Reflections on a gloomy day

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s one of those ugly days, overcast and rainy and generally gloomy. And it matches the news lately.

The earthquake and tsunami, terrible and horrible.

Libya.

Obama fiddling and dribbling and acting so clueless that “Hamlet-like” would be a compliment.

Republicans doing what Republicans do.

The hot breath of tax time beginning to be felt on the back of my neck.

As a self-employed person, my annual and futile scramble for some sort of health insurance that won’t use up an inordinate amount of my income.

But enough about me.

There’s a little ray of sunshine here, if you can believe Hillary when she says she won’t run. I, for one, lost all ability to figure her out when she accepted the position as Obama’s Secretary of State and has continued so long in the post.

Let’s get away.

More nuclear disaster talk

The New Neo Posted on by

I think I’m starting to sound like the proverbial broken record (although now that records are pretty much obsolete, should there not be another term?), but the beat goes on with the hyping of the nuclear plant problems in Japan.

Things have escalated somewhat and remain difficult and uncertain there, to be sure. According to the NY Times, there has been a fire that “blew a 26-foot-wide hole in the side of reactor No. 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,” as well as a separate explosion that “ruptured the inner containment building at reactor No. 2 at the Daiichi plant, which was crippled by Friday’s earthquake and tsunami” and released a surge of radiation.

However, even the Times has these reassuring words for those who got far enough in the article to read them:

But 50 workers stayed behind, a crew no larger than would be stationed at the plant on a quiet spring day. Taking shelter when possible in the reactor’s control room, which is heavily shielded from radiation, they struggled through the morning and afternoon to keep hundreds of gallons of seawater a minute flowing through temporary fire pumps into the three stricken reactors, where overheated fuel rods continued to boil away the water at a brisk pace.

By early afternoon radiation levels had plunged, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Workers have released surges of radiation each time they bleed radioactive steam from the troubled reactors in an attempt to manage the pressure inside the reactors, but the reactors are not yet releasing high levels of radiation on a sustained basis, Japanese officials said.

Talk shows, headlines, blogs, and demonstrators seem to think this is a disaster of terrible proportions. So far it is not, although I cannot imagine the terrible stress the crews are under. They are the ones who stand the greatest risk of health problems, but their plight seems easy compared to the vast numbers of the dead in Japan today—deaths that, by the way, have nothing to do with the nuclear plant.

Although news is fast-changing and dates quickly, and objective news is difficult to come by, this summary seems fairly comprehensive and relatively recent. It contains the following evaluation of the big picture by a scientist working in the field of nuclear power:

Japan suffered an earthquake and tsunami of unprecedented proportion that has caused unbelievable damage to every part of their infrastructure, and death of very large numbers of people. The media have chosen to report the damage to a nuclear plant which was, and still is, unlikely to harm anyone. We won’t know for sure, of course, until the last measure to assure cooling is put in place, but that’s the likely outcome. You’d never know it from the parade of interested anti-nuclear activists identified as “nuclear experts” on TV.

There is no question that those who advocate nuclear power have the motivation to look on the bright side, whereas those who are against it are inclined to the opposite point of view. From what I can see, the facts are on the side of the first group. But prognostications can never be 100% correct, and unforeseen things can happen.

In the comments section of a Slate article by William Saletan entitled “Nuclear Overreactors” I noticed an excellent example of the type of thinking that runs rampant on the left. In it, you can really sense the commenter’s desire for a bad outcome. Addressing Saletan’s argument that the situation is nowhere near as bad as the hype, the commenter says:

Dude, I’d suggest waiting until it’s OVER to write this OK? Sheesh. The magic containment vessel that all you nuke lovers keep twattering about (don’t worry, radiation won’t leak) appears to have been breached at Daini #2. And the ship’s unsinkable, right? Will human technoarrogance never end?

The metaphor of the Titanic as the epitome of human hubris and misplaced faith in engineering is a popular one. The Titanic, however, was apparently destroyed not by an iceberg or even poor design but because builders failed to use the correct (and more expensive) rivets that probably would have made the design work properly.

