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You are here: Home / Open Threads / This ain’t no disco

This ain’t no disco

by DougJ|  March 14, 201110:12 pm| 145 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Fox News is doing a bang up job of covering the crisis in Japan (via).

One name seems out of place on the graphic — that of “Shibuyaeggman.”

[….] [F]urther inquiries revealed that Eggman is the name of a dance club in a trendy neighborhood of Tokyo called… Shibuya.

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145Comments

  1. 1.

    calipygian

    March 14, 2011 at 10:16 pm

    Not only that but Sendai is wildly out of place there.

    Update: Huh. Who knew that there actually is a plant in a town in Kyushu called Sendai NPP in Satsumasendai, Kyushu. I apologize to Fux for the error. See what a classy motherfucker I am?

  2. 2.

    thomas Levenson

    March 14, 2011 at 10:17 pm

    Usually I’d write “I laughed, I cried.”

    But really, this time, I just laughed.

    Howled, really.

    And in case you were wondering: No it’s not you.

    I am the Eggman.

  3. 3.

    BR

    March 14, 2011 at 10:17 pm

    @calipygian:

    Yeah. You’d think that a city that was the main spot of devastation in a quake that hit Northern Japan would be properly labeled. It’s like they threw darts at a map instead of searching on Google images for 2 seconds.

  4. 4.

    Chyron HR

    March 14, 2011 at 10:18 pm

    Well, that’s the most dangerous one. I hear three of its Chaos Emeralds have been breached and it’s leaking Power Rings.

  5. 5.

    hilts

    March 14, 2011 at 10:18 pm

    Speaking of Fox, Glenn Beck uses this story to whack George Soros
    h/t http://www.mediaite.com/tv/glenn-beck-explains-japan-nuclear-meltdown-with-mms-and-george-soros

    Gilbert Gottfried Fired As The Voice Of The Aflac Duck For Insensitive Japan Tweets
    h/t http://www.mediaite.com/online/gilbert-gottfried-fired-as-the-voice-of-the-aflac-duck-for-insensitive-japan-tweets

  6. 6.

    WarMunchkin

    March 14, 2011 at 10:18 pm

    Uh, Sendai is not… where they say it is…

    I know, we can fix it by adding D-Sendai

    edit: fox 1 me 0

  7. 7.

    MattR

    March 14, 2011 at 10:19 pm

    @calipygian: @BR: Actually, that is the correct location of the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant

  8. 8.

    Cat Lady

    March 14, 2011 at 10:19 pm

    @calipygian:

    No, there’s a nuclear plant named Sendai there. I think they got lucky with that one.

    Does anyone watch Fox to get useful information anyway?

  9. 9.

    Kolohe

    March 14, 2011 at 10:22 pm

    @calipygian:

    No, it’s right http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendai_Nuclear_Power_Plant

    (that sendai is spelled 川内 , the Sendai that you’re thinking of is spelled 仙台

  10. 10.

    BR

    March 14, 2011 at 10:23 pm

    @MattR:

    Ok, I stand corrected. I thought they were labeling the city.

  11. 11.

    Jrod the Cookie Thief

    March 14, 2011 at 10:23 pm

    Koo koo kachoo.

  12. 12.

    Mike G

    March 14, 2011 at 10:24 pm

    “Fux News – we know jack shit about the rest of the world, and proud of it”

  13. 13.

    Azmtdog

    March 14, 2011 at 10:24 pm

    Fox News, they report, I decide not to watch.

  14. 14.

    Poopyman

    March 14, 2011 at 10:29 pm

    So there’s a nuclear power plant at the Eggman disco? There’s an Austin Powers movie plot in there somewhere.

  15. 15.

    Spaghetti Lee

    March 14, 2011 at 10:29 pm

    @hilts:

    Jeez, Gil, if you’re going to get fired for making a dumbass joke, it could have at least been a funny one.

    Maybe this is what it will take for that damn duck to kick the bucket. Fingers crossed.

  16. 16.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    March 14, 2011 at 10:31 pm

    to be fair, that night club does have 80s music on sunday nights, and the place is off the hook, when the dj plays “neutron dance” by the pointer sisters.

    of course,the opposite effect happens when they play the gap band “you dropped a bomb on me” at closing time, easy mistake.

  17. 17.

    Viva BrisVegas

    March 14, 2011 at 10:31 pm

    @hilts:

    Speaking of Fox, Glenn Beck uses this story to whack George Soros

    Glenn Beck is the Walrus.

    Now everything becomes clear.

  18. 18.

    Jrod the Cookie Thief

    March 14, 2011 at 10:31 pm

    You really can’t blame Fox for having trouble deciphering their heathen ching chong wing wong language. If they’d had the decency to speak God’s language, English, there’d be no confusion. Maybe then God wouldn’t have seen fit to smite them like He did if they were properly…

    Ugh, enough of that. I gotta go wash my hands.

  19. 19.

    GregB

    March 14, 2011 at 10:32 pm

    Fox, the most distrusted name in news.

  20. 20.

    Yutsano

    March 14, 2011 at 10:33 pm

    @Viva BrisVegas: I could’ve been the walrus, I’d still have to bum rides off people.

    (Not really, but Ferris was gonna get into this thread sooner or later.)

  21. 21.

