Stoplights at a Round-a-bout?

It has been a long while since I've posted anything to my blog, and for this, I am a little sorry. I've been distracted since summer began and can't seem to shake the hold that sun, warmth, and greenery has on my ability to sit inside for too long a period of time, like when you get caught behind the red light at the "rotary" located in downtown Middlebury.

For those of us who understand the concept of a rotary, we know that a rotary is designed to keep traffic moving in a consistent flow. Merging is a brilliant idea and quite effective when used properly, a concept that whomever is responsible for having traffic lights placed there, does not understand. I should have posted a photo so that you can better see how funked up it is but just looking at it is too much for my impatience with the matter.

If you ever happen to be driving on Rte. 7 through Middlebury, do it at the height of traffic so that you can fully appreciate the mess it creates. As for me, I have decided to get myself a faux traffic vest and start directing the southbound traffic to disregard the red light that is responsible for creating a 1/4 mile traffic jam each day at 8:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m., and 5:00 p.m. Drivers may then begin to understand that common sense should rule the road, especially a really badly designed one.

Until the next time I feel inclined to post something here and you opt to read it, Funk out and laugh like you mean it.

Radioactive Fish in the Connecticut River Not Linked to Vermont Yankee? Really?

I've been extremely slack in posting things to my blog lately, mainly because of endless meetings at work coupled with the season we call summer (a fleeting thing in Vermont), and because I've just been plain lazy. Today, however, I feel inspired to write and express my disdain with Vermont Yankee and the Vermont State Department of Health's recent report that fish found in the Connecticut River carrying "trace amounts" of strontium 90 have nothing to do with the radioactive materials being leaked into the waterway by Vernon's toxic teapot.

Excuse me but WHAT THE FUNK? Do you really expect me to believe that? If so, I fart in your general direction.

The Vermont Department of Health announced late last Friday that testing of fish in the Connecticut River has again turned up traces of strontium-90, a radioactive isotope linked to leukemia and other cancers.

In a press release last Friday, Health officials said the concentrations of the isotope are within "background levels" and are not linked to the nuclear power plant, which uses water from the river to run through its condenser. "Concentrations of Sr-90 detected in the inedible portions of these fish are in the range of what would be expected as a result of fallout from nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s, and the Chernobyl release in 1986," the Health Department said in a prepared statement.

Entergy Nuclear has now admitted that the bone-seeking radioisotope Stontium90 has been discovered near underground leaking pipes at its Vermont Yankee atomic reactor on the bank of the Connecticut River. Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates warns that Sr-90, which is highly soluble in water, can concentrate in bones and cause leukemia, and thus is the most hazardous radioisotope yet discovered leaking into the environment at the 38 year old reactor just across the Connecticut River from New Hampshire, and just several miles upstream from Massachusetts. Other leaking elements discovered into the site's groundwater and soil include tritium, cobalt-60, cesium-137, manganese-54 and zinc-65.

I suppose we should be happy that the radioactive materials hasn't spewed 140 million gallons of their shit into the river. Yet.

Stay cheerful, my kind and literate readers. Anyone up for a fishing trip?

Funk, out!