I’ll tell you this much: If Japan doesn’t light up like the underside of a tricked-out Nissan Skyline 2000GT-EX street racer by, say, 5PM MT today, I’m going to file an ethics complaint against Japan for its unconscionable efforts at forcing us — by way of this tease of a possible catastrophic nuclear event — into hysterical, ill-informed, and often quite hyperbolic “coverage”. Much of which makes us look silly, in retrospect.
After that, I’m going after Road Warrior and A Boy and His Dog.
That’ll teach them to fuel my imagination with their unethical portrayal of not real dystopian sci-fi.
****
update: just so you know, if there really is a catastrophe, I reserve the right to “report” on it any way I’d like, and to claim that I left open the possibility for such a contingency all during the event.
And I have to tell you, it feels good knowing that no matter what I say or write, in the end I’m assuredly correct.
Journalism!
****
update 2: I should note that because I have no practical experience with nuclear reactor construction, radiation containment, or earthquake engineering, you would be remiss not to check back every few minutes for my updates on these matters. About which I know nothing. Repeatedly.
Don’t thank me. It’s what I do.
****
update 3: A credible source inside the US military has let slip that “Japan has hordes of Radioactive Cannibal Samurai roaming Honshu.” I have not received secondary confirmation, but for the time being, I’m willing to report the worst because my journalistic ethics demand it of me.
Preliminary conclusion: You got me. Aim for their heads?
****
update 4: BREAKING BREAKING BREAKING: …Brains!
Mutant Samurai. There’s a scary thought.
ITS BEEN MINUTES WITHOUT AN UPDATE!!1!1! WHAT ARE YOU COVERING UP, JEFF???
What I want to know is, have the Japanese turned to cannabalism yet? And, if so, is it because of the tragic violence of human nature in a natural disaster or is it a side effect of radiation sickness?
I think there’s a story in that.
Heh.
I suspect Shep Smith will tell us one way or the other…
Ha! Japan has hordes of Radioactive Cannibal Samurai roaming Honshu – so that is the story you were hiding, eh?
Nah. Human flesh gets all rubbery when you microwave it, no matter how well it’s been brined.
READER POLL!
WHEN DID JEFF FIRST KNOW OF THE RADIOACTIVE CANNIBAL SAMURAI, AND WHY DID HE SUPPRESS THE STORY?
And I have to tell you, it feels good knowing that no matter what I say or write, in the end I’m assuredly correct.
And that right there is what the Kool-Aid tastes like.
Cheers!
There is nothing more ethical, dicentra, than covering all your bases and making sure you have plausible deniability at all times.
No, really!
Netflix has A Boy and his Dog, Road Warrior, and Seven Samurai for easy instant streaming. I watched Zardoz last night and it was slow (but I had not seen it before), but I did enjoy Monsters a couple of days ago (with a play on District 9, but on illegal immigration).
You need to add a “BREAKING NEWS” screamer in there somewhere.
For some reason The Camp of the Saints link won’t post, but this is a good post…
Radioactive Cannibal Samurai
we work in a porn angle and we’re RICH!
It’s been so long, and become such a regular feature, that we forget that 9/11 brought us the newscroll on all the news channels. It appeared … never to go away.
Remember when you actually had to wait and watch to find out all the really terribly important news? You couldn’t just wait for it to scroll by every 45 seconds or so.
I find watching Netflix a good filler between breathless media postings on Japan.
You’d think somebody would figure out a way to do that on websites.
Yea, McGehee. That’s just what we need. More news crawls.
email me the link, Joe, and I’ll link it.
Thanks
McGehee, pay the $8 a month and you can stream those movies right at your computer. I bet you can split screen it so you can watch and blog at the same time.
Porn angle?
Radioactive Cannibal Samurai Cheerleaders. Tagline: The radiation destroyed their country… and their inhibitions.
Excessive exposure to radiation mutates a helpless innocent into a cooked lobster! WHAT DOES THE GOVERNMENT KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT?!?!
(apologies to Stephanie)
bh, maybe that is next week’s Glee episode. Because without musical singing interludes and snide comments to conservatives, it gets too heavy.
