Local Damage
The MacDoctor post drought is over. Some idiot ran into the telephone pole outside of our house and succeeded in knocking us off the internet for a week. I confess, I rather enjoyed reading books and watching movies instead of rambling away on a MacDoctor post, but it was too painful to stay offline. Too painful because, during the internet blackout, I was wandering around our garden trying to get a 3G signal to download my email on my iPhone, when I tripped in a hole – dug by my husky – and fell, injuring my back. It has been too painful to sit for any length of time for the past 5 days. The dog is hiding from me, proving that she is less stupid than she appears.
My back IS getting better – it is only a bit of localised ligament damage.
Not that I have missed that much on the blogging front. It would have been nice to have been able to blog about the hysterics of the media over the nuclear problems at Fukushima power plant in Japan, but I see the hysteria is now limited to a single article in the World section of the Tabloid on Sunday. Apparently radiation levels found in a water leak are 10 million times higher than normal. This would indicate that the fuel rods in reactor number two are damages. Of course, we already knew that that was most likely the case, so nothing new there then. But hey, lets have a headline saying HUGE JUMP IN RADIATION INSIDE JAPAN NUCLEAR PLANT.
Clearly the nuclear issue is not maintaining traction with the public’s ephemeral attention span, so we must resort to wild exaggeration. It is, of course, a huge jump in reactor coolant radiation levels in a small puddle. It is not as if the entire plant is now glowing like a Christmas tree. Yes, it is serious and requires precautions. No, we are not all going to die in a nuclear fallout from an exploding reactor core. At worst, there is going to be serious contamination of the local area, which is going to take a lot of money and a lot of time to clear up. Tokyo is not likely to be in any danger and New Zealand was never in the remotest danger. Besides we can all breathe a sigh of relief because Greenpeace is monitoring radiation levels. I suspect they think this is poetic justice for killing all those whales…
The MacDoctor wishes to point out that it is now just over 2 weeks since at least 10,000 Japanese died in a spectacularly horrible earthquake and tsunami. There is massive damage and chaos over a wide area of Northern Japan. Entire towns have been flattened and swept into the sea. Yet the New Zealand media chose only to report on a damaged nuclear reactor. Clearly radiation is more interesting than dead people or human suffering.
And talking about preoccupation with local damage, the media and the blogs have been buzzing this week with the news of Darren Hughes “indiscretions”. The most interesting aspect of this otherwise underwhelming affair was the spectacle of Phil the Thill apparently committing seppuku on national television. Next time, Phil, please use a knife instead of a spoon…
The MacDoctor is uncertain why everyone is all lathered up over this one. It is not as if the Goffinator has not frequently blown his foot off before. For a man with nearly 30 years of political experience, he certainly knows how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. When Clark handed the reigns over to Goff, it was widely postulated that she was using him as a placeholder while new blood was being trained up to replace the old guard on Labour’s front bench. Goff’s performance to date leaves us with no doubt that Clark remains an astute political operator. Labour will lose the November election and Goff will be rolled. There will be a number of “resignations” and Clark will get her way – renewal of Labour. Its a bit like watching a Pit Bull play with a spaniel…
And talking of big, bad dogs, I see the Tabloid is running a front pager on dog bites (can’t get more local than that!). Seems like they are abandoning their pointless Two Drinks Max campaign and substituting it for a campaign on dog owner registration. Perhaps they can call it Two Bites Max?
It seems to the MacDoctor that there are plenty of laws already that deal to the problem of unruly, uncontrolled dogs and their owners. Dog owners also pay a license fee that is supposed to fund dog control. How would it be if we actually enforced these laws properly, rather than introduce another layer of pointless bureaucracy into the world of dog ownership?
But, of course, introducing pointless bureaucracy is exactly what governments do best, isn’t it?
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Mar 28 11 8:33 am
“I suspect they think this is poetic justice for killing all those whales…”
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/9082931/tsunami-harpoons-japanese-whaling-town/
scrubone´s last [type] ..I wonder how often destructive people actually read the newspaper
Mar 28 11 10:41 am
Nice to have you back.
Jeff W
Mar 28 11 11:24 pm
Thanks. Nice to be back.
Mar 28 11 9:17 pm
Hope you have a good doctor for that back….I’ve never had the luck to find a GP that knows anything about them.
Mar 28 11 11:27 pm
I have the BEST GP for my back. Me.
Mar 29 11 11:09 am
William Osler was on to something then.
http://www.iwise.com/B2kRr
Mar 28 11 10:20 pm
Its still grim over there but no quite so bad. From CNN …
“The water referred to by Edano includes the pooled water in the No. 2 unit’s turbine building that had radiation levels some 100,000 times normal, utility company and government officials said Sunday, correcting an earlier finding of 10 million times normal. The reading applies to radioactive iodine-131, which has a half-life of eight days.
Iodine-134, which loses half its radioactive atoms every 53 minutes, was found at less than a detectable amount, officials said, correcting an earlier figure of 2.9 billion becquerels per cubic centimeter.”
They’ll be a bit more cautious with their numbers in future.
Some of the more reasoned thinking has come from the Chinese, not know for their knee-jerk reactions. Quite early on they said there was no change in their policy although proposed new plants ie those not already approved, would be held over for the time being. China plans to have over 60 nuclear power plants by 2020 up from their current 13. Having the Chinese not building nuclear plants would be the worst outcome and they know it.
Other interesting aspects is that after the earthquake, parts of north eastern Japan dropped by as much as 75cm or 2.5Ft as well as moved 4.5 meters to the right. ( http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2011/03/sendaitohoku-earthquake-round-up/ ) one of the factors that made the tusnami worse was that the sea-walls had all dropped a couple of feet. I doubt it made not a jot of difference to the final outcome but I bet it was never factored in.
I’m still convinced that in my kids lifetime there will be some sort of Nuclear fusion/fission device operating in NZ.
Oh and get well soon. I have much sympathy. Am suffering from bruised ribs after a fall which render me stiff and sore in the mornings , can hardly get out of bed. Apparently I have another three more months of feeling like crap to look forward to !
Mar 28 11 11:34 pm
Get well too, Andy.
I suspect viable commercial fusion is some way away but probably achievable within the next 50 years. But there are dozens of possible new energy sources and extensions to old ones that are in the immediate pipeline, so the delay is not terribly important. One thing I have learned about innovation is that is can surprise you when you are least expecting it.
Mar 29 11 7:52 am
“The MacDoctor is uncertain why everyone is all lathered up over this one.”
Now, how many scandals include a ginga MP, a kid who was a schoolboy three months ago and a Labour Youth MP, much booze, two ginganuts and a naked youth running from the Labour Deputy leader’s house?
Near as I can tell this is a world first.. the associated stories on Phil are just cover so we can enjoy the more interesting and speculative bits.
JC