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Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

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Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#51

Post by HSO »

ugh wrote: post #47
HSO wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It could have been much worse but it is bad. Guess the glass can be half-empty or half-full. FWIW, I'm also sitting in Germany and I'm mighty impressed by the Japanese response. It's bad but it could have been much worse.

I did not in any way say that the Japanese response was inadequate or even merely ok and I have seen nobody in the media making a statement to that effect (nuclear incident excluded – but that’s mostly about the lack of information and contradictory information). Saying that the situation in the affected areas in Japan (which, even relative to Japan’s size, is quite a large area) is most certainly bad is in itself no…

Hmpf, I suppose this is a misunderstanding. I was just "playing" with your last sentence. I did not get that impression and certainly didn't (intend to) put words in your mouth.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#52

Post by lambda »

mattdeboard wrote: post #33

> "Japanese does not have a word for excessive preparation." Neither does English, as you've just demonstrated!

Yeah, this is a fairly common snowclone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone) that is often false, or when true transmits very little information at all: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3001

Just because someone doesn't have a word for something doesn't mean they have a concept for it; they might express it in two words instead of one. Also, most of the time you hear the claim that a language doesn't have a word for something, the claim is wrong, and the language actually does have such a word, while the person in question is ignorant of the language they are talking about (I presume that patio11 is not ignorant of Japanese, but may just be making a sloppy generalization).

It's used as a way of demonstrating that some entire culture thinks or acts in some particular way, which is usually a poor approximation of reality. While there are distinct cultures that have distinct practices, cultures are generally not so homogenous as to not even have a way to express a particular concept that goes against cultural norms.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#54

Post by patio11 »

lambda wrote: post #52
mattdeboard wrote: post #33

> "Japanese does not have a word for excessive preparation." Neither does English, as you've just demonstrated!

Yeah, this is a fairly common snowclone ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone ) that is often false, or when true transmits very little information at all: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3001 Just because someone doesn't have a word for something doesn't mean they have a concept for it; they might express it in two words instead of one. Also, most of the time you hear the claim that a language doesn't hav…

As a linguist? I agree, I don't like it, and literally that post went through my head when I was re-reading prior to hitting publish. As a writer? It is zippy and communicative, more than "The nation of Japan has chosen, through its political process, to invest a large amount of its resource surplus into disaster preparedness even though some observers believe it has long-since passed the point of diminishing returns."

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#55

Post by neutronicus »

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…

Desperate, but not unforeseen. I guarantee you that there is something on file at Japan's nuclear regulatory agency describing exactly what they're doing now and the circumstances under which to do it.

Nuclear engineering is imagining the worst case, every reload, and coming up with a plan for what to do to contain radioactive material if it happens.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#56

Post by pokjhnboi »

Klonoar wrote: post #3

Thank. Fucking. God. I am getting increasingly tired of explaining these points to everyone who asks me (currently in Tokyo). A well worded piece that I can just link to, very nice to see at the moment.

No thank Fucking engineers. God did the deed - engineers countered it.

Given the few 1000s casualties against a Mag8.9 earthquake I think God lost this one

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#57

Post by elptacek »

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…

I guess it goes without saying that this very thoughtfully composed post also implies is that it's not only the media infrastructure that is failed. But the answer is written into the post as well: be involved. Apparently everyone in Japan has a duty in times of crisis, and it's not something opted into.

I am genuinely jealous, after reading this post. In that I would love for _my_ country to have its shit together to this degree. That, also, goes without saying.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#58

Post by angus77 »

jrockway wrote: post #41
burke wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unlikely. The first character in taifuu means "big", and the second means "wind". They came up with this on their own; and it's simply a coincidence that other languages have a word that sounds similar.

Actually, the first character in typhoon is 「台」, which means something like "stand" or "platform". It's also the first character in "Taiwan". I've read before that the word "typhoon" was of Arabic origin and came to Japan from Chinese, but the word spread to the West via Japan.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#59

Post by w1ntermute »

mattdeboard wrote: post #33

> "Japanese does not have a word for excessive preparation." Neither does English, as you've just demonstrated!

Just like how English "doesn't have a word" for 我慢 ("gaman")[0], except it does (several, in fact)[1].

0: http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/sympathy-for-jap...

1: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/en/wiki/%E6%88%91%E6...

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#60

Post by patio11 »

pokjhnboi wrote: post #56
Klonoar wrote: post #3

Thank. Fucking. God. I am getting increasingly tired of explaining these points to everyone who asks me (currently in Tokyo). A well worded piece that I can just link to, very nice to see at the moment.

No thank Fucking engineers. God did the deed - engineers countered it. Given the few 1000s casualties against a Mag8.9 earthquake I think God lost this one

Take it to Reddit, please.
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