*to Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Κυνόσαργες

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Quote of the day: 'Anzen Dai-Ichi!'

Please rest assured, and don’t flee Tokyo.
"Japan is finished."

 "And so it goes..."

5 comments:

  1. Very nice. The post... very nice. Very simple. Very pedestrian-friendly. Had no idea about the extended title. Slaughterhouse-Five. Great read.

    The picture reminds me of something I read about the still bodies in the riverbed, still standing as they had packed in to avoid burning up. They had apparently suffocated, the fire sucking up all the air. But that was war.

    About the 1923 event... also happened to meet an older lady (a few years ago) who'd been a child during that quake. She'd described how happy she was to see her father when he made it home on foot a day or so later. The timing of that quake had caused fires too...something about..oh, Wikipedia's got the massacre of Koreans down too.

    One of the comments (anonymous) in the WS 'and' link was interesting. Like a foregone conclusion. Talking about rebuilding a New Tokyo after the devastation.

    After each disaster, a core control-element was allowed to remain in power. Some might say that helped with the rebuilding.

    The population would be decimated. I do not look forward to these kinds of things.

    Scary stuff to think about.

    Anyway...

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  2. You read this?

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8851989/Japan-considers-building-back-up-capital-in-case-of-emergency.html

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  3. Chris, you've been here a while, but maybe not during my first sojourn mid-nineties. They were talking about it then, and did about as much as you expect. Not sure a 'back-up' capital is the best idea, but moving government to Kansai might be: as it is now Tokyo is the centre for government, industry, media and culture. It all goes down together. No recovering from that. Surprised they never did complete it, as the kickbacks for the mob, and the politicians among all of that poured concrete would have been something.

    Will, I am starting to lay in more to my apartment. I have an infant here now, and he needs food and water I can trust. My thyroids are over forty, so I am less worried.

    The fire-storms have made me worry too, as the housing here, as in Tohoku and Kobe, goes up at once. Doesn't help that half the homes still use kerosene. Earthquakes, saturation bombing: you'd think they might learn. My building is concrete and I am almost ten stories above ground (keeping me above the 3m flood markings when the levees break, too) but in a big fire, that won't do. People boiled in the canals, but there is a medium sized river near here, and several bigger further. I hope the trick is to head into the wind, as the fires will get stronger as they travel further.

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  4. Uhmmmm...just checked. Yes. Read it not too long after it came out. I'm not too convinced that people are actually going to do anything until they absolutely have to. Often times, that means too little, too late. That's what experience has taught me (sets mirror down). Wait a minute! That sounds eerily familiar to a project proposed for India. The population 50,000 is where I'm making the mental connection.

    Here: http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2012/01/japans-government-industrial-complex-to.html

    Probably no relation at all. Just speculation. Yeah.

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  5. I should add that I have a dark kernel of hatred for Japanese hierarchy, based around the Kobe earthquake. I was not in Kobe, but I saw it all unfold on TV from Kanto. Most of those thousands did not have to die. Even with the rabbit hutches, kerosene stoves and idiotic zoning, most of them did not have to die. Cunts dithering over making a decision murdered them: "Dou shimashou-ka?"

    Excepting rare miracles, you save all of the lives in the first several hours, so you get people moving immediately. My awe and surprise at the helicopters flying north right away last March was destroyed as soon as we found out they have no proper nuclear regulations, nor response teams. Christ, if there is one thing Japanese organizations cannot be relied upon to do it is to improvise. Did I bring up 'the War' yet? They couldn't change tack even when their ships were going to the bottom: didn't change their naval codes for the ENTIRE war.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanshin_earthquake#Response

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