After the Titanic disaster we certainly didn’t stop designing ocean liners. Nor has there been a repeat. Scientists learn from their errors; they don’t run in fear from a soluble problem. Although it took many decades to figure out what went wrong on the Titanic, it is much clearer what the problems are at Fukushima. And a combined earthquake and resultant tsunami of the magnitude of the one causing the damage is an extremely rare event as well. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be prepared for. But the whole thing needs to be placed in perspective, something in short supply right now.

Are Israeli settlers human?

The New Neo Posted on by

Bret Stephens indicates in the WSJ that much of the world seems to think the answer is “no,” and that any sort of violence can be perpetrated on the settlers with impunity and even applause.

Stephens points out the moral failing of much of the Western world in allowing the most violent segments of Palestinian society (which is a pretty huge segment) to be feted for actions that are clearly evil, or at the very least to never be called to account for them. It is a depressing fact that this is no longer any kind of a surprise.

The action that sparked Stephens’ column was this mass murder and the celebratory Palestinian reaction to it, as well as the Western non-reaction to either the murders or the celebrations:

Last Friday, apparently one or more members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the terrorist wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s “moderate” Fatah party, broke into the West Bank home of Udi and Ruth Fogel. The Jewish couple were stabbed to death along with their 11-year-old son Yoav, their 4-year-old son Elad and their 3-month-old daughter Hadas. Photographs taken after the murders and posted online show a literal bloodbath.

Settlers have become vermin to be exterminated, exactly Hitler’s attitude towards Jews in general. And this is not just something many Palestinians think, but something a large segment of the West’s left and intelligentsia believe.

The most important portion of Stephens’ article, however (at least to my way of thinking, since my specialty is political change) is the following:

I have a feeling that years from now Palestinians will look back and wonder: How did we allow ourselves to become that? If and when that happens””though not until that happens””Palestinians and Israelis will at long last be able to live alongside each other in genuine peace and security.

But I also wonder whether a similar question will ever occur to the Palestinian movement’s legion of fellow travelers in the West. To wit, how did they become so infatuated with a cause that they were willing to ignore its crimes””or, if not quite ignore them, treat them as no more than a function of the supposedly infinitely greater crime of Israeli occupation?

That’s an important question because it forms part of the same pattern in which significant segments of Western opinion cheered Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe and even Pol Pot. The cheering lasted just as long as was required to see the cause through to some iconic moment of triumph, and then it was on to the next struggle. It was left to others to pick up the pieces or take to the boats or die choking in their own blood.

I believe I can answer, and the answer I give is not an encouraging one. I think the number of Palestinians who “will look back and wonder: How did we allow ourselves to become that?” is incredibly minuscule, and perhaps limited to those Palestinians who have not become “that” in the first place. And the same is true of “their legion of fellow travelers in the West.”

The ability to re-evaluate one’s past actions and thoughts in the light of new information is rare. Far more common is the tendency to excuse or ignore. How many leftists have taken another look at themselves because of Pol Pot? Although I’m sure they exist, they are as a few grains of sand on a vast beach.

[NOTE: I wrote at length about the same question here, in the context of the aftermath of the Vietnam War.]

Passing the hat: please donate to neo-neocon

The New Neo Posted on by

passhat.jpg

It’s that time again. Don’t feel too bad if you decide not to click on that Paypal “donate” button (hint hint: it’s on the right sidebar, above the Amazon widget, which is also a handy and helpful gadget to use). But I will be deeply grateful to every single one of you who does decide to contribute. Every bit— large or small—adds up, and helps me a great deal in continuing the blog.

I thank you all in advance. I will probably repeat this notice every now and then, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat. But I’ll be discreet about it. And it’s a lot better than those fund-raising drives they have on NPR, isn’t it? No interruption of the scheduled programming.

Meanwhile, remember Libya?

The New Neo Posted on by

Qaddafi does. And he’s making sure that Libya remembers him.

