Friends,
It’s been a couple weeks since horrifying devastation was wrought on Japan by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and giant tsunami, but what we seem to continue to focus on isn’t the human tragedy, but the threat of the unchecked release of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Some people I trust don’t think we should worry about it here on the left coast of the United States, which makes perfect sense to me. Some suggest that the plant was bound to fail in the first place. All I know now is that it’s time for everyone here in unincorporated rural southwestern Riverside County to lose your minds because they’ve found radioactive isotopes from the Fukushima plant in a collector in Riverside. Shhh!
The amount they found is as tiny as you would expect according to the monkey botherers over at the EPA [warning: PDF link]. All the usual suspects are here though. You’ve got your iodine, your cesium, your tellurium; all stuck to a little gizmo waving around up in the green-gray atmosphere of Riverside, CA. How much? The press release doesn’t say except to patronize us with a “100,000 times less radiation than a roundtrip international flight (to chernobyl? -ed)” line. We’re big boys and girls (speak for yourself. -ed), we can take the numbers. If anything at all has come of the calamity that has befallen Japan, it’s that we’ve all become amateur physicists through the reporting.
Of course some people seem to be having difficulty adjusting to this new world we’re facing. Take for instance the fellow in Hemet who took after a couple people with a samurai sword yesterday. I know you’re thinking two things; first, aren’t the Hemet police under siege from deadly gangs of dentists? Why yes they are, but things have calmed down to the point where they could immediately arrest the assailant. The second, and most important question you have must be, what does this have to do with that?
Certainly not this. Or this hysterical tripe.
– bob