MUCH MORE ON JAPAN HERE, and just keep scrolling for more.
UPDATE: Still more.
Archive for 2011
March 12, 2011
PERSISTENCE, AND THE BELL YOU CAN’T UN-RING: Phil Bowermaster on that porn-star schoolteacher.
EXPERT: Japan Quake Should Be Wakeup Call Along New Madrid Fault.
More on earthquake preparedness here and here. Also here. And an older post on Japan.
PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: “Can’t anyone here play this game?”
I think this is what they call “smart diplomacy” or something.
EXPLOSION ROCKS EARTHQUAKE-DAMAGED NUCLEAR PLANT in Japan. Unclear whether containment has failed.
Meanwhile the earthquake death toll is now believed to be greater than 1,700.
UPDATE: Much more at BlackFive.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Chris Matthews on the tsunami: “Was this sort of a good opportunity for the president to remind everybody that he grew up in the United States and Hawaii?” Isn’t it time for him to go?
MORE: A reader sends this from Tokyo:
Hi Glenn,
The global-warming axe-grinders and anti-nuclear luddites are coming out of the woodwork to use the nuclear crisis in Japan as an excuse to climb on their hobby-horses.
I was in the center of Tokyo during the earthquake and was one of those “roaming the streets” last night. Translate that as walked home cause the trains stopped. The earthquake was 8000 times more powerful than the New Zealand quake. Skyscrapers in Tokyo were swaying, the streets were vibrating and shaking and everyone was scared absolutely shitless. I’ve been here for twenty years and these things don’t scare me. So I don’t mind saying I was terrified and figured this was it.
And you know what? Not one building in Tokyo collapsed. Not even one. Part of roof caved in during a graduation ceremony. The devastation from the tsunami and from the tremors in Miyagi and Sendai is real. But Japan isn’t quaking in its boots and, yes, we are all alarmed at the nuclear crisis unfolding in Fukushima.
Here’s what’s not happening, however, from the Wapo right now:
“The explosion at the reactor is certain to rattle confidence in nuclear power in Japan, victim of the only nuclear weapons explosions and where people have long been sensitized to the dangers of radioactive releases. In the United States, it will deal a severe blow to advocates of a nuclear power renaissance.”
The US has been uncharacteristically shy about embracing technology the rest of the world relies on. I haven’t heard or read one adult questioning the wisdom of relying on nuclear energy in Japan. In fact, it takes something like a combination of a massive earthquake and a tsunami together to attack the integrity of the system. The systems largely worked.
Any other city in the world would have seen buildings flattened and the deaths of tens of thousands. To the best of my knowledge not one person in Tokyo died, although I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that some poor soul fell off a ladder.
Sound engineering, preparation, precaution, and technology saved the day. I could walk home last night secure in the knowledge that my kids, wife, and mother-in-law were completely safe despite experiencing the worst earthquake in Japanese history and the fifth-worst in the world ever.
So let’s not trash nuclear energy and Japanese engineering, please. The links to charities are much appreciated. The best thing the US can do is start learning from Japan about how to build buildings that can withstand these kinds of events and nuclear power systems that can survive earthquakes and the odd tsunami. The system worked. Trains are running again.
Please keep my name out of this should you choose to use this.
As I’ve said before, the Japanese do disaster-prep better than we do.
UPDATE: Reader Jack Lillywhite emails: “That commenter who was in Tokyo stated this EQ was 8,000 times greater than Christchurch is way off the mark. If Christchurch was 6.8 and Japan was 8.9 then it was only 1,100 times greater on the Richter scale. You may want to note the correction since this has gone viral on the internet.” Well, I’m about to get on a plane and can’t double-check, but “only” 1,100 times is still a lot.
ANOTHER UPDATE: And now several readers say that Lillywhite is wrong, and it is 8000 times. Either way, it’s big.
WHERE’S NOW WHEN YOU NEED THEM? Texas: New Black Panther Leader Justifies Gang Rape of 11-Year-Old Hispanic Girl.