    Warren Terra

    March 14, 2011 at 10:33 pm

    @Spaghetti Lee:

    Jeez, Gil, if you’re going to get fired for making a dumbass joke, it could have at least been a funny one.

    There are at least two errors in your statement:
    1) Your use of the subjunctive suggests that Gilbert Godfried can make a joke that isn’t dumbass, which hardly seems to be the case.
    2) You suggest that Godfried is capable of making a funny joke; again, the evidence doesn’t seem to support this.

  22. 22.

    freelancer

    March 14, 2011 at 10:37 pm

    @Spaghetti Lee:

    Why couldn’t the E-trade Baby make some racist comments? He’s a tiny Master of the Universe in training, little yuppie fucker. I hate that kid.

  23. 23.

    MattR

    March 14, 2011 at 10:38 pm

    @Warren Terra: Don’t mock the original inspiration behind the “Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a woman in 1990?” meme.

  24. 24.

    tkogrumpy

    March 14, 2011 at 10:41 pm

    @Jrod the Cookie Thief: I beleive that is spelled coocoocuchoo.

  25. 25.

    bago

    March 14, 2011 at 10:41 pm

    I was wondering who would get the Sonic reference first.

  26. 26.

    hilts

    March 14, 2011 at 10:41 pm

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    Glenn Beck is a raving, drooling, bed-wetting jackass. Hopefully, David Carr’s recent NY Times article was accurate and Fox News will decide not to renew this bastard’s contract.

  27. 27.

    Dave C

    March 14, 2011 at 10:42 pm

    So, it now appears that a catastrophic nuclear disaster is not only possible, but imminent. This shit is scary.

  28. 28.

    different church-lady

    March 14, 2011 at 10:42 pm

    Tokyo nightclubs have nukes now?

  29. 29.

    hilts

    March 14, 2011 at 10:47 pm

    @MattR:

    “Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a woman in 1990?”

    No, Beck is simply dumbing down millions of Americans to death and polluting the well of civil discourse with his bottomless cesspool of lies. He isn’t a rapist or a murderer he’s just a malignant media carcinogen.

  30. 30.

    Ash Can

    March 14, 2011 at 10:48 pm

    I wonder if the Fox “News” graphics people do shit like this on purpose, just for yucks, knowing that their audience is clueless and management is too busy with hookers and blow to crack down on them.

  31. 31.

    lostinube

    March 14, 2011 at 10:52 pm

    According to some sources, AFLAC does 75% of their business in Japan so…

    1) AFLAC CEO is coming to Japan to make a 100 million yen donation to the Red Cross.

    2) Gilbert makes jokes on twitter about Japan.

    3) *Poof!* Gilbert is gone.

  32. 32.

    Martin

    March 14, 2011 at 10:53 pm

    Well, now we know where all the people who can’t find the United States on a map works.

  33. 33.

    El Cid

    March 14, 2011 at 10:53 pm

    Jesus Fucking Christ! How much more do you fucking expect? You think Fox News is some sort of big honcho news network>? With all sorts of “money” to go and pay “experts” to tell us all the right god-damn names and places and shit to make you little prissy liberals happy?

    Shit, we’re lucky if we can get a few more commercials paid for before the credit card’s maxed out.

    We do our god-damn best to pay some kid on the sidewalk a couple of bucks to look something up on his phone thing which gets some sort of map or otherwise from somewhere.

    All this so you prigs can just dance around, making fun because maybe we didn’t get this or that fact right, and you just don’t see how hard we’re working to get out the big stories from a tiny budget and a bunch of dedicated reporters and analysts who wouldn’t take a dime if we didn’t make them.

    Maybe if we had all the jet planes and giant yachts and Swiss bank accounts and concerts and fancy studios and all else like your PBS and NPR, then we could go to somewhere which has “books” or whatever they call them and see if one of them says something about Japan.

    Until then, why don’t you climb off your high horse and give us working stiffs at Fox News a break for once?

  34. 34.

    cbear

    March 14, 2011 at 10:53 pm

    A particularly apropos clip from the past:

    Jane, you ignorant slut.

  35. 35.

    patrick

    March 14, 2011 at 10:54 pm

    They were using Obama’s teleprompter.

  36. 36.

    Martin

    March 14, 2011 at 10:54 pm

    @different church-lady: Yeah, Mothra keeps trying to crash the place.

  37. 37.

    asiangrrlMN

    March 14, 2011 at 10:55 pm

    @Spaghetti Lee: Right on. I hate that fumigating duck with a passion. Shoulda known it was Gilbert “break my eardrums” Gottfried.

    Eggman? Nightclub name? Bwahahahahhaha!

  38. 38.

    suzanne

    March 14, 2011 at 10:58 pm

    Google Earth haz a sad.

    I, however, haz a LAFF.

  39. 39.

    Ash Can

    March 14, 2011 at 10:59 pm

    BTW, according to the Beeb, the Japanese PM is addressing the nation right now and he’s being fairly blunt. This worries me, because the Japanese don’t really do blunt.

  40. 40.

    hilts

    March 14, 2011 at 11:00 pm

    @efgoldman:

    Gilbert Gottfried has taken the heat off of Larry Kudlow.

  41. 41.

