Why Onagawa Nuclear Power Station Survived the Tsunami 148
Kyusaku Natsume writes "While the town of Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture, was hit hard by the March 2011 tsunami, the nuclear plant it shares with the equally devastated city of Ishinomaki survived. The reason it did so is mostly down to the personal strength and tenacity of one Yanosuke Hirai, who passed away in 1986 and insisted that the plant should have been protected by a 14.8 m tall seawall. A great quote from the article: 'Corporate ethics and compliance may be similar, but their cores are different, from the perspective of corporate social responsibility, we cannot say that there is no need to question a company's actions just because they are not a crime under the law.'"
Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
Laws and legal liability are a subset of social ethics. Just because you can do something legally isn't a vindication that you should do it.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
Laws and legal liability are a subset of social ethics. Just because you can do something legally isn't a vindication that you should do it.
Laws and legal liability *intersect* social ethics. There are cases where complying with law or regulations would be unethical.
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Okay, granted... I was imagining the legal ideal. If we actually had that ideal we wouldn't need jury nullification.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Informative)
Just to clarify a point here, because it's a pet peeve of mine...
Jury nullification is for when the law itself is unethical, not just when one application is unethical. If you have an ethical reason to break a law, that's mitigating circumstances, which can itself lead to a "not guilty" verdict, without bringing the issue of the law's legality into question (which almost always just makes a trial more complicated).
There are really rather few cases where nullification is a reasonable option, but the hivemind here seems to be obsessed with it as a panacea for unpopular laws.
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E.g.: felony murder rule.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Interesting)
JN _is_ a viable way to fight unjust laws. not just instances of injustice but whole laws.
we all know that getting laws passed (or even worse, revoked) is near impossible for regular people.
the JN option is essentially the only option we have left, as 'little people'. our power faded when corps took over making (and even sometimes enforcing) laws.
but if you are in the jury box, you DO have a way to say 'enough is enough' this is bullshit and this guy does not deserve X to happen to him. I simply don't give a shit about what law you claim he broke; sending him to prison is WRONG and I won't allow it'.
that's what JN is about. standing up for your view of ethics even in the face of 'establishment' saying otherwise.
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"Unpopular laws"? Nonsense.
The correct application of the jury nullification is any time when there is a conflict between the individual and the collective.
Any time at all when an individual is brought up on any charges by the Federal government jury nullification must be applied.
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Re:Legality (Score:4)
That's not a law based on which an individual will be put in front of a federal judge, do you even understand what it is?
Criminal laws are handled by States.
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Precisely. And all of them should be nullified.
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The collective is all the other individuals. You don't seem very keen on democracy.
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Oh, by the way, while you are absolutely correct about my stance on democracy, that was not really the main point of the comment.
The main point was that at any time that federal government is one side of a legal issue and an individual on the other side, federal government must always lose, no exceptions.
There can be no case when it is correct or right or moral or just for the federal government to win any case at all when it concerns an individual.
States can deal with criminal and other laws where it conce
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so if the federal government asserts that they have the right to restrict citizens from owning nuclear bombs, you're going to say the feds must lose on that issue? nuclear non-proliferation is the job of the states?
what's your feeling on discipline in the armed forces? you think courts martial are unconstitutional because it's the feds vs an individual?
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so if the federal government asserts that they have the right to restrict citizens from owning nuclear bombs, you're going to say the feds must lose on that issue? nuclear non-proliferation is the job of the states?
- yes.
what's your feeling on discipline in the armed forces? you think courts martial are unconstitutional because it's the feds vs an individual?
- I am against standing armies, especially on federal level. They are just a hair-trigger away from becoming tools of oppression.
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I'm sure the guys who wrote the constitution would be surprised to hear that courts martial and other decisions and rules that run the armed forces are blatantly unconstitutional.
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Did I say court martial is unconstitutional? Articles of War handle this provision.
I said: I am against having standing armies and just like the Founders, I prefer State militias to be handling border patrol. But Constitution DOES allow federal gov't to 'provide' Navy and Army.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
Um.. did it ever cross you mind that the weathy has a responsibility to ensure that the society which is has benifitted from immensely is sustained?
