Before we get to that here’s some stuff to read/watch:

1. Another opinion similar to mine

2. Should you cancel your trip to Japan?

3. Watching news in Japan

4. A report from Tokyo

All read up now, you big-nosed, gundam-loving fiends? Without having to go into depth about what is fucked up about the US/UK media (easily a 400 page book), let’s just take a look at the headlines and crazy shit said by newscasters, headlines, and the those that were brought on to discuss the incident. Let’s start with the easily most egregious example, The Sun. Now you could say “That’s not fair!”, but, sorry, I don’t give a shit. Highlighting the worst gives us a better view of how far the average viewpoint spread will be. Below is one of their headlines after the earthquake.

Let it all sink in, all the bullshit, fearmongering, and lack of knowledge. They write turgid articles such as that one and this one which, even if you neither read nor subscribe to the less-than-bathroom-reading quality rag, can affect any passerby that sees a shocking headline such as those.

What about the other papers and new stations? How about ABC. They had Michio Kaku come on to Good Morning America to talk about the nuclear power plant. Although he’s of Japanese descent that’s not why they brought him on the show, it’s because he’s a physicist; the problem is that he’s a theoretical physicist, which has fuckall to do with nuclear reactors. Besides that, he goes on to say that this could be worse than Chernobyl and that we should just dump sand and concrete on it. If you think this could be worse than Chernobyl or that dumping sand and then concrete on these would be a good idea you really need to read more about nuclear power plants, second generation nuclear reactors, and what actual nuclear engineers are saying and recommending.

It’s shit like this that causes people to worry much more than they should. News stations should be telling us what is likely to happen but for various reasons western coverage of events comes down to the most horrible and unlikely being described with a short paragraph about the actual situation. They almost made up for bring on Mr. Kaku by showing this clip. However, they just couldn’t help themselves and they had to throw in some worst case scenarios because, like most western media, they’re sluts for chaos and horrible, but interesting, situations.

The effects of this type of reporting can be seen in the following two clips.

No one outside of the eastern seaboard of NE Japan is in any real danger and yet you have people running around in California trying to buy iodine pills and worried parents calling their children (300 miles away from harm) in western Japan. How are any of those people informed? What useful information have they learned that they could put to use? None. Maybe if Fallout wasn’t just a game they’d have a use for iodine pills, but I doubt the Chinese are going to actually cause the world to turn into a nuclear wasteland.

They’re just being “realistic”.

Another thing I don’t understand is that within the reporting no one is bringing up the fact that the United States detonated atomic bombs in the pacific and took radiation samples afterwards. Since these tests were done to the east of Japan and the fallout didn’t hit mainland why aren’t the newsmedia quelling these retarded fears? They’re doing even more harm by just blurting out numbers with no baseline and thus no possibility for comparison.

Then again, the western news media is correct. Just look at this horrible footage from Tokyo.

Learn more:
Radiation comparison chart
A report from another teacher
A short explanation of radiation
And a marmot thinks it’s smarter than real people

The day of the quake I took my dog to the doctor because she was having trouble keeping food down (she’s fine now). I usually go to Japanese class on Friday mornings, but after waking up to a glob of red fluid and a (still) happy dog I thought it best to head straight to the vet and skip class. Later on in the day when I’m wasting time before class starts I suddenly feel slightly dizzy (apparently that was a common reaction in the Mie area). At the time I had no clue that this was actually an earthquake since earthquakes are associated with more jerky movements, not a lazy back and forth for 15 seconds; 20 minutes later I then realize the situation at hand. On the Japan side of things that’s it (so far).

Given my basically pointless account of events, I feel that some perspective would be a good idea. Gakuranman has an extremely detailed list of events as they happened here and here

If you feel like you want to give, please do. However, I feel that money would be better spent helping somewhere else that can’t help themselves as well as Japan can.

Earthquake reports can be found at:
JMA
USGS
Yahoo Japan

Misc. Links:
Before and after photos
Photos from the National Post
Meat and potatoes from NewScientist

TV:
Japanese TBS ustream
NHK ustream

Even though Japan is much better planned for earthquakes there was lots of preventable damage that occurred during the Kobe earthquake. You would have thought that the even would have caused people to make some obvious changes (bury power lines), but unfortunately that hasn’t happened. They have made transportation routes safer, but for some reason they refuse to acknowledge the glaring defect.

For Haiti, Kobe, and everywhere else that has been hit by an earthquake in January let’s shake our tables in remembrance.