By Michael A. Levi, Wednesday, March 16, 12:05 PM
Explosions. Radiation. Evacuations. More than 30 years after Three Mile Island, the unfolding crisis in Japan has brought back some of the worst nightmares surrounding nuclear power — and restarted a major debate about the merits and the drawbacks of this energy source. Does nuclear energy offer a path away from carbon-based fuels? Or are nuclear power plants too big a threat? It’s time to separate myth from reality.
1. The biggest problem with nuclear energy is safety.
Safety is certainly a critical issue, as the tragedy in Japan is making clear. But for years, the the biggest challenge to sustainable nuclear energy hasn’t been safety, but cost.
In the United States, new nuclear construction was already slowing down even before the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979; the disaster merely sealed its fate. The last nuclear power plant to come online started delivering power in 1996 — but its construction began in 1972. Today, nuclear power remains considerably more expensive than coal- or gas-fired electricity, mainly because nuclear plants are so expensive to build. Estimates are slippery, but a plant can cost well north of $5 billion. A 2009 MIT study estimated that the cost of producing nuclear energy (including construction, maintenance and fuel) was about 30 percent higher than that of coal or gas.
Of course, cost and safety aren’t unrelated. Concerns about safety lead to extensive regulatory approval processes and add uncertainty to plant developers’ calculations — both of which boost the price of financing new nuclear plants. It’s not clear how much these construction costs would fall if safety fears subsided and the financing became cheaper — and after the Fukushima catastrophe, we’re unlikely to find out.
2. Nuclear power plants are sitting ducks for terrorists.
It’s easy to get scared about terrorist attacks on nuclear plants. After the Sept. 11 attacks, a cottage industry sprung up around the threat, with analysts imagining ever-more horrific and creative ways that terrorists could strike nuclear facilities and unleash massive consequences.
There are certainly real risks: Nuclear expert Matthew Bunn of Harvard University has pointed out that well-planned terrorist attacks probably would produce the sort of simultaneous failures in multiple backup systems that Japan’s reactors are experiencing. But it’s much harder to target a nuclear power plant than one might think, and terrorists would have great difficulty replicating the physical impact that the March 11 earthquake had on the Japanese plants. It also would be tough for them to breach the concrete domes and other barriers that surround U.S. reactors. And although attacks have been attempted in the past — most notoriously by Basque separatists in Spain in 1977 — none has resulted in widespread damage.
Certainly, the water pools in which reactors store used fuel, which reside outside the containment domes, are more vulnerable than the reactors and could cause real damage if attacked; there is a debate between analysts and industry about whether terrorists could effectively target them.
3. Democrats oppose nuclear energy; Republicans favor it.
Yes, the GOP base is enthusiastic about nuclear energy, while the Democratic base is skeptical. Moreover, many Republican politicians support assistance to the industry such as loan guarantees for nuclear developers, while many Democrats oppose them. But the politics of nuclear power have changed in recent years, mainly because of climate change.
Democrats, including many supporters in the environmental movement, have become more open to nuclear power as a large-scale zero-emissions energy option. Steven Chu, President Obama’s energy secretary, has been enthusiastic about the nuclear option. When asked to compare coal and nuclear energy in 2009, Chu responded: “I’d rather be living near a nuclear power plant.”
The biggest prospective boost for nuclear power in the past two years was an initiative championed by Democrats and scorned by Republicans: cap-and-trade legislation. Cap-and-trade would have penalized polluting power sources such as coal and gas emitters, thus tilting the playing field toward nuclear power. Department of Energy simulations of the ill-fated Waxman-Markey climate bill projected that it would have increased nuclear power generation by 74 percent in 2030.
Yet although Democrats may have become more accepting of nuclear power, few became fully enthusiastic. Japan’s tragedy may make many reconsider their stance.
4. Nuclear power is the key to energy independence.
When people talk about energy independence, they’re thinking about oil, which we mostly use in vehicles and industrial production. When they talk about nuclear, though, they’re thinking about electricity. More nuclear power means less coal, less natural gas, less hydroelectric power and less wind energy. But unless we start putting nuclear power plants in our cars and semis, more nuclear won’t mean less oil.
This wasn’t always the case: During the the heyday of nuclear power, the early 1970s (45 plants broke ground between 1970 and 1975), oil was a big electricity source, and boosting nuclear power was a real way to squeeze petroleum out of the economy. Alas, we’ve already replaced pretty much all the petroleum in the power sector; the opportunity to substitute oil with nuclear power is gone.
5. Better technology can make nuclear power safe.
Technology can increase safety, but there will always be risks with nuclear power. The Japanese reactors at the center of the current crisis use old technology that increased their vulnerability. Next-generation reactors will be “passively cooled,” which means that if backup power fails like it has in Japan, meltdowns will be avoided more easily. (Passive-cooling systems vary, but their common feature is a lack of dependence on external power.) Other lower-tech improvements, such as stronger containment structures, have also mitigated risk.
But what happened in Japan reminds us that unanticipated vulnerabilities are inevitable in any highly complex system. Careful engineering can minimize the chance of disasters, but it can’t eliminate them. Operators and authorities will need to make sure that they’re prepared to deal with unanticipated failures even as they work to prevent them.
Most energy sources entail risks. In the past year, we’ve seen an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fatal explosions at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia and now the crisis in Japan. The American public will need to decide whether the risks of nuclear power — compared with those of other energy sources — are too high.
Michael A. Levi , a senior fellow and director of the program on energy security and climate change at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of “On Nuclear Terrorism.”
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© 2011 The Washington Post Company
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
15/03 From Japan’s devastation, our Lisbon moment?
By Harold Meyerson, Tuesday, March 15, 7:49 PM
First came the earthquake, then the tsunami and the fires, and then, over time, a critical decline in belief in a benevolent God.
The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 killed about a fifth of the city’s 200,000 residents and leveled 85 percent of its buildings, including almost every major church — on a church holiday, when they were packed with parishioners. It also shook 18th-century philosophers to the core. “Candide,” Voltaire’s comic polemic against the belief that all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds, was written in the quake’s aftermath, as Voltaire was abandoning any notion of godly oversight of the world’s affairs. The young Immanuel Kant was sufficiently upset to research and write one of the first books ever on the causes of quakes, before he turned to his life’s work of creating ethical codes that functioned in both the presence and absence of God.
Today, the quake, tsunami and, most particularly, the potential of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan should weaken at least one of our own deeply rooted faiths — in our own infallibility. Consider, for a moment, all the systems that the experts said had been rendered safe, foolproof and immune to disaster, and that nonetheless crashed during the past three years. There was the financial system, an assemblage of immense wagers on all manner of things, which an array of mathematicians and economists assured us could not possibly come tumbling down. There was deep-water oil drilling, which the oil companies’ geologists, among others, insisted could not possibly result in a cataclysmic spill. And today, there are nuclear power plants, safeguarded, their engineers have told us, against the oh-so-remote possibilities of meltdowns.
These assurances — at least, most of them — were not given in bad faith. Wall Street’s quants genuinely believed that they had erected a stable system, as did the geologists and the nuclear engineers. The equations were elegant; things penciled out. At long last, humankind had triumphed over risk.
Except when it hadn’t.
What all these wizards did not factor in was that these were all just as much human and social systems as they were mathematical. Behind the equations were human and social assumptions, rooted in such human and social impulses as greed, denial and hubris. The derivatives that the banks’ economists had devised were said to distribute risk so widely that they made the system safe; but in fact, they interlocked risk so completely that they brought the system down. But they also brought the banks such massive profits that few on Wall Street wanted to recognize the risks that economists not in Wall Street’s sway had detected and identified.
What the systemic failures on Wall Street, in the Gulf of Mexico and in Japan should teach us is that the need for active, disinterested governmental regulation is rooted not in any radical impulse, as the American right continually contends, but in a sober, conservative assessment of the human capacity for mistake and self-delusion, not to mention avarice and chicanery. We can underestimate the risks of a particular undertaking, even when we think we have guarded against them. We fall prey to our own sense of infallibility, often as a way to rationalize what is otherwise a risky endeavor. When those risks go bad, the consequences often fall on those who didn’t take those risks themselves, as the millions of Americans who lost their jobs thanks to Wall Street’s follies can attest. This is a concept that libertarians don’t seem able to grasp, which is why the rise of libertarianism within Republican ranks is bad news for food safety, clean air, economic stability and the like.
The market may in time punish bad actors, which is the ostensible safeguard that libertarians prefer to regulation. Yet as the people sealed inside their homes in the vicinity of Japan’s malfunctioning nuclear plant could tell us, untold numbers of innocents may pay a much higher price, more quickly, than the executives and shareholders of offending companies. For that matter, shareholders and non-shareholders alike, all across the planet, may soon feel economic pain as a consequence of Japan’s insufficient precautions.
And yet, the war on regulation in America — backed by Wall Street and such energy-industry leaders as the Koch brothers — rolls on. Before last week’s quake, House Republicans cut funding for training first responders to radiation disasters. Japan, one hopes, should bring an end to such nonsense. It’s time for our own Lisbon moment. We haven’t defeated risk. We haven’t engineered the glitches out of the system. We need some rules, some regs, and a government willing to devise and enforce them.
meyersonh@washpost.com
© 2011 The Washington Post Company
First came the earthquake, then the tsunami and the fires, and then, over time, a critical decline in belief in a benevolent God.
