Tuesday Evening EDT/
Wednesday Morning Japan Time
Disaster Update

"Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding." Xi Zhi 

The New York Times has an excellent piece today on the pathetic state of farmers in Fukushima prefecture who are slowly realizing that lands that their families have farmed for centuries are probably worthless. 

“We think we’ll lose 80 percent of our income,” Ryuji Togashi, who runs a Towa-area farmer’s co-op store, said last weekend. “We’ve been damaged by rumor. People think that all our vegetables are affected by radiation. We can’t even sell the products that aren’t affected.”

 The Japanese face a classic conundrum. [1590s, Oxford University slang for "pedant," also "whim," etc., later (1790) "riddle, puzzle." Also spelled quonundrum. The sort of ponderous pseudo-Latin word that was once the height of humor in learned circles.-Online Etymological Dictionary] They need to keep dousing the reactors and spent fuel pools with water to prevent disastrous meltdowns and fires; yet the water draining from these areas is seriously radioactive and cannot be collected for safe disposal if such a thing is possible.