Martin Heideggar in a Bucolic Setting

Tuesday Morning EDT/
Tuesday Evening Japan Time
Fukushima etc. Shitstorm Update


While reluctantly noting words of Nazi philosopher Martin Heideggar


“The Fuhrer alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn to know ever more deeply: from now on every single thing demands decision, and every action responsibility.”


Prime Minister Naoto Kan stated that Japan "would tackle the problem while in a state of maximum alert" until the disaster is brought under control.

NHK reports "No major progress is reported in the effort to drain radioactive water filling the basements of turbine buildings near 3 reactors in the damaged Fukushima nuclear facility" today.

Japanese automakers may be brought to their knees by the ramifications of the earthquake said the Japan Times. Parts intended for plants in the United States are becoming unavailable.

"Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy."

More plutonium has been found in the soil around the Fukushima Daiichi complex. Authorities are insisting the levels are not dangerous.

"Being and time determine each other reciprocally, but in such a manner that neither can the former - Being - be addressed as something temporal nor can the latter - time - be addressed as a being."

The plight of the workers at the site is shown in the following passage. 

Huddling at the plant's 'quake-resistant' tower, resting workers lie on lead matting to prevent exposure to radiation which can rise up to 10 micro-sieverts an hour in that part of the complex.
'Workers sleep in conference rooms, hallways or near bathrooms. Each person is given one blanket, everyone sleeps on the floor in rows,' said Kazuma Yokota, a nuclear safety agency inspector stationed at the plant. 'We want to avoid staying too long as much as we can, because we are exposed to radiation every day. I've been exposed to 883 micro-sieverts in the past five days,' the exhausted-looking 39-year-old confided to broadcaster NHK. The Singapore Straits Times

This must be a error or misinformation. That 883 micro-sieverts seems exceedingly low considering the levels of radiation admitted at the plant by officials, as high as 1000 millisieverts an hour. I suspect that is intended to be read as  883 millisieverts. But the picture Mr. Yokota describes of his environment is instructive.

"Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man."

The highly radioactive water at plant 2 is still rising, now into more tunnels and basement rooms Tuesday evening.
The problem of the capture and safe disposal of the water being used to cool the various reactor cores and spent rod cooling ponds as well as the extremely radioactive water collecting in and around plant 2 seems to be a question without an answer at this juncture. Most of it just seems to be draining into the sea.

"Only a god can save us."