There is a moral argument for providing a social safety net (and by extension a working universal healthcare system), and then there is a practical one - a country where the majority of it citizens is not able to sustain a minimium living standard will be prone to widespread civil unrest.
May I remind you that there were a time when government was small - social cohesion was usually maintained by force - and the living standards of the many were squalid. Are you seriously adovcating the return to those times (just so we can compete with China on cheap labor)?
logical conclusion (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting argument, but it relies on a logical fallacy that implies our wealth is derived from being free, and not from being a growing industrialized nation. China might be an argument against your supposition.
Other thought - while our country was "free" there were horrors, like rivers catching on fire from accumulated waste, and working situations like "the Jungle" by Upton Sinclair.
Our wealth is beng polarized by the new Oil Barrons, and wasteful wars, etc.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
By your argument, Somalia must have the fastest growing economy on earth due to the lack of government intervention.
The industrialization of America is not the result of less government - (in those times America has similar amount of industrial regulation when compared to its contemporaries). It is because America at that time had lots of resources, including natural resources and labor that has not been fully developed into an industrial economy. Similar to how China is right now.
I hate to say this, but you're adding nothing to the argument. The thing we should be discussing is not whether to regulate - it is established beyond doubt in economics, especially after the events of 2007, that blind deregulation leads to extremely bad outcomes. What we need to determine is what to regulate and how to do it.
Your argument that because government regulation may lead to some bad outcomes some of the time, so shouldn't be doing it all of the time is a logical fallcy and doesn't hold water. BTW, the proper way of dealing with government tyranny is to ensure that the constitution of government is accountable to the people, not to destroy the mechanism of government.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
May I remind you that there was time when USA had the most individual freedoms FROM government intervention (specifically between the Civil war and WWI)
I don't think that was exactly the most freedom-filled time for those of us who are not white, straight, men.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
Um.. did it ever cross you mind that the weathy has a responsibility to ensure that the society which is has benifitted from immensely is sustained?
- what crossed my mind is that this is exactly the kind of thought process that destroys the society by taking away people's individual rights and killing off the economy.
The history of the United States would contradict your fairy-tale views. When the U.S. was it's most prosperous, when the standard of living for the average citizen was at it's absolute highest, the extremely wealthy were "suffering" tax rates far, far higher than at any time before or since.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Informative)
Then you're a moron. Your points are contradicted by reality.
Individual rights cannot exist without collective rights for them to exist within. Anarchy has total freedom but no rights.
Social safety nets exist because all natural systems degenerate to the 80:20 rule and the 80:20 rule is neither efficient nor ethical.
The US has never been particularly productive, individual freedoms != individual rights (Americans really need to grasp this), and the time between the Civil War and WW1 is when it was guilty of most of the theft of technology from other nations, had one of the worst civil rights records and was most interested in financially backing tyrannies and dictatorships. It fought many wars in that time out of greed and perversion (not claiming more recent wars were better, merely those wars were cynical, self-serving and degenerate), xenophobia and religious extremism were rampant. The South, especially, became dangerously close to Failed Nation status out of its desire to circumvent individual rights in the name of individual freedom.
I regard the US as the worst possible example of progressive or rational thinking. The first President had it right - political parties are destructive monstrosities and liberty is no excuse for the destruction of society.
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Um.. did it ever cross you mind that the weathy has a responsibility to ensure that the society which is has benifitted from immensely is sustained?
- what crossed my mind is that this is exactly the kind of thought process that destroys the society by taking away people's individual rights and killing off the economy.
It seems to me the GP just described an aspect of what in medieval times was called "noblesse oblige", or in its modern form "with great power comes great responsibility", and you just said to hell with that. Did I misunderstand?
Re:Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
- what crossed my mind is that this is exactly the kind of thought process that destroys the society by taking away people's individual rights and killing off the economy.
Your opinion is backed up by facts. Popular uprising and social unrest always results from the haves trampling the have-nots. You can either think ahead and plan for a sustainable system or you can pilfer by force through a robber-baron culture until people get pissed off enough to take to the streets.
not by using majority to steal from minority. There is absolutely nothing moral or just about it.
