What the Best Science Shows

So. Still nervous about nuclear power, given the disaster that occurred at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in early 2011 when it was first damaged by an earthquake and then a tsunami?

You shouldn’t be.

Nor should you believe the majority of what’s been reported on the accident, its severity, and government “worst-case scenarios” that had 30 million people in metropolitan Tokyo evacuating due to an impending plume of radiation.

So says Paul Blustein and a bevy of nuclear experts he interviews at Slate.com, in an article that should be read by anyone in favor of nuclear energy and by those who oppose it. Especially those who fear nuclear energy but rail on those who fear climate change.

Here’s the deal, summed up: politics and misinterpretations by news agencies across the world made the disaster at Fukushima seem much more dangerous than it ever was.

Says Blustein:

[T]he public deserves to know what the best available science shows. Whatever conclusions people draw about the implications of the accident, the following should be borne in mind: The claim that an evacuation of Tokyo could have been necessary is based on flimsy, easily rebuttable evidence. Furthermore, the falsity of that claim is indicative of the distortions in much of the Fukushima news coverage. That coverage has given rise to baseless fears about Fukushima that have heavily influenced public opinion. It is time to dispel those fears.

Even more illuminating is what Gregory Jaczko, chariman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in the days after the disaster, per Blustein:

There’s what’s worst-case, and then there’s what’s possible. We should produce a worst case that’s actually possible. I mean, a worst case would be that you eject the core and somebody puts it in a bag and carries it across the ocean and pus that in  . . . California. So I think we should produce a source term that is truly what I would call a worst case but a possible scenario.

Politicians looked at some worst-case, but implausible, scenarios, spun up their own, and fed it to a media primed and ready to shout about the nuclear boogeyman. At the same time decrying those who do the same with climate change – ignoring the science, trumpeting exactly what the echo-chamber listeners want to hear.

We deal with worst-case scenarios where I work all the time. There was a time when an airplane crashing into one of our waste retrieval tents seemed implausible. Not now. We drill for that. We drill for fires and waste spills and earthquakes and other events – but all are possible. We don’t deal in the improbable. And neither should our trusted nuclear experts nor politicians nor the media.

ANOTHER Gorilla!

This may not be the smartest video to use to illustrate this story, as, on the surface, it could be misinterpreted that I’m a racist scumbag. I hope my writing proves otherwise.

An interesting bit of news today coming out of Slate.com (that aggregator in disguise), National Public Radio, and a few local Cleveland, Ohio, news outlets: The much-celebrated Charles Ramsey, hailed in the news and on the Internet as the hero who freed three women held captive by a neighbor for nearly a decade isn’t the only hero in the picture.

In fact, he wasn’t even the first on the scene.

His wasn’t the home from where Amanda Berry made her now-famous 911 call.

But no one here is shouting “First!” least of all Angel Cordero, who was first on the scene and working on the door when Amanda Berry first started screaming; neither is Wentel Tejeda, from whose home Berry made the call. Both say they just did what had to be done (as did Ramsey, of course) to rescue the three women and the small girl held captive in their neighborhood for so long.

So why is Charles Ramsey getting all the notoriety? And why are we all being called racist for “enjoying” his “hilarious” video interviews? (Now, some of the memeification of Ramsey is clearly racist. But that’s not what I’m talking about.)

It’s because the media is racist(!)

That is, of course, click bait. Because the media really isn’t racist. Not really. Not really, really racist. They just happened to focus on the rescuer who spoke English, so maybe it’s more fair to say it’s because the media is monolingual.

Codero and Tejeda are Hispanic. Both offered interviews to local Cleveland news outlets (and others now that the Buzz! and the Wham! of the rescue and Rasmification of it all is fading) in Spanish. Both Codero and Tejeda were less colorful in their language, even if they spoke in one the reporters didn’t quite understand.

So it’s not because the media is racist. They’re just monolingual, and, let’s face it – I was once a media as well so I know very well what I’m talking about here – they’re also just lazy.

Ramsey is a hero. Absolutely no question. He helped break those ladies out of their hell. And he’s colorful – not in skin, but in language. Get any red-blooded reporter in a room with the likes of Charles Ramsey and more timid, less English-able folks like Codero and Tejeda, and the media is naturally going to gravitate toward Ramsey because he’s there with the Boffo that every story needs, even a story where four people set free from captivity doesn’t carry enough Boffo of its own.

