Japan: The Safety Myth

It looks like our reading of "1984" is coming in handy. Japan, with it's recent nuclear disaster, is giving us a sharp example of the power of pervasive propaganda:

Over several decades, Japan’s nuclear establishment has devoted vast resources to persuade the Japanese public of the safety and necessity of nuclear power. Plant operators built lavish, fantasy-filled public relations buildings that became tourist attractions. Bureaucrats spun elaborate advertising campaigns through a multitude of organizations established solely to advertise the safety of nuclear plants. Politicians pushed through the adoption of government-mandated school textbooks with friendly views of nuclear power.

The result was the widespread adoption of the belief — called the “safety myth” — that Japan’s nuclear power plants were absolutely safe. Japan single-mindedly pursued nuclear power even as Western nations distanced themselves from it.

The belief helps explains why in the only nation to have been attacked with atomic bombs, the Japanese acceptance of nuclear power was so strong that the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl barely registered. Even with the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the reaction against nuclear power has been much stronger in Europe and the United States than in Japan itself.

If these were darker times, a more deeply fallen world, more in the vicinity of a true Big Brother, we would be hearing that this nuclear plant disaster was a dastardly work of Islamist terrorists, or maybe eco-terrorists, whichever would be seen as better serving the purposes of the Establishment. We are not so far gone as that.

(Source: Norimitsu Onishi for The New York Times)

Japan: The Safety Myth

It looks like our reading of "1984" is coming in handy. Japan, with it's recent nuclear disaster, is giving us a sharp example of the power of pervasive propaganda:

Over several decades, Japan’s nuclear establishment has devoted vast resources to persuade the Japanese public of the safety and necessity of nuclear power. Plant operators built lavish, fantasy-filled public relations buildings that became tourist attractions. Bureaucrats spun elaborate advertising campaigns through a multitude of organizations established solely to advertise the safety of nuclear plants. Politicians pushed through the adoption of government-mandated school textbooks with friendly views of nuclear power.

The result was the widespread adoption of the belief — called the “safety myth” — that Japan’s nuclear power plants were absolutely safe. Japan single-mindedly pursued nuclear power even as Western nations distanced themselves from it.

The belief helps explains why in the only nation to have been attacked with atomic bombs, the Japanese acceptance of nuclear power was so strong that the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl barely registered. Even with the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the reaction against nuclear power has been much stronger in Europe and the United States than in Japan itself.

If these were darker times, a more deeply fallen world, more in the vicinity of a true Big Brother, we would be hearing that this nuclear plant disaster was a dastardly work of Islamist terrorists, or maybe eco-terrorists, whichever would be seen as better serving the purposes of the Establishment. We are not so far gone as that.

(Source: Norimitsu Onishi for The New York Times)

Of Monkeys and Angels

We are risen apes, not fallen angels.

-- J. Anderson Thomson

And I don't even feel all that risen.

Of Monkeys and Angels

We are risen apes, not fallen angels.

-- J. Anderson Thomson

And I don't even feel all that risen.

Alyssa

Alyssa the Ginger said, “OMG 230 viewers and they are probably all creepy old men!”

John Doe said, “That doesn’t turn you on?”

~
No, I am not John Doe. Or at least not that John Doe. They said she would show, but that was another false promise. Such promises almost always are. Almost.

Alyssa

Alyssa the Ginger said, “OMG 230 viewers and they are probably all creepy old men!”

John Doe said, “That doesn’t turn you on?”

~
No, I am not John Doe. Or at least not that John Doe. They said she would show, but that was another false promise. Such promises almost always are. Almost.

Ode to Books

“Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it’s an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.”

-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon, "The Shadow of the Wind"



Johann Hari gives us a heartfelt ode to good old-fashion books and reading, and you know I cannot pass those up, as I tend to think of such appreciations as pretty love songs. We have been getting more of these lately, too, as our growing e-world with its laptops and ipads and tablets and what have you crowd out that romantic world that comes together when a curious and seeking reader meets a good book. Which is the theme of Hari's post, and we shall greedily keep all of it.

( article )

Ode to Books

“Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it’s an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.”

-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon, "The Shadow of the Wind"



Johann Hari gives us a heartfelt ode to good old-fashion books and reading, and you know I cannot pass those up, as I tend to think of such appreciations as pretty love songs. We have been getting more of these lately, too, as our growing e-world with its laptops and ipads and tablets and what have you crowd out that romantic world that comes together when a curious and seeking reader meets a good book. Which is the theme of Hari's post, and we shall greedily keep all of it.

( article )