Japan Coverage

On Friday I waited on line and got an iPad. I've basically been playing with it since. I love it. I'll write up some posts about it (maybe later today).

I do love reading on it. The New York Times app is amazing, maybe the best news experience I've had. The NPR, CNN and Economist apps are all great too. Each has a different layout for the news (text, images, video, audio) and they all seem natural. It's obvious it was an effort because other apps aren't as easy to use. I've also been very happy with Instapaper, Reeder, Echofon and to a lessor extent Apple's Mail. More on those later, but I have been using it exclusively and have been keeping up with info.

Still it's been very odd enjoying playing with it and reading news about the disasters in Japan. Viewing images on the iPad is great. Seeing Big Picture quality photographs of towns swept away, fires, tsunamis, and displaced people is both amazing and devastating. I knew that the iPad didn't do flash, but I've been surprised that I've only run into it once so far (that I know of). I've watched lots of video embedded in articles and linked to from various sources and it's all played just fine. And then you realize you're watching a giant wave destroy an entire town and that car driving down the road moving off camera probably didn't make it.

I've also had the TV on in the background, both network and cable news. I'm completely amazed at how bad the coverage is. The initial video from Japanese TV of the wave was mesmerizing. The talking heads, even the experts, have been useless. I don't know why a producer would think anyone would want to watch a broken up Skype video of a journalist stuck in traffic.

And now everything is about the "meltdown". I've already seen hours of coverage this morning and no anchor has asked anything more substantial than "what about the meltdown"? The experts then have 30 seconds to explain something that doesn't fit into 30 seconds but takes more like 5 minutes. What boggles my mind is that I've yet to see any channel, in their hours and hours coverage on the topic, devote five continuous minutes to explaining what's going on the the reactors. They can't even make it clear how many reactors are having problems. I think it was Jon Stewart who said it years ago, in this age of 24 hour news stations, there's no time to cover anything in depth. It's moronic.

Doc Searls wrote Earthquake turns TV networks into print. He says the TV is just echoing stuff first seen in other sources and the best info is from Al Jazeera English, Twitter and Wikipedia. I haven't found much useful on Twitter. Some news sources (e.g., Breaking News) have some info, but not much and it's often links to articles from other sources. Following tags like #Japan is just a sea of noise. The wikipedia page 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami is an excellent summary of everything. It's nice to see the article of record being written incrementally.

So as best as I understand it, there are two plants that are in crisis. One has two reactors and another has three. There are apparently other plants in Japan that are having some issues, but I don't know how many and they seem to be much less significant. This Scientific American article, Nuclear Experts Explain Worst-Case Scenario at Fukushima Power Plant, is ok, but still not very coherent.

Here's a little on the Science of Tsunamis and how earthquakes cause them. I also heard part of a piece on Science Friday (on the way to the Apple Store) explaining it. I get how an underwater quake can generate a big wave and that it's not so much the magnitude of the quake but how close it is to the ocean floor that is the necessary factor. That it moves at about 500 miles an hour is pretty amazing but easy enough to accept. I don't understand how that fact was used to first measure the depth of the ocean. I also get how the wave is low in the ocean and can be small, only 6 feet tall and that it's not that big deal for boats mid-sea. And as it gets to shore and the ocean floor rises, pushes the wave's height together and makes it gain a huge force as it hits shore. What I don't get is what the wave is. I think of a wave as being what I see at the beach, water coming to shore. But with a tsunami, apparently there isn't water at the surface moving 500 miles an hour. So what is the wave? I don't think it's only at the ocean floor but that makes more sense to me. Anyone know?

Ok, of course the tsunami wikipedia page is pretty good, with animations and everything. The wave has small amplitude but a huge wavelength so it's a huge mass of water. Still shouldn't water somewhere be moving at 500 miles an hour? The article still has dumb sentences like "Except for the very largest tsunamis, the approaching wave does not break (like a surf break), but rather appears like a fast moving tidal bore." I suspect only a few people know what a tidal bore is. It's pretty dumb to explain something by saying it's not like this thing you know but more like this thing you don't know. And if you go to the tidal bore page it says it's not like a tsunami.

I've yet to see a scale on any map on TV. I've heard reports say Japan is a small island but as I understand it, it's basically the size of the east coast which I don't consider small. I have heard that Sendai to Tokyo is about 250 miles, though Google Maps says 227 to drive on the direct highway. That's almost exactly New York City to Washington DC. Still the images from the air of towns devastated give me no sense of how big an area I'm looking at, how far inland it, how much of the coast was devastated, etc. Can't anyone put up a color coded map? Someone must have flown a helicopter with a camera along the whole coast by now.

Another thing I'm missing from the coverage is any real sense of how it's affecting the Japanese. From the Japanese homes around Tokyo I was in 10 years ago, I was surprised at how small they were and how little the kitchens were. Most homes have mini fridges (like I had in college) and not an average fridge you'd find in the US. There were what we would call small stores everywhere and people stopped on their way to get food. This isn't just packets of ramen, but very fresh food to cook that night. If there's a big disruption, I suspect people have much less supplies on hand than in the US. I heard reports that store are empty and I believe that. Though another aspect is that they are much more prepared than we are in the US for such things, so maybe they do have supplies. I think as a society they are also more orderly than we are, so they follow the instructions they get.

I haven't seen anything comparing it to Katrina but I can't help but think that people are are calm and in shelters and being constructive. The long water lines I've seen are all orderyly. Compare that to the images we saw in New Orleans 5 days after the storm? Also I've heard of no infighting between city, state and federal authorities. Maybe it isn't making our news but I suspect it's just not a factor.

I have to note, this is the most cynical thing I've seen about the disaster. Stock futures drop on Japan quake, oil below $100. "Oil prices dipped below $100 for the first time this month. The quake is likely to cut short-term demand for crude from Japan, which is the world's third biggest oil consumer." Here's some more info.