So is it a wonder that the video of Ramsey is the one making the Internet rounds – it’s the one the media shoved into our faces. It’s the colorful one. It’s the one that makes a spectacular news event entertaining and, well, entertaining, because once again the rescue of these ladies isn’t enough.

Aldous Huxley knows what I’m talking about.

Bill Hall, who used to write opinion for the Lewiston Morning Tribune, once penned a column in which he kind of laughed at the media tendency to focus on the gorilla in the room – literally. He attended an environmental rally at which someone wore a gorilla costume. So the costumed person is the one who was photographed and put into the newspapers regionally. Because he was more colorful than your typical, run-of-the-mill tree-hugger, which, considering this is North Idaho, is saying something.

The media will focus on the color every time.

Recently, some friends of ours in Sugar City got involved in a fundraiser for a sick kid. One wing of the fundraiser put together a benefit auction and dinner for the kid. The other wing put together a motorcycle rally – because the kid really likes motorcycles – and made him the grand marshal. Guess which wing of the event got the most coverage on the news? And guess which event leader got bent out of shape because her event didn’t get equal coverage?

Once again, it’s the Gorilla Question.

So yeah. There were more gorillas in the room, so to speak, in Ohio. The media simply chose, as they raced to be first and to meet those deadlines, to present to us the one with pretty white girls running into his arms and the McDonalds bag in his lap.

Don't Look Away

It made me wince.

 
It’s clear what we’re seeing here, or at least in part. A shattered leg. One leg; where the other leg is, that’s not certain. Certain, however, that this man – a victim of the bombings at the Boston Marathon on April 15 – has lost the lower extremities of both legs. 

There is blood. There is bone. There is hanging cloth, hanging flesh, hanging skin, tenacious tendons. And, in the hand of the man in the cowboy hat, a pinched artery or vein. 

I will not show this photo to my children. Their tender hearts are still trying to process that bad people did something horrific in Boston on Monday. 

But we as a people need to see such photos. We do not need to be protected from them. Because in them we can see in them the resilience and the ugliness that is the world we live in. 

German residents near concentration camps were marched through them after they were liberated, so they would know firsthand what had happened there. 

This photo will become iconic of the Boston Marathon bombings, if we, as a nation, are allowed to see it. It was shown on the news the first day, but has since appeared cropped, leaving the worst of it out. If we see enough of it, if we see enough of images such as this, perhaps we can figure out how to end things like this, perhaps we can think that our own drones are doing things like this in other countries in the name of fighting terror. 

There are other iconic photos, of course. The Falling Man, from the September 11 terrorist attacks.

There is the photo of a fireman carrying one-year-old Baylee Almon from the wreckage of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

 

We need to see these photos so when we say never again, we don’t forget what we never want to see.

We ARE Kings of the Forest

Over at TIME.com, James Poniewozik has written a wonderful essay on the changing ways we consume media, thanks to the prevalence of cable TV networks, the internet, DVRs, and other such technology. Providing TIME doesn’t suddenly yank Poniewozik’s essay from the interwebs and make us travel back in time to read it, it’s worth your time.

Here’s the best of Poniewozik’s essay:

The surest sign that a medium is changing is that people start to romanticize the very features of it that used to be condemned. Back when there were only three TV networks with massive audiences, for instance, they were bemoaned for homogenizing the culture and playing to the lowest common denominator; now they’re recalled fondly as a “shared cultural experience” that we no longer have in the digital-cable era.

Likewise, the episodic structure of TV exists because of commercial considerations, not storytelling ones. Episodes end on cliffhangers to bring you back the next week. Subplots are resolved in an hour to give you a sense of completion as you wait for the next installment. “Acts” end on dramatic notes to keep you from channel-flipping through the commercials.

TV, in other words, takes its form from the conditions of its creation—which makes it no different from any other art form, such as the novel. Narratives changed when they went from lyrics, meant to be remembered and recited orally, to devices printed mechanically. Their subjects changed as more people became literate and had access to print. All of that matters–but it doesn’t mean that I’m spoiling The Iliad by reading it rather than having it recited to me by an old Greek man, or that if I’m not going to read Dickens once a week in the newspaper as he meant me to, I may as well not read him at all.

I see that romanticism a lot. I’ve participated in some of it. But there is a lot of truth in what he says. We have the right to consume content as we see fit, as it fits into our schedules and how it fits into our budgets – far more than those who manufacture our media could ever imagine we would, sometimes to their chagrin.