Is the fact that Qaddafi is successfully fighting the rebels any sort of surprise? It shouldn’t be. Nothing fundamental has changed in Libya since I wrote this three weeks ago:

There are tyrants, and then there are tyrants. Qaddafi is no Mubarak; he’s more brutal and repressive, and already a great many more people have been killed in demonstrations in Libya than in Egypt as Qaddafi tries to hold on to power. That’s the way it is with dictatorships: the worst of them are always prepared to do more violence against their own people.

That means it ordinarily takes far more courage and far more lives to depose them, or is even impossible. If the ruler wants to up the ante, it can be made very costly indeed. The turning point often happen only when their own armies and police forces refuse to follow orders.

And, oddly enough, this also is still true, from the same post:

I have read nothing that indicates any sort of knowledge about who the Libyan protesters are. Patriots eager for liberty? Islamists eager for a theocracy? Enemies of Qaddafi eager for their own leaders to take over, establish their own tyrannical dictatorship, and enjoy its spoils? Young men just tired of being poor, and angry in general? All of the above?

Meanwhile, Obama does nothing. He has hardly been immune from criticism for his inaction (see this, this, and this).

Those who criticize his lack of response are at the same time trying to figure it out. What could it signify? What is the strategy? I’m not of the opinion that it’s a mystery at all: (a) Obama hasn’t a clue what to do; (b) his default position, especially in foreign affairs, tends to be inaction; and (c) I’m not at all sure he even cares much about what happens in Libya.

Pushing English as the official language

The New Neo Posted on by

Those cruel and racist Republicans have introduced a bill to declare English the official language of the US and to require a basic knowledge of it in order to become a citizen (although there would be some exceptions for unusual circumstances).

That such a proposal might be controversial or necessary is strange, because one would think it merely common sense. I have no idea how much support or opposition it has, but no doubt it has at least some of the latter.

But even back when I was a liberal Democrat, I would have supported it. I have never been a fan of multilingualism for the US. Learning English is both a symbolic and a practical aspect of becoming part of this country, and our failure to require it has not done anyone a service, including the would-be immigrants themselves.

Why is so much attention being paid to the nuclear reactor?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not a scientist, but this article by William Tucker in the WSJ seems to make a great deal of sense and is worth quoting at length.

The gist of it is that Fukushima Daiichi ain’t Chernobyl. Nor is it likely to be much of a problem except an economic one, as well as a political one if it’s exploited by the anti-nuclear power forces:

If the pumps are knocked out in a Generation II reactor””as they were at Fukushima Daiichi by the tsunami””the water in the cooling system can overheat and evaporate. The resulting steam increases internal pressure that must be vented. There was a small release of radioactive steam at Three Mile Island in 1979, and there have also been a few releases at Fukushima Daiichi. These produce radiation at about the level of one dental X-ray in the immediate vicinity and quickly dissipate…

None of this amounts to “another Chernobyl.” The Chernobyl reactor had two crucial design flaws. First, it used graphite (carbon) instead of water to “moderate” the neutrons, which makes possible the nuclear reaction. The graphite caught fire in April 1986 and burned for four days. Water does not catch fire.

Second, Chernobyl had no containment structure. When the graphite caught fire, it spouted a plume of radioactive smoke that spread across the globe. A containment structure would have both smothered the fire and contained the radioactivity.

If a meltdown does occur in Japan, it will be a disaster for the Tokyo Electric Power Company but not for the general public. Whatever steam releases occur will have a negligible impact. Researchers have spent 30 years trying to find health effects from the steam releases at Three Mile Island and have come up with nothing. With all the death, devastation and disease now threatening tens of thousands in Japan, it is trivializing and almost obscene to spend so much time worrying about damage to a nuclear reactor.

What the Japanese earthquake has proved is that even the oldest containment structures can withstand the impact of one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history. The problem has been with the electrical pumps required to operate the cooling system. It would be tragic if the result of the Japanese accident were to prevent development of Generation III reactors, which eliminate this design flaw.

