This and That, Including 
Monday Evening EDT/ 
Tuesday Morning Japan Time
Disaster Update

With an assist this evening from the words of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872).


"Man is what he eats."


Food tainted by radiation will affect the Japanese people for a long time to come reports the Toronto Globe and Mail.

“Repeated consumption of certain products is going to intensify risks, as opposed to radiation in the air that happens once,” says Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the World Health Organization.
Shoppers in Asia are avoiding Japanese food reports Bloomerg.

“The present age ... prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence ... for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.”

Power rationing due to the earthquake and the nuclear crisis is affecting Japanese industry. The Business Times is projecting the possibility of zero growth in Japan this year.

The three most damaged reactors are still without power to the controls and pumping systems.
Highly radioactive water seeping from reactor 2 at Fukushima Daiichi has been found in a trench outside the building. The water is emitting radioactivity at a rate of 1 sievert an hour. Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano urged evacuees from the area  to stop returning  to their homes to retrieve possessions citing the extreme danger.

"Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity."


Masataka Shimizu, President of TEPCO, has not been seen in public, nor has he attended crisis management meetings with public officials since March 13. The company has explained  this by saying he is suffering from exhaustion due to overwork. In another, more honorable age, Mr. Shimizu would have performed a seppuku by now.