Hi I once read a book that cataloged personal reflections of the great thinkers on their work and critisms of contemporaries.He noted that most of these people had little or no impact on society until the mid 13th century. He attributed this change in attitude to plagues and the spread of the concept of "personal wealth" There was also a long part on why Christianity spread to Europe rather than the Orient. I'm hoping someone will be able to tell me the name and author of this book?? I wish i could remember direct quotes but will paraphrase some of them. Hopefully I'm crediting the correct person. Eli Whitnet " The cotton gin will completely eliminate slavery because it does the work of a 100" Fleming "The discovery of penecillin will complete eliminate invectios disease within 20 years." McCormaick "The widespread use of my reaper will end world starvation" Mao Tse Tung "There is no alternative for the peoples of China except for the grace of international communism" Einstein There is probably no practicle use for "realtivity" except for the creation of an explosion.Of course it would be so large as to be useless" National Geographic thinkers.There is absolutely no way to escape the gravity of the earth" "The marriage of the atomic bomb to the guided missile will make attack impossible" Can't remember the person. "By the 1970 there will be no wars,no famine and no disease" " DDT will save more lives than all medicines combined" There is no way for the telephone to become wide spread or useful because ther is no way to make connections. "The universe is approximately 3 billion light years,randomly spaced with no more than 1 million galaxies" I could go on and on but this topic has made me think about this book.Anybody recognise it?? Would love to read it again. Sorry this is soooo long Gary

It is all so very tragic and heart wrenching - does remind you how powerless we are as humans against some of what mother nature doles out. I too have been very struck by the way the Japanese people have responded to this adversity in comparison to the American victims of Katrina based on the story the media presented on both. Something I saw on TV showed a petite, older couple in their 70's back at their home cleaning the floor on their hands and knees with a rag. My vision of Katrina was of people walking around complaining about their plight and the fact the government hadn't come to their rescue. I also saw images of the sleeping area in a shelter for homeless Japanese that was completely tidy and orderly. Katrina - shelter looked like a garbage dump. Certainly some very significant differences in culture if what the media depicts is accurate. I visited Japan a while back. Before I left I was reading about how little crime they have and how you wouldn't get your purse stolen even if you left it unattended. Well, I didn't mean to but I did leave my purse sitting by a chair in the hotel lobby and walked away. A while later I panicked of course that I didn't have my purse. I knew right where I'd left it - went back - still sitting there untouched. I loved Japan and the people I met there - so sad that the Japanese people are suffering now.

Quote: The first question that comes to mind is why he has a geiger counter to start with? If the truth were told it is probably an old war surplus model that hasn't been calibrated in 50 years and the guy operating it probably doesn't have a clue how to read it. Unquote. There is a group of people, some of whom, have geiger counters. These are "rockhounds" and amateur geologists, or the curious and interested. Modern geiger counters are available - all it takes is money. These folks very likely would not use a WW2 surplus geiger counter for the simple reason that it requires too much power to be practical for the average hobbyist. Geiger counters made in the 1940s used vaccuum tubes - transistors had not been invented yet. Those old vacuum tube amplifiers required considerable amount of power and the gain drifted while in use. From a practical viewpoint, replacement amplifier tubes are non-existant. Modern instruments use solid state amplifiers. The modern geiger tube (sensor), however, is similar to the original. Rockhounds who collect mineral specimens may check their finds with a gieger counter for safety purposes. Its not a good idea to carry a load of radioactive rocks in your pocket, especially near the gonads. On rare occasion, one might pick up a rock containing uranium-oxide and it may have radioactive elements. Radioactivity has been used to measure wear rates in auto engines and cutting tools. Wear rate tests have been made in specially prepared test engines. An engine might be equipped with irradiated cam shafts and/or piston rings. The engine is run under various test conditions and the oil collected. (Wear particles appear in the engine oil.) The oil is measured for emmisions. For cutting tools, an irradiated tool is mounted in a special research lathe and contolled cuts made on standardized test pieces. The chips are collected and measured for radioactivity. Tool wear particles micro-weld to the chips and loose particles fall into the collection bag. These maesurements are tiny indeed and it takes careful procedures to get meaningful results. A major problem is that the background radiation is often as large or larger then the measurand. When we made measurements, our first chore was to take a background measurement to substract from the gross measurement. We were surprised at times by items that were ruining the measurements. On days with high sun spot activity, incomming radiation might be too variable and we could not measure on those days. The background has to be stable for this to work. One day, the physicist wore an old style glow-in-the-dark watch. its dial waa loaded with radium and played havoc with the readings. Other sources of radioactivity strong enough to be bothersome are cathode ray tubes (TV and oscillosope tubes) and neon lamps. Both meon lamps and cathode ray tubes have a small amount of radioactive material placed in their emitters. The usual matrial is thorium. Its there to aid electron emission and subsequent current flow through the space in the the tubes. In fact, a major cause of failure in neon lamps is age. In time, the radioactive material becomes 'used up' and weakened and the neon lamp begins to flicker and misfires. Residents living in SE Wisconsin may find to their dismay that they have 'hot' basements. This problem is assocaited with cities using deep wells (1000 to 1200 ft deep) drilled into a deep sandstone water bearing strata. Water from this strata has small amount of radon gas. The water piped into households may bring in radon. Also, this gas seeps upward through the soil and permeable subsurface layers to collect in places like basements. It is a minute amount and the problem is that governing bodies do not have data on what is a safe level. As a result, the allowable amount is set low. There are people around who have geiger counters and know how to use those. Admitedly, calibration is a problem and most hobbyist do not bother because relative measurements are suffificent for their use. For example, a person who has read his meter for two days and then on the third day sees a reading 2 to 4 times greater, it's a fair bet that something has changed.

Thank you for all the replies. I'm sorry for the late response. Right after I wrote this, something came up and I was super busy. The raised brick bed is 26 foot long and 20" deep. It runs along the front of the house. It's sandwiched between the red brick wall of the house and my lawn, so the plant would fall onto the lawn. I probably overdid it on "full shade." It might get at most a few hours of light morning sun. I'm trying to hide water damage to the front of the bed. The brick is darkened and looks awful, so I'd prefer something evergreen or something that hides it somewhat in the wintertime even it's not blooming and doesn't have leaves. It would need some height. I can hear you screaming already, but I had settled on ivy because it's the only evergreen that would grow quickly in shade that I could think of and I pictured the ivy piling up at the top 9 inches or so and spilling over. Maybe I'll have to resort to making another bed under the raised bed and putting some dwarf evergreen shrubs along with a conical tree or something. I was hoping not to have to create another garden. I'll check out the other forums and the yews. I love Oakleaf Hydrangeas, but it's too narrow. Thanks again for all the responses! Sorry, but the photo I added is very low resolution. I don't know what the greenish-black marks on the brick above the bed is. You don't see that with the naked eye. But hopefully it will give you an idea of what I'm talking about. It's a very long, narrow raised bed that's been damaged.