The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 killed about a fifth of the city’s 200,000 residents and leveled 85 percent of its buildings, including almost every major church — on a church holiday, when they were packed with parishioners. It also shook 18th-century philosophers to the core. “Candide,” Voltaire’s comic polemic against the belief that all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds, was written in the quake’s aftermath, as Voltaire was abandoning any notion of godly oversight of the world’s affairs. The young Immanuel Kant was sufficiently upset to research and write one of the first books ever on the causes of quakes, before he turned to his life’s work of creating ethical codes that functioned in both the presence and absence of God.
Today, the quake, tsunami and, most particularly, the potential of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan should weaken at least one of our own deeply rooted faiths — in our own infallibility. Consider, for a moment, all the systems that the experts said had been rendered safe, foolproof and immune to disaster, and that nonetheless crashed during the past three years. There was the financial system, an assemblage of immense wagers on all manner of things, which an array of mathematicians and economists assured us could not possibly come tumbling down. There was deep-water oil drilling, which the oil companies’ geologists, among others, insisted could not possibly result in a cataclysmic spill. And today, there are nuclear power plants, safeguarded, their engineers have told us, against the oh-so-remote possibilities of meltdowns.
These assurances — at least, most of them — were not given in bad faith. Wall Street’s quants genuinely believed that they had erected a stable system, as did the geologists and the nuclear engineers. The equations were elegant; things penciled out. At long last, humankind had triumphed over risk.
Except when it hadn’t.
What all these wizards did not factor in was that these were all just as much human and social systems as they were mathematical. Behind the equations were human and social assumptions, rooted in such human and social impulses as greed, denial and hubris. The derivatives that the banks’ economists had devised were said to distribute risk so widely that they made the system safe; but in fact, they interlocked risk so completely that they brought the system down. But they also brought the banks such massive profits that few on Wall Street wanted to recognize the risks that economists not in Wall Street’s sway had detected and identified.
What the systemic failures on Wall Street, in the Gulf of Mexico and in Japan should teach us is that the need for active, disinterested governmental regulation is rooted not in any radical impulse, as the American right continually contends, but in a sober, conservative assessment of the human capacity for mistake and self-delusion, not to mention avarice and chicanery. We can underestimate the risks of a particular undertaking, even when we think we have guarded against them. We fall prey to our own sense of infallibility, often as a way to rationalize what is otherwise a risky endeavor. When those risks go bad, the consequences often fall on those who didn’t take those risks themselves, as the millions of Americans who lost their jobs thanks to Wall Street’s follies can attest. This is a concept that libertarians don’t seem able to grasp, which is why the rise of libertarianism within Republican ranks is bad news for food safety, clean air, economic stability and the like.
The market may in time punish bad actors, which is the ostensible safeguard that libertarians prefer to regulation. Yet as the people sealed inside their homes in the vicinity of Japan’s malfunctioning nuclear plant could tell us, untold numbers of innocents may pay a much higher price, more quickly, than the executives and shareholders of offending companies. For that matter, shareholders and non-shareholders alike, all across the planet, may soon feel economic pain as a consequence of Japan’s insufficient precautions.
And yet, the war on regulation in America — backed by Wall Street and such energy-industry leaders as the Koch brothers — rolls on. Before last week’s quake, House Republicans cut funding for training first responders to radiation disasters. Japan, one hopes, should bring an end to such nonsense. It’s time for our own Lisbon moment. We haven’t defeated risk. We haven’t engineered the glitches out of the system. We need some rules, some regs, and a government willing to devise and enforce them.
meyersonh@washpost.com
© 2011 The Washington Post Company
21/03 Japan Extended Reactor’s Life, Despite Warning
March 21, 2011
By HIROKO TABUCHI, NORIMITSU ONISHI and KEN BELSON
TOKYO — Just a month before a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant at the center of Japan’s nuclear crisis, government regulators approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station despite warnings about its safety.
The regulatory committee reviewing extensions pointed to stress cracks in the backup diesel-powered generators at Reactor No. 1 at the Daiichi plant, according to a summary of its deliberations that was posted on the Web site of Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency after each meeting. The cracks made the engines vulnerable to corrosion from seawater and rainwater. The generators are thought to have been knocked out by the tsunami, shutting down the reactor’s vital cooling system.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, has since struggled to keep the reactor and spent fuel pool from overheating and emitting radioactive materials.
Several weeks after the extension was granted, the company admitted that it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment related to the cooling systems, including water pumps and diesel generators, at the power station’s six reactors, according to findings published on the agency’s Web site shortly before the earthquake.
Regulators said that “maintenance management was inadequate” and that the “quality of inspection was insufficient.”
Less than two weeks later, the earthquake and tsunami set off the crisis at the power station.
The decision to extend the reactor’s life, and the inspection failures at all six reactors, highlight what critics describe as unhealthy ties between power plant operators and the Japanese regulators that oversee them. Expert panels like the one that recommended the extension are drawn mostly from academia to backstop bureaucratic decision-making and rarely challenge the agencies that hire them.
Because public opposition to nuclear power makes it hard to build new power plants, nuclear operators are lobbying to extend their reactors’ use beyond the 40-year statutory limit, despite uneven safety records and a history of cover-ups. The government, eager to expand the use of nuclear energy and reduce the reliance on imported fossil fuels, has been largely sympathetic. Such extensions are also part of a global trend in which aging plants have been granted longer lives.
Over the next decade in Japan, 13 more reactors — and the other 5 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant — will also turn 40, raising the prospect of gargantuan replacement costs. That is one reason critics contend that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency’s committee in charge of inspecting aging nuclear power plants may play down its own findings.
In approving the extension in early February, regulators told Tokyo Electric to monitor potential damage from radiation to the reactor’s pressure vessel, which holds fuel rods; corrosion of the spray heads used to douse the suppression chamber; corrosion of key bolts at the reactor; and conduction problems in a gauge that measures the flow of water into the reactor, according to a report published in early February.
The committee, which convened six times to review findings gathered during inspections of the No. 1 unit at the power station, found that Tokyo Electric had met all required protections from earthquakes. Inspectors, however, had spent just three days inspecting the No. 1 unit, a period that industry experts say was far too brief because assessing the earthquake risk to a nuclear plant is one of the most complex engineering problems in the world.
Despite these doubts, the committee recommended that Tokyo Electric be given permission to run the No. 1 unit, which was built by General Electric and began operating in 1971, for an additional decade. During the approval process, the company claimed that the reactor was capable of running for 60 years.
Mitsuhiko Tanaka, an engineer who worked on the design of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, said the reactors there were outdated, particularly their small suppression chambers, which increased the risk that pressure would build up within the reactor, a fault eliminated in newer reactors. Since the tsunami, officials at Fukushima Daiichi have tried to relieve rising pressure inside the reactors, several times resorting to releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere, a measure that in turn has contributed to the contamination of food and water in the area.
“It was about time the reactor was replaced,” Mr. Tanaka said. “The tsunami would have caused great damage, regardless. But the pipes, the machinery, the computers, the entire reactors — they are just old, and that did not help.” Somewhat younger reactors, Nos. 2, 3, and 4, also suffered extensive damage.
Regulators approved the 10-year extension even though aging reactors at Tokyo Electric, as well as those at other power companies, had suffered a series of problems as far back as a decade ago. Attempts to cover them up and manipulate data, particularly by Tokyo Electric, the country’s biggest utility, underscored not only the problems of the nuclear industry but also Japan’s weakness in regulating it. The company has admitted wrongdoing.
A Tokyo Electric spokesman, Naoki Tsunoda, said: “We are committed to carrying out proper inspections in the future. We will study why this has happened and endeavor to inform the public.”
In 2000, a whistle-blower at a separate company that was contracted to inspect the reactors told regulators about cracks in the stainless steel shrouds that cover reactor cores at Fukushima’s Daiichi plant. But regulators simply told the company to look into the issue, allowing the reactors to keep operating.
Nuclear regulators effectively sat on the information about the cracks in the shrouds, said Eisaku Sato, the governor of Fukushima Prefecture at the time and an opponent of nuclear power. He said the prefecture itself and the communities hosting the nuclear plants did not learn about the cracks until regulators publicized them in 2002, more than two years after the whistle-blower reported the cracks.
In 2003, regulators forced Tokyo Electric to suspend operations at its 10 reactors at two plants in Fukushima and 7 reactors in Niigata Prefecture after whistle-blowers gave information to Fukushima Prefecture showing that the company had falsified inspection records and hid flaws over 16 years to save on repair costs. In the most serious incident, Tokyo Electric hid the large cracks in the shrouds.
“An organization that is inherently untrustworthy is charged with ensuring the safety of Japan’s nuclear plants,” said Mr. Sato, governor from 1988 to 2006. “So the problem is not limited to Tokyo Electric, which has a long history of cover-ups, but it’s the whole system that is flawed. That’s frightening.”
Like many critics of Japan’s nuclear industry, Mr. Sato attributed weak oversight to a conflict of interest that he said essentially stripped the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of its effectiveness. The agency, which is supposed to act as a watchdog, is under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which has a general policy of encouraging the development of Japan’s nuclear industry.
The ministry and the agency, in turn, share cozy ties with Tokyo Electric and other operators — some of which offer lucrative jobs to former ministry officials in a practice known as “amakudari,” or descent from heaven.
“They’re all birds of a feather,” Mr. Sato, 71, said in an interview at his home in Koriyama, in Fukushima Prefecture.
The Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, which is supposed to provide a second layer of scrutiny, is understaffed and largely an advisory group. Masatoshi Toyoda, a former vice president at Tokyo Electric who, among other jobs, ran the company’s nuclear safety division, said the organization should be strengthened. The United States had a similar setup until the 1970s, when Congress broke up the old Atomic Energy Commission into the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“Like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States, they should have full-time engineers who should check the safety of power plants,” Mr. Toyoda said. “I’ve been telling the government that the system should be changed, but any changes to Japan’s nuclear policy take a long time.”
Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said that “there are no problems with the current safety setup.” He added that the extension of the life of Reactor No. 1 “was approved on the understanding that any problems found would be fixed by Tokyo Electric.”
But critics say the approval process for extending the lifespan of reactors is fraught with problems. Limited amounts of information are disclosed before approval is granted. The government reviews only reports submitted by utilities, and does not conduct its own tests to determine whether those reports are true, according to Chihiro Kamisawa, a nuclear safety researcher at the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, Japan’s most vocal nuclear watchdog.
“They are stretching the limit,” Mr. Kamisawa said.
Kantaro Suzuki and Noriko Takata contributed reporting.
By HIROKO TABUCHI, NORIMITSU ONISHI and KEN BELSON
TOKYO — Just a month before a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant at the center of Japan’s nuclear crisis, government regulators approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station despite warnings about its safety.
The regulatory committee reviewing extensions pointed to stress cracks in the backup diesel-powered generators at Reactor No. 1 at the Daiichi plant, according to a summary of its deliberations that was posted on the Web site of Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency after each meeting. The cracks made the engines vulnerable to corrosion from seawater and rainwater. The generators are thought to have been knocked out by the tsunami, shutting down the reactor’s vital cooling system.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the plant, has since struggled to keep the reactor and spent fuel pool from overheating and emitting radioactive materials.
Several weeks after the extension was granted, the company admitted that it had failed to inspect 33 pieces of equipment related to the cooling systems, including water pumps and diesel generators, at the power station’s six reactors, according to findings published on the agency’s Web site shortly before the earthquake.
Regulators said that “maintenance management was inadequate” and that the “quality of inspection was insufficient.”
Less than two weeks later, the earthquake and tsunami set off the crisis at the power station.
The decision to extend the reactor’s life, and the inspection failures at all six reactors, highlight what critics describe as unhealthy ties between power plant operators and the Japanese regulators that oversee them. Expert panels like the one that recommended the extension are drawn mostly from academia to backstop bureaucratic decision-making and rarely challenge the agencies that hire them.
Because public opposition to nuclear power makes it hard to build new power plants, nuclear operators are lobbying to extend their reactors’ use beyond the 40-year statutory limit, despite uneven safety records and a history of cover-ups. The government, eager to expand the use of nuclear energy and reduce the reliance on imported fossil fuels, has been largely sympathetic. Such extensions are also part of a global trend in which aging plants have been granted longer lives.
Over the next decade in Japan, 13 more reactors — and the other 5 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant — will also turn 40, raising the prospect of gargantuan replacement costs. That is one reason critics contend that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency’s committee in charge of inspecting aging nuclear power plants may play down its own findings.
In approving the extension in early February, regulators told Tokyo Electric to monitor potential damage from radiation to the reactor’s pressure vessel, which holds fuel rods; corrosion of the spray heads used to douse the suppression chamber; corrosion of key bolts at the reactor; and conduction problems in a gauge that measures the flow of water into the reactor, according to a report published in early February.
The committee, which convened six times to review findings gathered during inspections of the No. 1 unit at the power station, found that Tokyo Electric had met all required protections from earthquakes. Inspectors, however, had spent just three days inspecting the No. 1 unit, a period that industry experts say was far too brief because assessing the earthquake risk to a nuclear plant is one of the most complex engineering problems in the world.
Despite these doubts, the committee recommended that Tokyo Electric be given permission to run the No. 1 unit, which was built by General Electric and began operating in 1971, for an additional decade. During the approval process, the company claimed that the reactor was capable of running for 60 years.
Mitsuhiko Tanaka, an engineer who worked on the design of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, said the reactors there were outdated, particularly their small suppression chambers, which increased the risk that pressure would build up within the reactor, a fault eliminated in newer reactors. Since the tsunami, officials at Fukushima Daiichi have tried to relieve rising pressure inside the reactors, several times resorting to releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere, a measure that in turn has contributed to the contamination of food and water in the area.
“It was about time the reactor was replaced,” Mr. Tanaka said. “The tsunami would have caused great damage, regardless. But the pipes, the machinery, the computers, the entire reactors — they are just old, and that did not help.” Somewhat younger reactors, Nos. 2, 3, and 4, also suffered extensive damage.
Regulators approved the 10-year extension even though aging reactors at Tokyo Electric, as well as those at other power companies, had suffered a series of problems as far back as a decade ago. Attempts to cover them up and manipulate data, particularly by Tokyo Electric, the country’s biggest utility, underscored not only the problems of the nuclear industry but also Japan’s weakness in regulating it. The company has admitted wrongdoing.
A Tokyo Electric spokesman, Naoki Tsunoda, said: “We are committed to carrying out proper inspections in the future. We will study why this has happened and endeavor to inform the public.”
In 2000, a whistle-blower at a separate company that was contracted to inspect the reactors told regulators about cracks in the stainless steel shrouds that cover reactor cores at Fukushima’s Daiichi plant. But regulators simply told the company to look into the issue, allowing the reactors to keep operating.
Nuclear regulators effectively sat on the information about the cracks in the shrouds, said Eisaku Sato, the governor of Fukushima Prefecture at the time and an opponent of nuclear power. He said the prefecture itself and the communities hosting the nuclear plants did not learn about the cracks until regulators publicized them in 2002, more than two years after the whistle-blower reported the cracks.
In 2003, regulators forced Tokyo Electric to suspend operations at its 10 reactors at two plants in Fukushima and 7 reactors in Niigata Prefecture after whistle-blowers gave information to Fukushima Prefecture showing that the company had falsified inspection records and hid flaws over 16 years to save on repair costs. In the most serious incident, Tokyo Electric hid the large cracks in the shrouds.
“An organization that is inherently untrustworthy is charged with ensuring the safety of Japan’s nuclear plants,” said Mr. Sato, governor from 1988 to 2006. “So the problem is not limited to Tokyo Electric, which has a long history of cover-ups, but it’s the whole system that is flawed. That’s frightening.”
Like many critics of Japan’s nuclear industry, Mr. Sato attributed weak oversight to a conflict of interest that he said essentially stripped the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of its effectiveness. The agency, which is supposed to act as a watchdog, is under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which has a general policy of encouraging the development of Japan’s nuclear industry.
The ministry and the agency, in turn, share cozy ties with Tokyo Electric and other operators — some of which offer lucrative jobs to former ministry officials in a practice known as “amakudari,” or descent from heaven.
“They’re all birds of a feather,” Mr. Sato, 71, said in an interview at his home in Koriyama, in Fukushima Prefecture.
The Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, which is supposed to provide a second layer of scrutiny, is understaffed and largely an advisory group. Masatoshi Toyoda, a former vice president at Tokyo Electric who, among other jobs, ran the company’s nuclear safety division, said the organization should be strengthened. The United States had a similar setup until the 1970s, when Congress broke up the old Atomic Energy Commission into the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“Like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States, they should have full-time engineers who should check the safety of power plants,” Mr. Toyoda said. “I’ve been telling the government that the system should be changed, but any changes to Japan’s nuclear policy take a long time.”
Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said that “there are no problems with the current safety setup.” He added that the extension of the life of Reactor No. 1 “was approved on the understanding that any problems found would be fixed by Tokyo Electric.”
But critics say the approval process for extending the lifespan of reactors is fraught with problems. Limited amounts of information are disclosed before approval is granted. The government reviews only reports submitted by utilities, and does not conduct its own tests to determine whether those reports are true, according to Chihiro Kamisawa, a nuclear safety researcher at the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, Japan’s most vocal nuclear watchdog.
“They are stretching the limit,” Mr. Kamisawa said.
Kantaro Suzuki and Noriko Takata contributed reporting.
22/03 Cộng đồng khu vực
Stanislaw Ossowski, Lê Hải dịch[1]
Có lúc ở một nơi khác tôi từng phân chia giữa hai khái niệm “tổ quốc riêng tư” và “tổ quốc ý thức hệ”[2], rằng khi nói đến tổ quốc ý thức hệ[3] tôi nghĩ đến lãnh thổ quốc gia, và toàn bộ phân tích đó phát xuất từ các nghiên cứu chủ nghĩa dân tộc hiện đại. Nhưng khái niệm tổ quốc ý thức hệ trong này mang phạm vi rộng hơn: tổ quốc ý thức hệ là khu vực mà cá nhân liên hệ không chỉ qua trải nghiệm cá nhân và trực tiếp liên quan tới lãnh thổ đó và được tạo ra qua hoạt động cuộc sống bình thường, mà còn thông qua việc lệ thuộc vào một cộng đồng nhất định, vào nhóm mà cái lãnh thổ đó phần nào định hình. Vai trò các yếu tố cá nhân trong quan hệ cá thể với tổ quốc ý thức hệ hoàn toàn là giao thoa giữa tổ quốc riêng tư và tổ quốc ý thức hệ.
