Corporate Classroom II: Science

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This week’s lesson: Science
Brought to you by The American Nuclear Society

The American Nuclear Society publishes a variety of educational materials for children, including the charming activity book, “Let’s Color and Do Activities with THE ATOMS FAMILY.” Using mazes, word puzzles, and do-it-yourself science experiments, the ANS sets out to teach its K-5 grade readers “what an atom is, how a nuclear plant makes electricity and how radiation is used.”

The scientific facts presented by the ANS check out, according to Jasmina Vujic, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley — but the pictures reflect a clear pro-nuclear energy stance.

The booklet is adorned with the smiling faces of mom, dad, brother, and sister atom (each accessorized with bow tie or hair bow, as gender-appropriate), who “stay close, like a family.” These friendly characters pop up everywhere: on a nuclear power plant, a hospital bed, even shining in the sky like the sun.

Mom Atom Visual and verbal cues link nuclear power to nature throughout. Atoms are compared to grains of sand on the beach, smiling fish are shown swimming in the water being pumped to a power plant, and a page entitled “Radiation also is all around us” shows a bucolic homestead surrounded by fresh fruits and vegetables. A nuclear power plant is even compared to the human body — with the nuclear reactor as its heart.

Radiation too is shown as a friendly force which brings electricity to our homes, treats and diagnoses illnesses, and is essential in making smoke detectors, sodas, and non-stick frypans.

By the time they’re done with this activity book, kids’ll love nuclear power plants so much they’ll want to make their own!

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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