Happy Travails

Bananas Are Radioactive Too

I was flattered by all the advice I got to eschew a return through Narita, Tokyo's airport, and avoid any radiation risk. I spent about an hour in transit, and got about 50x the radiation from flying at 37000 feet than I would have standing for an similar time near the troubled reactors. I was more worried over the food. Normally they stock local Japanese provisions in transit. You can tell because the meals taste better than the standard fare. Well, on the final leg we were served sub-standard fare. Bad food in this case is safer food. 

The risk of this hour in transit was trivial. You can tell by comparing it with a normal activity - eating a banana. 

Bananas are radioactive and there is a Banana Equivalent Dose (BED) standard. For those of you who like equivalence, consider this:

A radiation dose equivalent of 100 μSv (10 mrem, or 1,000 BED) increases an average adult human's risk of death by about one micromort—the same risk as driving 40 miles in a car, eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter, or of smoking 1.4 cigarettes.

News today is 10x the amount of radioactive cesium and iodine fell in the Tokyo rainfall - but still at minuscule levels.  A banana produces about 14 Bq (becquerels). The normal fall is about 100 bananas per meter, and thus spiked 10x to a kilo-banana. Good thing I stayed indoors and didn't drink tap water. Bad for the Japanese if this continues, although still at very low levels. (And I bet you didn't know that low levels of radiation were all around, all the time?) 

There is a chart below showing all the equivalence, which I sourced from The Big Picture. Click on it to make it readable. A day near the plant is 3.5 μSv, or 35 bananas. A six hour flight from NY to LA is 12 times more radiation, or 400 bananas. My 18 hour flight is 36 times more than a day in the Fukushima area, or a little over a 1200 bananas (1.2 kiloBED) - thus worth about one micromort, as noted in the comment above.

Y'all were at more risk commuting every day than I was. 

Transiting Through Narita

Narita is Tokyo's key international airport, and travelers on United to places in Asia are accustomed to transiting through it. It got shook by the earthquake, and was on the edge of the tsunami zone, so it was a bit of a miracle that it was operating when I flew through on Monday, just a few days after the disaster. 

You gotta love the resilience and tenacity of the Japanese. The place was running as if normally, with ceiling tiles hanging loose and the Red carpet Club closed due to damage from the shake. The TVs were set to NHK for news in English, mostly about the nuclear radiation leaks and the no-fly zones around the reactors. Narita is outside those zones, but is situated between the reactors and Tokyo, and who knows, a wind shift could close it. Since I am flying back via Narita, this is dear to my heart right now. 

The Da Vinci Code and the Second Coming

The critics thought it murky, and the acting reactive - with no chemistry between the leads. (How could there be, when it turns out that one of them has the Blood Royal - the bloodline of Christ? A bit calming of ardor, meditating on that legacy.) The movie has done well so far, despite the critics - with a better opening than The Passion. $225m worldwide in the first weekend.  Yet it is a mediocrity, and may lack legs.

We enjoyed the movie, and also enjoyed rapping with the protesters out front, who asserted that the Catholic Church had a monopoly on truth, and the movie was blasphemous. The alternative 'truth' of the movie is a bit much, based on a known fraud. Also, knowing he was going to be crucified, would the Son of God have left a pregnant wife behind?

Yet the incredible interest in the book is based on a widespread feeling in Christendom is that the message may have been hijacked by the early Catholic Church, especially when it became the State Religion of the Roman Empire. Is there a great conspiracy, just not the one of the book & movie?

Postscript to "War of the Worlds"

We noted how "War of the Worlds" has been a prescient social indicator, each time presaging the major event to come. The book - WWI. The radio show - Pearl Harbor. The first movie - Sputnik and the Space Race. So what does the Spielberg movie presage? The most telling moments in the movie are how quickly order breaks down, and it becomes everyone for themselves. There is no heroism, no sacrifice, other than for one's family. At the time of the post (July), it looked like it was preparing us for another terrorist attack. After the hurricane hit New Orleans, it is now clear what the movie portends: how quickly civil order can break down, even in the US. So what does it presage? Katrina. And the next breakdown.

"War of the Worlds" as a Social Barometer

Skirts are getting longer. Movies are getting darker. The country seems a bit on edge, as if it waiting for another shoe to drop, after 9/11. Stories abound of a real estate bubble. Bush's polls are much below where Reagan or Clinton were at this point, down to the abysmal levels of Nixon's second term. Support for Iraq is where it was for Vietnam in 1968 when the country turned against the war.  Even that icon of the bull market, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is at such low poll numbers it is doubtful if he will run for re-election. Into this comes a very different type of Spielberg sci-fi movie. A dark one, a pessimistic one. One in which the aliens come out of the blue, from beneath the ground (from China, perhaps?). What does this say about the social mood of the US?

View from Masada

Masada is the most visited site in Israel. It holds a special place in the heart of the Jewish State, much like the Alamo once did to Americans. In both cases, a small brave group of freedom fighters held out for as long as they could against a great Imperial power. At Masada, history has captured one of the most stirring speeches for freedom in any age (see the attached Masada photo album for more of this fascinating moment of history). After the Alamo, the US went on to win Texas and continue in its Manifest Destiny to control the continent from sea to shining sea. After Masada, the Jewish State was eradicated and the Jews once again dispersed, not to return for almost two millennia. Why then the special appeal of Masada, and what does it say about the current conflict in the Middle East?

View from Ground Zero

It seemed altogether fitting and proper to visit the site of a great battlefield of the War on Terror on Memorial Day, a day first conceived of and dedicated to the proposition that all Civil War fallen should be honored. The battle that rages is how to rebuild the site: replace the office space, return the city street life to the area, add a monument to the fallen? A few minutes in the site make it clear that dedicating a new memorial would not consecrate nor hallow this site any more than the fallen already have by their great devotion to duty. The site is a monument to industry, and is already showing the signs of returning to its former state.

View From Nagasaki

It was threatening to rain when we got to Nagasaki, a picturesque town at the western tip of Japan, the tip nearest to both Korea and China. When Japan withdrew from the world in 1636, and to enforce the ban on Christianity that had begun in 1587, an artificial island was built off Nagasaki harbor called Dejima, to house the remaining Portuguese. Dejima became Japan's only window to the Western World for 200 years. It is ironic that one of the most Western cities in Japan was the site of the second original Ground Zero.

View From Jerusalem

You feel the weight of history in Jerusalem, some of it recent. Saturday is the Sabbath for one faith, but just another day for the others. Yelnick visited last Saturday, at the front lines of the New World Order.