Cộng đồng này không hề phải là dân tộc hiện đại. Các cộng đồng lãnh thổ khác nhau chứa tổ quốc ý thức hệ theo nhiều kiểu khác nhau, mà nếu áp dụng khái niệm dân tộc trong cách hiểu hiện đại gây ra những nghi ngại nghiêm trọng. Với châu Âu hôm nay có thể nói cả đến tổ quốc ý thức hệ của cộng đồng khu vực: giữa tổ quốc riêng tư và lãnh thổ dân tộc có thể có chỗ cho tổ quốc khu vực. Đây không phải là tổ quốc riêng tư, nếu liên kết nối giữa cá thể và tổ quốc khu vực được thực hiện thông qua sự tham gia vào cộng đồng.
“Khu vực” được hiểu rất khác nhau. Thường người ta coi khu vực là đơn vị địa lý, tách biệt trên cơ sở địa hình hoặc các tiêu chuẩn kinh tế. Khu vực theo cách hiểu trong bài này, tức là hiểu theo nghĩa xã hội học, là mối tương quan giữa các cộng đồng khu vực. Mà cộng đồng khu vực là cộng đồng lãnh thổ, nhiều hay ít sẽ có cảm giác về sự tách biệt của bản thân, nhưng không coi mình là dân tộc; hay nói cách khác, thành viên của cộng đồng không tìm cách thiết lập cho cộng đồng mình những thuộc tính của dân tộc. Thường thì cộng đồng đó là thành viên của một cộng đồng dân tộc nào đó. Thành viên cộng đồng khu vực, người Podhalan, Kurp, Burgund hay Gaskon có thể cùng lúc cảm thấy trung thành với khu vực của mình và trung thành với tổ quốc dân tộc. Tại những khu vực đứt gãy của châu Âu hoặc một số vùng biên có lịch sử phức tạp cũng có thể là dân cư không nhìn ra ngoài mối liên kết khu vực, và không có – như người ta nói - cảm giác dân tộc.
Vấn đề thứ ba là cảm giác rất mạnh về sự tách biệt khu vực được nối với sự thù ghét nhắm vào nhà nước, vốn có cơ cấu ở địa phương, kèm theo xu hướng li khai, và tư tưởng có kèm theo đòi hỏi chính trị. Các lãnh đạo những cộng đồng như vậy cố gắng áp dụng mô hình cộng đồng dân tộc và tổ chức kháng chiến theo các khuôn mẫu kháng chiến giải phóng dân tộc. Việc khi nào thì chúng ta công nhận sự chuyển đổi của một cộng đồng khu vực thành dân tộc là điều khá tương đối. Vào khoảng năm 1880 ở vùng Catalonia mở rộng phong trào địa phương, tuyên truyền văn hóa và ngôn ngữ Catalonia trong khuôn khổ tổ quốc Tây Ban Nha. Sau 1890 người ta bắt đầu ồn ào hơn về “tổ quốc Catalonia duy nhất”. Trong những trường hợp đó, tranh chấp về chuyện chúng ta đang ngihên cứu nhóm khu vực hay dân tộc đang hình thành thường là mâu thuẫn giữa các cách nhìn của nhóm đấu tranh giải phóng dân tộc và góc nhìn của cộng đồng rộng hơn, bảo vệ tình trạng sở hữu của mình và không muốn từ bỏ một trong số các “khu vực” của mình.
Đối lập với cộng đồng dân tộc kiểu đó - vốn phổ biến ở châu Âu lục địa ngoài Liên Xô, là cộng đồng khu vực - như chúng ta đã nói – có thể là thành viên của cộng đồng rộng hơn, mà cộng đồng rộng hơn đó cũng có thể là dân tộc, cũng như là các cộng đồng khu vực khác (khu vực trong khu vực, các khu vực lớn hay nhỏ). Từ góc nhìn của ngành xã hội học không có lý do gì để mà không coi các vùng lớn của Cộng hòa Ba Lan thời giữa hai cuộc chiến như Galicja, Kogresów, Poznan như là các khu vực, nơi mà dân chúng còn giữ cảm giác tách biệt được tạo ra từ việc phân chia lãnh địa thời lệ thuộc. Người Poznan cảm thấy rất tách biệt so với người Galicja hay Kongresów, mặc dù vẫn trung thành với tổ quốc Ba Lan. Trong lòng các cộng đồng khu vực lớn đó lại có thêm các phân chia khu vực nhỏ hơn, và gần hơn với cách dùng chữ “khu vực” của đời thường: Podhalan, Krakow, Kurp, Ksiezak, Kaszuby.
Cảm giác riêng biệt về khu vực có thể có nguồn gốc khác nhau. Có thể bắt nguồn từ điều kiện địa lý chia cắt ở một mức độ nào đó so với các vùng đất láng giềng (Korsyka là vùng đảo ở Hà Lan, đất của các dòng tộc đặc biệt chia cắt bằng vịnh, hồ và chuỗi núi cao) hoặc phương thức canh tác và quan hệ láng giềng cách biệt (Pohale, Huculszczyzna, Polesie, Kurpie, Zaglebie Górnicze). Có thể là kết quả của lịch sử chính trị riêng biệt, mà ở đây là nhà nước riêng biệt trong quá khứ hay là phụ thuộc khu vực trong các giai đoạn khác nhau vào các hình thái chính trị khác nhau. Tây Ban Nha thành lập từ quá trình nối kết 17 vương quốc, một tỉnh và hai mảnh đất lãnh chúa, và sự tách biệt phân chia dân chúng các quốc gia nhỏ đó trước khi thống nhất trong nhiều trường hợp để lại dấu vết mà hôm nay vẫn còn nhìn thấy. Vùng Alsace và Lorraine trong giai đoạn thuộc vào Pháp khác biệt với các tỉnh khác của Pháp về ký ức mối quan hệ chính trị quá khứ với Liên bang Đức; còn trong giai đoạn thuộc về Đức thì lại cảm thấy sự tách biệt so với các vùng đất khác của Đức qua ký ức về quá khứ nằm trong biên giới Vương quốc Pháp và Cộng hòa Pháp. Các khác biệt chính trị tiếp theo – bên cạnh các yếu tố khác - ảnh hưởng tới cảm giác cách biệt của dân cư các tỉnh của Nam Tư như là Bosnia, Banat, Sandzak, Macedonia, chưa nói gì đến Chorwacja và Dalmacja. “Chúng tôi từng là Áo, rồi thiếu chút nữa là Czech, sau đó chúng tôi là Ba Lan, sau đó là Đức, bây giờ lại là Ba Lan” - một dân cư Ustron vùng Czeszyn chia sẻ với tôi. “Chúng tôi muốn biết một lần cho rõ luôn, rằng chúng tôi sẽ ở đâu đó lâu dài”. “Chúng tôi” ở đây rõ ràng là dân cư vùng Slask thuộc Cieszyn.
Trong một số trường hợp, đặc biệt là với các khu vực nhỏ hơn, cần tìm nguyên nhân cảm giác tách biệt trong điều kiện lịch sử kiểu khác, ví dụ như là đất thuộc tổng giám mục nhà thờ Gnieznien, hay vua chúa, mà trong một số khu vực cuộc sống xã hội của người nông dân có khác với nơi được định hình trực tiếp theo kiểu cha truyền con nối.
Bên cạnh tất cả các tình huống vừa kể, nơi sự khác biệt của cộng đồng khu vực phát xuất từ khác biệt địa lý hay lãnh thổ chính trị khu vực, chúng ta còn phải cân nhắc nguồn gốc cho cảm giác tách biệt khu vực trong một quá trình cuộc sống xã hộI cho tính chất văn hóa của dân cư khu vực, những người không nhất thiết phải liên quan về nguồn gốc với tính chất địa lý của khu vực hay với quá khứ lịch sử của nó. Ý tôi muốn nói đến ngôn ngữ hay lòng tin riêng. Khác biệt về ngôn ngữ là yếu tố khu vực quan trọng ở các tỉnh biên giới nước Pháp như Bretania, Flandria, Alsace, Nizzy, xứ Basque, Roussillon. Ba Lan có phương ngữ Kaszub, dù rằng không phân biệt người Kaszub ra khỏi người Kociew hay Mazura trên mặt bằng thông hiểu, nhưng có vai trò như vậy ở một mức độ nào đó. Chúng ta chú ý rằng ngôn ngữ riêng có thể là yếu tố cách biệt khu vực ngay cả khi chỉ có một phần dân cư trong khu sử dụng, ví dụ như là ở Bretania, và ngôn ngữ có thể là thành phần văn hóa địa phương, được những người thậm chí không sử dụng tôn trọng.
Trong các trường hợp đặc biệt các yếu tố cách biệt khu vực khác nhau cùng hỗ trợ nhau. Nhưng khu vực có được sự khác biệt là nhờkết hợp một số tính chất, mà mỗi tính chất đều nối với tổng thể lãnh thổ khác. Tách biệt nhóm có thể là kết quả cùng lúc hoặc lần lượt của sự lệ thuộc của nhóm đó vào hai nhóm lớn hơn khác nhau. Dân Bỉ ở Flamand nối kết với quá khứ chính trị và công giáo xứ Walon, và ngôn ngữ với Hà Lan. Dân Mazura thuộc Phổ nối với người Bắc Mazura ngôn ngữ Ba Lan, với người Đức là lệ thuộc chính trị và lòng tin. Tín ngưỡng không chỉ phân chia họ với ngườI Mazura bên kia ranh giới, mà còn vớI người Ba Lan ở vùng Chelmins, mà họ từng có quan hệ chính trị từ năm 1772 đến 1919, với người Warmin mà họ có quan hệ chính trị từ năm 175. Nếu người Galicja ở Ukrainia tạo ra cộng đồng khu vực với cảm giác cách biệt mạnh thì là vì nối kết với phía tây di sản chính trị và công giáo, còn phía đông là ngôn ngữ và chính thống giáo.