    Arclite

    March 14, 2011 at 11:02 pm

    I saw some Fox coverage and was impressed that they had all the name pronunciations and location descriptions correct. I’ve been watching lots of coverage: BBC, CNN, ABC, etc, and invariably someone makes either mangles the name of the place completely, or messes up the name of the location, or calls the entire Fukushima nuke complex “Daiichi” which just refers to the first reactor.

  42. 42.

    suzanne

    March 14, 2011 at 11:05 pm

    @efgoldman:

    Gilbert was sort of funny as the voice of the henchparrot in Aladdin.

    Not to be pedantic, but I believe he was actually voicing a henchTOUCAN. I have a seven-year-old. Disney and I are (unfortunately) on a first-name basis.

  43. 43.

    lostinube

    March 14, 2011 at 11:10 pm

    Doesn’t Daiichi refer to the name of the power plant?

    There are two power plants in Fukushima:福島第一原子力発電所, 福島第二原子力発電所

    #号機 (number go ki) is for the reactor numbers.

  44. 44.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 14, 2011 at 11:10 pm

    @suzanne:
    @Arclite: Hench-tropical-bird, ok?

  45. 45.

    freelancer

    March 14, 2011 at 11:10 pm

    @suzanne:

    Not to be pedantic, but…

    If BJ was a family, this would be scribed on our crest.

  46. 46.

    Nutella

    March 14, 2011 at 11:12 pm

    Gilbert Gottfried Fired As The Voice Of The Aflac Duck For Insensitive Japan Tweets

    I can’t tell the difference between real news and the fake stuff at the Onion any more.

  47. 47.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 14, 2011 at 11:19 pm

    @Nutella: Do ducks tweet? I thought they quacked. In Romanian, they “mak” (apparently pronounced like mock).

  48. 48.

    RareSanity

    March 14, 2011 at 11:19 pm

    @Ash Can:

    This worries me, because the Japanese don’t really do blunt.

    You got that right, brother…

    The calm bluntness on the outside carefully masks the, “Oh Shit!” on the inside.

  49. 49.

    asiangrrlMN

    March 14, 2011 at 11:21 pm

    @El Cid: I need to smoke a ciggie now. Wonderful.

  50. 50.

    Roger Moore

    March 14, 2011 at 11:23 pm

    @Ash Can:

    I wonder if the Fox “News” graphics people do shit like this on purpose

    Nah, they probably just got trolled by Wikipedia defacers. Five will get you ten that a look at some Wikipedia history pages will show that “Shibuyaeggman” showed up on a list of Japanese nuclear plants before Fox talked about it.

  51. 51.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 14, 2011 at 11:23 pm

    @El Cid: I think I’ve worked with you in the past.

  52. 52.

    Tim F.

    March 14, 2011 at 11:27 pm

    I wish that they had a Pulitzer category for post titles.

  53. 53.

    Yutsano

    March 14, 2011 at 11:30 pm

    @lostinube: If I’m parsing this right:

    福島 = Fukushima

    第一 = number one

    原子力発電所 = power generator (possible reference to nuclear in there but not certain)

    #号機 = not sure.

  54. 54.

    El Cid

    March 14, 2011 at 11:30 pm

    @asiangrrlMN: Can you loan me one? We at Fox just don’t have money this week for cigarettes.

    @Omnes Omnibus: We all have worked with me in the past.

  55. 55.

    Mike Kay (True Grit)

    March 14, 2011 at 11:31 pm

    Just heard on Fox News

    Reactor #4 (D-Fukushima) on fire.

  56. 56.

    Roger Moore

    March 14, 2011 at 11:32 pm

    @lostinube:

    “Daiichi” is Japanese for first. “Ichi” is one and “dai” (that’s dai written “第”) converts a number from cardinal to ordinal. So Fukushima Daiichi would mean the first plant built in Fukushima.

  57. 57.

    lostinube

    March 14, 2011 at 11:34 pm

    @Yutsano:

    号機 is the counter for the reactors. The Japanese news will reference 2号機 which means reactor No. 2.

  58. 58.

    BR

    March 14, 2011 at 11:35 pm

    @Mike Kay (True Grit):

    They’ve put the fire out per the latest reports.

  59. 59.

    scav

    March 14, 2011 at 11:36 pm

    @Mike Kay (True Grit): The Beeb already has that fire reported out as of 3:20 3:21 so typical of Fox. ETA: Whoops, sorry, wrong tab, it’s the Guardian thread.

  60. 60.

    chines

    March 14, 2011 at 11:39 pm

    burn baby burn. Disco Inferno.

  61. 61.

    Nerull

    March 14, 2011 at 11:43 pm

    NHK just reported the fire as still burning.

  62. 62.

    eemom

    March 14, 2011 at 11:43 pm

    @RareSanity:

    The calm bluntness on the outside carefully masks the, “Oh Shit!” on the inside.

    coming from a Mediterranean background where hysteria is the default response to any negative stimulus, I do find that an admirable quality.

  63. 63.

    zoej

    March 14, 2011 at 11:44 pm

    A question from the ignorant:
    Why is so much still flooded in the news? I thought the water all went back out to sea when the tsunami receded.

  64. 64.

    Nerull

    March 14, 2011 at 11:45 pm

    @zoej: Water gets trapped inland by higher elevations near the shore.

  65. 65.

    Wiesman

    March 14, 2011 at 11:47 pm

    Bleg!

