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[Doc]

Prob my memory is just shot full of holes. I wonder what I was reading.

[miles]

Your brain is just full of important medical information, like this.

[wombat]

Prob my memory is just shot full of holes. I wonder what I was reading.

Probably also you are not spending eighteen hours a day following this news like I am.

They could have been talking about other plants. The one that's most in the news is not the only one that had to shut down.

[AugustWest]

Probably also you are not spending eighteen hours a day following this news like I am.

Why are you doing this?

[wombat]

Well, I have friends there, and have studied the language, and normally spend part of every evening watching NHK English TV programming, so I have a certain degree of connection to the country. And of course all that programming has been pre-empted by coverage of the news so every time I turn the TV on, there it is.

But you know, I also have the internet so perhaps it has gotten a bit out of hand. I have a dozen browser windows open to various sources of information and it is too easy to click over and get sucked into checking whether they are all saying the same thing at any given time. Fortunately, the time is different enough that most of the people on Twitter go to bed in the middle of my day so at least I can get some work done when, with only the news sites to check.

[Carlos del Vaca]

President Obama appeared on ESPN this week, in a taped segment, running down his picks for the NCAA tournament.  And there are apparently people saying "How can he spend time on something so frivolous, when there's all this stuff going on in Japan and Wisconsin and everything else?!"  Those are probably the same people who complain about everything the president does, so I take it with a grain of salt.

But I've been thinking a lot lately about all the awfulness in the world, and whether it's somehow bad to try to enjoy my own life when something bad is happening somewhere else.  And I've come to the conclusion that it's not.  There has always been bad shit going down somewhere in the world or other; now that we are hyper-connected, we are more aware of it than ever before.  If I spend time moping and not enjoying myself because of what's happened to Japan, I might as well kill myself right now.  Because there will be another bad thing after that, somewhere, and another, and another.  Not to say I don't feel badly for them, or that I won't send a few bucks to the Red Cross to try to alleviate the suffering there or elsewhere.  But at the same time, I'm going to try to move on with my own stuff.

[AugustWest]

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

[wombat]

I'm going to try to move on with my own stuff.

I totally agree this is the right thing to do. But for me, Japan is "my own stuff."  I am no more caring about distant strangers than the average person. But this affects me directly if only in the trivial way of wondering when I will be able to watch my favorite TV programs every night again. If this had happened somewhere else I'd find it quite sufficient to read one newspaper article a day. But this is affecting places and people that I know and hope to see again someday, and people whose Twitter feeds I am following anyway, and Facebook friends who are posting about it. It would be all up in my face anyway unless I actually cut off many of my usual sources of information.

[AugustWest]

I totally agree this is the right thing to do. But for me, Japan is "my own stuff."  I am no more caring about distant strangers than the average person. But this affects me directly if only in the trivial way of wondering when I will be able to watch my favorite TV programs every night again. If this had happened somewhere else I'd find it quite sufficient to read one newspaper article a day. But this is affecting places and people that I know and hope to see again someday, and people whose Twitter feeds I am following anyway, and Facebook friends who are posting about it. It would be all up in my face anyway unless I actually cut off many of my usual sources of information.

I hope your friends are OK.

[Nabubrush]

Hey, did you guys see we finally got a new member? That's right - Spidergoose has moved into the archives!

Sorry.

I wouldn't worry terribly about us not going to nuclear power because of this. It'll happen eventually. The question is whether we'll all be living in domes or underground when we adopt it.

[Nabubrush]

And I also hope that your friends are ok.

[jay-ell]

Wombles, I don't know what kind of phone service you have, but Consumerist has an article today on how some phone companies (including Verizon and AT&T) are dropping all charges for phone calls to Japan until a specified date (some April 15, some April 1). So if you need to get in touch with anyone over there, keep that in mind.

[Nabubrush]

I wonder if Credo is.