Personally I think Google is doing their employees a favor. As someone who worked in hotel hospitality prior to my current career, where I've worked remote for 10 years, I see a vast and profound difference in work experience and quality of work life. While in hotel hospitality I was constantly engaging with people who worked outside my department. This was a fun way to meet people with different skills, languages, backgrounds, experiences. It was at an international resort and I would eat lunch with dishwashers from China, cooks from Venezuela, front desk staff from Germany, France, England and bellhops from Southern California. It was dynamic, it was fun, it was a cool way to meet foreign babes, we had great karaoke nights, and all of it came together simply because we shared a building. When I moved to my current career I still engaged with hundreds of people, but it was primarily via phone and email. There was no office culture, no shared geo location. I discovered that no matter how much I worked, nobody really had a clue what I did. Sure, if the work wasn't done they may notice, but when it was done it was just the oil keeping the machine moving. Only visible to the parts I was directly in contact with. I have felt a profound disconnect from the joy of work by being remote. It just feels monotonous. I do love the flexibility I have; I work out in the morning or on my "lunch" break almost daily. But for all the supposed flexibility there is no real synchronicity with the rest of the work force. If someone needs something they call me, which interrupts my flow. If a senior manager has some hair up their ass, now it has to be a hair up my ass- also without regard for my hefty work load. Tasks just come and don't stop. No matter how productive I am, there's always ten projects waiting in the wing. Every day is a constant battle of choosing what's a priority and what's an URGENT priority. And worst of all, there's nobody to just share the experience with unless it's a prescribed meetup (which now feels like an interruption to my personal schedule). I won't even get into the frustrations of people calling and emailing at all hours of day/night/weekend and vacation. Nobody ever knows if you're tied up on a call, a trip, a vacation... they don't need to know, they don't need to care. One of the great benefits of the office is that it is a place to BE. Work, collaborate, converse, gossip... while you're THERE. When you're gone, the work can stay behind too. I know I would miss a lot of the flexibility I have if I went back to a destination workplace however I think the overall trade off is in favor of going into an office and staying engaged in the world. Not just for the reasons I listed, but for the myriad mental and emotional benefits you only notice when they are gone... Love, Drew.

I certainly don't mind nuclear power any more than I did before the accident. I've lived near a nuclear plant since I was a child and obviously toyed with the notion that it might blow up. I learned to live with it and rather enjoy the idea that there's a powerful, clean energy source so near to where I reside! "Does this surprise anybody?" is a rhetorical question; America's "reaction" to crises like these is uniformly pious.