FROM KEVIN ROSE: Apple’s Role in Japan during the Tohoku Earthquake.

LESSONS FROM JAPAN FOR THE U.S. WEST COAST: Practical advice: Got enough water to last a couple of weeks? Got enough batteries? Warm clothing if you lose electric power and natural gas?

UPDATE: Plus this, from the comments: “Every trillion squandered on global warming, is a trillion not spent on earthquake preparedness.”

NISSAN: 600 U.S.-bound Leafs left port before quake hit Japan. I’m in California, and I’ve seen several electric-car charging stations. None had any cars using them, though. So there’s another reason to buy an EV: No-wait charging!

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON JAPAN: The Fragility Of Complex Societies.

U.S. GOVERNMENT STUNG by latest undercover sting. “The nation was left reeling yesterday by the revelation that the presidential election of 2008 was a hoax. The shocking announcement came when White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Barack Obama has been working in secret with conservative provocateur James O’Keefe since 2007.” It all makes sense now.

JAMES TARANTO ON PUBLIC-EMPLOYEE UNION THUGGERY:

In the letter to Wisconsin businessmen, however, we see why so-called collective bargaining is particularly corrupting to the police. Although the letter explicitly threatens only an economic boycott, when it is written on behalf of the police–of those on whom all citizens depend to protect their safety–it invariably raises the prospect of another kind of boycott. Can a businessman who declines this heavy-handed “request” be confident that the police will do their job if he is the victim of a crime–particularly if the crime itself is in retaliation for his refusal to support “the dedicated public employees who serve our communities”?

Read the whole thing.

A QUESTION FOR WISCONSIN TEACHERS: Do you really want to use rote chanting to train kids to protest against authority? The answer: Yes. After all, if they thought for themselves, they might figure out what’s being done to them and switch sides . . . .

CHARLIE MARTIN: Fear The Media Meltdown, Not The Nuclear One.

More here:

The frustrating part about writing on this stuff is that people don’t seem to have any middle setting between “everything is fine” and “run in circles scream and shout”. So saying “no, it’s not Chernobyl” is interpreted as “it’s nothing.”

So let’s go ahead and make this clear: no, it’s still not Chernobyl. But no, it’s not nothing.

Too nuanced for most of our news media.

IN THE MAIL: Eclipse 4: New Science Fiction and Fantasy SC.

LEADERSHIP: While Japan Burns, Obama Fills Out His Bracket. Also, Libya.

INFLATE THAT HIGHER-ED BUBBLE: “The best economic policy is one that produces more college graduates.”

Another violation of Reynolds’ Law, which reads: “Subsidizing the markers of status doesn’t produce the character traits that result in that status; it undermines them.”

Here’s the original passage:

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

I don’t think Obama grasps this.

SO I TAPED AN INTERVIEW WITH JERRY POURNELLE in the PJTV studios in L.A., and he mentioned that Lucifer’s Hammer in the Kindle edition is doing shockingly well. I’m not surprised, and it certainly seems timely now, if perhaps not quite as timely as Fallen Angels.

SOME LOW-KEY THOUGHTS on disaster preparation.

BYRON YORK: Unions vs. The Little Guy In Wisconsin Recall Fight.

If you’re a Republican, it’s a scenario straight out of “Alice in Wonderland.” Fourteen Wisconsin state senators, all Democrats, flee the state for three weeks, bringing government to a halt in an effort to stop Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill. After three weeks, the fugitive Democrats return in failure. And then, when a rich and highly organized effort to punish lawmakers is launched, it’s directed not at the Democrats who ran away but at the Republicans who stayed home and did their job.

That is precisely what is now happening in Wisconsin. Local and national labor organizations, enraged by the successful Republican effort to limit the collective bargaining powers of public employees unions, are pouring money and manpower into petitions to recall GOP state senators. At the same time, Republican drives to recall runaway Democrats, while rich in volunteer spirit, are working with far less money and organized support.

But if you want to help, I’ll bet they’ll accept.

MARK MCKINNON: Do We Still Need Unions? No. “The primary purpose of public unions today, as ugly as it sounds, is to work against the financial interests of taxpayers: the more public employees are paid in wages and uncapped benefits, the less taxpayers keep of the money they earn. It’s time to call an end to the privileged class. And the White House makes a mistake if it thinks it can grow a manufactured and uncivil unrest into a popular movement.” It’s a big leap from We’ve got to protect our phoney-baloney jobs to you’ve got to protect our phoney-baloney jobs.

