Saturday, March 19, 2011

"Radiation is Actually Good For You"

Ann Coulter never actually said this*, but if she had, I'd be nodding my head vigorously alongside her.

Radiation is good for you!

Without radiation, there'd be no flowers, no food, no fun. Inside chloroplasts, electrons get tossed about like rag dolls in a pool of pit bulls, energized by electromagnetic radiation emitted from a nuclear furnace about 8 light-minutes away. Chloroplasts transfer the energy to chemical bonds, making our food.

Each breath we take, every thought we think, flows from the sun's radiation.

The stuff we happen to see, visible light, is just a small slice of the spectrum. Infrared rays, ultraviolet, radio waves, gamma rays, all the same phenomena, just different frequencies (a bit disingenuous, since those differences reflect huge differences in energy, but still....)

We think of small doses of light as harmless, because for most of us, it is. Our bodies continually repair damage to our DNA caused by UV light. Not all of us can do this.

Some of us are condemned to the dark because of a rare genetic disease that prevents them from repairing damage done to them, to all of us, by light.

And some others, like Ann Coulter, choose to live in the dark anyway.




 





The UV protection suit photo is from the HED Foundation here.

1 comment:

Kathryn J said...

Thanks for the laugh! Sad the amount of misinformation and misommunication that is out there.