Much better. Makes the newz really POP.
Makes me feel all super-knowledgable and stuff, y’know!
The Left is dying for a huge(r) catastrophe in Japan, so it diverts attention from the Annointed Messiah’s trouble and the death of the unions. For my part, I donated to a charity doing disaster relief and am keeping the Japanese people in our prayers. Unlike many disaster stricken countries, the Japanese are our friends and allies and I think we owe it to them to do whatever we can.
I draw the line at Zombie Samurais though. How do you shoot them through the head if they have on one of those big helmets with the fin?
Joe, I have Netflix on my iPhone and TiVo. In fact, I just switched two movies from my DVD-by-mail queue so I can watch them without waiting for the disc. They really need to get more movies onto stream though.
As for blogging while watching movies, I can do that in front of the TV with my phone, so…
Nah. Human flesh gets all rubbery when you microwave it, no matter how well it’s been brined.
Rubbery? Nice Japanese accent you got going there, B Moe.
Anyway, all serious types get the straight dope on nuclear disasters from m’learned friend.
The Left is dying for a huge(r) catastrophe in Japan, so it diverts attention from the Annointed Messiah’s trouble and the death of the unions. For my part, I donated to a charity doing disaster relief and am keeping the Japanese people in our prayers.
Can you see Walker doing a presser where he encourages all the state workers to take the money they would have spent on union dues and give it to the Red Cross instead? Heads would explode!
Conflicting reports. The radioactive cannibal zombie cheerleaders aren’t after your brains so much as your life essence.
Yeah. That’s the Ticket!
It all sounds so familiar….
Radioactive Cannibal Samurai Cheerleaders
Can’t say I was expecting The Vagina Bubbles From Hell, TCW. They came way out of left field.
TaiChiWawa! How in the hell did you get a video of happyfeet being attacked by Sarah Palin’s coochie?
I’m cool with this. It’s the Retroactive Cannibal Samurai that keep me up at night.
Mutant Cannibal Samurai: BAND NAME!!
Ahhh, pooter power. It’s all clear now.
Excoriate me for linking. Again.
William Saletan has a sensible, informative piece on the matter at Slate, if anyone’s interested in such a thing. It’s rather boring, actually, aside from the fun with social engineering that seems to be in play.
Re: JHoward
That’s not altruism. It’s an understanding of personal responsibility as a component of the social compact. One minute you’re looting, the next somebody’s stolen all your shit. The Japanese have more honorable rules of the road. And not much of a welfare state.
One of the comments indicated the reason for the lack of looting in Japan was “no blacks.” I am somewhat ashamed to say I thought long and hard about that as a viable reason and cannot necessarily discount it as a factor.
Aim for the heads? I dunno – I cheat….and use an M240B and hose the shambling ronin down with a stream of 7.62.
hose the shambling ronin down with a stream of 7.62.
Doesn’t that just make ’em angry?
My first guess as to why there’s no looting in Japan?
All the widescreen TVs are at the bottom of the Pacific.
That’s not altruism. It’s an understanding of personal responsibility as a component of the social compact. One minute you’re looting, the next somebody’s stolen all your shit. The Japanese have more honorable rules of the road. And not much of a welfare state.
Let’s not go crazy.
I love Japan but it’s hardly perfect. They are ridiculously conformist, and socialist (in the ‘community’ sense of everyone being all up in everyone’s bidness), somewhat authoritarian, racially homogenous.
They’re not about to go looting each other, hell no. Very little crime in Japan in general, actually. A great deal of social trust.
However, they are about to go picking through each others garbage and they will rat your ass out to the gubmint for not sorting your recyclables properly.
All that social cohesion has it’s benefits, but it also has it’s draw backs.
The best Japanese looters are still sleeping off Shanghai. Plus Mothra fucked up the El and they can’t get the good stuff home.
I changed my mind:
Mutant Cannibal Ninjas!
Neal Boortz once gave mea copy of Camp of the Saints in 1988.
That’s a sick book.
