Baron von Oracle

Diamond formation (click on this one, it’s pretty neat)

Solo flight

Number six

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that the first three photos (at 300mm) aren’t quite as sharp as the fourth one (at 96mm). The Tamron 70-300mm lens is really cheap, a fantastic bargain for the price, but it noticeably loses sharpness at the far end. Thing is, that’s where I want to use it, especially for stuff like this. It’s bad form to blame equipment, but in this case I actually did outshoot my lens. Looks like it’s time for an upgrade.

The invisible hand of Amazon can’t reach in and change or destroy your books. You can lend them, sell them, or give them away. They smell good. If you happen to misplace one, you didn’t lose a $200 piece of equipment. A lot of people want to steal your e-reader, but nobody wants to steal your book. Books do not need batteries, electricity, or any other hallmarks of civilization. Books will survive the next fall of civilization. You can borrow books from a public library, and it does not cost money.

When you read a book you are an icon of literacy, intelligence, and introspection; but holding an e-reader makes you look like a self-indulgent bandwagon-hopper. My grandparents read books, my parents read books, and I will read books.

Read, and be informed:

Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

Some Perspective On The Japan Earthquake

*Planning is a stage BEFORE the tragedy actually happens. Contrast with politicians, who react.

Power and water is still unavailable in a majority of eastern Tohoku. I’ve been able to reach a few friends in Sendai, one in Kami, and one in Furukawa, and they’re all OK. A friend with parents in Fukushima city says they’re OK, if a bit shaken. As for the coastal areas, those have not fared well. Kesennuma area seemed to take the brunt of it, but the farmland areas to the east and south of Sendai including Natori are underwater. I’ve seen images of boats capsized over land as far north as Hachinohe in Aomori prefecture, and as far south as Soma in Fukushima prefecture. Parts of Ishinomaki are flooded, a good chunk of Kesennuma is smoldering or flooded (or both), and I did see a picture of a derailed train in Matsushima. I’ve been to all these places. It really breaks my heart. And the nice little village of Shizugawa I used to ride through on my motorcycle after getting a cup of coffee? It’s gone.

Some news sources are quoting a few ignorant, self-righteous twats comparing the Fukushima reactor crisis with Chernobyl. The anti-nuclear lobby is full of shit, enough to fertilize all the currently submerged farmland and have some left over. If anything, it has more in common with Three Mile Island, but as of now the government has evacuated a much larger area than is necessary, and primary containment is holding. I won’t get into the details of how an RBMK is different from modern BWR designs, but all the affected reactors in Japan are subcritical, even the forty year old Fukushima #1. Yes, all the backup diesel electric generators failed; that tends to happen when you dump a metric fuckton of seawater into them. Yes, small amounts of radioactive Cs137 and I131 have been released. Yes, the top of a secondary containment area blew off. Yes, Tepco has a very shady track record, and if I had to guess they’re probably trying to cover up some bad decisions again. But there will be no nuclear explosion.

And really, there are bigger problems to be addressed at the moment, like how to house and feed tens of thousands of displaced people in winter. Shame on you, AP and Reuters, for publishing the word of sensationalist doomsday idiots instead of something factual. Shame on you for lazy and uninformative reporting, like not telling us the extent of damage in specific towns and cities (no, Sendai does not encompass the entirety of northern Honshu), or how people can help out from overseas.

But despite all the crap people put up with, the Japanese as a whole are being quite pragmatic about the whole thing. This picture sums up the general attitude. This is a photo of the Yamanote line, one of the main train lines in Tokyo, the morning after the quake. All the trains shut down after the quake for safety reasons, and many people had to spend the night at offices. Despite this, nobody tries to push and shove; everyone lines up in an orderly fashion.

So much for sleeping tonight.

I decided when I moved in that I wouldn’t waste my money on that stuff. I want some actual real furniture, made out of solid pieces of wood and not sawdust superglued together. So over the past few months I’ve been slowly accumulating things that don’t make my house look like a dormitory. The bed set was one. A couple of decent sofas was another. And a few days ago I finally bought a real writing desk. Not something to put my computer on, but something used to hold papers and pencils. This is a desk from when they actually knew how to make desks. No idiotic sliding tray to bang and scrape your knees on, no stupid plastic-covered hole in the middle. Genuine stained and finished mahogany, dings and scratches and all. This thing has character, it has panache. Someone was probably writing on this thing when you were in diapers. Damn, son, but that’s a real desk.

There’s something both ridiculous and amazing about watching six hundred pilots simultaneously fill up their contraptions and take to the sky in droves.

Most of the pilots launch right at dawn, but there is a small set that go up earlier to test the winds and make sure it’s safe enough for everyone else. I woke up at 4am to get to the field on time to photograph them as they set up and launched. I even bought a new lens specifically for the occasion, a Canon 10-22mm ultrawide, and used the tripod Annie gave me before I left. Be sure to click on each of the crops to view the full images. I’ll post the daylight images later, but for now enjoy the early bird set.

Turbine
Sikorsky
Not the starship
Dragonflies
Sunset Reflecting Pool