[1] Bản gốc là phần lý thuyết từ tập sách về “Vấn đề liên kết xã hội khu vực và dân tộc ở vùng Slask Opolski, GS Stanislaw Ossowski viết năm 1947, in lại trong Toàn tập, quyển 3, PWN xuất bản năm 1967 ở Warszawa, trang 74-78. Ngoại trừ phụ lục kế tiếp là của nguyên bản, còn lại là do người dịch chú giải thêm.
[2] Trong bài Analiza socjologiczna pojecia ojczyzny [Phân tích xã hội học về khái niệm tổ quốc], tạp chí Mysl Wspolczesna 1946, nr 2, trang 154-175, in lại trong các trang 15-46 Toàn tập, quyển 3, PWN.
[3] Nguyên gốc là ojczyzna ideologicza. Ideologiczna là thuộc về tư tưởng, mà theo cách hiểu trong các bài viết khác của Ossowski là do ảnh hưởng từ một phong trào tư tưởng, tức là ý thức hệ. Khái niệm Ojczyzna phát xuất từ chữ Ojciec – cha, tức là có thể hiểu là quê cha đất tổ, hay quê hương. Mặc dù tác giả cũng nhắc đến tình cảm trong khái niệm này, nhưng cũng có nhiều chỗ nhắc đến lòng “yêu nước” – patriotism đối với miền đất đó. Như vậy nó còn nhiều hơn là miền yêu dấu trong tâm khảm, là khái niệm quê hương gần với cách dùng “tổ quốc riêng tư” của tác giả hơn. Tổ quốc ý thức hệ cũng được dùng cho những vùng đất ly khai như xứ Basque (đòi) tự trị, cho nên mang nghĩa gần với tổ quốc và quốc gia hơn là quê hương.
18/03 Exotic Tastes in China, Vietnam, Singapore and Japan
March 18, 2011
By XIYUN YANG, NAOMI LINDT, ROBYN ECKHARDT and JANE KITAGAWA
A look at notable restaurants that are worth a visit in four Asian cities.
Beijing
Wistaria Bridge
Dining in Beijing often feels like participatory performance art: spacey and surly waiters, endless menus in challenging and challenged English, confusion sprinkled liberally throughout. The experience can both frustrate and delight. One example of this odd combination is Wistaria Bridge, above, a restaurant that opened last year in the city’s tech district and serves up its personal take on classic Beijing food.
Confusion will probably begin the dual-language menu, which describes dishes like “braised Der Gelbfish” and “stir shell fish with Chinese little green.” Pictures help, and so might an overeager waitress who forgets drink orders, but is more than happy to practice her English.
But once the “pork with special wine” arrives, there will be no complaints. Squares of pork belly are braised with Chinese wine for nine hours over a whisper of a flame until fat and meat have melded together — only to melt away in your mouth.
Soy sauce braises are a classic Beijing technique; the adventurous should try the unfortunately named “Beijing style braised pork bowels” — a savory, tender, garlicky offal stew, served with glass noodles and topped with a nutty hot pepper oil. Another fine example is the “special pork kidney.” The dish, which is served cold, features a white pepper sauce with green garlic slivers. The kidney itself has a snappy texture and none of its usual pungency.
And the creative menu descriptions continue. “Deep fried duck cube with walnut” is marinated duck meat under an airy pillow of ground chicken and walnut, an unexpected twist on the city’s primary fowl. “Stir shell fish with Chinese little green” is dried clam’s foot stir-fried with bok choy sprouts — clean and grassy, with a tinge of ocean brine.
The star of the show, as in most restaurants in China, is the food, so it’s best not to be distracted with wondering how the Cubist stained-glass window fits in with the slate gray traditional courtyard interior and fake plastic cherry blossoms.
Wistaria Bridge (Ziteng Qiao), Zhongguancun Pedestrian Street (Zhongguancun buxingjie) R23; (86-10) 5986-3680. A meal for two is about 200 renminbi, or about $31 at 6.4 renminbi to the dollar. (All prices are without drinks or tip.) XIYUN YANG
Hanoi
La Coopérative
Opened by a group of French and Vietnamese friends in late 2009, La Coopérative materialized out of a shared passion for great food, conversation and ruou, Vietnamese rice liquor.
“There aren’t many places in Hanoi where foreigners and locals gather,” said Pham Viet Anh, an owner. “So we created a space where all of us would feel happy and be reminded of the beauty and culture of old recipes, both French and Vietnamese.”
The menu is split in two sections — “Tay” and “Ta,” loosely translated as “theirs” and “ours” — and is a lesson in the revelatory things that can happen when European and Asian flavors unite.
Following local custom, we ordered a number of dishes and shared everything. Buttery wheels of foie gras and fig terrine, accompanied by anise-infused mini-toasts, were enhanced by a deceptively simple steamed preparation of chayote and carrot, explosively flavored with salt, chopped peanuts and sesame seeds.
A warm lentil salad tossed with stewed tomatoes, braised chicken and a zingy, vinegar-based dressing dovetailed effortlessly with sweet, tender hunks of caramelized pork slow-cooked in a gingery fish sauce and served in a clay pot.
The bo cuon la cai is a do-it-yourself hand-roll: soft morsels of beef, butter lettuce, cilantro and an assortment of garnishes (pineapple, green banana, carrot, starfruit) are rolled in rice paper and dipped into a wasabi-rich soy sauce. Sweet, savory, bitter, tart and spicy, it captures the complexity for which Vietnamese cooking is revered.
In a nod to the past, food arrives on white dishes imprinted with the letters HTX, the abbreviation for hop tac xa, or “a cooperative”; they’re replicas of the government-manufactured plates and bowls used in the decade following reunification in 1975 — just one of the restaurant’s many thoughtful design touches, which also include weathered, wooden electrical cable spools standing in for tables and oversize cylindrical silk chandeliers.
In one of the three main dining areas, guests sit on floor cushions and eat at low tables, the traditional way. It’s quite taxing for the uninitiated, so the numerous wooden columns installed for weak backs come as a warm welcome.
La Coopérative, 46 An Duong; (84) 4-3716-6401; hoptacxa.net. An average meal for two is about 350,000 Vietnamese dong, or $17 at 20,339 dong to the dollar. NAOMI LINDT
Singapore
Salt Grill & Sky Bar
At a recent weekday lunch at Salt Grill & Sky Bar, right, suited executives shared pricey bottles of red wine and meticulously groomed ladies-who-lunch pored over a menu featuring caviar, foie gras and wagyu.
Yet Salt, which opened on the 55th and 56th floors of the prestigious Ion Orchard building last November, is anything but precious. The dining room, dressed in black, brown and taupe, isn’t opulent but it’s comfortable; stunning views, through floor-to-ceiling windows, are its “wow” factor. (An adjacent wine bar and intimate mezzanine cocktail bar share the same views.) And those expensive menu ingredients? They were added post-debut, a concession to lofty expectations engendered by the restaurant’s exclusive perch.
“We’re really not trying to do Singapore-style fine dining,” said Kathy Tindall, head chef. “But a lot of people come to a restaurant like this wanting to spend real money, and we want to make them happy.”
Salt is the latest addition to the Australian celebrity chef Luke Mangan’s growing culinary empire, which includes restaurants in Sydney, South Melbourne and Tokyo. His imprint is hard to miss, both tableside — where Mr. Mangan’s name adorns plates, cutlery, glassware, even salt and pepper grinders — and in the French, Asian and Modern Australian influences on the menu.
Ms. Tindall said she aspires to serve “not fancy or complicated food but nice, clean, simple dishes made with quality ingredients.” Indeed, the restaurant’s best preparations are its most straightforward.
The rich savoriness of deep-fried pastry “cigars” of confit of rabbit and mustard fruits is balanced by a bright apple and celeriac salad. In a Mangan signature dish, Australian yellowtail kingfish sashimi, goat feta and ginger strike a surprisingly harmonious chord.
Mains include steamed and sous-vided Petuna ocean trout, which arrives as a silky pink fillet, paired with tarragon-flecked warm potato salad. As might be expected of a kitchen with Antipodean origins, grilled items, like the crisp-skinned but moist barramundi fillet, are superb. That wagyu — rump or fillet — arrives appetizingly crusty, bathing in a shallow pool of mashed potatoes.
Licorice parfait with lime syrup, another Mangan invention, tops the dessert list. But the most pleasure is to be found in an uncharacteristically complex preparation: The strawberry soufflé, a cerise cloud rising several inches above the rim of its copper vessel, is uncomprehendingly featherweight yet infused with the fruit’s very essence. It makes the delicious pandan and coconut gelato served alongside borderline superfluous.
Salt Grill & Sky Bar, 2 Orchard Turn, Level 55-56, ION Orchard; (65) 6592-5118; saltgrill.com. An average meal for two, without drinks or tip, is about 185 Singapore dollars, or $149 at 1.25 Singapore dollars to the dollar. The two-course Executive Lunch Menu, Monday to Friday, is 40 Singapore dollars. The seven-course tasting menu is 140 or 200 Singapore dollars. ROBYN ECKHARDT
Tokyo
Vegetable Sushi Potager
(Note to Readers)
Can sushi be sushi without the fish? Aya Kakisawa certainly thinks so. The co-owner and chef of this decidedly vegetarian restaurant — the newer of two spots where she runs the kitchen — is winning plaudits for her commitment to healthful, vegetarian cooking, and her desire to imbue it with a sophisticated playfulness.