Me
“One of the comments indicated the reason for the lack of looting in Japan was “no blacks.” I am somewhat ashamed to say I thought long and hard about that as a viable reason and cannot necessarily discount it as a factor.”
First of all, there are blacks in Japan and second of all white people loot too.
You should be ashamed.
I love Japan but it’s hardly perfect. They are ridiculously conformist, and socialist (in the ‘community’ sense of everyone being all up in everyone’s bidness), somewhat authoritarian, racially homogenous.
Those first two are flat out wrong stereotypes, as for the third every culture has authoritarian (and it’s not necessarily bad depending on *how* it’s used) aspects and that last one sounds like PC liberal crap. Whether you live in a heterogeneous or homogeneous society means squat when it comes to happiness. I could care less what color or race my society is.
“All that social cohesion has it’s benefits, but it also has it’s draw backs.”
Oh, c’mon, don’t give that post modern bull. Nonsense like that is used to justify being a prick. Leave the fanatical obsession with “non-conformity” with the “post-modern” paranoid left-wing twitchy little Tyler Durden types and the finding “draw backs” to everything that is good to the brain dead moral relativist ilk.
That’s not altruism. It’s an understanding of personal responsibility as a component of the social compact. One minute you’re looting, the next somebody’s stolen all your shit. The Japanese have more honorable rules of the road. And not much of a welfare state.
I was wondering if it was a component of more social unity. Less us v them mentality. There aren’t “Eric Holder’s people” and the man keeping ’em down divisions.
No multiculturalism.
Just people.
If we encouraged a similar mentality – get rid of the hyphens and just became “Americans” we could be less looty, I’m thinking.
Pat’s at it again, now he is claiming there are *three* meltdowns. I have not heard of confirmation of just *one* yet. It’s like he’s going out of his way to find the most pessimistic sources.
I mean, people don’t steal from their neighbor if they like them.
First of all, there are blacks in Japan and second of all white people loot too.
Unless they’re whitish Japanese people. Then they don’t.
Carin, I totally agree. Unfortunately in the U.S. we have self-appointed “leaders” whose whole life is based on fanning the flames of racial and cultural divides.
I figure it’s ‘cuz they’re all so blissed-out on 19th century tentacle pr0n woodcuts that they don’t have the energy or inclination to riot.
Dref? I’m on the side of Matt. It may not be “blacks” that are the looters/problem. but it IS the victim mentality that causes our riots/looting/crime.
Feckless DEMOCRATS have caused this mentality since what, 1940? At least since LBJ anyway. So I see his point.
“Unless they’re whitish Japanese people. Then they don’t.”
No, not those in Japan, I meant in general. And does anybody else hate the term ‘Caucasian?’ It sounds too much like “crustacean” for my taste. Although crustaceans themselves are definitely to my tastes.
IMHO, I don’t think you necessarily have to like your neighbor per se, just respect their property rights. I have a few neighbors who I don’t care much for, but I’m not contemplating the day when I can have a chance to loot their homes just because of that. But the likes of Sharpton and crew are all about breeding disrespect and hate.
I meant more of loving your neighbor because he is you. Not other. I don’t even know my neighbor, but he’s American and thus a part of me.
When thugs loot – they don’t have any respect for other Americans or feel any social cohesion.
In other news, Middle East unrest begins it’s third month tomorrow, in a series of riots and demonstrations that began January 14th in Tunisia, and now is sweeping though Libya.
No widespread looting reported.
But I thought I’d mention it anyway…
I heard two nuke experts on Hannity saying they wished people who didn’t understand what meltdowns were would stop talking breathlessly about meltdowns.
Right now, the rating for damage is a 4. Three Mile Island was a 5, 10x as bad. Chernobyl was 7 (the highest).
But Chernobyl had no containment building. Japan’s reactors do. According to both experts, no harm to humans is likely. The caveat being that they aren’t there, and so they have to rely on outside sources.
Their take was that the hyperventilation and the misinformation being propagated only helps the enviro leftists. And is designed to do such.