    A friend of mine told me there was nothing to worry about re: nuclear meltdown in Japan, because of this blog post:

    http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/

    Does anyone know anything about the veracity of this blog? I would prefer not to be worried, and am not looking for reasons to be scurred. But this post seemed a little rosy imo.

    TIA.

  66. 66.

    Martin

    March 14, 2011 at 11:49 pm

    @zoej: Subsidence. Japan moved east by 8 feet. Some places sank by over 5 feet and are now permanently part of the Pacific.

  67. 67.

    SatanicPanic

    March 14, 2011 at 11:49 pm

    The Eggman wasn’t a tip off? How dense are these people?

  68. 68.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 14, 2011 at 11:51 pm

    @eemom: My Romanian b-i-l says that the Romanian response to any crisis is 1) Burn the crops, 2) Poison the wells, and 3) Flee to the mountains. Repeated invasions by the Turks will do that to a national psyche, I guess.

  69. 69.

    BR

    March 14, 2011 at 11:51 pm

    Not sure if this is accurate, but ZH says:

    Per Kyodo, the northeastern winds have carried the radiation from Fukushima all the way to Tokyo. The only prudent thing that the authorities can do right now is to shut down all public equity markets immediately to prevent widespread panic resulting in a repeat of the liquidity collapse of 2008.

  70. 70.

    MikeJ

    March 14, 2011 at 11:52 pm

    http://library.thinkquest.org/C004606/applications/measuringrad.shtml

    At sea-level, the average radiation level is approximately 0.03 microsieverts per hour. As the altitude increases, the radiation exposure increases exponentially. Mexico City, 2240 m above sea-level, is exposed to about 0.09 microsieverts per hour; La Paz (in Boliva, South America) – the highest city in the world – has radiation of about 0.23 microsieverts per hour.

    http://mitnse.com/

    The pressure in the pool was seen to decrease from three atmospheres to one atmosphere after the noise, suggesting possible damage. Radiation levels on the edge of the plant compound briefly spiked at 8217 microsieverts per hour but later fell to about a third that.

    So the radition at the plant is only 32,000 times that at the highest city in the world. Nothing to see, move along.

  71. 71.

    Mike Kay (True Grit)

    March 14, 2011 at 11:52 pm

    This Just In:

    Gilbert Gottfried has been arrested for toilet papering the Japanese embassy.

  72. 72.

    Martin

    March 14, 2011 at 11:54 pm

    @SatanicPanic: Fox would care more about Japan if they would switch to Jesus’s native tongue (English) and participate in more moose-hunting.

  73. 73.

    General Stuck

    March 14, 2011 at 11:55 pm

    Jesus, the Japanese people are experiencing nothing less than a personal national apocalypse with the nukes going hot on top of a devastating earth quake and equally devastating tsunami.

    The world needs to come to their rescue, everything else is small stuff in comparison.

  74. 74.

    lostinube

    March 14, 2011 at 11:58 pm

    FNN is saying that the fire in Reactor 4 has been put out.

    (In Japanese)
    http://www.fnn-news.com/news/headlines/articles/CONN00195228.html

  75. 75.

    Roy G

    March 15, 2011 at 12:00 am

    It’s not ‘Shibuyaeggman,’ it’s ‘Sheboygan,’ and it’s in Wisconsin.

    FOX is both clueless and on the downlow about non-teabagger activism.

  76. 76.

    eemom

    March 15, 2011 at 12:03 am

    @BR:

    waaaaiit a minute: earlier they were saying that, thankfully, the winds were blowing it all out to the ocean……

  77. 77.

    Mike Kay (True Grit)

    March 15, 2011 at 12:03 am

    With all the devastation going on in Japan, don’t you think it’s the right time to make a contribution of $25, $50 or more to FDL.

    Remember, only you can keep those registration tags current.

  78. 78.

    gwangung

    March 15, 2011 at 12:05 am

    From the BBC live blog:

    Edward O’Brien, from Yotsukaido, Chiba-ken, Japan, writes: “Most of the people fleeing or complaining about information being withheld seem to be foreign residents. Very few Japanese people I know in Chiba and Tokyo are even thinking of evacuating.”

  79. 79.

    mr. whipple

    March 15, 2011 at 12:06 am

    @Mike Kay (True Grit):

    Remember, only you can keep those registration tags current.

    It’s the birth of TagPac, for all your car-related activist needs.

  80. 80.

    Nerull

    March 15, 2011 at 12:07 am

    @eemom: I don’t know the local conditions, but it’s fairly common for wind to change direction with altitude – known as ‘wind shear’. Different layers of the atmosphere can be moving in different directions. It could be the case that the prevailing wind is out to sea, but the wind at some altitudes is blowing towards Tokyo.

  81. 81.

    Martin

    March 15, 2011 at 12:09 am

    @eemom: Fucking weather, how does it work!

    (sorry, couldn’t resist)

  82. 82.

    Mike Kay (True Grit)

    March 15, 2011 at 12:10 am

    I can’t believe you guys are talking about something as frivolous as an epic natural disaster/nuke meltdown and not poor bradley manning!

  83. 83.

    Hob

    March 15, 2011 at 12:10 am

    @Warren Terra:

    You suggest that Godfried is capable of making a funny joke; again, the evidence doesn’t seem to support this.