Situated in the swank Roppongi Hills shopping complex, Vegetable Sushi Potager seats about 37 at a pine and emerald resin U-shaped counter and a handful of semi-private areas. Diners can choose from two omakase menus, the Akane (5,250 yen, or $65 at 81 yen to the dollar), and the Hisui (8,400 yen); the latter features more courses, and both change every month or two. At a time when Japan is embroiled in free trade talks and there is much hand wringing over self-sufficiency, all food is sourced domestically and the staff takes great care to explain the origins of each dish.
During a recent visit, highlights included a starter of nonalcoholic purple sweet potato amazake “wine,” and a pale “potager style” steamed egg custard, which is perched daintily on a jeweled vegetable gelée, referencing Ms. Kakisawa’s French training. (Potager is the French term for a kitchen garden.)
Yet where the chef really excels is in dishes that not only resemble their fish-based counterparts, but are every bit as satisfying. Most successful is the carrot “uni” (sea urchin) sushi. A mousse of both regular and kintoki carrots — the latter a red orange species cultivated in Japan since the Edo period — it is marvelously iridescent and bears an uncanny resemblance to its fishy cousin.
Eyes were also drawn to the stunningly realistic “maguro” (tuna) sushi, actually a sliced tomato dabbed with a tomato compote and cheese. A cherry tomato stuffed with a medley of three kinds of rice was more visually sedate, but proved outstanding; its soft flesh sweetly exploded in the mouth, the risotto serving as a nutty riposte.
Ms. Kakisawa’s famous desserts — she also runs an outrageously successful “vegetable sweets” patisserie in trendy Nakameguro — run extra. The tomato, kiwi fruit and rosehip verrine with tomato sorbet (1,260 yen) was refreshing, yet subtle, proving that illusion isn’t always necessary.
Vegetable Sushi Potager, Roppongi Keyakizaka-Dori, Roppongi Hills, 6-9-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku; (81-3) 3497-8822; sushi-potager.com/en. Vegan menu available by advance reservation. JANE KITAGAWA
By XIYUN YANG, NAOMI LINDT, ROBYN ECKHARDT and JANE KITAGAWA
A look at notable restaurants that are worth a visit in four Asian cities.
Beijing
Wistaria Bridge
Dining in Beijing often feels like participatory performance art: spacey and surly waiters, endless menus in challenging and challenged English, confusion sprinkled liberally throughout. The experience can both frustrate and delight. One example of this odd combination is Wistaria Bridge, above, a restaurant that opened last year in the city’s tech district and serves up its personal take on classic Beijing food.
Confusion will probably begin the dual-language menu, which describes dishes like “braised Der Gelbfish” and “stir shell fish with Chinese little green.” Pictures help, and so might an overeager waitress who forgets drink orders, but is more than happy to practice her English.
But once the “pork with special wine” arrives, there will be no complaints. Squares of pork belly are braised with Chinese wine for nine hours over a whisper of a flame until fat and meat have melded together — only to melt away in your mouth.
Soy sauce braises are a classic Beijing technique; the adventurous should try the unfortunately named “Beijing style braised pork bowels” — a savory, tender, garlicky offal stew, served with glass noodles and topped with a nutty hot pepper oil. Another fine example is the “special pork kidney.” The dish, which is served cold, features a white pepper sauce with green garlic slivers. The kidney itself has a snappy texture and none of its usual pungency.
And the creative menu descriptions continue. “Deep fried duck cube with walnut” is marinated duck meat under an airy pillow of ground chicken and walnut, an unexpected twist on the city’s primary fowl. “Stir shell fish with Chinese little green” is dried clam’s foot stir-fried with bok choy sprouts — clean and grassy, with a tinge of ocean brine.
The star of the show, as in most restaurants in China, is the food, so it’s best not to be distracted with wondering how the Cubist stained-glass window fits in with the slate gray traditional courtyard interior and fake plastic cherry blossoms.
Wistaria Bridge (Ziteng Qiao), Zhongguancun Pedestrian Street (Zhongguancun buxingjie) R23; (86-10) 5986-3680. A meal for two is about 200 renminbi, or about $31 at 6.4 renminbi to the dollar. (All prices are without drinks or tip.) XIYUN YANG
Hanoi
La Coopérative
Opened by a group of French and Vietnamese friends in late 2009, La Coopérative materialized out of a shared passion for great food, conversation and ruou, Vietnamese rice liquor.
“There aren’t many places in Hanoi where foreigners and locals gather,” said Pham Viet Anh, an owner. “So we created a space where all of us would feel happy and be reminded of the beauty and culture of old recipes, both French and Vietnamese.”
The menu is split in two sections — “Tay” and “Ta,” loosely translated as “theirs” and “ours” — and is a lesson in the revelatory things that can happen when European and Asian flavors unite.
Following local custom, we ordered a number of dishes and shared everything. Buttery wheels of foie gras and fig terrine, accompanied by anise-infused mini-toasts, were enhanced by a deceptively simple steamed preparation of chayote and carrot, explosively flavored with salt, chopped peanuts and sesame seeds.
A warm lentil salad tossed with stewed tomatoes, braised chicken and a zingy, vinegar-based dressing dovetailed effortlessly with sweet, tender hunks of caramelized pork slow-cooked in a gingery fish sauce and served in a clay pot.
The bo cuon la cai is a do-it-yourself hand-roll: soft morsels of beef, butter lettuce, cilantro and an assortment of garnishes (pineapple, green banana, carrot, starfruit) are rolled in rice paper and dipped into a wasabi-rich soy sauce. Sweet, savory, bitter, tart and spicy, it captures the complexity for which Vietnamese cooking is revered.
In a nod to the past, food arrives on white dishes imprinted with the letters HTX, the abbreviation for hop tac xa, or “a cooperative”; they’re replicas of the government-manufactured plates and bowls used in the decade following reunification in 1975 — just one of the restaurant’s many thoughtful design touches, which also include weathered, wooden electrical cable spools standing in for tables and oversize cylindrical silk chandeliers.
In one of the three main dining areas, guests sit on floor cushions and eat at low tables, the traditional way. It’s quite taxing for the uninitiated, so the numerous wooden columns installed for weak backs come as a warm welcome.
La Coopérative, 46 An Duong; (84) 4-3716-6401; hoptacxa.net. An average meal for two is about 350,000 Vietnamese dong, or $17 at 20,339 dong to the dollar. NAOMI LINDT
Singapore
Salt Grill & Sky Bar
At a recent weekday lunch at Salt Grill & Sky Bar, right, suited executives shared pricey bottles of red wine and meticulously groomed ladies-who-lunch pored over a menu featuring caviar, foie gras and wagyu.
Yet Salt, which opened on the 55th and 56th floors of the prestigious Ion Orchard building last November, is anything but precious. The dining room, dressed in black, brown and taupe, isn’t opulent but it’s comfortable; stunning views, through floor-to-ceiling windows, are its “wow” factor. (An adjacent wine bar and intimate mezzanine cocktail bar share the same views.) And those expensive menu ingredients? They were added post-debut, a concession to lofty expectations engendered by the restaurant’s exclusive perch.
“We’re really not trying to do Singapore-style fine dining,” said Kathy Tindall, head chef. “But a lot of people come to a restaurant like this wanting to spend real money, and we want to make them happy.”
Salt is the latest addition to the Australian celebrity chef Luke Mangan’s growing culinary empire, which includes restaurants in Sydney, South Melbourne and Tokyo. His imprint is hard to miss, both tableside — where Mr. Mangan’s name adorns plates, cutlery, glassware, even salt and pepper grinders — and in the French, Asian and Modern Australian influences on the menu.
Ms. Tindall said she aspires to serve “not fancy or complicated food but nice, clean, simple dishes made with quality ingredients.” Indeed, the restaurant’s best preparations are its most straightforward.
The rich savoriness of deep-fried pastry “cigars” of confit of rabbit and mustard fruits is balanced by a bright apple and celeriac salad. In a Mangan signature dish, Australian yellowtail kingfish sashimi, goat feta and ginger strike a surprisingly harmonious chord.
Mains include steamed and sous-vided Petuna ocean trout, which arrives as a silky pink fillet, paired with tarragon-flecked warm potato salad. As might be expected of a kitchen with Antipodean origins, grilled items, like the crisp-skinned but moist barramundi fillet, are superb. That wagyu — rump or fillet — arrives appetizingly crusty, bathing in a shallow pool of mashed potatoes.
Licorice parfait with lime syrup, another Mangan invention, tops the dessert list. But the most pleasure is to be found in an uncharacteristically complex preparation: The strawberry soufflé, a cerise cloud rising several inches above the rim of its copper vessel, is uncomprehendingly featherweight yet infused with the fruit’s very essence. It makes the delicious pandan and coconut gelato served alongside borderline superfluous.
Salt Grill & Sky Bar, 2 Orchard Turn, Level 55-56, ION Orchard; (65) 6592-5118; saltgrill.com. An average meal for two, without drinks or tip, is about 185 Singapore dollars, or $149 at 1.25 Singapore dollars to the dollar. The two-course Executive Lunch Menu, Monday to Friday, is 40 Singapore dollars. The seven-course tasting menu is 140 or 200 Singapore dollars. ROBYN ECKHARDT
Tokyo
Vegetable Sushi Potager
(Note to Readers)
Can sushi be sushi without the fish? Aya Kakisawa certainly thinks so. The co-owner and chef of this decidedly vegetarian restaurant — the newer of two spots where she runs the kitchen — is winning plaudits for her commitment to healthful, vegetarian cooking, and her desire to imbue it with a sophisticated playfulness.
