Over at the NYTimes Peter Wynn Kirby has kicked off a nice discussion of nuclear disaster in Japanese pop culture, which is what put me in mind of Gojira. The staff here at TPUSA has been reading through the discussion and found one comment to be particularly potent. It’s by Bert from Philadelphia:
Nuclear power is perfectly safe if it is place in a location that we know in advance will be unmolested by earthquake, terrorism, uprising, tornado for the next half century. And that it is made of pure unobtainium* so that the parts never break or wear out unexpectedly. And the software that runs it is bug free. And the operators will never be inattentive, sick, drunk or drugged up, or having sex instead of watching the gauges.
*Jeez, I hope James “Avatar” Cameron hasn’t trade-marked that term.
Transition Party USA 
#1 by Charlie Keil on March 16, 2011 - 6:15 am
I thought much of the humor in Bert’s post was in the spelling mistakes, imperfections, mutations, all the evidence that humans are very error prone, conscious and speaking but not necessarily thinking. I’ll go copy the original and paste it in a comment box.
#2 by Charlie Keil on March 16, 2011 - 6:57 am
“Liberty Lover,
You are right. Nuclear power is perfectly safe if it is place in a location that we know in advace will be unmolested by earthquake, terrorism, uprising, tornado for the next half century. And that is is make of pure unobtainium so that the parts never break or wear out unexpectedly. And the sortware that runs it is bug free. And the operators will never be inattentive, sick, drunk or drugged up, or having sex instead of watching the gauges.”
This is Bert of Philadelphia’s sloppy original, “sortware” included. “that is is make of pure unobtainium” is pure poetic genius in a class with e.e. cummings or James Brown. What it is what it is.
In the first comment, “Liberty Lover” closes his argument for the safety of nuclear technology by blaming any nuke accidents on the “poor judgement on the parts of humans”. But poor judgements r’ us all over the planet all the time! Poor judgement is pervasive, partly because advertising helps us swallow lies and inferiority messages (you don’t have this you’re inferior, you don’t own that you’re a dope) dozens of times a day. In an era when science and technology magnify poor judgments and morally evil decisions to a gigantic scale Godzillas are becoming the only reality and will be coming ashore soon if we don’t Transition to sustainable very quickly indeed.
“Oh NO, there goes Tokyo!” And New York City!! As downwind of Indian Point as it ever was.