BUS YOUR OWN TRAY

Expert #1:

‘We have not detected any increases beyond what you’d expect historically. Nothing you can attribute to Japan,’ says Philip Fine of the South Coast Air Quality Management District in Southern California. (LAT)

Expert #2:

Minuscule amounts of radioactive particles believed to have come from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected on the U.S. west coast, diplomatic sources said on Friday. The level of radioactivity was far too low to cause any harm to humans, they said. (Reuters)

Depending on who you talk to, nuclear fallout from Japan either is or is not raining down on California, albeit in trace amounts that everyone assures us are not harmful. Fine. I’m stepping out of my isolation bubble now, though it was rather enjoyable to ride to work in a hamster ball this morning.

But the fact that there’s clear division within the nuclear expert community, and that the giant explosion from Wednesday did actually send radioactive particles into the jet stream, and that these particles are going to start hitting California on Tuesday, and that nobody seems to want to address the possible effects of all this on the produce coming out of the Central Valley — yeah, I’m not quite ready to ratchet down my general state of unease just yet.

- A guy in a giant black BMW X6 rolled up, parked illegally, got out of his car and started freaking out about something. He was wearing the uniform of the bagel place workers. Then he pointed frantically at his iPhone and drove away.

- Someone wants to know where to put the fifteen boxes of red and white tulips.

- Judging by the cardboard cutouts they’re now placing on the sidewalk, the bagel place has its own brand of bottled water.

lazybookreviews:

It actually reminded me a little of how sometimes people say “oh, your dog doesn’t really know the word ‘walk,’ he just knows that when you make that particular sequence of noises, he gets taken for a walk,” and I go, “what kind of metaphysically gifted concept of language do YOU possess, exactly?”

I am not a nuclear physicist. Obviously. (I have a tumblr. That alone disqualifies me.) But I cannot shake this feeling that every single person who talks about Japan in the press is downplaying the whole thing. Here in California, everyone is all, “Yeah, no fallout will reach us unless it’s a Chernobyl-sized disaster, and even then the particles will be so dispersed after the 5,000 mile trip that the danger is small. You know. It’s probably small. I mean maybe it will be bigger.”

Except, the European atomic scientists are already pretty sure this is going to hit Chernobyl levels. And according to the Internet, only one reactor melted down at Chernobyl. There are at least two reactors in Japan that are headed toward full meltdown, with the potential for four to reach that level.

So what if this whole thing eclipses Chernobyl? They don’t even have a rating for that. And, yeah, I’m making it a little all about us when clearly this would be horrific (it already is) for Japan, but nuclear fallout is already scheduled to hit California this weekend, albeit in some tiny amount, and if four reactors blow, then what?

And I’m worried and getting frustrated with the media to the point I’m starting to sympathize with climate change skeptics and creationists who say the experts are dummies. Because the experts here clearly don’t have a grip on what’s happening, and when they tell me oh yeah there’s nothing to worry about it just lacks internal credibilty.

Somebody please tell me I’m an asshole and prove it.

Also, I left the coffee machine on ALL DAY today so clearly I’m kind of an idiot.

The reactor with the roof gone and the walls blown off is something of a sobering sight. Definitely fullscreen it.