THE HILL: Japan reactor crisis: Obama, Republicans still back nukes. “The Obama administration and senior Republicans offered a fresh show of support for nuclear power Monday even as the crisis involving Japanese reactors deepened.” Something to be thankful for.

JAPAN: Workers Strain to Retake Control After Blast and Fire at Japan Plant. “Though the situation remained perilous, there were signs that workers had, at least for the moment, contained some of the danger. The higher radiation levels of earlier in the day — possibly from a fire in the No. 4 reactor — stabilized and then declined toward evening, according to the Japanese authorities.”

UPDATE: A more negative assessment from a reader in Japan:

Lufthansa and several other airlines have stopped flying into Tokyo. The Austrian Embassy has temporarily relocated to Osaka. Reactors five and six, shut down a while back are heating up again.

Edano has the look on TV of a man trying to control panic and the truth. We have arrived at a point where only sources on the ground are reliable. It may be that the radiation levels we find in Tokyo tomorrow confirm less risk. At present, however, there is a 30 kilometer no-fly zone above Fukushima and that can only mean radiation at altitude above the reactors. We simply do not know what is taking place.

We just had another plus six quake not far from Kanto about twenty minutes ago. Trains will have stopped. We’re already facing disruptions and there is no guarantee that the next earthquake will be milder than the one we experienced last Friday.

You know from my other posts that I’m pro-nuclear, pro-Japan, and generally optimistic. The WSJ piece could have been written by the press office of the prime minister. The situation appears to have stabilized the same way that we haven’t had a major tremor since the quake twenty minutes ago. Everybody here is preparing for a long period of unpleasantness. Those who aren’t sound delusional.

Thanks for the links and reminders to donate. Much appreciated. We’re not leaving the house except as necessary.

Emphasis on “we simply don’t know.” And I think he’s referring to the NYT piece linked before — a front-pager in today’s WSJ is considerably more negative.

AT AMAZON, a sale on two-way radios. Good for disaster-prep, though I doubt you’ll see the full 28-mile range they claim unless you live in Nebraska.

SO HOW’S THAT DAILY BEAST / NEWSWEEK MERGER WORKING OUT? “OK, now they’ve basically killed off traffic at Newsweek.com, while visits to Dailybeast.com remain flat. The brilliance of this strategy is still escaping me.”

UPDATE: Reader Tom Grant writes: “Their entire focus is to act as campaign supporters for Obama’s 2012 re-election bid, so neither traffic, advertising revenue, nor profitability, actually matter.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: When Rail Becomes Ridiculous. “I often find it hard to convince environmentalists that I really am a rail buff who likes dense, walkable development, and the planet. If that’s so, they ask, why do I spend so much time harping on the problems with high speed rail? My answer is that I wouldn’t harp on the problems if the advocates of high speed rail advocates wouldn’t make such glaring mistakes. Like, say, the Tampa-to-Orlando high speed rail project. No matter how much you love trains, and the planet, I think you ought to be skeptical about projects like this. A New York Times article makes it clear just how dimwitted the concept was. . . . So basically, the feds wanted to spend $2.6 billion, plus any cost overruns or operating costs, to put in a train for which there was no evident demand. Why? Because they didn’t have any better options, and they wanted to build a train. The California High Speed Rail project, following similarly sound reasoning, is going to start out in California’s not-very-populous Central Valley, because . . . it’s easier to get the right of way. Never mind that there aren’t any, like, passengers.”

PROFESSOR JACOBSON: Does Being A Conservative Now Require That We Join In Sexualized Mocking of Conservative Women?

T-SHIRT OF THE DAY: “If I had a dollar for every time that capitalism was blamed for problems caused by government, I’d be a fat filmmaker with a baseball cap.”

CHANGE: ‘Two centuries ago, government was cheap and everything else was expensive… …today, most everything not closely associated with the state is cheap and getting cheaper by the day. Those goods and services that the state either provides, heavily regulates or subsidizes are expensive and getting more so all the time. Why?”

HOW TO get faculty to retire.

FIRST PIMCO, now OPEC fleeing from dollar. “And does anybody think that the No. 3 U.S. government debt buyer, Japan, is going to be in the market for a while?”