(no subject)
I've given up on trying to convince people not to panic over the nuclear situation in Japan. At this point I'm half-tempted to just tell everyone they're going to die, and then offer to sell them potassium iodine tablets at exhorbidant mark-ups.
Let's make one thing absolutely clear: the disaster in Japan was massive, the situation at the reactors is very worrisome, fluid, and changing by the minute. People have every right to be concerned.
But... let me make my point by giving an example.
A couple nights ago, I watched some guy on CNN stand in front of a giant clunky touchscreen and finger-paint circles around the wrong city in Japan, the wrong reactor on a Google Maps shot of the plant site, the wrong level of containment in the subsequent reactor diagram, and then flub the micro vs. milli vs. base units conversion on the Sievert scale and overstate the level of reported radiation by a factor of 1,000,000. When later corrected, they blamed the Japanese government for being "unclear" and subtly implied it was due to some kind of nefarious cover-up.
Later, I watched them spend five minutes breathlessly reporting the entire 45M+ population Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area was being evacuated, based on a user report of an iPhone video anonymously posted and referred to them by Twitter. Shockingly -- shockingly! -- it turned out to be a misunderstanding of a misunderstanding, but not before probably sending several million viewers into a panic, and prompting another round of concerned calls from friends and family.
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Here's the thing, guys.
Why do people watch disaster movies? Why do they watch horror movies? Because they're exciting, and on some level, enjoyable because of the distraction they provide from the hum-drum of our daily lives. The action is visceral and immediate. The drama is clear, and intense. The heroes are heroic, the bad guys are bad, and above all, sitting in your chair, you feel that you have some kind of deep understanding of everything that's in play, and can predict how it will turn out.
Real disasters don't play out that way. They're messy, and complicated. Nobody has 100% of the story. Organizations have complex reporting structures and different standards of communication. The situation can look hopeless one minute, and be under control the next. (And then back to hopeless a few hours later.)
The Japanese government and TEPCO have been extremely dilligent in providing regular news conferences explaining precisely what they know at any given time, including (so-far) proven accurate reports of radiation levels, evacuation areas, and efforts to contain the problem.
But nuclear engineering is complicated. What's the difference between graphite-moderated cores and zirconium cladding? How about a boiling water and pressurized water reactor? What's the difference between 600 microSv and 2 milliSv? What's the difference between the radioactive half-lives of nitrogen-16 and cesium-137?
The answer is potentially the difference between life and death for millions of people, and understanding how requires at least a tiny bit of scientific and mathematical literacy, or more importantly, the willingness to pay attention and learn, real quick, once you need to. Which isn't at all sexy. Explaining the Sievert radiation scale to a rapt audience is the quickest way to make them change the channel, usually to someone who'll do all that thinking for them and just tell them how bad it is.
So news organizations have no choice but to report in vague, relative terms. They report "spikes" in radiation, without saying how much. They report radiation levels "X times over normal," without saying what normal is. They report workers are "forced" from the reactor by international exposure standards, without explaining which level of reactor containment, or what level of international exposure they were using.
And above all, they ceaselessly report on the "worst case scenario," speculating wildly and drawing comparisons to completely different types of disasters (like Chernobyl). All under the guise of being "responsible" and "better safe than sorry," but ultimately allowing so much wiggle-room in their descriptions, people are free to back-fill the holes with whatever they can imagine from a lifetime of watching action movies.
At this point, the need to identify heroes in the situation and return it to our comfortably cinematic level of comprehension has me reading news articles that border on Bruce Willis personally leading a spacesuit-clad team of retirees into the reactor, apparently to save the entire planet before -- sweaty, shaking palms weakly pressed to the glass -- they sigh out a final line of apro pos wisdom and expire like Spock in The Wrath of Khan.
And when the resulting game of Massively Multiplayer "Telephone" inevitably results in widespread confusion, they come down like a ton of bricks on the only people probably qualified to get us out of this mess.
----------------------------------------
A real crisis is occuring here. The situation at the plants is unknown. They don't have instrumentation or cameras to the effected areas. All they can do is take regular readings of the radiation outside the plant and dutifully report it many times a day. They are playing it safe, and keeping a large area evacuated while not putting the health of their workers at risk. It still has the potential to get much worse.
But they are doing everything they're supposed to do. Need I remind you, when a disaster of similar magnitude hit New Orleans several years ago, our government said nothing for days and left thousands stranded. Then swooped in for a photo-op, gave a "Heckuva job, Brownie," and went home. The city instantly devolved into mass looting and gunfire.
By comparison, things are being handled pretty damn well.
So please, I understand the human tendency to pay rapt attention to the excitement, and want desperately to help. But I implore you, please don't get caught up in the drama. Cross-check every source. Understand that people are twitchy due to lack of information, (mostly because it all being scrubbed for the sake of production values), and take everything with a grain of salt until you've seen numbers, and seen them corroborated by multiple sources.