— Which of course means that these two experts need to be obsessively stalked in perpetuity for questioning Frey’s honor or some such. I forget how it works when you disagree and tell him he’s helping the left.
Yep. Exactly.
61.
I forget how it works when you disagree and tell him he’s helping the left.
Oh, come ON. He’s being a good man …
Those first two are flat out wrong stereotypes,
Well, sir… I disagree!
They’re stereotypical stereotypes.
as for the third every culture has authoritarian (and it’s not necessarily bad depending on *how* it’s used) aspects
OK, possibly true. Japan still has particular issues with it.
and that last one sounds like PC liberal crap.
No, it’s not. What brought it up was people pointing out the benefits. PC??? I’m saying there’s benefits to being a racially homogenous (substitute “pure” if you please) society. As well as drawbacks.
Whether you live in a heterogeneous or homogeneous society means squat when it comes to happiness.
Not true. There is such a thing as a social ‘trust dividend’. Their are benefits to having a homogenous society. That hardly limits it just to racial homogenousness, but PC or not, that can play a part in it as well.
That’s hardly counter intuitive. There is science and studies to back that conclusion up, but if you bother to think about it, it seems common sense.
Which race doesn’t matter. They’re all interchangable. Actually there aren’t any ‘races’ really, not objective ones – race is a relative concept.
Oh, c’mon, don’t give that post modern bull. Nonsense like that is used to justify being a prick. Leave the fanatical obsession with “non-conformity” with the “post-modern” paranoid left-wing twitchy little Tyler Durden types and the finding “draw backs” to everything that is good to the brain dead moral relativist ilk.
Sorry, dude. I’m way hipper than even the lefties, I’m fricken libertarian. Hell I’m stoned right now.
Po-Mo twitchy Tyler Durden types are the ultimate conformists. Toss a little bread and circuses at them and they’ll be so distracted they’ll do whatever you tell them.
You don’t think the authoritarian, marxist, statist leftwing loves conformity? They demand it. They’ll tell you what to eat, what to drive, where to work, what you’ll get for it, and when you’ll die, for the greater good of the collective group. There chief virtue is egality FFS – think about that: everyone has to be the same.
PC, which you were just bitching and accusing me of, is an attempt to enforce thought conformity through the language.
Japan has been brutally authoritarian for thousands of years. It was like that for a reason. The rabid militarism of a few years ago didn’t come from nowhere and doesn’t entirely disappear that quickly.
Don’t get me wrong: Japan is fundementally different today, and a repitition of that is practically unimaginable. Absurd.
But in Japanese culture, in the stratified language, in the religions, there are certain deap-seated fundemental assumptions that reinforce the idea of thinking of oneself and defining oneself as a member of a group rather than an individual. Of seeing people’s existence in relation to the role they function in to serve the greater society.
That’s when Obama’s death panels off Grandma because she doesn’t pass muster on a cost-benefit analysis. Because it’s not like Grandma is entitled to live her own damn life regardless of whether it’s useful to anyone else.
Indeed. It’s like the various Hypercaffeinated News Monkeys don’t even want to have nuclear power — ’cause that’s the inevitable outcome when even ‘our side’ is fanning the flames of ignorance with this “breaking: nuclear meltdown!” crap. You don’t have to be Nostra-frickin-damus to see that. Hell, just ask Joe Lieberman.
Even if the things went full-on China Syndrome — which I believe is impossible — it still would amount to a getting a zit on a gangrenous limb. Irrelevant in the wake of the larger tragedy.
I’m pretty sure that, world-wide, the band Great White has killed more people than nuclear power.
dref posted on 3/14 @ 4:01 pm
Pat’s at it again, now he is claiming there are *three* meltdowns. I have not heard of confirmation of just *one* yet. It’s like he’s going out of his way to find the most pessimistic sources.
Come on, Patterico has melted down way more than three times.
“Which race doesn’t matter. They’re all interchangable. Actually there aren’t any ‘races’ really, not objective ones – race is a relative concept.”
Entropy, I haven’t heard the ‘race is a relative concept’ before. Would you mind expanding on that for me?