Nobody is stealing anything. It takes money to maintain a large nation, and it has to come from somewhere. You certainly aren't going to get it from the poor, which make up a surprisingly large percentage of this country.
Sounds to me like your perfectly happy letting the rich rape the poor though.
- May I remind you that there was time when USA had the most individual freedoms FROM government intervention (specifically between the Civil war and WWI) and that was the time when USA became the most productive country, becoming world's biggest creditor nation, exporting highest quality, affordable manufactured goods. All this, while increasing the strength of its own economy and making everybody who lived in it much wealthier (the dollar gained value by factor of 2, while USA still became the largest exporter of manufactured goods).
[citation needed]
Some of the worst economic crisis happened during that period, including recurring bank runs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States). What your describing happened after WW2, and that's because we were one of the places with an economy and manufacturing capability still intact after the war.
This was definitely prior to USA growing a huge government and destroying its economy and society in the process, while becoming world's greatest debtor nation not only on the planet at the time, but in history of humanity.
That's the fault of congress and the wealthy that fund and control them. In case you hadn't notice, there aren't exactly many poor people in positions of power so your "tyranny of the majority" argument has no basis. Th wealthy are in control of the nation, and it is the wealthy who will drive it into the ground for their own benefit.
USA is now bankrupt, only holding together by other nations providing it with the consumables that it eats without producing anything in return.
We are not bankrupt. You're opinion is that we are bankrupt, but by any legal definition we are far from being bankrupt.
And once again, you have only the wealthy to blame. They pushed to remove regulations and restrictions, and once they got what they wanted they shipped everything off overseas to increase profits, created entire markets on speculation, and trashed the economy and manufacturing in this country in the process. Sure, we can get those jobs back if we roll back labor laws to allow conditions like third world countries to occur here but I'm pretty sure that will result in some serious issues.
There is no such thing as 'responsibility' of the few to maintain standard of living for many, that's pure nonsense.
Well, at least not to a sociopath such as yourself.
Voluntarism is the key, but it only works in a free society, there is no voluntarism in a totalitarian regime.
Voluntarism doesn't work at large scales. Do you honestly think people will donate enough to offset the social safety nets in this country? Especially when almost all the wealth is controlled by a very tiny percent of the population? You're incredibly naive if you thinks so.
Again: democracy leads to tyranny, that's what you have now.
You really have no fucking idea what tyranny is. Grow up.
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Interesting argument, but it relies on a logical fallacy that implies our wealth is derived from being free, and not from being a growing industrialized nation.
- there is no logical fallacy, the wealth in USA was increased specifically because the country was free from government regulations and various taxes.
Out of 37 richest self-made people in USA, 27 were born prior to 1850. Only 3 were born in the 20th century - Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Sam Walton.
1870 to 1913 time period increased overall wealth of all the people in USA comparatively more than any time before or after. This was done without most of what is called 'government' today, including most depa
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By your argument, Somalia must have the fastest growing economy on earth due to the lack of government intervention.
- no, that's not my argument, that's a strawman.
Somalia is a consequence of a country that was destroyed by the former Communist regime and a resulting civil war (that's one way to end the totalitarian Communist rule). Of-course it wasn't much freer before the Communist rule as a British colony.
Somalia has multiple different forms of government right now, not 'anarchy' actually, as many believe, and in a sense they are more free (depending on the part of the land) than many people elsewhere. Somalia actu
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Even today blacks are only, what, 15% of population in USA?
In any case, by the time the Civil war ended you can't even make an argument that there was slavery involved in industrialisation, and in reality industrialisation didn't even happen in the Southern states, it started in the North if I am not completely mistaken.
As to 'straight' - this is not an argument at all.
Of-course I wouldn't have ratified the original Constitution as it didn't actually recognise people as equals under the law, so if I could b
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The history of the United States would contradict your fairy-tale views. When the U.S. was it's most prosperous, when the standard of living for the average citizen was at it's absolute highest, the extremely wealthy were "suffering" tax rates far, far higher than at any time before or since.
