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Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

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Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#91

Post by lubos »

patio11 wrote: post #2

There is a bit of overlap here with my comments on HN the last couple of days. I've had to explain it to 100+ friends, family, customers, clients, etc, so I figured I might as well polish it and put it somewhere public. At the risk of stating the obvious: I am not "HN's Japan Guy." There are many, many HNers in Japan. A few dozen of them make it out to the Tokyo meetups. There are many, many perspectives on this disa…

I just realized you are the guy who made bingocardcreator. Man, I know you forever since I used to be joelonsoftware regular before HN just like you :) anyway, thanks for write-up and good luck

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#92

Post by 6ren »

patio11 wrote: post #54
lambda wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a nice line, btw is it literally true? It fits with Deming, quality and six-sigma.

I ask, because Christensen claims that Japan success a few decades ago was because all their successful firms (Toyota, Sony, etc etc) began with disruptive innovations, that needed to be improved, with sustaining innovations. Aiming at quality works really well for this.

He then says their recent hard times are because those disruptive innovations have now become good enough - but the Japanese firms are still improving on quality. He contrasts this with the US, where new disruptive firms are being created all the time (aided by employee mobility, VC/angel/YC non-debt funding, open markets, start-up infrastructure, largely unregulated competition, and strong IP for R&D).

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#93

Post by lukevdp »

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…

Worse case scenario is core meltdown, which poses no risk to humans. The reactor melts into a concrete pit made specifically for that purpose.

Flooding the building with sea water is not something they came up with on the spur of the moment during this crisis. All of their options are well planned.

More info: https://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-w...

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#94

Post by kahawe »

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…

There is quite a difference in the way the situation of the nuclear reactors are describe in patio's article and the way the media here presents it.

patio basically says everything is under control, nothing to worry about, no harmful radiation levels - not more than eating a banana or taking a long distance flight.

The media is talking about meltdown, nuclear catastrophe and there have been at least two explosions by now. US forces moved away from the shores due to radiation, Russia is worried about the wind carrying radioactive caesium and iod all the way over to them. As far as I can tell from news coverage, radiation levels did exceed 500 mikro-sievert, at times were as high as 1500.

It is just hard to understand what all this really means in terms of risk and how bad the situation really is. Meltdown and explosions at a nuclear plant just generally does not sound very safe and "standard procedure" to me.

Anyone can shed some light on what is going on there, from a technical and engineering and maybe even physicist point of view?

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#95

Post by khafra »

patio11 wrote: post #54
lambda wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As Zed Shaw, you could've gotten away with "Japan is justly famous for martial arts, cool gadgets, and staggeringly comprehensive preparations for just about anything. If Batman were a country, that country would be Japan."

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#96

Post by patio11 »

kahawe wrote: post #94
brazzy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is quite a difference in the way the situation of the nuclear reactors are describe in patio's article and the way the media here presents it. patio basically says everything is under control, nothing to worry about, no harmful radiation levels - not more than eating a banana or taking a long distance flight. The media is talking about meltdown, nuclear catastrophe and there have been at least two explosions by…

100 micro-sieverts is approximately equal to the radioactive exposure you'd get from one trip between Japan and Chicago.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#97

Post by megaduck »

robryan wrote: post #80
rwmj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the Japanese don't generate 30% of their electricity from nuclear power for fun or because it's a popular choice. It's by necessity -- Japan imports 99% of its oil and has only tiny coal reserves.

Wondering roughly what kind of cents per kilowatt hour they pay for electricity over there, I know nuclear is a lot more efficient energy generation but have no idea how this translates for the end consumer.

I'm a Tepco (Tokyo) customer. Looking at my most recent electric bill we're paying about 22 yen a kWh, or around 27 cents.

That'll probably go up with Fukushima out of commission.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#98

Post by hunterp »

mistermann wrote: post #84
hunterp wrote: post #83

Nukes are only "safe" when built to spec like the functioning,socialist government of Japan is capable of. And then very "intelligent" blog articles try to rationalize a cancer causing, radiation inducing thing. Nuke plants that are old, not kept up to date, etc are very very dangerous. As economies ebb and flow, the demand for energy always is present, but the resources to keep a plant up to spec are not. Sustainabl…

I have to assume you are joking?

Not joking at all. The reason sustainables are not super popular is that they have high initial investment costs, and represent decentralized power. Unless you have a united force supporting them like the spanish government (Spain is one of the most sustainable countries) or the recent 10 billion dollar investment for offshore wind by South Korea, you are not really going to win the economic battle necessary to get us going sustainable. Sustainables are a form of decentralized power, so there are a lot of reasons why centralized power does not want it to exist.

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#99

Post by charlief »

Thank you for this and it was highly informative, but the article's tone seems a bit apathetic to me. It is still tough for me to stomach even a little engineering pride in the immediate wake of a tragedy of this magnitude. I know the policies and procedures in place worked as they should for the earthquake's immediate damage, but what about the specific preparedness for the tsunami, which will be the largest cause of causalities. It is an enormously challenging problem, but surely more could have been done.

Also: Would be better to say Great Britain and Honshu are about the same size instead that Honshu is larger (Britain is slightly larger). Leiman Shock: slight spelling error in Lehman Brothers?

Re: Patio11's perspective on the Japan Earthquake

#100

Post by Helianthus16 »

charlief wrote: post #99

Thank you for this and it was highly informative, but the article's tone seems a bit apathetic to me. It is still tough for me to stomach even a little engineering pride in the immediate wake of a tragedy of this magnitude. I know the policies and procedures in place worked as they should for the earthquake's immediate damage, but what about the specific preparedness for the tsunami, which will be the largest cause o…

More can always be done. Confining your reaction to the emotional is uninformative and exactly the sort of panic that our media creates and is creating about this event.

If you can't slip smoothly from being sad about the death and destruction to analyzing the disaster response dispassionately, that's your problem.

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