Situated in the swank Roppongi Hills shopping complex, Vegetable Sushi Potager seats about 37 at a pine and emerald resin U-shaped counter and a handful of semi-private areas. Diners can choose from two omakase menus, the Akane (5,250 yen, or $65 at 81 yen to the dollar), and the Hisui (8,400 yen); the latter features more courses, and both change every month or two. At a time when Japan is embroiled in free trade talks and there is much hand wringing over self-sufficiency, all food is sourced domestically and the staff takes great care to explain the origins of each dish.
During a recent visit, highlights included a starter of nonalcoholic purple sweet potato amazake “wine,” and a pale “potager style” steamed egg custard, which is perched daintily on a jeweled vegetable gelée, referencing Ms. Kakisawa’s French training. (Potager is the French term for a kitchen garden.)
Yet where the chef really excels is in dishes that not only resemble their fish-based counterparts, but are every bit as satisfying. Most successful is the carrot “uni” (sea urchin) sushi. A mousse of both regular and kintoki carrots — the latter a red orange species cultivated in Japan since the Edo period — it is marvelously iridescent and bears an uncanny resemblance to its fishy cousin.
Eyes were also drawn to the stunningly realistic “maguro” (tuna) sushi, actually a sliced tomato dabbed with a tomato compote and cheese. A cherry tomato stuffed with a medley of three kinds of rice was more visually sedate, but proved outstanding; its soft flesh sweetly exploded in the mouth, the risotto serving as a nutty riposte.
Ms. Kakisawa’s famous desserts — she also runs an outrageously successful “vegetable sweets” patisserie in trendy Nakameguro — run extra. The tomato, kiwi fruit and rosehip verrine with tomato sorbet (1,260 yen) was refreshing, yet subtle, proving that illusion isn’t always necessary.
Vegetable Sushi Potager, Roppongi Keyakizaka-Dori, Roppongi Hills, 6-9-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku; (81-3) 3497-8822; sushi-potager.com/en. Vegan menu available by advance reservation. JANE KITAGAWA
21/03 Do You Have Free Will? Yes, It’s the Only Choice
March 21, 2011
By JOHN TIERNEY
Suppose that Mark and Bill live in a deterministic universe. Everything that happens this morning — like Mark’s decision to wear a blue shirt, or Bill’s latest attempt to comb over his bald spot — is completely caused by whatever happened before it.
If you recreated this universe starting with the Big Bang and let all events proceed exactly the same way until this same morning, then the blue shirt is as inevitable as the comb-over.
Now for questions from experimental philosophers:
1) In this deterministic universe, is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for his actions?
2) This year, as he has often done in the past, Mark arranges to cheat on his taxes. Is he is fully morally responsible for his actions?
3) Bill falls in love with his secretary, and he decides that the only way to be with her is to murder his wife and three children. Before leaving on a trip, he arranges for them to be killed while he is away. Is Bill fully morally responsible for his actions?
To a classic philosopher, these are just three versions of the same question about free will. But to the new breed of philosophers who test people’s responses to concepts like determinism, there are crucial differences, as Shaun Nichols explains in the current issue of Science.
Most respondents will absolve the unspecified person in Question 1 from full responsibility for his actions, and a majority will also give Mark a break for his tax chiseling. But not Bill. He’s fully to blame for his heinous crime, according to more than 70 percent of the people queried by Dr. Nichols, an experimental philosopher at the University of Arizona, and his Yale colleague Joshua Knobe.
Is Bill being judged illogically? In one way, yes. The chain of reasoning may seem flawed to some philosophers, and the belief in free will may seem naïve to the psychologists and neuroscientists who argue that we’re driven by forces beyond our conscious control — an argument that Bill’s lawyer might end up borrowing in court.
But in another way it makes perfect sense to hold Bill fully accountable for murder. His judges pragmatically intuit that regardless of whether free will exists, our society depends on everyone’s believing it does. The benefits of this belief have been demonstrated in other research showing that when people doubt free will, they do worse at their jobs and are less honest.
In one experiment, some people read a passage from Francis Crick, the molecular biologist, asserting that free will is a quaint old notion no longer taken seriously by intellectuals, especially not psychologists and neuroscientists. Afterward, when compared with a control group that read a different passage from Crick (who died in 2004) these people expressed more skepticism about free will — and promptly cut themselves some moral slack while taking a math test.
Asked to solve a series of arithmetic problems in a computerized quiz, they cheated by getting the answers through a glitch in the computer that they’d been asked not to exploit. The supposed glitch, of course, had been put there as a temptation by the researchers, Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
In a follow-up experiment, the psychologists gave another test in which people were promised $1 for every correct answer — and got to compile their own scores. Just as Dr. Vohs and Dr. Schooler feared, people were more likely to cheat after being exposed beforehand to arguments against free will. These people went home with more unearned cash than did the other people.
This behavior in the lab, the researchers noted, squares with studies in recent decades showing an increase in the number of college students who admit to cheating. During this same period, other studies have shown a weakening in the popular belief in free will (although it’s still widely held).
“Doubting one’s free will may undermine the sense of self as agent,” Dr. Vohs and Dr. Schooler concluded. “Or, perhaps, denying free will simply provides the ultimate excuse to behave as one likes.”
That could include goofing off on the job, according to another study done by Dr. Vohs along with a team of psychologists led by Tyler F. Stillman of Southern Utah University. They went to a day-labor employment agency armed with questionnaires for a sample of workers to fill out confidentially.
These questionnaires were based on a previously developed research instrument called the Free Will and Determinism Scale. The workers were asked how strongly they agreed with statements like “Strength of mind can always overcome the body’s desires” or “People can overcome any obstacles if they truly want to” or “People do not choose to be in the situations they end up in — it just happens.”
The psychologists also measured other factors, including the workers’ general satisfaction with their lives, how energetic they felt, how strongly they endorsed an ethic of hard work. None of these factors was a reliable predictor of their actual performance on the job, as rated by their supervisors. But the higher the workers scored on the scale of belief in free will, the better their ratings on the job.
“Free will guides people’s choices toward being more moral and better performers,” Dr. Vohs said. “It’s adaptive for societies and individuals to hold a belief in free will, as it helps people adhere to cultural codes of conduct that portend healthy, wealthy and happy life outcomes.”
Intellectual concepts of free will can vary enormously, but there seems to be a fairly universal gut belief in the concept starting at a young age. When children age 3 to 5 see a ball rolling into a box, they say that the ball couldn’t have done anything else. But when they see an experimenter put her hand in the box, they insist that she could have done something else.
That belief seems to persist no matter where people grow up, as experimental philosophers have discovered by querying adults in different cultures, including Hong Kong, India, Colombia and the United States. Whatever their cultural differences, people tend to reject the notion that they live in a deterministic world without free will.
They also tend to agree, across cultures, that a hypothetical person in a hypothetically deterministic world would not be responsible for his sins. This same logic explains why they they’ll excuse Mark’s tax evasion, a crime that doesn’t have an obvious victim. But that logic doesn’t hold when people are confronted with what researchers call a “high-affect” transgression, an emotionally upsetting crime like Bill’s murder of his family.
“It’s two different kinds of mechanisms in the brain,” said Alfred Mele, a philosopher at Florida State University who directs the Big Questions in Free Will project. “If you give people an abstract story and a hypothetical question, you’re priming the theory machine in their head. But their theory might be out of line with their intuitive reaction to a detailed story about someone doing something nasty. As experimenters have shown, the default assumption for people is that we do have free will.”
At an abstract level, people seem to be what philosophers call incompatibilists: those who believe free will is incompatible with determinism. If everything that happens is determined by what happened before, it can seem only logical to conclude you can’t be morally responsible for your next action.
But there is also a school of philosophers — in fact, perhaps the majority school — who consider free will compatible with their definition of determinism. These compatibilists believe that we do make choices, even though these choices are determined by previous events and influences. In the words of Arthur Schopenhauer, “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.”
Does that sound confusing — or ridiculously illogical? Compatibilism isn’t easy to explain. But it seems to jibe with our gut instinct that Bill is morally responsible even though he’s living in a deterministic universe. Dr. Nichols suggests that his experiment with Mark and Bill shows that in our abstract brains we’re incompatibilists, but in our hearts we’re compatibilists.
“This would help explain the persistence of the philosophical dispute over free will and moral responsibility,” Dr. Nichols writes in Science. “Part of the reason that the problem of free will is so resilient is that each philosophical position has a set of psychological mechanisms rooting for it.”
Some scientists like to dismiss the intuitive belief in free will as an exercise in self-delusion — a simple-minded bit of “confabulation,” as Crick put it. But these supposed experts are deluding themselves if they think the question has been resolved. Free will hasn’t been disproved scientifically or philosophically. The more that researchers investigate free will, the more good reasons there are to believe in it.
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By JOHN TIERNEYSuppose that Mark and Bill live in a deterministic universe. Everything that happens this morning — like Mark’s decision to wear a blue shirt, or Bill’s latest attempt to comb over his bald spot — is completely caused by whatever happened before it.
If you recreated this universe starting with the Big Bang and let all events proceed exactly the same way until this same morning, then the blue shirt is as inevitable as the comb-over.
