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Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

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Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#31

Post by burke »

patio11 wrote: post #15
alexandros wrote: post #13

I hate to be -that- Greek, but the word typhoon in English is arguably either Greek or Arabic in origin. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=typhoon May the mocking commence.

Well, you learn something new every day. (The Japanese word, borrowed from Chinese, sounds like "taifuu.")

I had to stop and think about that one for a while. Are there any cases that you know of where a Japanese word is anglicized before becoming an English word? It seems like english speakers have an easy enough time guessing at Japanese pronunciation that we normally keep the direct romanization. This is why "typhoon" seemed weird to me. It makes a lot more sense that both languages would have imported it from Greek.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#32

Post by gbhn »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #11

English-language reporting on the matter has been so bad that my mother is worried for my safety. I can believe it. So, on the one hand, it often seems like HN spends way too much time absorbed with inside-baseball conversations on the design of social news. How do we keep social-media communities intelligent and informative? How do we prevent them from being constantly trolled, dominated by sugar-coated memetic fluf…

Thanks for this post. The suppression of bullshit is a glaring hole in our media environment. It's at least moderately plausible that intelligent and informed posts like Patrick's here can now get very wide distribution thanks to the internet. But what we don't have is a good way to incent the more hairspray-reliant members of the media sphere to read things like this and become informed.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#34

Post by mantas »

ugh wrote: post #26
mantas wrote: post #7

Agreed. After living in Japan for a while, european point of view on this earthquake makes me smile. Anyway, prayers and best wishes to Japan. On nuclear reactors: I bet Japan will restart them soon. Give them a month, max 3. For the fcks sake, they still hunt whales. IMHO Japan is one of those countries that still don't give a damn about loud-screamos. Although they'll upgrade their plants to prevent failure like th…

What is the European view? I have been told time and time again in the German media that Japan is prepared for disasters like this as good as one can be prepared, that they know exactly what to do [0] and that everyone is coping with it without much fuss. I have also seen several maps of the affected regions, showing clearly that not all of Japan is affected. The blog article wasn’t that surprising to me and seemed v…

At least in Lithuanian mass media coverage in one sentence is "Shit did hit the fan". And featured article in biggest news website this weekend is notice issued by National Nuclear Smth saying nuclear stuff shouldn't hit us. Probably.

I haven't seen single article in local media saying how well Japanese survived the earthquake/tsunami. It's more about how shitty situation (usually with ever-rising dead/missing headcount) is and rat-race to find worse pictures of post-apocalyptic Japan.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#35

Post by [deleted] »

burke wrote: post #31
patio11 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you learn something new every day. (The Japanese word, borrowed from Chinese, sounds like "taifuu.")

I had to stop and think about that one for a while. Are there any cases that you know of where a Japanese word is anglicized before becoming an English word? It seems like english speakers have an easy enough time guessing at Japanese pronunciation that we normally keep the direct romanization. This is why "typhoon" seemed weird to me. It makes a lot more sense that both languages would have imported it from Greek.

[deleted]

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#36

Post by mantas »

brazzy wrote: post #29
mantas wrote: post #7

Agreed. After living in Japan for a while, european point of view on this earthquake makes me smile. Anyway, prayers and best wishes to Japan. On nuclear reactors: I bet Japan will restart them soon. Give them a month, max 3. For the fcks sake, they still hunt whales. IMHO Japan is one of those countries that still don't give a damn about loud-screamos. Although they'll upgrade their plants to prevent failure like th…

Re reactors: you're kidding yourself. The reacors that shut down regularly will be restarted, sure. But those where cooling failed will NOT run in a month or 3. Those where the core melted are gone beyond salvage. And patio11 is talking bullshit as well: the situation at Fukushiuma may not be a Apocalyptic Nightmare Scenarios yet , but the systems did not work "exactly as designed", the situation it's not under contr…

Just to clarify - I meant reactors that are OK. Failed ones won't be restarted for sure.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#37

Post by lisper »

patio11 wrote: post #30
lisper wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to know whether Godaido Hall in Sendai survived the tsunami?

I live several hundred miles from Miyagi prefecture. If this is a matter of life-or-death importance to you, find my contact info and I will find someone for you to speak to about it. If not, wait a few weeks and the prefectural tourism board will be able to help you out.

Nowhere near life-and-death. I just visited there about a year ago, was curious, and thought you might just know. I'll wait for the official word.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#38

Post by ugh »

mantas wrote: post #34
ugh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the European view? I have been told time and time again in the German media that Japan is prepared for disasters like this as good as one can be prepared, that they know exactly what to do [0] and that everyone is coping with it without much fuss. I have also seen several maps of the affected regions, showing clearly that not all of Japan is affected. The blog article wasn’t that surprising to me and seemed v…

At least in Lithuanian mass media coverage in one sentence is "Shit did hit the fan". And featured article in biggest news website this weekend is notice issued by National Nuclear Smth saying nuclear stuff shouldn't hit us. Probably. I haven't seen single article in local media saying how well Japanese survived the earthquake/tsunami. It's more about how shitty situation (usually with ever-rising dead/missing headco…

Shit did actually hit the fan. Several thousand people are dead. It could have been much worse but it is bad.
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