- nonsense. That's the time after 1947, when gov't cut spending by 64% and taxes by 30%, which finally allowed the Great Depression to end, but that wasn't due to high taxes or anything of the sort, it was the consequence of USA having a near monopoly on production as the rest of the world was in shambles.
The real prosperity (not based on the unfortunate situation of the rest of the world) was achieved in USA in 19 century after the Civil war, when free market allowed maximum competition and turned the cou
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Maybe you should heed your calling and build up Somolia into the world class economy that they deserve due to their superior libertarian ideals. May I be the first to wish you luck.
Your ability to see reality through libertarian-o-vision is truly amazing.
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due to their superior libertarian ideals.
- more strawman.
Where is it written that Somalians have LIBERTARIAN IDEAS?
Are you high?
By the way, I AM interested in Somalia, looking to see if there is a way to invest in something there. I like investing into things when they are down.
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Any responsibility that you think you can place upon an individual to care for another individual by rule of law is unjust and immoral.
When did 'responsibility' become a synonym for 'oppression by the threat of government violence'?
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Wouldn't that make all rules of law unjust and immoral?
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How is that? Caring for another individual by threat of violence VS not HURTING other individual are different things.
We don't hurt each other (in most cases, hopefully), and it's not even because of laws, it's because of reciprocity, because in reality an open conflict among grown ups ends in serious injury or death.
Laws are really irrelevant, once somebody is killed as an example, the laws can only be used to punish after the fact, they can't undo the damage.
AFAIC most laws are ineffectual anyway, basical
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I gave enough details on the Great Depression, with numbers, etc. [slashdot.org] It was caused by the federal reserve monetising UK debt, buying out bad debt UK owed to France (interestingly enough, it was bad debt to France that prompted Nixon to default on the gold dollar).
The Fed printed enough money from 1913 to 1920 that it caused the depression of 1921, which ended in about 2 years after Harding cut gov't spending by around 70% (real spending, not what they do today).
Nobody paid the marginal taxes in post war USA,
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The only reason why you can claim that other are using strawman arguments is because you selectively ignore the arguments people present against you. If you feel that that the only people you can get along with are the people you agree, then fine. It doesn't help your case though.
There are many arguments against a public sector which is too large - mainly dealing with the inefficiencies resulting from lack of competition and the resulting stagnation - none of which deals with the type of paranoid and dystop
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The only reason why you can claim that other are using strawman arguments is because you selectively ignore the arguments people present against you.
- no.
The reason why they are strawman is because they are not the arguments that I make, but also they are pretty stupid. Weren't you the one saying that in Somalia they have LIBERTARIAN IDEAS? :) Hah ahahahaha, oh boy, that's funny. Libertarian ideas. If you believe that they have 'libertarian ideas' and that's why they have the problems that they do today, then I guess yes, you can't understand a word of what I am talking about.
Libertarian ideas in Somalia. Yeah, ok.
China is capitalist (Score:2)
it relies on a logical fallacy that implies our wealth is derived from being free, and not from being a growing industrialized nation. China might be an argument against your supposition.
China was piss-poor until they adopted a free economy system.
The fallacy is on you, when you consider all the industrialization plans they implemented in communist countries, hoping they would provide wealth. The end result? Communism is no more, except in Cuba and North Korea.
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I've said that - and more - to professors, generals and lords. I've said similar things to bullies (and have plenty of scars where they've lobbed me through windows). Why should I be afraid to say the same thing to you? I believe in the ultimate authority of reality, opinions and emotions are as nothing. They have no currency, only that which is matters, and all the implicit threats can't change that.
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Nobody paid the marginal taxes in post war USA, there were enough loopholes to drive entire fortunes through them, nobody was dumb enough to pay taxes in those brackets, so the effective rate never went over 20%.
Right, about one-third higher than is commonly paid by that group now. Nice try. It's the collected revenue that counts. You really need to broaden your sources - you know include more than Rand and crack-pot economists.
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That group has moved its income out of USA by the way, and nearly nobody paid income taxes, especially when they were that high, they would be idiots to, there was basically no way to do any cross checking without computerised records and you could write off just about anything against your income.
