Japan earthquake: UK rescue team 'foiled by red tape' Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12756366 Just typical.
If the scale of the devastation is still not clicking with you, check these images out that the NY Times have posted up: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...te-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html It's terrifying. (I've seen the video on the news of the wave coming in, and engulfing everything - and pics of the aftermath. But these satelite images convey the sheer scale of it all. There for the grace of whatever deity there may be, go I... I still remember boxing day 2004, and the tsunami hitting the resort I was staying at in the Maldives...
tbh, the media fear-mongering regarding the fukushima daiichi facility is starting to wear on me. don't get me wrong, i'm very saddened for the people of japan affected by this tragedy, and the countless who have lost family. no minimization intended. my aunt in yokohama is thankfully safe, if a bit frightened in the aftermath, and she's currently safe from fallout due to the relative concentration of leaked radiation and the distance between her and the affected reactors. the fact is, that except for the immediate vicinity, most people there, particularly as far away as tokyo, will not be adversely affected by fallout for those same reasons: concentration of radiation, distance, and length of exposure. sure, if there were a full-on, out of control meltdown, people further away would eventually be affected, but the exposure and ill-health consequences (including death) would happen over time. as an aquaintance's brother living in nagasaki remarked "nuclear radiation is like farts."
That's great to hear - now hopefully we can stop fussing over these silly reactors and start fussing over what really matters: people.
Brief update in the small bits of the news not entirely dominated by yet more wars. Confirmed death toll rises to 8,133, and predicted total now up to 20,000 killed. Power hopefully soon to be restored to Fukushima, which might enable cooling systems to be restarted.
I love it. I've read some reports about people on the west coast going bonkers over fears of cancerous radiation effects. Sadly, I just wish it was limited to the west coast: On a related note, one of my wife's co-workers carries around a Geiger counter at all times. He reassured everyone at a recent staff meeting that he is closely monitoring radiation levels, and he'll alert them if he sees any increase. He wasn't joking. In light of this, I was delighted to read the following article over on NPR: Radioactive Milk Only A Danger After 58,000 Glasses. Hopefully more people will get the message that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan is more likely to affect car parts and electronics than cause cancer in paranoid Texans.
Yeah, here too. They should publish that XKCD cartoon in the newspaper. It's amazing to me how much mythology has built up around all things nuclear. People think that one atomic bomb will destroy the world and that minuscule amounts of radiation will kill them. It's the intersection of ignorance and projection of people's fears, Sort of the fear equivalent of Godwin's law. Not sure if that makes any sense, I just woke up.
Well a bit of good news (at least for me) we finally got in contact with my relatives in Sendai, and they are all accounted for.
My best friend was there a couple of days before the tsunami, it still makes me cry thinking about how close i was to loosing him. We should all think about the ones who have lost everything and feel lucky if you aren't affected atall.
