March 2011 archive

Bloomberg’s daily status report from Fukushima…

No. 2: Contaminated water in the turbine structure contains 10 million times more radiation than normal cooling water, NHK said.

So how bad is that?

The water in the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 2 reactor’s turbine building was measured at more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said today.

The normal radiation level that we receive over a year is about four millisieverts,” said Stephen Lincoln, a nuclear power and uranium specialist at the University of Adelaide.

In other words, the dose you get at Fukushima in one hour is the same as what you would normally absorb in 250 years!

Two articles tonight point to the exponentially growing catastrophe in Japan.  The first is an NHK report of radiation levels 10 million times greater than normal.  In the second, Michio Kaku discusses the increasing evidence for a possible [probable?-dsyd] breach of containment.  Even if it is still only “possible,” it seems to be becoming more and more “probable.”  This is a tragic catastrophe.  

The only possible positive result would be for the people of the world to now rise up and say “NO” to all things nuclear — at least until such time, perhaps 1K years from now, when humans might have learned how to handle it in a respectful, humble manner.  

UPDATE, 11:30 AM PST, 3/27/11:  I found the correction upon arising this morning.  TMC and Mishima both pointed out that Tepco officials had retracted the 10 million report, calling it a math error.  Instead of 10 million, the specified radioctivity was 100,000 times normal.  See the discussion and link to AP article in the comments below.

The article“Extreme radiation detected at No.2 reactor” is below the fold:

The link vid & print here

Essays Featured Saturday the 26^th of March~

Late Night Karaoke has the spotlight on Pink Floyd, mishima DJs

Six Brilliant Articles! from Six Different Places!! on Six Different Topics!!!

                Six Days a Week!!!    at Six in the Morning!!!!

Alma talks about Librarians in Saturday Open Thoughts

an update on The Dream Antilles from davidseth

Gha!

A reminder to conserve from our newest member ALifeLessFrightening  It all comes out in the wash.

The most recent Popular Culture  from Translator, The Who Sings My Generation

Our regular featured content-

• Six In The Morning by mishima
• On This Day In History by TheMomCat
• Punting the Pundits by TheMomCat

And these articles-

• Popular Culture (Music) 20110325. The Who Sings My Generation by Translator (a weekly feature)
• Blow Out Over the Blowout Preventer by TheMomCat
• Health and Fitness News by TheMomCat (a weekly feature)
• Random Japan by mishima (a weekly feature)
• Evening Edition by TheMomCat (an able substitute for a daily feature)

Special live blogging of the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournament-

• Regional Finals Day 1
• Round of 16 Day 1

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Who exactly are these rebels we’re supporting?

A short quote from a very exhaustive annotated article:

The so-called Libyan opposition itself is a hodge-podge mix of political opportunists, ex-CIA-trained Mujahideen guerillas such as Abdel Hakim al-Hasidi of the so-called Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who openly admits to close ties to al-Qaeda going back to Afghanistan.12 That certainly raises the level of incredibility of Washington’s most bizarre military crusade of recent times.

As well, the opposition includes former senior Gaddafi regime members who saw greener grass on the US, British and French-backed opposition side, and outright cutthroats who, encouraged by Washington, London or Paris smelled the chance to grab control of one of the richest lands on Earth.

Their “opposition,” unlike in Tunisia or elsewhere, was never “non-violent.” It was an armed revolt from the git-go, a war of tribe against tribe, not of surging aspirations for democracy. NATO member countries are being told by Washington to back one band of tyrants to oust another whose agenda does not comply with what the Pentagon calls Full Spectrum Dominance.

You can take all the gold in the world and put it in two Olympic swimming pools.

There is not an economy on the planet that ties its economy to gold. Not one. You haven’t been able to turn a note in to gold in decades. It is a medieval view of the modern world. Steve, do you use a calculator or an abacus?

Olympic swimming pools are 8 lanes wide and 50 yards long.

(h/t John Amato @ Crooks and Liars)

Nothing like Internet interruption to get the priorities re-oriented.  Nothing like the Mac announcing that it’s “looking for networks” and the persistent message from Vonage that things are not well in VOIP land.  Friday brought high winds.  First, phones out.  An otherworldly, beeping, static laden dial tone.  And then, when the phones mysteriously returned all on their own, no Internet.  Red lights on the modem.  Whirling beach ball email symbols.

According to the consoling voice at the so-called “Internet Help Center,” they are very sorry, very sorry indeed, but your bloguero might be disconnected until, wait for it, Monday or Tuesday.  This news raises the specter of no Port Writers’ Alliance digest this week, or writing it on the crusty Blackberry, or scouting out a local Internet hotspot.  It also raises the fear of no Netflix on demand.  It only occurs to your bloguero after he realizes that no Internet might mean he has a legitimate excuse for no Digest this week and that maybe he will finish reading the first book of Eduardo Galeano’s masterful trilogy, that he first wonders how he will be able to do any work this weekend.  Exactly how good an excuse, your bloguero wonders, is no Internet?

These fertile introspections, of course, can’t last.  They can’t get played out.  No.  The phone rings on Saturday morning and the tech guy at the “Internet Help Center” says all is well and that your bloguero should now re-cycle the router.  Of course, he’s right.  It works.  Your bloguero’s growing reveries about being Robinson Crusoe on an island without WiFi  are shattered.

This week the Dream Antilles marked the passing of a lawyer hero, Leonard Weinglass.  He was held in contempt 14 times by Judge Julius Hoffman during the Chicago 8 7 trial, inspiring me and dozens of other lawyers with his fearlessness in defense of his clients.

Haiku about clouds.  These were inspired by a brief passage by Galeano.

Our Nominee For Understatement Of The Week is about the administration’s pathetic understanding of the US role in the centuries long oppression of Latin America.  Your bloguero thinks he should make a reading list for US officials and take them on a tour of Central and South America so that they can understand how dreadful and anti-democratic US policy has been in the region.

Cops of the World is about Simultaneous War III in Libya.  It was written on Wednesday.   The questions remain unanswered.  One might wonder why the US isn’t lobbing million dollar missiles at Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen this morning.  Meanwhile, Phil Ochs’s song of more than  40 years ago fits the situation.

And an obituary for Pinetop Perkins, a helluva blues piano player.

Your bloguero notes that this Digest is a weekly feature of the Port Writers Alliance and is now posted early Saturday morning.   See you next week if the creek don’t rise if there’s still Internet.

Have a wonderful weekend.

This is one of those reports many may find extremely interesting and much more should be reported about. But that’s why we have and need a PBS and an NPR, they Report as to their news shows.

Fear and devastation on the road to Japan’s nuclear disaster zone

Daniel Howden travels through a post-tsunami wasteland to the gates of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power station

Saturday, 26 March 2011

Once this road was thronged with traffic: an expressway, one of the arteries of a nation’s economic life, as familiar and modern a sight as you would find anywhere in Japan. The only barriers on the route to Fukushima Daiichi were the other people heading in the same direction.

Today the journey is different. It is a journey to the heart of a catastrophe. About 10 kilometres beyond the half-deserted city of Iwaki, the coastal road is blocked not by commuters but by landslides; the satellite navigation system that might once have flashed up traffic jams shows clusters of red circles that denote barred roads.