mariness

As if Japan wasn't enduring enough, a volcano decided to leap into the fun.

Since I could tell that some of the stuff the media is saying about seawater is dead wrong, I am questioning some of the confusing reports about the nuclear reactors in Japan. This, an explanation of nuclear reactors, was forwarded to me earlier; they link to the IAEA.org which is providing updated if (to me) somewhat vague information. I will also note that coverage seems to be falling into "pro nuclear" and "anti nuclear" camps which is not helpful for getting accurate information about to the public. Both camps are biased. (Disclosure: I tend toward the pro nuclear camp, with the added note that this disaster and the petrochemical/natural gas fires that also resulted stress the importance of developing solar/wind energy technologies.)

I can, however, say that if anyone is telling you that seawater is at a constant temperature and salinity you should probably change the channel. If anyone says anything about "pure" seawater (seawater has many, many things dissolved in it, particularly seawater that close to a land mass: nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, carbon dioxide, iron, copper, mercury, boron and many other elements besides sodium and chloride) you should also probably change the channel.

And that it would be awfully nice to not have to constantly be irritated at the media.

It's not even 10:30 yet.

My dreams last night started bizarrely enough - I was travelling in Romania, which had an extraordinary amount of Asian art for Romania and more resembled Cambodia than Romania, but my dream self is not good with geography when the horror hit: I found I couldn't read. At all. I kept wildly going through books and standardized tests and newspapers and magazines but the print made no sense - and it was regular, English print; I knew that, but I couldn't read or understand it.

I woke up still thinking I was in Romania. It took a few minutes for me to find myself, and then I grabbed a book, and then another book, and a third book, just to make sure I wasn't reduced to reading just one book. Then I shook a little. I know reading is important to me; I just didn't realize how important.

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Afterwards, I came out to find that today's minor planned expedition must be cancelled on account of rain, and turned the computer on to read about the horrific 8.8 earthquake in Chile. Put everything else into perspective.

Earthquakes scare me. I've only been in very minor ones, in Italy and Japan and very oddly, upstate New York (I know that New York doesn't strike anyone as an earthquake zone, which is why it took us all awhile to realize that what we were feeling wasn't a major malfunction of the dryer, but a tiny earthquake.) But each time it's been freaky; it upsets my inner conviction of how the world is supposed to work. We'll ignore for a second the whole plate tectonic explanation of how the world actually works, instead of the way my mind would like it to work. in a way, I suppose, it allows for the type of world I prefer: a shifting, ever changing one, where even mountains and stars aren't all that eternal. But it's a bit jolting when it happens.

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Chile is in comparatively better shape to survive an earthquake than Haiti, but this was a much, much worse earthquake. The pictures are already horrific, and aid agencies will be needing financial assistance.

On a marine biologist point, Reuters is reporting that a major tsunami wave hit the Juan Fernandez Islands. These fairly isolated islands are known for about two things: one, the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe lived there for a few years, and more critically from a biology perspective, the islands are home to the rare Juan Fernandez Fur Seal, a species that almost entirely died out but has been slowly climbing back thanks to a fierce conservation effort by Chile, to a considerably more stable population of about 12,000 individuals. These are incredibly cute, if shy, seals, and I'm hoping that their habitat, and one of the rare conservation success stories, wasn't too devastated.