I love these things (hat tip: Ace):
Hillary declines to be Ophelia?
It seems that Hillary is tired of playing Ophelia to Obama’s Hamlet.
At least, that’s the story. I’m even inclined to believe it’s at least partially true. I’ve always felt that Hillary had more on the ball (and has more balls) than Obama in regard to foreign policy.
Her lament (and Ophelia’s) about Obamalet:
Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!””
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th’ observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. Oh, woe is me,
T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
Note that I did not have to change a single word.
Which does this say more about…
Chernobyl and Fukushima: how do we define “disaster?”
We’ve been hearing the word “disaster” in connection with the nuclear reactors in Japan, usually in the context of phrases such as, “Japanese teams work mightily to avoid looming disaster.”
But what is the definition of a disaster these days? Surely, by any reasonable measure, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami qualify as an enormous disaster. The death toll will run into tens of thousands and perhaps even a hundred thousand or so before the work of rescue and discovery is over, and the rebuilding will take years and eat up enormous amounts of money. The psychological toll on Japan is hard to overestimate, although the people are remarkably resilient. But in an instant, whole villages were wiped away, and the shock must be profound. It’s frightening even to view it from afar, reduced to a small computer or TV image.
But what of the nuclear power plant problems? That is a projected disaster, a feared and dreaded one. The word “meltdown” is another that’s constantly used in news stories as a likely possibility, and it conjures up images of something cataclysmic. The specter of Chernobyl is raised again and again, even though that plant’s design was profoundly different in critical ways.
Chernobyl was by far the worst accident in the history of nuclear plants, but the initial incident claimed 57 lives. This is tragic and horrible, but not usually the sort of thing that enters into “disaster” territory, if sheer numbers are the measure.
But what of its residual long-term effects? The main Wiki article on the subject notes, “Estimates of the total number of deaths attributable to the accident vary enormously, from possibly 4,000 to close to a million.” That would certainly constitute a disaster—but are those figures correct?
They do not appear to be. Chernobyl is not only a word that strikes fear into the heart, but it is one of the most-studied environmental incidents ever in terms of its possible effects. The following is what UNSCEAR, the United Nations Scientific Committee of the Effects of Atomic Radiation, has learned over the twenty-five years since Chernobyl occurred:
Among the residents of Belaruss 09, the Russian Federation and Ukraine there had been, up to 2002, about 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, and more cases are to be expected during the next decades. Notwithstanding problems associated with screening, many of those cancers were most likely caused by radiation exposures shortly after the accident. Apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure. The risk of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to its short latency time, does not appear to be elevated. Although those most highly exposed individuals are at an increased risk of radiation-associated effects, the great majority of the population is not likely to experience serious health consequences as a result of radiation from the Chernobyl accident. Many other health problems have been noted in the populations that are not related to radiation exposure.
Wiki also notes that “thyroid cancer is generally treatable. With proper treatment, the five-year survival rate of thyroid cancer is 96%, and 92% after 30 years.” This is not to make light of the stress of having a child thus diagnosed, but in general we can say that the number of additional deaths beyond the original 57 that could be attributable to Chernobyl is small. We can be fairly certain of this because there has been no lack of effort to find them, and no dearth of studies that would be likely to have detected them if they had existed.
But such reports have not eradicated the idea that Chernobyl was a dreadful disaster that caused an enormous number of deaths. For example, Greenpeace jumped into the arena, speculating so wildly based on suspect and non-peer-reviewed studies that even Gregory Hé¤rtl, a spokesman for WHO, “expressed concern that the conclusions were motivated by ideology.”
There is little doubt that the accident had a negative effect on the flora and fauna in the area. But again, it was less than in the popular imagination.
Speaking of imagination: paradoxically, that is what has been responsible for a fair amount of harm. Not only has fear of nuclear power reduced our willingness to build nuclear power plants and continued the world’s dependency on imported oil from the Middle East and all its attendant woes, but this fear may have had an indirectly deleterious effect on the emotional health of the population around Chernobyl:
It also concluded that a greater risk than the long-term effects of radiation exposure is the risk to mental health of exaggerated fears about the effects of radiation:
“The designation of the affected population as “victims” rather than “survivors” has led them to perceive themselves as helpless, weak and lacking control over their future. This, in turn, has led either to over cautious behavior and exaggerated health concerns, or to reckless conduct, such as consumption of mushrooms, berries and game from areas still designated as highly contaminated, overuse of alcohol and tobacco, and unprotected promiscuous sexual activity.”
That is not to say that Chernobyl was nothing. It was most definitely something: a frightening event that shone a light on a large number of mistakes (especially in Soviet power plants) that needed to be righted, and a tragedy from which people and the environment suffered and many lives were lost.
But “disaster” is a word that has been too freely used. It is not exactly clear how best to define disaster—whether by number of deaths, amount of property destroyed, human suffering, environmental damage, or some complex combination of all or some of them. But on the worldwide scale of events, an argument could be made that Chernobyl only qualifies as a major disaster in its lasting legacy of hyper-fear bestowed by those who exaggerated its effects in order to further their own political ends.
[NOTE: For example, the NY Times today has a piece entitled “Scientists Project Path of Radiation Plume.” And although the article makes it clear in the second paragraph that the radiation will be essentially negligible almost as soon as it begins to make that worldwide journey, the headline and the lede (“A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday”), which is probably all many people read, are designed to stir up anxiety. Why not put the word “harmless” in the headline, right before the word “plume?” Funny question, I know. Perhaps the Times has stock in iodine pills.]
[ADDENDUM: The Christian Science Monitor also attempts to set the record straight. Good luck.]
A little inspirational music from Aled Jones
Here’s something to relieve the gloom.
Many years ago I watched a documentary entitled “The Treble.” It was about Welsh boy soprano Aled Jones and the crisis he faced on the brink of puberty with an imminent change of voice looming. Only a kid, and about to become a has-been!
I’ve never been a big fan of boy sopranos, but there was something very special about Aled, and his story stuck with me all these years. Here’s a clip from the original documentary and you might see what I mean:
Well, a great many years have passed, and Aled is a 40-year-old married man with two children.
And he’s still singing, although he sounds a wee bit different:
Reflections on a gloomy day
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.
Crichton on science and fear
Worth watching:
It’s part of a much longer speech that Crichton gave a few years ago. The entire speech can be watched here (hat tip: SteveH).
More nuclear disaster talk
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?
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
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?
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
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.