Beyond that even if you couldn't write off anything, you'd just not take a salary that would put you mostly into the marginal bracket.
My sources do not in fact include 'Rand', whatever that is.
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"Republic" means a form of government that is controlled by its subjects. In other words, it's pretty much synonymous with democracy.
Also, the alternative to rule by many is rule by few, also known as dictatorship. Those aren't famous for maintaining people's freedoms either.
People keep on saying this, yet the only instances I know of
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"Republic" means a form of government that is controlled by its subjects. In other words, it's pretty much synonymous with democracy.
- be specific. It's a representative democracy, which is an attempt to prevent mobocracy, which always leads to tyranny.
Examples are plenty, if you are American, you are living in one. But as I said, I am not reinventing a bicycle here [suite101.com].
Of-course unlike all other Republics before it, USA is quite unique in the artificial way that it started its existence. Roman Republic was created on the ruins of the overthrown monarchy, and it ended with Caesar, Sulla and later Pompey - dictators.
It takes a bit of time,
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When people say "democracy", they mean representative democracy, not ancient Atheian direct democracy. Also, please explain the difference between representative democracy and mobocracy?
Yet th
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"Always" is a big word, and one I suspect you do not comprehend. Indeed, by your very use of it here, you are stating you can mathematically prove your claim (since examples alone CANNOT be used to prove an "always") that there can NEVER exist a democracy that does not lead to tyranny. Unless you have the equations for Seldon's Psychohistory, I don't see how you could mathematically prove that. Ergo, your claim is arrogant and supported only by your worldview rather than by facts on the ground. Any such vie
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Oh, another one. We can use induction of-course by looking at the past, and if the performance of the past (and of the current) is any indication of the future, then this vicious cycle of: republic (which allows for most wealth to be created), democracy (which happens ONLY because there is all this wealth accumulated) and then tyranny (which happens because democracy / mobocracy is used by the politicos to gain most power by stealing and handing out bread, circuses and military contracts) will always be th
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An element of a set cannot be extrapolated to infer the set. Induction is useless, particularly in your case as you're apparently incapable of comprehending what rules you can perform induction on, or how.
Your "logic" states nothing beyond your personal arrogance, it shows NOTHING. Democracy doesn't require wealth and CORRECTLY-IMPLEMENTED democracy has no mob rule, populist rule, etc. Those exist only in degenerate systems, where the Tea Party is a classic example of degeneracy in action. You show nothing
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An element of a set cannot be extrapolated to infer the set. Induction is useless, particularly in your case as you're apparently incapable of comprehending what rules you can perform induction on, or how.
- since when do I have to prove something about far away future, while we know the history and the current, and what does it matter if 1000 years in the future there will be some other form of democracy that may exist for a longer period of time?
How is it relevant?
It's irrelevant completely, but you obviously don't understand that.
emocracy doesn't require wealth and CORRECTLY-IMPLEMENTED d
- again, as all of the revolutionaries, the missionaries and all of the failed dictators of the past (and current and not too distant future), they have all talked about buildin
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Because "all" and "every" have no exceptions, now or ever. If you use these words, I need find ONE exception, that is all. Your claim that it is irrelevant is because I have found your supposed logic wanting and you can't cope with that.
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In a democratically controlled system of government, there is no excuse for the existence of unpopular laws.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
it works the other way, too.
just because someone bought a law decrying X to be illegal does not mean its immoral to so X.
in fact, if the law is recent enough, likely THE LAW is unethical and the behavior perfectly fine. very likely, given our back-assward world we now live in.
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Agreed. Common Law is perhaps the most useful subset of law, in this regard, in that it provides a framework for understanding (common law marriage, for example) but that's all it provides. Criminal and civil law are intended to draw absolute lines over which people should not cross, but they're now too complex to parse and contradictory, and are therefore useless in any practical sense as that framework.
But laws (even well-written ones) can only ever be a framework, a skeleton on which other things can han
Huzzah! (Score:4, Insightful)
... we cannot say that there is no need to question a company's actions just because they are not a crime under the law.