All I’ve got is this song about zombie ninjas to contribute.
Hrm. I could write pages on that.
You ever see the Ancestry.com commercial or whatever, where the people go to Ireland – the land of their forefathers because they are Irish – and find out that their grandparents came to America from Ireland… en route from Sweden because they’re fucking Swedish now?
So what they eat lutefisk now instead of corned beef hash?
Genetic studies (for whatever they are worth) show that humans have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors.
How is that possible? Because you don’t count the same guy twice (or 46 times). Genghis Khan had like 1200 children. You may be the incestuous product of 300 of his great-great-great-great-grand children, which makes you part Mongol.
Now I know what you’re thinking – 1/8327th Mongol doesn’t count as Mongol! Ah, but you’re 1/8327th Mongol… 2200 times! You’re like a quarter Mongolian! Ah, but so is everyone in some areas of Europe. What it means to be a certain ethnicity may in and of itself constitute a blend of others.
All greeks are part persian, to be Greek in 2011AD is to be of significant part Iranian. Any Irishman who’s related to any other Irishman who has black hair, which is all of them, are Spanish.
You don’t know who your daddy is, is what I’m saying. No one does. But it’s not who you think it is far far far more often than you think.
Race is perception. What is “white”? Greeks are white, Swedes are white, Turks are not white. Does a Greek have more in common with a Swede than a Turk? Does a Greek even look more like a Swede than a Turk? What about an Italian? Where do you draw the line? It’s entirely arbitrary. “Hispanic”. “Caucasian”. These things are concepts that were created as political distinctions.
WTF is an Italian? A Roman? An Etruscan? What is a Spaniard – if a Roman is Italian than is a Basque a Spaniard? But then why are the Basque’s ethnically seperatist and trying to seceed? Is a Quebecois a Canadian? Is he a German or is he a Westphalian, or a Bavarian? Oh, he is “white”, like a Muscovite? Or a Russian? Where do you draw the line?
Even if you think you drew the lines small, you’ll find there are smaller still, and no clear distinctions. You reject “white” and go with French and Belgian, which is more specific, but Norman and Walloon is more specific still. Until you define yourself down to a town. And then you find family feuds.
You’ll find great argument about what races are what, and which are the same, and which subgroups are members of which groups. Even when you devise your criteria for what a distinct race is, who gets to decide?
You have a billion or whatever genetic markers. You have a marker for black skin, I have a marker for white skin. So we’re of seperate races eh? But you have a marker for O neg, and I have a marker for O neg, and that black dude over there has a marker for A+, so why are you and I not of the same race and him a different? Why arbitrarily privledge some inherited traits over others? Genes – they are so very complicated and complex and we hardly understand them. Just because the one is easier to see and makes racial distinctions more easily functional?
You have 30 great-great-great-grandfathers from Ghana and 2 from Ireland. I have 4 from Ireland and 4 from Czech Republic and 4 from Sweden and 4 from Poland. That guy has 32 from Mozambique. So who’s the same race as who now? Hell, Ghana’s near as far from Mozambique as it is from Ireland.
I guess it depends on how black is black. 2/3rds? 1/16th? Do we actually have an answer for that one now, or is it racist just to ask?
Race is perception. “One-ness” and “Other-ness” as applies a slightly more specific subset with no actual distinction, just a sort of ineffable ‘racially’ feel.
We choose which distinctions to arbitrarily privledge as meaningful vs. not, and then assign whatever meanings we wished to assign.
Entropy, thanks, and wish I could say more, but I gotta go. Later.
This morning I had shredded wheat with a banana on top, hair is in my comb, death to follow soon.
I don’t eat bananas. I expect to live past the Mayan apocalypse next year, but not by much.
Because of the lack of an atmosphere after that whole end of the world thing.
…kinda puts radiation sickness in another light. A sickly, greenish light.
They had some “expert” from UGA on the radio this morning explaining that even if the radiation is contained and the threat isn’t real, it is the perception and fear of a disaster that is the real problem and society shouldn’t be subjected to such horrifying threats, or some such bullshit.