    I remember him making a funny joke at least once. Paul Reubens had just been busted for public indecency, and Gottfried said something like “If masturbation is a crime, I should be on death row.”

    I also liked the random shit he used to say when he was hosting the USA Network late-night crap movie show, but then again I was 14.

  84. 84.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    March 15, 2011 at 12:11 am

    @hilts:
    And let us not forget 50 Cent also.

  85. 85.

    RareSanity

    March 15, 2011 at 12:12 am

    @eemom:

    coming from a Mediterranean background where hysteria is the default response to any negative stimulus, I do find that an admirable quality.

    It would be admirable if it didn’t mostly happen after things are already out of control.

    I hold a lot about Japanese culture in extremely high regard, but, there is a tendency to only come clean about issues when it can no longer be managed.

  86. 86.

    Mike Kay (True Grit)

    March 15, 2011 at 12:12 am

    @Martin: nuclear winds go in, nuclear winds go out, never a miscommunication.

  87. 87.

    eemom

    March 15, 2011 at 12:13 am

    well, I don’t know…..they were all making a big deal earlier about what a good thing it was that the wind was blowing the way it was…..

  88. 88.

    cyd

    March 15, 2011 at 12:14 am

    @Wiesman:

    It’s amazing how much traction that essay has gotten on the Internet. Unfortunately, it’s rather inaccurate. See some of the comments on the page for details. Here’s someone debunking some of the main points (though this debunking itself suffers from one or two mistakes of its own).

    Note that the fellow who wrote the “nothing to worry about” piece is no a nuclear engineer, although apparently his dad is (rolls eyes). Also, this was written a couple of days ago, prior to the latest set of developments. The containment breach, which it said was practically impossible, has now occurred.

  89. 89.

    Mike Kay (True Grit)

    March 15, 2011 at 12:17 am

    This has been a bad month for celebrities: Charlie Sheen, John Galliano, Colonel Quaddafi, 50 Cent, Bradley Manning, and now the grim reaper has claimed Gilbert Gottfried’s fame.

  90. 90.

    Jrod the Cookie Thief

    March 15, 2011 at 12:18 am

    @tkogrumpy: Well, in Japanese it’s spelled ククカチュ. So there.

  91. 91.

    Mike Kay (True Grit)

    March 15, 2011 at 12:21 am

    @Hob: really, when I was 14, I was much more into Rhonda Shear on “Up All Night” than Gilbert.

  92. 92.

    asiangrrlMN

    March 15, 2011 at 12:22 am

    @RareSanity: I would agree with your assessment. Taiwanese culture is a lot like that, too, and it can be frustrating because communication is Byzantine, and there is a definite reluctance to acknowledge that anything is a problem.

  93. 93.

    burnspbesq

    March 15, 2011 at 12:25 am

    @Mike Kay (True Grit):

    No. 4 was not in service. It was being used to store spent fuel. Still, a fire there would seem to almost guarantee a significant release.

  94. 94.

    burnspbesq

    March 15, 2011 at 12:27 am

    Here’s todays small amount of comic relief.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8382227/Russian-bomb-squad-called-in-to-defuse-sex-toy.html

  95. 95.

    FlipYrWhig

    March 15, 2011 at 12:29 am

    @Mike Kay (True Grit): I hear Gilbert Gottfried and PJ Crowley orchestrated the whole thing in order to trade jobs.

    “How is Private Manning being treated?”
    “We call it… The Aristocrats!”

  96. 96.

    Jay in Oregon

    March 15, 2011 at 12:30 am

    @suzanne:

    Gilbert Gottfried was Iago, the talking parrot in Aladdin.

    I think you’re thinking of Rowan Atkinson, who was the talking hornbill Zazu in The Lion King.

  97. 97.

    Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude

    March 15, 2011 at 12:35 am

    @lostinube: Just like NPR.

  98. 98.

    MattR

    March 15, 2011 at 12:38 am

    @asiangrrlMN: Malcolm Gladwell has a chapter in Outliers called “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes”. He talks about how several countries (I think Korea was his main example) had to make a real effort to retrain their flight crews to “overcome” cultural instincts (and that their safety record improved considerably after this training). Part of it was to give the co-pilot the comfort with having the authority to speak up and correct the pilot at any time. And part of it was being assertive/straightforward with air traffic control.

    One of the examples given involved a Korean Air flight that basically fell out of the sky while circling JFK (I think) because it ran out of fuel. Gladwell said the problem was that according to Korean norms the pilot had made it crystal clear that he was running out of fuel and had to land but to New York City air traffic control it sounded like a request and/or observation that they were starting to get low on fuel so they told them to circle one more time and the Korean pilot complied.

  99. 99.

    Yutsano

    March 15, 2011 at 12:44 am

    @MattR: Could be this one, per Wiki:

    11 September 2001 – Korean Air Lines Flight 85 from Seoul to Anchorage, with continued service to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York was intercepted by U.S. and Canadian fighter jets and escorted into Whitehorse International Airport during Operation Yellow Ribbon, on possible hijacking concerns. There was no hijacking; the plane was low on fuel and there was a communication problem, according to a public affairs official at the airport. When the plane landed, witnesses reported that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ordered the crew out at gunpoint. The entire incident was a misunderstanding caused by an incorrect transponder setting.

  100. 100.