The spirit of the Samurai still lives. This is good. I'd thought MacArthur had bled that out of the Japanese.
Re:Huzzah! (Score:4, Insightful)
The spirit of the Samurai still lives. This is good. I'd thought MacArthur had bled that out of the Japanese.
Samurai were conservative engineers? Who knew? I thought they were a warrior race. Did they wear the Medieval Japanese equivalent of a pocket protector?
Re:Huzzah! (Score:5, Insightful)
The spirit of the Samurai still lives. This is good. I'd thought MacArthur had bled that out of the Japanese.
Samurai were conservative engineers? Who knew? I thought they were a warrior race.
Wikipedia: "From the earliest times, the Samurai felt that the path of the warrior was one of honor, emphasizing duty to one's master, and loyalty unto death." That's what I was talking about. He didn't just "build to code." He built what he believed was necessary to satisfy the requirements of the situation. He was also proved right.
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Duty to one's master an loyalty until death is a recipe for all kinds of corner cutting and neglect of wider obligations.
Samurai isn't the right model for obligation to society at large. But what is?
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Samurai isn't the right model for obligation to society at large. But what is?
I don't recognize any obligations I have to society at large. As long as my fist isn't impacting your nose, I shouldn't be any problem for you. I try to get along and cooperate with and support others when it's in my interest, as should you. I avoid and boycott bad behavior on the part of others, as should you. I don't think any more should be expected of either of us.
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That'd make a great .sig ...
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The spirit of the Samurai still lives. This is good. I'd thought MacArthur had bled that out of the Japanese.
Samurai were conservative engineers? Who knew? I thought they were a warrior race. Did they wear the Medieval Japanese equivalent of a pocket protector?
Actually, they were not a "race" at all. They were a warrior class, though in the case of the Samurai, "warrior" is a rather inadequate term to describe the those bound by Bushido.
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Frankly, the Samurai were a privileged upper-class of the 16th-18th century. And even then, most men who could call themselves "Samurai" were really basically accountants or family members, of the very upper echelons, who perhaps spent a lot of time studying martial arts, and zen philosophy, because they had nothing better to do with their time, because they had the peasants doing all their work for them. When the gun came, the Shogun dispensed with the need for sword and spear-wielding footsoldiers. Jus
Re:Huzzah! (Score:5, Funny)
when will we ever learn (Score:5, Insightful)
The right thing to do is not necessarily the profitable or expedient thing to do.
To quote Richard Feynman, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Engineering must NEVER have its integrity compromised by issues of money, politics, law, marketing, religion, bureaucracy, or superstition. History repeatedly teaches this to us and yet we still obstinately refuse to learn. And the result is that people are injured or killed.
Re:when will we ever learn (Score:4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVDGmjz7eM
Re:when will we ever learn (Score:5, Insightful)
There are ignorance problems and there are malice problems(and, hovering somewhere between the two, there are the gamblers who take on risks that turn out to go badly)...
Re:when will we ever learn (Score:5, Insightful)
or even subjected to civil or criminal liability
No, unlike software engineers, real engineers are legally accountable (at least in the west). If you sign off on a doggy bridge design and the bridge falls down, it will be shown (by other engineers) that you failed in your due dilligence, you will go to jail, you will never hold another engineering position on a western project. You will get sued in civil court, not just by the victims but also by the insurance companies that will have to pay to clean up your mess and build a new bridge.
Politicians have nowhere near this level of accountability. If they are warned about (say) levees but ignore the problem for decades. When they inevetibly break at the hieght of a king tide, it's called a "natural disaster", "a freak occurence" or if they're really nailed to the wall, "aging infrastructue".
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If you sign off on a doggy bridge design and the bridge falls down
The poor little pooches :(
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In a way, that's part of the problem. Too much emphasis on punishing failure, not enough on rewarding success. That philosophy works well when the failure mode is commonplace. If you design a plane and it can't fly, you can't sell it. The failure forces you to redesign it until it can fly.
But in the case of rare failures (plane crashes, nuclear accidents, bridge collapses, etc), it's not an adequate motivator
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"I'll be gone."