If you don't, you're just making a bad situation even worse.
Let's make one thing absolutely clear: the disaster in Japan was massive, the situation at the reactors is very worrisome, fluid, and changing by the minute. People have every right to be concerned.
But... let me make my point by giving an example.
A couple nights ago, I watched some guy on CNN stand in front of a giant clunky touchscreen and finger-paint circles around the wrong city in Japan, the wrong reactor on a Google Maps shot of the plant site, the wrong level of containment in the subsequent reactor diagram, and then flub the micro vs. milli vs. base units conversion on the Sievert scale and overstate the level of reported radiation by a factor of 1,000,000. When later corrected, they blamed the Japanese government for being "unclear" and subtly implied it was due to some kind of nefarious cover-up.
Later, I watched them spend five minutes breathlessly reporting the entire 45M+ population Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area was being evacuated, based on a user report of an iPhone video anonymously posted and referred to them by Twitter. Shockingly -- shockingly! -- it turned out to be a misunderstanding of a misunderstanding, but not before probably sending several million viewers into a panic, and prompting another round of concerned calls from friends and family.
-----------------------------------------
Here's the thing, guys.
Why do people watch disaster movies? Why do they watch horror movies? Because they're exciting, and on some level, enjoyable because of the distraction they provide from the hum-drum of our daily lives. The action is visceral and immediate. The drama is clear, and intense. The heroes are heroic, the bad guys are bad, and above all, sitting in your chair, you feel that you have some kind of deep understanding of everything that's in play, and can predict how it will turn out.
Real disasters don't play out that way. They're messy, and complicated. Nobody has 100% of the story. Organizations have complex reporting structures and different standards of communication. The situation can look hopeless one minute, and be under control the next. (And then back to hopeless a few hours later.)
The Japanese government and TEPCO have been extremely dilligent in providing regular news conferences explaining precisely what they know at any given time, including (so-far) proven accurate reports of radiation levels, evacuation areas, and efforts to contain the problem.
But nuclear engineering is complicated. What's the difference between graphite-moderated cores and zirconium cladding? How about a boiling water and pressurized water reactor? What's the difference between 600 microSv and 2 milliSv? What's the difference between the radioactive half-lives of nitrogen-16 and cesium-137?
The answer is potentially the difference between life and death for millions of people, and understanding how requires at least a tiny bit of scientific and mathematical literacy, or more importantly, the willingness to pay attention and learn, real quick, once you need to. Which isn't at all sexy. Explaining the Sievert radiation scale to a rapt audience is the quickest way to make them change the channel, usually to someone who'll do all that thinking for them and just tell them how bad it is.
So news organizations have no choice but to report in vague, relative terms. They report "spikes" in radiation, without saying how much. They report radiation levels "X times over normal," without saying what normal is. They report workers are "forced" from the reactor by international exposure standards, without explaining which level of reactor containment, or what level of international exposure they were using.
And above all, they ceaselessly report on the "worst case scenario," speculating wildly and drawing comparisons to completely different types of disasters (like Chernobyl). All under the guise of being "responsible" and "better safe than sorry," but ultimately allowing so much wiggle-room in their descriptions, people are free to back-fill the holes with whatever they can imagine from a lifetime of watching action movies.
At this point, the need to identify heroes in the situation and return it to our comfortably cinematic level of comprehension has me reading news articles that border on Bruce Willis personally leading a spacesuit-clad team of retirees into the reactor, apparently to save the entire planet before -- sweaty, shaking palms weakly pressed to the glass -- they sigh out a final line of apro pos wisdom and expire like Spock in The Wrath of Khan.
And when the resulting game of Massively Multiplayer "Telephone" inevitably results in widespread confusion, they come down like a ton of bricks on the only people probably qualified to get us out of this mess.
----------------------------------------
A real crisis is occuring here. The situation at the plants is unknown. They don't have instrumentation or cameras to the effected areas. All they can do is take regular readings of the radiation outside the plant and dutifully report it many times a day. They are playing it safe, and keeping a large area evacuated while not putting the health of their workers at risk. It still has the potential to get much worse.
But they are doing everything they're supposed to do. Need I remind you, when a disaster of similar magnitude hit New Orleans several years ago, our government said nothing for days and left thousands stranded. Then swooped in for a photo-op, gave a "Heckuva job, Brownie," and went home. The city instantly devolved into mass looting and gunfire.
By comparison, things are being handled pretty damn well.
So please, I understand the human tendency to pay rapt attention to the excitement, and want desperately to help. But I implore you, please don't get caught up in the drama. Cross-check every source. Understand that people are twitchy due to lack of information, (mostly because it all being scrubbed for the sake of production values), and take everything with a grain of salt until you've seen numbers, and seen them corroborated by multiple sources.
If you don't, you're just making a bad situation even worse.