Used to be for our family watching The Wizard of Oz on TV was a big event because, well, it was on TV, man. We didn’t have to go to the video store to rent it, or sit around waiting until VHS tapes and VCRs were invented and available to rent to the unwashed masses such as ourselves. If, for example, the scouts were fooling about in the snow making snow caves to camp out in when Oz was on TV, we simply missed it on TV that year.

No more. Now I can watch it any time I want, because I have a DVD copy at home.

We’ve broken free of predetermined schedules. We’ve broken free of television – we haven’t had paid TV services in the house since we were married in 1997 – and we didn’t have it in the house I grew up in either. Four channels. All romanticized now. Ebooks mean we don’t necessarily have to go to the book store or the library to get books to read (though I’m cheap and still get most of my books, in physical form, from thrift stores). We don’t have to subscribe (generally) to magazines or newspapers any more because we have the internet. I don’t even have to have an unsightly antenna on my house to get our local TV stations, because their websites, well, they put everything they produce on them now.

I can still watch the news. Just when I want to. How I want to. And I can skip the stupid sports reports. That’s liberation right there.

As is this:

Accident Inspires Incorrect Headline, Incorrect Juxtaposition

An explosion that killed one worker and injured three or four others at a French nuclear waste treatment site is inspiring headline writers all over the mass media to write incorrect headlines that blow the accident out of proportion.

The stories do generally a better job of explaining what occurred at the Centraco site Monday, but the fuzzy use of the pejorative “nuke plant” in the headlines is misleading readers and likely fueling fears of another Fukushima-style disaster, rather than what has actually happened.

The Associated Press headline (shown here at TIME.com, but Google searches show the “nuke plant” shorthand is being used legion elsewhere, so my assumption is the headline comes from the AP) screams “1 Dead, 4 Hurt in Blast at French Nuke Plant.” Where a photo accompanies the story, more often than not it’s of your typical nuclear power plant’s cooling towers.

I understand what’s going on here – it’s all due to shorthand. “Nuke plant” is shorter than “waste facility” or even “waste plant,” and conjures up a more concrete image – who cares if there’s an explosion at a French landfill, for instance. Throwing in the cooling tower photo makes the nuclear connection even more clear. Unfortunately, this kind of shorthand, as easy as it is in conjuring up pictures in the minds of readers, is inaccurate. Only by reading the story do readers understand – and then, only in a klunky fashion – what has occurred. And in this age of Twitter and instant praise/condemnation based on as few words (and facts) as possible, saying an explosion and death occurred at a “nuke plant” is going to get more attention and more negative reactions toward nuclear power, even though the accident did not, as a point of fact, occur at a nuclear power plant. (That it occurred in the mere vicinity of a nuclear power plant (experimental ones at that) is even more exciting to the fearmongers.)

Reuters – which in general does a lot better at technical and science reporting than the AP – does a better job with its headline, “Blast at French nuclear site kills one, no leaks” shown here.

CNN.com, too, does a fair job at reporting the facts without exaggeration.

It’s fair to include nuclear in both headlines, of course. But the image of a “plant” versus a “site” in many minds conjures up power plants, which in turn conjures up images of Fukushima and Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and C. Montgomery Burns buying another $1,000 ivory-handled backscratcher.

Why is this such a big deal to me? Well, I work at an American site that is processing nuclear waste. If an explosion occurred here and the news were saying it was at a “nuke plant” there’s be a lot of howling at the press in my work neighborhood. It appears the explosion occurred in an oven being used to melt metallic low-level waste, which is less dangerous than the stuff being processed where I work. (Per World Nuclear News and the American Nuclear Society, the furnace that exploded was being used to melt scrap metal, pumps, tools, etc., lightly contaminated with short-lived and low-level radioactivity) So again, the headline – and the images being used with this story in some places -- do not fit with reality.

Shutpocalypse!

So, the big question on the lips of the media this week is: If the government shuts down, will we really notice?

No, really the question on the media's lips is: GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN! Flee to your fallout bunker and whatever you do, don't visit Yellowstone National Park because maintenance of the hot pools and geysers was WAAAAAYYY down before everything shut down so the whole damn place could blow at any minute! And it's the Republican's fault! Of course, so is my psoriasis!

I think if they could they'd use the opening sequence from Wall-E to illustrate what the landscape will look like if the government shuts down:

We got a rather more calm memo from the higher-ups in my company yesterday concerning the shutdown. Their message: Folks, we've got enough money in the coffers to keep things going for about a month, so come Monday if the government is shut down you'd better be at work unless you want to be put on the layoff list.

The bit about the layoffs isn't true, of course.

