Going Bananas

[ UPDATE 27 March 2011 – … and The Media keeps pushing the banana scare]

Banana Benders  🙂

What’s really been happening with our global Media services over the last week? Have the world’s newspapers and TV been reporting an objective view of the facts about events in Japan … or … have the MSM (main stream media) been  … going bananas … again?

 

If you believed the reports flooding the news services about a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima power plant then one could end up quite confused:

“These Japanese operators sure are hardy guys… First they withstand 1000 times the normal radiation, and they even continue working while being boiled alive (100C) … Their control room is placed right on top of the reactor for added fun, and when it explodes around them, they’re still doing their job. Are they all Chuck Norris?”

     

One could also be a bit skeptical of the press “information”, apply some critical thinking, do a bit of independent fact checking and come to the opposite conclusion:

“It has gotten to the point where I can barely watch the news. The hysteria driven media consistently endeavors to one-up itself on the terrors of radiation. You know, “significantly increased levels of radiation have been detected…” Of course, they fail to provide a baseline dose rate before the earthquake/accident and then do not say what is the significantly increased dose, so that sane, rational people can actually make comparisons and draw reasonable conclusions.”  

And what might be this “significantly increased dose“ ? Let’s try the familiar Banana Equivalent Dose (BED) :

  = 10 x  
“The radiation spiked up to 30 bananas a day (2 days ago) and then fell back down to 1 to 2 bananas per day.”

One could also make a case that the reporters have been inhumane in their treatment of the Japanese tsunami vicitms.
   
“With 10,000 people missing due the tsunami and earthquake , evacuating 200,000 more because of this nuclear “incident” is a huge distraction of man-power and other resources that are needed to help the tsunami victims.”

Some people seem to be standing up to the current shameful news disinformation campaign, but right now this Media-Made-Tsunami of whipped up fear seems to have the world sucessfully in its grip. More comparative/relative facts would help the public … like these.  

First, how many people have been killed by the Fukushima nuclear power station? Let’s have a look shall we?

Not too many dead. None. About the same amount as Three Mile Island or 0 (zero). The 2 missing may have been swept away by the 7m high tsunami. Of course, we are not including the 10 000 or so Japanese that really did lose their lives along the Japanese coast to the north.

Second, what are the effects of radiation exposure at Fukushima compared to say … chest x-rays? 

 “At 4:10PM on March 16, a radiation level of 1530 micro sievert per hour was recorded at the main gate of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
o For comparison, a human receives 2400 micro sievert per year from natural radiation in the form of sunlight, radon, and other sources. One chest CT scan generates 6900 micro sievert per scan.”

Another pertinent question might be: Do other forms of power generation have problems? Well … yes.

     

Looking a bit closer at clean-renewable-environmentally friendly hydroelectric power generation, we begin to see the truly horrific scale of disasters (already happened, not may or might or possible) from these “green & good” forms of power stations.

 
“As a consequence of the terrible rainfall a total of 64 dams failed and the Banqiao Dam was one of the dams to fail. Where the Banqiao Dam failed a giant wave swept the land covering 6 miles and peaking at heights around 23 feet! This titanic wave traveled at around 30mph and decimated the surrounding area taking 231, 000 lives“

Or why not another example from a few years later, at the same time as the US & World Media scared us witless by the 0 deaths and 1/75 of a banana of iodine radiation at TMI.

    
“During the same month as TMI (Three Mile Island nuclear accident) in 1979, a large hydro dam in Gujarat Province in India (Morbi Dam) ruptured and drowned 10,000 people in less than 15 minutes, and the press never reported a word about it. It was too caught up in Walter Cronkite’s TMI “worst industrial accident ever”.”

It seems like the people of the Japanese Sendai coast region today are being treated by The Media the same as they did the Morbi Dam victims 40 years ago.  Hmm …  😦  

One could (easily?) make the case, that in observing the quality of the news reporting about the Japanese Tsunami , the The Media today are primarily interested in money (for themselves) and power (for special interest groups).  Only secondly do The Media seem to care about giving accurate information to John and Jane Public, coming home tired after the end of a long hard day’s work, wanting to know what’s happening out in the world.

But this train of thought would be unkind … wouldn’t it? 😉

Let’s end with a relevant song … relevant to radiation levels and The Media’s childish reporting levels.
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  1 banana, 2 bananas, 3 bananas, 4  – The Banana Splits  
         
“Four banana three banana two banana one
All bananas playing in the bright warm sun
Flipping like a pancake popping like a cork
[The Main Stream Media] making up a mess of fun”   😉
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Banana Loving Brady