Much of the MSM, however, seems hard at work to keep such information from us. Granted, it’s a bit technical, and requires a soupé§on of intelligence to understand, but not anything beyond the range of most people. However, here are some answers to the question I posed in the title of this post:

The more ominous outcome—or the possibility of it—fits into the agenda of the left very nicely.

Compared to the earthquake and tsunami, it is a story with focus and a single locus rather than a spread-out tale of death and destruction over a wide area.

It is happening in real time. Therefore, it has a powerful element of suspense, rather than just tragedy.

There is a movielike aspect to the story being hyped by the press—“The China Syndrome,” to be exact. So many people think they know the possibilities, because they’re been prepared to think that way by the film, which provides the template. The actual events that occurred at Chernobyl—the technical aspects of which elude most people or have been forgotten—can be used in the same way to stir up anxiety. Anxiety has two functions: it boosts viewership/readership and it serves the needs of the anti-nuclear-power folks, who will stir it up (and count on scientific illiteracy, as well) in an attempt to curtail the development of nuclear power in this country and around the world.

[NOTE: It is ironic that the worst problem here may come through an attempt at recycling nuclear waste:

Nuclear experts are particularly worried about the No. 3 unit, supplied by Toshiba Corp., because it uses an unconventional fuel called MOX fuel, short for mixed oxide.

It is made by mixing low-enriched uranium with plutonium that has been recycled from a global stockpile of defunct nuclear weapons. This recycling is part of an international effort to decrease the number of nuclear weapons and move from “megatons to megawatts.”

MOX fuel has greater concentrations of “actinides,” or radioactive elements and runs hotter than conventional fuel, so a shut down plant would have to deal with more “decay” or residual heat from fuel rods.

This reminds me of another recycling problem that seems to have arisen with a completely different product—cardboard cereal boxes made from recycled paper that might leak chemicals toxic to human beings (hat tip: Artfldgr).

The law of unintended consequences strikes again.]

[ADDENDUM: Here’s some of the metaphorical fallout (of the political variety) in Germany, where the Spiegel headline blares “Nuclear Disaster ‘Will Have Political Impact as Great as 9/11.'” It ignores a host of things, including the fact that, at least so far, there has been no nuclear disaster—except for the effect on the functioning of the plant itself, which will almost undoubtedly never go online again.]

Japan: epicenter of disaster

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s the quake, and then there’s the aftermath. Sometimes, as in Japan today, the latter is worse than the former.

Not that the former wasn’t really really bad. It was, and it lasted for over two minutes. I’ve been in several quakes in California of moderate magnitude (which is many thousands of times less than the force of this one), and the most each ever lasted was probably 15 seconds, if that. I cannot imagine how endless and terrifying this one must have seemed.

So far, the resultant tsunami seems to have caused the majority of deaths. Now, even drinking water is a problem in some areas. And then, of course, there are those nuclear power plants that have been dangerously compromised. Because Japan was a pioneer in nuclear power, quite a few of its plants are around forty years old, and were built in a time of lesser seismic activity in which earthquake protections were more lax. The newer ones are better, but all portions of the old ones had not been sufficiently updated.

Many people in the comments section here have noted the abysmal ignorance about earthquakes and nuclear power plants exhibited almost uniformly by the press. Not only are they uninformed, they don’t seem to be taking the time and proper steps to become informed, and are fear-mongering and comparing the reactors in Japan to that in Chernobyl, which had a different design. Could it be that they have an agenda?

One of Japan’s exports in the post-WWII years has been disaster movies. This is one come to life, minus the monsters (although if we wait a bit, maybe…). Although Japan is used to earthquakes, it’s not used to something of this magnitude, which sweeps away—along with the houses, boats, trains, and people—the illusion of control

Apocalypse now?

The New Neo Posted on by

The scenes on the television are surreal. Buildings and cars and trains and boats tossed around and floating in water like so many discarded toys in a flooded garbage dump.

Fire.

And now, a potential (or already partial) nuclear meltdown. The frantic efforts to avert more major trouble there are a bit hard to follow and quite technical, but so far the damage seems mostly contained although the threat of a far greater catastrophe is present.