These fuckers have no shame or morals, and their followers are beyond stupid. We don’t need to compromise with them, we need to kick their fucking ass.
Turks are not white.
I have been to Turkey and a lot of them sure look white. It is a pretty diverse place. But I can confirm you only see fez caps in the tourist bazzars and that you can generally not trust rug merchants.
Great. So when do they stop teaching AGW in schools?
If anybody cares for some actual reporting and opinion by people who are experts then go here. Scroll down to “What is of most current concern?” for the most recent. Below the reporting but before the comments section is this.
Radioactive Cannibal Samurai are pussies.
geoffb – I’ve heard that the effects of fear at the Chernoble site caused more harm than the radiation. It is hard to figure how the media can drum up alarmism for ratings when there are so many sources for information available for everybody to see. Still – I have members of my own family worried about radiation levels that might reach our country. They have college degrees, but tend to gravitate towards the social sciences.
The media just inspire anger and ranting from me whenever I’m forced to or unintentionally watch. I’ve tried to tell those I know that they should not trust what is being broadcast about this.
I see two interests that have converged into a perfect storm. The insatiable hunger of the news for ratings uber alles and the intent of the “greens” to leverage this event to use as another step towards eliminating nuclear power.
As with the BP spill, it is to be a crisis that cannot be wasted, even if it has to be mostly invented as with BP also. Once the narrative is implanted it will be hard to displace. So much of what “everybody knows” of even recent historical events is narrative not fact.
Yep. That’s what bothers me, Geoff. Their aim is clear. So let’s not help them by hyping it up without actual evidence.
It’s plenty terrible already.
I have named my bracket pick over at Ace’s ‘Zombie Samurai Midget Warriors’ I figured I have as much a clue on basketball as Eeyore I and II have on responsible “Japan’s melting into the sea OMG” reporting. Seems fitting.
A good question – “How will the radiation effect the NCAA playoffs”. I’ll go with Purdue, Butler and Notre Dame – as Shep assures me that these teams are the least effected by radiation. Maybe Wisconsin and Kansas. That’s about it.
Are they even playing a round in Atlanta this year? If so, go for your top team to come from that bracket. Stone Mountain puts off enough radiation and radon gas to complement Japan nicely.
If not, then fuck if I know, but the Cheetah III strippers need the filthy lucre from all the present and former NBA players and the groupies need to get in on that baby-daddy money.
I have no idea what you are saying but I like it. Big game in Hoosierland so got to go with the big dogs. Jeff’s stuck with some Rocky Mountain leftovers. Best of luck.
LOL. I’m not sure I know what I’m saying… I’ve been exercising and the lack of oxygen is telling, ain’t it?
Now, or then? Because while Chernobyl wasn’t a criticality event, a great number of men died due to radiation burns and radiation poisoning because of exposure while fighting the fires caused by the initial explosions. Very little fear was involved–in fact, most of the men who went in there did so without knowing or caring the how that much radiation would affect them. They had a job to do; a large number of them became Heroes of the Soviet Union (posthumously, of course) for doing it.
Let’s not downplay how horrific it was even while we affirm it can’t happen again. What happened at Chernobyl was the fault of terrible reactor design and operator error, both of which have been learned from.
What happened at Chernobyl was the fault of terrible reactor design and operator error, both of which have been learned from.
I don’t know. Things seem pretty lax at the nuke plant in Springfield.
According to CNN news on the radio this morning the stock market crash in Japan is due to the nuclear disaster.
Pelligri – Good God, those people that went into that plant, knowing full well of the radiation, deserve every medal in the book. I can’t imagine going into places that assured a slow horrible death. My criticism was aimed at the higher ups who, of course, were no where near the plant.
It’s still about the worse thing that can happen to a nuclear plant.
Time to buy some Japanese stocks.
In Road Warrior, if gasoline is like gold, why weren’t they all riding motorcyles? Why single drivers in 70s muscle cars? Not that there is anything wrong with it, but it does not seem pragmatic?
Joe – A road warrior movie with battery powered cars just wouldn’t sell.
Kind if like today.
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