As you say, real engineers are on the hook for their designs. However, the engineer in TFA died in 1986(and quite possibly retired before then). Had he done the wrong thing, he would have avoided inconvenience then and been worm food before it turned out to be a problem.
More broadly, of course, there
Re:when will we ever learn (Score:4, Insightful)
Better safety measures to protect their million/billion dollar assets are very much in their interest.
Re:when will we ever learn (Score:5, Informative)
Better safety measures to protect their million/billion dollar assets are very much in their interest.
Two reasons why it is not:
1. Profits are higher 99% of the time, and when something goes wrong it wasn't their fault (big tsunami, rouge operator mistake etc). Ultimately someone has to decide to spend money on safety, and chances are that person won't be to blame if there is an accident but will get a bonus if the share price goes up so there is little incentive for them to chose the less profitable option.
2. The majority of the cost of an accident is born by the government anyway. The cost of insuring nuclear installations would make them uneconomical so the government has to do it. I don't have a figure for Japan to hand by in the UK the required insurance is £140m per site and in the US it is $10bn for the entire industry. Fukushima has already cost orders of magnitude more than that, and while TEPCO will eventually pick up some of that cost the majority is being met by the government.
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You mean a communitst saboteur?
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rouge operator
You mean a communitst saboteur?
Or a cross-dressing spy.
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The first and most important engineering principle I learned - informally - was Murphy's Law.
It really should be taught as a formal discipline in all engineering schools, along with methods to assess and prioritize possible modes of failure and their consequences.
Civil Engineers (Score:2)
As a computer engineer, I am always a little jealous of the "all in a days work" attitude of good civil engineers. This is a bit of a puff piece, but the unfortunate fact is, we, as engineers, often can't or at least don't anticipate all possible problems down the line. This is an amazing story of success, but it just underscores the fact that this is exception, not the rule. Regardless, technology keeps marching and we can only hope to get better and better, despite governments' inadequacies.
Re:Civil Engineers (Score:4, Informative)
Social Contracts (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if TEPCO will attempt to claim credit for something they didn't want to do.
Re:Social Contracts (Score:5, Funny)
While not everyone will have the honor of insisting on sound engineering at vulnerable nuclear facilities, we are sure that all of you can find a way to squeeze in some unpaid overtime or not seek reimbursement of job related expenses.
Re:Social Contracts (Score:5, Informative)
what's so sad about the whole fukushima mess and this article, is that the meltdown wasn't even caused by the tsunami - unit 1 (at least) was already melting down, out of control, and venting radioactive xenon, iodine and caesium before the tsunami even hit. the earthquake itself was enough to shear the reactor coolant pipes. even if the diesel generators weren't wiped out, the plant would have suffered the exact same fate.
but for all the apologists saying plants in the usa are safe, i wonder what they'll do when an earthquake knocks out cooling for a plant that's nearby themselves or their family. probably run for the hills i assume - any nuclear plant that's not 100% passively safe (that is, every plant on the face of the earth as of right now) should never have been built. then again, who cares what engineer's think about failsafes.
but we had to go with a reactor that could breed bomb-grade plutonium, instead of a passively safe plan like a thorium reactor. look where it's got us.
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Even if Fukushima's Daiichis Unit 1 was already damaged by the quake (I haven't found any reference for this, the closest is the manual shutdown of the emergency cooling system at march 11 2011, 15:03), the accident recovery was severely hampered by the tsunami. If the emergency generators had survived, the accident at Fukushima Daiichi would have been a Ievel 3 or 4 accident at worst.
A toast to Mr. Hirai (Score:5, Insightful)
They should build a giant statue of Yanosuke Hirai as a reminder. My organization needs one also.
Re:A toast to Mr. Hirai (Score:4, Informative)
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A toast to a great engineer, indeed.