Our global communications now are so good that videos of all these catastrophes are beamed into our livingrooms and bedrooms in real time. The combination of modern technology and ancient scourges and primal fears is a shock to the system, and a reminder.

Japan, of course, has had more than its share of these particular catastrophes, although not always together like now. Earthquakes and tsunamis have plagued the island nation for all its recorded history. And Japan has the dubious distinction of having been the only country ever attacked with nuclear weapons. Although a nuclear power plant is not an atomic bomb, trouble there is a small echo of that earlier blast.

The quake that hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was the largest ever recorded in Japan. Although Japan is very advanced at earthquake-resistant construction, such a huge quake was not necessarily foreseen. The largest previous quake near a nuclear power plant occurred in 2007 in the vicinity of the the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Japan, although it was “only” a 6.6 on the Richter scale. The plant survived intact, but it was shaken “beyond design basis and initiated an extended shutdown for inspection, which indicated that greater earthquake-proofing was needed before operation could be resumed.”

I’m a proponent of nuclear power. But it’s clear that plants need to be located as far from fault lines as possible (very difficult in a country like Japan) and made even stronger. The part of the plant at Fukushima Daiichi that seems to have been most damaged was built in the late 60s and opened in 1971. That’s a pretty old design; things have improved greatly since then. But I have no idea whether even a new design would have fared very well in an earthquake of this magnitude.

[NOTE: Ace has been doing good updates on this.]

The Guten Tag Hop Clop and Hansel and Gretel

The New Neo Posted on by

I believe I have done a great service to the world in unearthing the provenance of Mel Brooks’ immortal “Guten Tag Hop Clop” from the musical version of “The Producers.”

You may have thought it was merely a ridiculous German song and dance, featuring that famous German song-and-dance man, Will Ferrel (in the movie) wearing lederhosen and a helmet, and slapping himself and others silly. But did you know it drew its inspiration from a popular opera (hint: one I wrote about the other day)?

Here, in case you haven’t committed it to memory and your recall needs refreshing, is the Brooks song:

And now please observe Exhibit B, the song known in English as “Brother, Come and Dance With Me” (and in German as “Bré¼derchen, Komm Tanz Mit Mir”) from the Humperdinck opera “Hansel and Gretel:”

And here’s is the original folk version (minus the lederhosen); you can see how much Humperdinck added to it:

Earthquake and tsunami in Japan

The New Neo Posted on by

The terrible earthquake and tsunami last night in Japan recalls the fact that tsunami is a Japanese word:

The term “Tsunami” comes from the Japanese word for harbor (tsu) and wave (nami). The origins of the word are not surprising given that the majority of tsunamis occur within the Pacific Ocean and vicinity of Japan.

The term is said to have originated with fishermen when, upon returning to port, found the area surrounding the harbour devastated, even though they had not been aware of anything out of the ordinary while fishing in the open ocean.

Japan is perfectly positioned for such a thing. It has a lot of coast and a great many earthquakes, although last night’s seems to have been the strongest in Japanese history and (depending on the list) the sixth or seventh strongest worldwide. These days, in a country such as Japan with earthquake resistant buildings, as well as almost instantaneous worldwide communications and a massively updated warning system since the Asian-wide tsunami of 2005, it is possible that the death toll for even such a massive event will remain relatively low compared to the comparable earthquakes of history. But we don’t know yet; early statistics are always slow to come in such disasters.

For those of us who only watch, it’s a vivid reminder of just how helpless we all are in the face and force of overwhelming nature:

As the commentators in the video said, the flood moves surprisingly fast. And the tsunami wave moves even faster across the ocean—at about jet speed, 500 miles an hour—although by the time this one hit Hawaii, the force of the wave had not only been greatly diminished but warnings had been obeyed and the beaches long since evacuated.

[NOTE: Here’s a previous post I wrote about tsunamis, and disasters in general.

And here’s a pretty decent animation of how a tsunami works.]

[ADDENDUM: Unfortunately, there were some deaths on the US west coast after all.