So yeah. If the government shuts down, it's highly likely we won't notice a thing. We've already got our federal tax refund. We're not in need of passports. And anyone who goes to Yellowstone National Park in early April is going to have a lot more trouble dealing with snow, waking grizzly bears and other more natural calamities than the total and complete absence of federal workers.

The media -- and some of the more wide-eyed conservative locals -- make it sound like it's the Shutpocalypse if the government shuts down. The media, of course, because they're on the side of the Democrats in this argument (and if you say they're not, well then, I have a recording of about five minutes' worth of long, cynical laughter for you to listen to). At least they may more sense than the wide-eyed conservatives around here, who seem to be ranting on about why the hell does the government have to shut down because that's what I'm trying to pay the bare minimum of taxes for anyway? Like any of them are going to need to rush out and get a passport any time soon.

The Goode Family: Just NOT Good Enough

Maybe this little clip from ABC's The Goode Family was a little prescient. This Mike Judge cartoon, lampooning the smugger sides of America, is being cancelled. Which is a pity, because Gerald and Helen Goode were growing on me. Not that I helped them at all. I pretty much watched what I could of the show on YouTube, so my fannery doesn't show up in the small (at its height, the show barely attracted 3 million viewers) ratings the show got. So ABC is pulling the plug.

I don't know why more people didn't like the show. While it does poke fun at the left-leaners in the nation, there's enough That's-Me-In-The-Mirror moments in the show to make everybody laugh at themselves. I especially liked the constant one-upmanship between Helen and her rival Margot, seeing who could out-Liberal each other. (Best moment: After Helen's long-time pen pal Mikinkin from Myanmar shows up to stay with the Goodes, Helen brags to Margot that she's hosting a refugee. Margot steams: How did she get a refugee before I did? I'm on a list!)

I feel like Judge and company struck enough similar chords between The Goode Family and their other, more popular project, King of the Hill, to get enough crossover appeal. But perhaps the KOTH appeal was more character than the satire, and if that's so, that's too bad.

Half Of America Hopes I Fail

We were listening to BBC 4's "The Now Show" Friday night. They were talking about American politics and said something rather stupid: "Half of America wants Barack Obama to fail." I have to ask: how stupid are the people on "The Now Show?" Really? Half of America wants Barack Obama to fail? Their primary reason was: payback. They said the Democrats spent the last eight years wanting Bush to fail, so it was only then logically natural that the Big O should have failure rays being shot at him from the right. Then he went on to lament on how polarized American politics has become, "much more so than here," he added. Of course, it's not as polarized as that. Perhaps it is in the world of the media, where a lot of incorrect images are created, but it is not so here. And to say it is while relying only on the media and polarized independent voices is ignorant, short-sighted, and politically naive. Aside from the pundits and bloviators on television and the Internet, I have not heard anyone say they hope Obama will fail. I have heard a lot of people express dubiousness about some of his approaches and policies, but I have yet to hear a single soul aside from Rushmo say they hope for failure. Expressing doubt is not the same as hoping for failure, else there are plenty of Democrats out there who syllogistically hope Obama will fail as well.

The sub-issue here is the lamentation over the polarization of the proletariat. To steal a phrase from Tricky Dicky, I firmly believe there is a mostly silent majority of people in this country who, to use a term of polarization, sag in the middle. It's this middle, alternatively cautiously optimistic and leery of both left and right that swing elections in this country to the right or to the left. One of the effects of the two-party system is that it masks this majority under the flimsy guides of "moderates." In other nations, with multiple parties, these moderates are not physically united with other parties, having parties of their own. (Yes, we do have Libertarians, Independents and others, but it's clear these parties represent the fringe, not the center, where the moderates lie, or they have become platforms for single-issue candidates.) That, in other countries, these parties form ruling alliances is akin to unpartied moderates voting Democratic in one election, Republican in another. We have to share power before or at the election, not afterward, when alliance-building occurs in most multiparty democracies. For the moderates, the platforms of either party do not wholeheartedly appeal, but sometimes it's just choosing one lesser evil over the other.

The polarization comes from the talking heads and the media. The Republican Party has reluctantly take on the role of the opposition party and us screwing it up royally, much as the Democrats have in the past eight years. Bloviators on both sides and the media ferret out and point to polarizing opinions and actions of a few and foolishly pass those off as the will of the people or the desire of "half the nation" to see the other side fail. This is a childish approach to politics, punditry, and journalism that does little to fix things, because lies that are widely spread are lies still.

Posted with LifeCast