatism, which refers to the willful exposure to toxins in an attempt to develop immunity against them.

  In toxicology, hormesis is a dose response phenomenon characterized by a low dose stimulation, high dose inhibition, resulting in either a J-shaped or an inverted U-shaped dose response. Such environmental factors that would seem to produce positive responses have also been termed “eustress”.

  tags: hormesis health

• Radiation Chart « xkcd

  There’s a lot of discussion of radiation from the Fukushima plants, along with comparisons to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Radiation levels are often described as “ times the normal level” or “% over the legal limit,” which can be pretty confusing.

  tags: radiation chart

• Adrian Liston – With a Graph and a Map – A true apology from the Pope would acknowledge that Catholic Priests are 100 times more likely to be a child sex offender

  A new report, the Adriaenssens Commission, has come out on the scale of child rape by Catholic Priests within Belgium. The results are horrific, with reports of children as young as two being abused, three quarters of parents being afraid of the consequences of reporting the Priest to the authorities, sexual abuse in every congregation in Belgium and evidence that even now cultural barriers are preventing many cases from coming to light.

  Of course, you wouldn’t know this from the statements made by the Pope. One of the most offensive and infuriating parts of the Catholic Church child rape saga is the complete inability of the Catholic Church to admit that the Church has causative responsibility for the abuse. Instead they acknowledge that abuse is bad, but in the same breathe blame homosexuality and “a few bad apples”. The Church must know that the first excuse is a blatant scapegoating attack and the second excuse is the entire reason that the child rape saga has continued since time immemorial.

  tags: Priests sexabuse

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