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Monday, March 14, 2011

Remember What I Said About Japan Still Not Having It Quite As Bad As Port Royal?

Yeah... never mind.

Seriously. Never. Freaking. Mind. Still technically true, per capita, but never mind.

Whoever's up there-- God, Shinto gods, Godzilla-- you can stop now. You proved your point, whatever it is.

(In related news, if we could cut out the talk about the effect on Japan's stock market until we're a bit further into cleanup, that'd be great. The Nikkei is probably the least of concerns for a whole hell of a lot of Japan right now. Businesses that can supply food and water? That's much more useful.)

If you have any spare money laying around, the American Red Cross could use it. This donation link will cover readers in the United States and Canada; other nations, there's surely a charity near you.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you planning to cover the reactor situation at all? Despite the horribleness of the quake/tsunami no one around me can stop talking about the reactors.

Pinyan said...

Indeed. Maddow and CNN are obviously covering the potential nuclear catastrophe, but an additional perspective that isn't constrained by commercial breaks and the top of the hour would be nice. For instance, is my use of the word "catastrophe" justified, or hyperbole? I honestly don't know anymore.

Aaron Allermann said...

I'm not really the best on nuclear energy, to be honest. I've always been kinda clouded by the Chernobyl/Three Mile Island stuff and no amount of 'but look at all these safety measures and updated designs' has been able to shake me out of it.

However, what I've seen at Fukushima Daichi, strange as it is, actually kind of reassures me to a degree on the concept. I mean, you've got an 8.9 earthquake, a ginormous tsunami, fires, explosions, Japan basically transformed into a Jerry Bruckheimer movie... and this is ALL that's happened. If you told me, before anything had happened, that a nuclear plant was going to get pounded with what it has, I'd probably think that you'd have radioactive chunks of stuff coming down halfway to Hong Kong. But that hasn't happened. They've still got a chance at avoiding meltdown.

And apparently, from what I'm being told, this is itself an obsolete plant.

If a plant like that can take that kind of beating and not go kablooey, really, what is it going to take?