Quote of the Day
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
Jonathan Swift
Fox News' Handling of the Fukushima Nuclear Incidents: Thumbs DOWN!
"Kill zone"? Japanese government "cover up"? "Deadly" radiation ? "Potentially dangerous plume"? "Unstable"? "Government leaving us here to die"? "Desperate workers"? "Lives at risk"? "Literally risking their lives"? "Catastrophe of unimaginable proportions"? " Meltdown"? "Smoke from reactor #2, no explanation"? "Worse ahead"? And that's just today (and an incomplete listing). In my judgment, totally irresponsible Fox News personalities included: Jon Scott, Megyn Kelly, Shep Smith, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren. I lost respect for each of these individuals today. This is the moral equivalent of shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater and unconscionable. This alarmist tone and nonsense are irresponsible and must stop!
Let me give just one minor example of irresponsible reporting. Shep Smith today kept repeating that the officials were close to connecting an electrical line from an active switch station to the plant. (The connection has now been made and power should be available within 15 hours. This presumably will address many of the current problems, especially with spent cooling fuel rod pools #3 and #4.) At one point, Shep makes it clear that he thought that somehow the idea of getting a connection of the plant to an available source of power got lost in the shuffle of responding to more immediate tasks at hand and it must have suddenly occurred to them; that is so extraordinarily presumptuous and insensitive, it shouldn't be necessary to address, but, in fact, TEPCO workers have been diligently working on this connection for days. Fox News just didn't bother to do solid investigation and reporting. This "seat of the pants" speculation does not constitute news reporting; I've complained about Shep Smith before; he mixes an idiosyncratic commentary with his announcing or reporting, and this has repeatedly happened; save the commentary stuff for the opinion shows.
Consider, for instance, these statements from global environmental health professor Kirk Smith from UC-Berkeley:
Consider, for instance, these statements from global environmental health professor Kirk Smith from UC-Berkeley:
What is the danger to people on the West Coast? The short answer is, essentially none...Even after the Chernobyl accident, which released a million times more radiation than has been released in Japan and produced a plume that went all over the planet, there was absolutely no risk to people in the United States...there will be no radioactive iodine. It will have decayed – its half life is only eight days...
One voice of reason is the website Hiroshima Syndrome. (Basically this refers to "the phobic state of fear caused by confusion between reactors and bombs, confusion between fallout and radiation itself, and the widespread belief that there is no safe level of radiation exposure)". The author, who has a degree in nuclear engineering, has worked as a nuclear power plant operator and design engineer, has offered daily highly readable and interesting posts (given the underlying subject matter complexity). One of the things he's been stressing is that radioactive decay in the (#1-#3) previously active reactors within a day or so would have fallen to the point where any further melting is unlikely. Today's post continued to debunk several news reports, e.g., purported coverage issues in spent fuel rod pool #3. He considers what I would call an evacuation contagion panic to be ethically irresponsible company and government actions which go beyond the bounds of prudence. He also points that there have been wrong inferences about the withdrawal of 50 workers thought to be related to deteriorating radioactivity levels and instead references work shifts among the 180 workers.
We also see an inadequate emphasis on highly salient observations that, at worse, the situation appears to be stabilizing; consider Reuters' report quoting International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official Graham Andrew: "The current situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant remains very serious ... (but) there has been no significant worsening since yesterday."
Robotics and Fukushima?
Let me repeat a prescient comment I made in yesterday's post update:
One of the questions that occurs to me as we hear accounts of the 50 worker/heroes moving in and out as radiation levels ebb and spike respectively is to what extent robotics have improved to assist in these scenarios; I was particularly impressed with how the robots were able to work at depths where humans can't...
Reuters just posted a story addressing the same thing. There are interesting hints here about a state of denial [not wanting to think about a nuclear power incident] or worker job protection:
Japan is a world leader in robots, using them to automate the most complicated manufacturing processes and to sift through rubble to look for victims in earthquakes...Nuclear safety agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama said: "We have no reports of any robots being used."...Kim [Seungho], a deputy director in nuclear technology for the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, said budget constraints and denial have kept emergency robots out of many plants in his country and around the world...While Japan is renowned for its cutting edge technology, it also maintains an anachronistic element in its society that relies on humans for tasks that have given way to automation in many other parts of the world, such as operating elevators and warning motorists of road construction.
The piece does point out in the hundreds of nuclear power plants out there there are some emergency robots for very specific tasks. The concept of man-computer symbiosis, of course, has been fleshed out since Licklider's clarion call. Among other things, it is important for humans to practice and retain key know-how and problem-solving skills to deal with emergency situations; say, for example, some key technology fails or is unreliable in a given context; we would want an airline pilot to be operating with muscle memory, not sluggishly, like a baseball hitter's timing may be off after the winter break. The performance of technology (congruent with operator characteristics) is contingent on relevant design, resources/components, implementation and operational context. There are obvious situations where technology can extend functionality for humans, e.g., in situations where humans can't move, reach or breathe, perform fine-grained actions, or are physically exhausted; just consider the potential of nanotechnology, including miniature machines.
Kudos to Governor Rick Scott (R-FL):
FINALLY Teacher Reform... Thumbs UP!
Former Governor Charlie Crist, who I initially supported for election to the Senator Martinez seat (filled out by George LeMieux), lost my support for a number of reasons, but a key reason was his blatantly political decision to veto teacher reform legislation, citing examples of teachers whom lost sleep or resorted to crying worried about raises, no longer depending on political promises but on performance. In the real world, people with superb skills and performance have been looking for work for circumstances beyond their control, taking temp jobs without benefits, cutting salary or hourly wage requirements, reducing hours, moving to other locations to find work, etc.
By the way, I'm not anti-teacher; I have a late aunt, a sister, and a couple of nieces with or earning teaching credentials. I taught for 8 years, where teaching was not evaluated by student performance, course syllabi, or quality of instruction, but by notoriously unreliable single-item measures asking students their overall assessment, a comparative assessment, etc. If you didn't like your professor, it was fairly obvious how to score the items. I've published before in this column seeing a comment by one student, whom went out of his/her way to say "I've learned more in Professor Guillemette's class than any other class I've had. But he deserves none of the credit; I had to do it all on my own..." I still consider that one of my best evaluations ever (I'm sure he bubbled in the lowest score on the mark-sense form for the individual items, but I didn't really care)... And in case you're wondering: yes, it was a Wisconsin student.
Governor Rick Scott will soon receive a teacher reform bill for his signature from the Republican-controlled state legislature that includes some long-overdue reforms including merit pay in conjunction with standardized test scores, statewide teacher evaluations, collective bargaining and due process reforms, and no tenure for new teachers (what about existing deadwood teachers?)
Political Humor
Today is the Ides of March, the day on which in 44 B.C. Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by 60 Roman Senators. That could never happen today. We can't get 60 Senators to agree on anything. - Jay Leno
[I disagree, Jay. The senator all agree that they personally were not responsible for the status quo...]
A Tibetan mastiff puppy was sold in China for a million dollars. It’s a lot of money, but it also includes an appetizer and dessert. - Jimmy Fallon
[I'm not saying that the dollar has lost its value, but they're using Treasury bills to house train the puppy...]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
America, "Ventura Highway"