    MattR

    March 15, 2011 at 12:46 am

    @Yutsano: Don’t think so. I want to say it was from the 70’s. Now I am gonna have to go dig through the book

    EDIT: My memory is not so great (and there was no way you were gonna find it). This particular flight was Colombian airline Avianca flight 052 in January 1990. Korean Air was a different set of examples in that chapter.

  101. 101.

    Mike Kay (True Grit)

    March 15, 2011 at 12:48 am

    Man O Man. Just when you think things can’t get worse.

    Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director — whose credits include “Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich” and “Ocean’s Eleven” is retiring from film making at age 50.

  102. 102.

    Yutsano

    March 15, 2011 at 12:48 am

    @MattR: The Wiki had all the listings of the Korean Air accidents and incidents. That was the closest one to your scenario. I’ll check other Asian airlines.

  103. 103.

    MattR

    March 15, 2011 at 12:56 am

    @Yutsano: And boy was I off in my estimate of when those Korean Air incidents were. There were a ton of them in the 80’s and 90’s. According to Gladwell, in April 99 Delta and Air France terminated their partnerships with Korean Air and then the US Army forbade its soldiers from taking civilian flights on it. In 2006 after the retraining program they were given the Phoenix Award by Air Transport World for their turnaround

  104. 104.

    Yutsano

    March 15, 2011 at 1:00 am

    @MattR: Yeah, I would have had to get really creative in my Google-fu to go that far afield. Thanks for finding it though, I’ll at least be able to sleep knowing which incident it was.

  105. 105.

    MattR

    March 15, 2011 at 1:07 am

    @Yutsano:

    Thanks for finding it though, I’ll at least be able to sleep knowing which incident it was.

    Between answering the questions we need to know and the ones we never knew we had, how did we ever survive without the Internet? For example, today I learned that the county I grew up in is the most Jewish one in the United States at 31.4% as of the 2000 Census.

  106. 106.

    Yutsano

    March 15, 2011 at 1:10 am

    @MattR: Isn’t that in upper New York, like where Yonkers is? And yeah I find myself constantly Googling information, even though even back when you had to use books and pages I was still decent at finding stuff. Of course reading a set of encyclopedias when I was 8 probably helped there.

  107. 107.

    freelancer

    March 15, 2011 at 1:10 am

    @Mike Kay (True Grit):

    Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director—whose credits include “Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich” and “Ocean’s Eleven” is retiring from film making at age 50.

    Thank Jesus. Most overrated and pretentious mainstream filmmaker in the last 2 decades. Out of Sight and the Solaris remake were both good movies, but almost everything else was self-indulgent crap.

  108. 108.

    Uloborus

    March 15, 2011 at 1:13 am

    @cyd:
    Um… are you sure? I’ve heard that the steel reactor was damaged, and that the containment *building* was damaged, but the latest information on that MIT site – and those are indeed nuclear scientists – was that the containment shield itself, the gigantic concrete thing designed to hold a full meltdown, is intact. It’s hard to get good information, obviously, so I’m not sure.

  109. 109.

    MattR

    March 15, 2011 at 1:17 am

    @Yutsano:

    Isn’t that in upper New York, like where Yonkers is?

    I don’t know if this is snark or not, but “them’s fighting words” where I come from. It’s actually Rockland County which is across the Hudson River and about 20 miles north of NYC (and as far south as you can be in NY State on the west side of the Hudson). A source of major irritation in college was all the jackholes from NYC or Long Island who thought that was “upstate”.

    FYI – Yonkers is just north of NYC on the east side of the Hudson.

    @Omnes Omnibus: Geez. What a bunch of geeks we are. (EDIT: But reading encyclopedias is nowhere near the focused power of Google or the random places that clicking on hyperlinks can take you)

  110. 110.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 15, 2011 at 1:17 am

    @MattR: As a kid, I read encyclopedias.

  111. 111.

    Yutsano

    March 15, 2011 at 1:30 am

    @MattR: I know very little about the internal geography of New York so the question was genuine. The Dawg would probably give me a lecture for days about that, being as he’s native to the Catskills.

  112. 112.

    Cermet

    March 15, 2011 at 1:35 am

    One of the reactor’s core is open to the air – the impossible has happened –

    “We are on the brink. We are now facing the worst-case scenario,” said Hiroaki Koide, a senior reactor engineering specialist at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University. “We can assume that the containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most definitely be released.”

    So says the expert nearby – this is far worse than all accidents than Chernobyl but that may change by morning.

    Where are all our nuke experts to tell us how safe it is and that they plan on flying out there to experience the fallout and prove it is safe. I am no nuke engineer but I now know the stakes just got a lot fraking higher.

    There are fifty brave soles in the plant risking all to stop this from getting worse – these are truely hero’s.

  113. 113.

    eemom

    March 15, 2011 at 1:37 am

    @MattR:
    @Yutsano:

    Good heavens. Yutsy, are you implying you thought Yonkers was UPSTATE New York??

    Just think about that a minute: what place in its right mind would call itself “Yonkers” — unless it was forced to?

    And as for Rockland County, I’ve known since I was a little kid that it’s just New Jersey masquerading as New York. You cross the GW Bridge: you’re in New Jersey. End of story.

  114. 114.