UPDATE: A reader emails:
I’m a Houstonian, and familiar with Quannell X. He is many things, not many of which I would admire. My sense of fairness and modesty requires me to defend him against the charges in your headline.
I had the opportunity to hear X on the radio yesterday. One of our conservative radio hosts, Michael Berry, had the man on to explain himself. The TRUE story is, as usual, more complex than the headline. Here is what I heard:
X believes that of the men arrested for the crime, a few are actually innocent, and weren’t even in the town on the days in question. X believes that there are others, not black men, who are also guilty of having victimized this girl over a longer period of time. He bases that accusation on things he has read from and about the girl.
He wants to make sure that ALL guilty parties are found, and brought to justice. He wants to make sure that any innocent men are released, and he wants to hold the community at large and the girl’s family a bit more up to public shame and questioning for not protecting this child. He wants to make law enforcement look BEYOND “gang of black boys raped Mexican girl” and see that a young girl was a victim of MANY men of different races, over a longer period of time.
He is IN NO WAY blaming the girl, or excusing the rapes, he wants the rapists prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Kinda odd for me to defend X, but truth is truth.
Well, I watched the video and read the story, but it wouldn’t be the first time a news account failed to capture the entire truth.
JAMES OBERG: Next Week’s Digital Soyuz Return Could Be Rocky.
ENTITLEMENT REFORM: Obama criticizes lawmakers for not doing what he didn’t do either.
OPEN CARRY on Idaho college campuses.
“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Crowley deleted tweet comparing Middle East ‘tsunami’ to Japan crisis.
THE JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE/TSUNAMI REPORTS just keep sounding worse.
Related: Some charities to consider.
AT AMAZON, markdowns on power tools.
VOTING “PRESENT” ON the Japanese earthquake? I thought we were sending an aircraft carrier group.
UPDATE: Navy Ships Move to Assist Stricken Japan: At Least 11 Ships Moving to Aid of Japanese Quake Victims.
DISASTER PREP: Reader Mary Forman writes in praise of the Kindle: “We have been unable to reach our daughter in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, since the earthquake struck almost 20 hours ago. We just received an email from her (she’s fine) which she sent from a friend’s 3G Kindle! Put that on your disaster list!” Noted. As a test, I blogged from my Kindle once. It worked, but it wasn’t easy with that tiny keyboard. . . .
UPDATE: Reader Matt Potter emails: “Just a follow up to the Kindle email comms. My friend’s daughter was a missionary in Haiti at the time of the earthquake. They primarily used text messages to arrange evacuation. The layering of communications in the modern world now offer these kind of capabilities.” Yes, text-messaging often works when regular calls won’t get through.
POLITICO: A Laura Richardson Ethics Probe: “A letter of resignation sent by a former staffer to Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Cali.) appears to indicate that ethics investigators are probing the Los Angeles-area Congresswoman — a fact Richardson has denied to local reporters. . . . This is not the first time that Rep. Richardson has faced ethics questions in her short tenure in Congress. The ethics committee investigated her in 2009 on charges revolving around her foreclosed Sacramento home. Richardson was later cleared of any wrongdoing.”
Some background on that foreclosure scandal here. The country’s in the very best of hands.
I’M NOT SO SURE IT WAS ALL THAT UNWITTING: NPR board member says “we unwittingly cultivated a core audience that is predominately white, liberal, highly educated, elite.”
DARPA TRAINS TROOPS to be popular.
FIVE RETIREMENT MYTHS.
Plus, How to afford health insurance if you retire early. Judging by the state of my portfolio, that won’t be a problem. . . .
THE LAND THAT feminism forgot.
SO WHERE’S MY PHASER? A laser-powered tractor beam.
MOLECULAR MOTOR performs actual work.
IN THE SENATE, a call for antitrust oversight hearings regarding Google.
WIN IOWAHAWK AS YOUR HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATION SPEAKER!