As the submitter, even if the article was several days old, I thought that the story was still relevant, not only in the "feel good" department, but in the sense of a very practical benefit of ethical behavior. This is the "month of safety" in my company, and this story helps to drive home the idea that energy workers are responsible not only of their own safety but also of the community they serve. More so when we work for a state owned company, that makes us public serv
Corporate Social Responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
If you've read Professor Yunus's Book, "Creating a World without Poverty" in which he describes the concept of "Social Business" as an alternative to pathological profit-maximisation, you will fully appreciate his interpretation of "Corporate Social Responsibility" being synonymous with "Corporate Financial *irresponsibility*".
the damage caused by allowing Corporations to get so out of control at a National (and an International) level should by now be quite obvious, with these kinds of examples such as Fukushima. there is an alternative pathogen which consumes all resources and maximises its own gain to the absolute exclusion of all other considerations: it's called Cancer. Profit-maximising Corporations are a Cancer and should be treated as a disease.
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Not only that, but the lack of personal accountability.
Even Adam Smith, the corporatists darling (even though they ignore this part), railed against any form of limited liability.
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Did you know that the limited liability corporation is a creation of government, not of private individuals?
Did you know that before there were LLC's, there were large businesses without the limited liability bonus?
Don't blame people for using what the government creates to their own benefit. If you disapprove of the LLC, point your anger at its source - the government that created it....
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Profit-maximising Corporations are a Cancer and should be treated as a disease.
There is immense profit to be made in ongoing prevention, diagonsis, and treatment of Cancer. So Cancer is really a good thing. Creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, feeds millions of children.
What about the people in the cities? (Score:4, Insightful)
While I'm far from disagreeing that nuclear power stations should be as safe as conceivably possible, what about the cities?
18 Cities were largely or completely destroyed by the tsunami (others merely to some small part). This is where people lived, this is where people died. Where is the scandal, where is the outrage about exposing some 500,000 to the risk of the on-rushing water? Where is the investigation why it could be that almost 20,000 people died?
There has been so much supposedly outraged talk about Fukushima Daiichi, about how anybody could expose the people to such risks, that it is grotesque that nobody is talking about the risk that was there, that was obvious, that killed people.
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I wonder if building a seawall that big around entire cities is feasible, or environmentally sound.
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It is certainly much more environmentally sound than letting 20 million tons of debris be washed into the sea. Feasibility is not an issue at all. Just look at the piles of debris still on land that were piled up in a matter of months to make any sense of the chaos at all. Those are much larger in their volume than the walls that are needed.
Or compare it to large hydro dams - the material used in a single dam like the Itaipu is enough to protect dozens of cities. (This dam is 8km long and 200m high. It's mo
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Those killed by a tsunami don't make for good propaganda for anti-nuclear lobby.
Sadly, people don't like to pay taxes... (Score:2)
...and most government officers rarely are good public servants.
Many cities had seawalls. There were several places that survived the tsunami. The seawalls coupled with the tsunami alerts bought thousands, maybe millions enough time to evacuate, but, since people had to run uphill, this meant that the elderly were unable to evacuate. This is the reason that caused that a very high percentage of elderly people -even for japanese standards- died in the tsunami. They make the bulk of casualties. Is easier to h
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I know that most cities were protected by seawalls after the 1896/1933 tsunamies and I had also heard about Fudai on the longnow blog [longnow.org], but not about other villages/towns/cities (I realize those terms have very differnt meanings throughout the world).
Since I guess that you are Japanese (brilliant guess, I know), can you say something about the general Japanese perception of the earthquake? Here in Germany it has become perfectly acceptable to refer to the earthquake and tsunami simply by saying Fukushima, wi
Cost vs Saving (Score:2)
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Dear Fellow Hacker,
Unfortunately, I will be unable to provide the assistance you desire, as I have some serious concerns regarding the engineering work that has already been done on the project, and I doubt the current estimates provide an accurate foundation for future work.
Firstly, there is the estimate of "a hour or less" to read a Slashdot post. While I have spent an hour reading a comment before, it was the proofreading of my own essay-length point-by-point rebuttal. The referenced post is obviously n
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Damnit... That should have been "...appear to be guessing for the..."
I'm not usually a grammar Nazi, but when I is I fail.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_nut
If not then all you will make is an amazing hand glider that can fly with a fridge loaded above it.