    Cermet

    March 15, 2011 at 1:41 am

    As long as they keep reactor #3 intact/no melt down, then cover the others with cement, we may get by and this will be the worst – then the spin machine will prove all was well and ignore the fool behind the curtain as we steal billons from taxpayers and rate payers … so amerikan

    Fifty brave workers are still at the plant trying to save all – these are brave people and hero’s

  115. 115.

    Yutsano

    March 15, 2011 at 1:41 am

    @eemom: Yeah well I still make decent spanakopita. So neener.

  116. 116.

    trollhattan

    March 15, 2011 at 1:48 am

    More bad news from Fox: the bullet train tracks between Shibuyaeggman and Boomshakalaka were washed away in the tsunami.

  117. 117.

    MattR

    March 15, 2011 at 1:52 am

    @eemom: It was always a little disconcerting to have to drive through New Jersey when going from my parents house in Rockland to my aunt’s apt in NYC.

  118. 118.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason (formerly frosty)

    March 15, 2011 at 1:55 am

    @Nutella: Think back ten years. Would any of the words in this quote make any sense at all?

    Gilbert Gottfried Fired As The Voice Of The Aflac Duck For Insensitive Japan Tweets

    Gottfried, wasn’t he on that disastrous SNL season? He’s still around? Wait, ducks tweet? What the hell is going on here?

  119. 119.

    Cermet

    March 15, 2011 at 1:57 am

    The holding “pool” for spent fuel rods is dry and on fire – the NYT has an interesting take:

    A 1997 study by the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island described a worst-case disaster from uncovered spent fuel in a reactor cooling pool. It estimated 100 quick deaths would occur within a range of 500 miles and 138,000 eventual deaths.

    The study also found that land over 2,170 miles would be contaminated and damages would hit $546 billion.

    That section of the Brookhaven study focused on boiling water reactors — the kind at the heart of the Japanese crisis.

  120. 120.

    MattR

    March 15, 2011 at 1:57 am

    Just for the record, if I am ever in some kind of horrific accident and have obviously died, please don’t spend any resources to find and recover my body (unless doing so is scientifically/forensically useful). I am sure somebody here will be in a position to enforce my wishes.

  121. 121.

    eemom

    March 15, 2011 at 1:59 am

    @MattR:

    Orangeburg. Does that ring a bell?

    We had cousins there. They had a nice house with a pool.

  122. 122.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason (formerly frosty)

    March 15, 2011 at 1:59 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: Not a bad approach. I expect if you ask the Scots-Irish in the Appalachians, they’d say the same thing. Except they’d keep enough of the wells safe to make whiskey when they came back.

    Repeated attacks by the English will do that to you.

  123. 123.

    Cermet

    March 15, 2011 at 2:00 am

    So, where are our experts again telling us now safe nuclear power is and that even a minor accident is a few million to one … . Only too soon the million-dollar spin campaign will start and we will be should a bill of goods – more corporate welfare, taxpayer rip-offs and ratepayer rape so the nuke companies can build sub based reactors.

  124. 124.

    trollhattan

    March 15, 2011 at 2:02 am

    @Cermet:

    Could explain this:

    Prime Minister Naoto Kan has urged all residents to evacuate from within 20 kilometers of the disaster-stricken Fukushima No.1 nuclear power station. He told people living within 20 to 30 kilometers to stay indoors.
    __
    Kan issued a public appeal on Tuesday morning, saying 2 hydrogen explosions and a fire are raising the level of radioactivity released into the atmosphere. He said there’s also an increased danger of more radioactive leaks.
    __
    The prime minister said most people who live within the 20-kilometer evacuation area have already taken refuge, but that he wants every single person to leave.
    __
    He said all-out efforts are being made to prevent further explosions or radioactive leaks, adding that plant workers are risking their lives to inject water to cool the reactor cores.
    __
    The prime minister said that although he understands people’s anxiety, he wants the public to remain calm.

  125. 125.

    Cermet

    March 15, 2011 at 2:03 am

    One of the reactor’s core is open to the air – the impossible has happened –

    “We are on the brink. We are now facing the worst-case scenario,” said Hiroaki Koide, a senior reactor engineering specialist at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University. “We can assume that the containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most definitely be released.”

    So says the expert nearby – this is far worse than all accidents than Chernobyl but that may change by morning.

  126. 126.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason (formerly frosty)

    March 15, 2011 at 2:05 am

    @asiangrrlMN: Sounds a lot like my white-bread family. You knew there was a problem when everyone was quiet.

    Somehow the approach of hollering “Fuck! It’s all fucked! Why’d you fuck it up” seemed healthier. Although moderation in all things is advised, of course.

  127. 127.

    Cermet

    March 15, 2011 at 2:06 am

    Why is a simple post, using information taken from the source so BJers feelings aren’t hurt, and no foul language like the childish poster currently here on line uses, forcing my post to be moderated – weird

  128. 128.

    MattR

    March 15, 2011 at 2:08 am

    @eemom: Sure. The southern part of the county. My grandmother’s retirement apartment was near there. Of course everything in Rockland is relatively near each other. It is the smallest county in the state outside of NYC. Nice place to live, but a terrible commute to Manhattan (which would have gotten significantly better had Chris Christie not been a ginormous asshole.)

    @Cermet: You may have used one of Word Press’s naughty words (or it could be a subword like soc1alism has c1alis) but you can get around it by replacing a letter

  129. 129.

    Cermet

    March 15, 2011 at 2:10 am

    Looks like the main core on one of the reactors is open (impossible as we have been told countless times by the nuke bomb companies … I mean power companies) is now sending the burning hyber radioactive core vapor into the air. This is fast approching chernobyl.

  130. 130.

    Yutsano

    March 15, 2011 at 2:12 am

    @MattR:

    (which would have gotten significantly better had Chris Christie not been a ginormous asshole.

    But he made a POINT dude! Don’t you get that? HE MADE HIS POINT THAT HE COULD DO WHATEVER THE FUCK HE WANTED!!

    (The fact that he will now screw NJ seven ways from Sunday befoe he’s gone is irrelevant. And you’re just a dirty hippie for thinking that.)

  131. 131.

    Cermet

    March 15, 2011 at 2:12 am

    @Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason (formerly frosty): Good point and maybe the reason

  132. 132.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason (formerly frosty)

    March 15, 2011 at 2:14 am

    @freelancer: Re: Out of Sight. Soderbergh has Elmore Leonard to thank. He just coasted on the book.

  133. 133.

    eemom

    March 15, 2011 at 2:15 am

    Cermet: there is an individual named mclaren on the previous thread who’s just dyyyiiinnn to meetchoo….

  134. 134.

    Yutsano

    March 15, 2011 at 2:17 am

    @eemom: Oh you agent provocateur.

  135. 135.

    burnspbesq

    March 15, 2011 at 2:45 am

    @eemom:

    Rockland County was where kids from my town went to drink when the drinking age in New York was lower than it was in Jersey. Jersey lowered its drinking age to 18 as of January 1 of the year in which I turned 18. On my eighteenth birthday, I signed my own note to leave school early, went and registered for the draft, and then bought my first legal six-pack and got shit-faced in gratitude to whatever deity was responsible for me getting a lottery number in the 340s. Going to college instead of Vietnam was generally considered a good thing, even if college was in a godforsaken dump like Lexington, Virginia.

  136. 136.

    burnspbesq

    March 15, 2011 at 2:51 am

    @trollhattan:

    There’s plenty of energy in Shibuya, just not of the nuclear variety.

  137. 137.

    burnspbesq

    March 15, 2011 at 2:54 am

    @eemom:

    We gonna bring a case of wine, you know mess and fool around like we used to.

  138. 138.

    Wiesman

    March 15, 2011 at 3:00 am

    @cyd:

    Thanks for the links. Yeah, if you read down in the comments (which I did after posting here) you can see some pretty good responses.

    One of my conserv friends told me that the Navy runs nuclear subs without incident which proves that nuclear power is safe for energy production. I replied that he is right, as long as the nuclear reactors are being run 100% by non-profit government agencies, I’m on board. That wasn’t quite where he wanted the conversation to end up!

  139. 139.

    Yutsano

    March 15, 2011 at 3:02 am

    @burnspbesq: Just out of curiosity, would you forgive me if I did my accounting coursework as a Golden Bear? It’s not a Bruin but I might be pushing a few boundaries here.

  140. 140.

    Calouste

    March 15, 2011 at 3:56 am

    @Wiesman:
    __

    I replied that he is right, as long as the nuclear reactors are being run 100% by non-profit government agencies, where people in charge can get courtmartialled and shot if they cut too many corners, I’m on board.

    Minor addition.

    Actually, as long as executives of nuclear power companies (past and present) do get courtmartialled and shot whenever there is an leak at a power plant, I might be lenient with the non-profit government requirement.

  141. 141.

    Uloborus

    March 15, 2011 at 5:36 am

    I’ve been looking around at the news, and I can’t find anyone remotely credible who says the containment vessel is breached. The containment building is breached – entirely separate and unimportant issue. References to the reactor being exposed seem to refer to a period in which they weren’t able to pump in seawater and there was nothing cooling it, greatly increasing risk of meltdown. Nothing even remotely resembling Chernobyl, which we found out about only because countries a thousand miles away immediately started registering the radiation. Love that Iron Curtain.

    Does anyone have anything other than a random quote from someone uninvolved with the situation that says otherwise? I am do not want to overplay or underplay the importance of this disaster, and that requires knowing what’s going on.

  142. 142.

    burnspbesq

    March 15, 2011 at 6:33 am

    @Yutsano:

    Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

    You can’t do it at YooDub?

  143. 143.

    alwhite

    March 15, 2011 at 6:35 am

    @MattR:
    It may also have something to do with East Coast attitudes!

    I worked for a tech company based out of Mass for a few years. Met with the help desk people a few times & got grilled about what was up with folks from Minnesota:
    “You try to help them and fail, they say its OK they that everything is fine. Then you find out later they are mad as hell. You work with someone from the East Coast and they are screaming at you and cursing, then you find out later they are very pleased with the service”

  144. 144.

    bjacques

    March 15, 2011 at 8:01 am

    I am the Shibuyaeggman! I only said Paul was the Shibuyaeggman to be NICE!

  145. 145.

    bill

    March 15, 2011 at 10:27 am

    @Mike Kay (True Grit): Not sure what Bradley Manning has to do with those others. I’m betting he’d be happy to swap whatever “celebrity” you think he’s luxuriating in for a pair of fucking pajamas to sleep in.

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