Now for questions from experimental philosophers:
1) In this deterministic universe, is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for his actions?
2) This year, as he has often done in the past, Mark arranges to cheat on his taxes. Is he is fully morally responsible for his actions?
3) Bill falls in love with his secretary, and he decides that the only way to be with her is to murder his wife and three children. Before leaving on a trip, he arranges for them to be killed while he is away. Is Bill fully morally responsible for his actions?
To a classic philosopher, these are just three versions of the same question about free will. But to the new breed of philosophers who test people’s responses to concepts like determinism, there are crucial differences, as Shaun Nichols explains in the current issue of Science.
Most respondents will absolve the unspecified person in Question 1 from full responsibility for his actions, and a majority will also give Mark a break for his tax chiseling. But not Bill. He’s fully to blame for his heinous crime, according to more than 70 percent of the people queried by Dr. Nichols, an experimental philosopher at the University of Arizona, and his Yale colleague Joshua Knobe.
Is Bill being judged illogically? In one way, yes. The chain of reasoning may seem flawed to some philosophers, and the belief in free will may seem naïve to the psychologists and neuroscientists who argue that we’re driven by forces beyond our conscious control — an argument that Bill’s lawyer might end up borrowing in court.
But in another way it makes perfect sense to hold Bill fully accountable for murder. His judges pragmatically intuit that regardless of whether free will exists, our society depends on everyone’s believing it does. The benefits of this belief have been demonstrated in other research showing that when people doubt free will, they do worse at their jobs and are less honest.
In one experiment, some people read a passage from Francis Crick, the molecular biologist, asserting that free will is a quaint old notion no longer taken seriously by intellectuals, especially not psychologists and neuroscientists. Afterward, when compared with a control group that read a different passage from Crick (who died in 2004) these people expressed more skepticism about free will — and promptly cut themselves some moral slack while taking a math test.
Asked to solve a series of arithmetic problems in a computerized quiz, they cheated by getting the answers through a glitch in the computer that they’d been asked not to exploit. The supposed glitch, of course, had been put there as a temptation by the researchers, Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
In a follow-up experiment, the psychologists gave another test in which people were promised $1 for every correct answer — and got to compile their own scores. Just as Dr. Vohs and Dr. Schooler feared, people were more likely to cheat after being exposed beforehand to arguments against free will. These people went home with more unearned cash than did the other people.
This behavior in the lab, the researchers noted, squares with studies in recent decades showing an increase in the number of college students who admit to cheating. During this same period, other studies have shown a weakening in the popular belief in free will (although it’s still widely held).
“Doubting one’s free will may undermine the sense of self as agent,” Dr. Vohs and Dr. Schooler concluded. “Or, perhaps, denying free will simply provides the ultimate excuse to behave as one likes.”
That could include goofing off on the job, according to another study done by Dr. Vohs along with a team of psychologists led by Tyler F. Stillman of Southern Utah University. They went to a day-labor employment agency armed with questionnaires for a sample of workers to fill out confidentially.
These questionnaires were based on a previously developed research instrument called the Free Will and Determinism Scale. The workers were asked how strongly they agreed with statements like “Strength of mind can always overcome the body’s desires” or “People can overcome any obstacles if they truly want to” or “People do not choose to be in the situations they end up in — it just happens.”
The psychologists also measured other factors, including the workers’ general satisfaction with their lives, how energetic they felt, how strongly they endorsed an ethic of hard work. None of these factors was a reliable predictor of their actual performance on the job, as rated by their supervisors. But the higher the workers scored on the scale of belief in free will, the better their ratings on the job.
“Free will guides people’s choices toward being more moral and better performers,” Dr. Vohs said. “It’s adaptive for societies and individuals to hold a belief in free will, as it helps people adhere to cultural codes of conduct that portend healthy, wealthy and happy life outcomes.”
Intellectual concepts of free will can vary enormously, but there seems to be a fairly universal gut belief in the concept starting at a young age. When children age 3 to 5 see a ball rolling into a box, they say that the ball couldn’t have done anything else. But when they see an experimenter put her hand in the box, they insist that she could have done something else.
That belief seems to persist no matter where people grow up, as experimental philosophers have discovered by querying adults in different cultures, including Hong Kong, India, Colombia and the United States. Whatever their cultural differences, people tend to reject the notion that they live in a deterministic world without free will.
They also tend to agree, across cultures, that a hypothetical person in a hypothetically deterministic world would not be responsible for his sins. This same logic explains why they they’ll excuse Mark’s tax evasion, a crime that doesn’t have an obvious victim. But that logic doesn’t hold when people are confronted with what researchers call a “high-affect” transgression, an emotionally upsetting crime like Bill’s murder of his family.
“It’s two different kinds of mechanisms in the brain,” said Alfred Mele, a philosopher at Florida State University who directs the Big Questions in Free Will project. “If you give people an abstract story and a hypothetical question, you’re priming the theory machine in their head. But their theory might be out of line with their intuitive reaction to a detailed story about someone doing something nasty. As experimenters have shown, the default assumption for people is that we do have free will.”
At an abstract level, people seem to be what philosophers call incompatibilists: those who believe free will is incompatible with determinism. If everything that happens is determined by what happened before, it can seem only logical to conclude you can’t be morally responsible for your next action.
But there is also a school of philosophers — in fact, perhaps the majority school — who consider free will compatible with their definition of determinism. These compatibilists believe that we do make choices, even though these choices are determined by previous events and influences. In the words of Arthur Schopenhauer, “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.”
Does that sound confusing — or ridiculously illogical? Compatibilism isn’t easy to explain. But it seems to jibe with our gut instinct that Bill is morally responsible even though he’s living in a deterministic universe. Dr. Nichols suggests that his experiment with Mark and Bill shows that in our abstract brains we’re incompatibilists, but in our hearts we’re compatibilists.
“This would help explain the persistence of the philosophical dispute over free will and moral responsibility,” Dr. Nichols writes in Science. “Part of the reason that the problem of free will is so resilient is that each philosophical position has a set of psychological mechanisms rooting for it.”
Some scientists like to dismiss the intuitive belief in free will as an exercise in self-delusion — a simple-minded bit of “confabulation,” as Crick put it. But these supposed experts are deluding themselves if they think the question has been resolved. Free will hasn’t been disproved scientifically or philosophically. The more that researchers investigate free will, the more good reasons there are to believe in it.
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21/03 Unmarried Pastor, Seeking a Job, Sees Bias
March 21, 2011
By ERIK ECKHOLM
Like all too many Americans, Mark Almlie was laid off in the spring of 2009 when his workplace downsized. He has been searching for an appropriate position ever since, replying to more than 500 job postings without success.
But Mr. Almlie, despite a sterling education and years of experience, has faced an obstacle that does not exist in most professions: He is a single pastor, in a field where those doing the hiring overwhelmingly prefer married people and, especially, married men with children.
Mr. Almlie, 37, has been shocked, he says, at what he calls unfair discrimination, based mainly on irrational fears: that a single pastor cannot counsel a mostly married flock, that he might sow turmoil by flirting with a church member, or that he might be gay. If the job search is hard for single men, it is doubly so for single women who train for the ministry, in part because many evangelical denominations explicitly require a man to lead the congregation.
Mr. Almlie, an ordained evangelical minister who lives in Petaluma, Calif., has also had to contend with the argument, which he disputes with scriptural citations of his own, that the Bible calls for married leaders. “Prejudice against single pastors abounds,” Mr. Almlie wrote in articles he posted on a popular Christian blog site in January and February, setting off a wide-ranging debate online on a topic that many said has been largely ignored.
Some evangelical churches, in particular, openly exclude single candidates; a recent posting for a pastor by a church on Long Island said it was seeking “a family man whose family will be involved in the ministry life of the church.” Other churches convey the message through code words, like “seeking a Biblical man” (translation: a husband and a provider).
“I’ll get an e-mail saying ‘wonderful résumé,’ ” Mr. Almlie said in an interview. “Once I say I’m single, never married, I never hear back.”
Federal anti-discrimination law specifically exempts religious groups when they hire a person for religion-related activities, and courts have been loath to interfere in ministerial employment, said David Middlebrook, a lawyer and a specialist in religion law in Dallas and Fort Worth.
R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said it was unfair to accuse churches of discrimination because that word implied something “wrongful.”
“Both the logic of Scripture and the centrality of marriage in society,” he said, justify “the strong inclination of congregations to hire a man who is not only married but faithfully married.”
Mr. Mohler said he tells the students at his seminary that “if they remain single, they need to understand that there’s going to be a significant limitation on their ability to serve as a pastor.”
Women seeking positions in mainline Protestant denominations like Episcopal and Presbyterian have seen the doors widen: By 2009, 28 percent of senior pastors in mainline churches were female, according to a survey byU.S. Congregations, a nonprofit research group in Louisville, Ky. But a preference or firm requirement for male pastors persists among conservative churches (mainly evangelical), with fewer than 2 percent of senior positions held by women.
Single pastors remain uncommon, especially among conservative churches, where the figure is one in 20, according to the same survey. Among mainline Protestant denominations, roughly one in six senior pastors are single.
Amy Mark is, like Mr. Almlie, ordained by the Evangelical Covenant Church, and like him has searched widely in the evangelical world for a permanent position. After seven years with only some temporary pastoral stints, she finds herself working in a crafts shop to get by.
Her denomination’s policy of accepting women as leaders has not been taken to heart by many local churches, she discovered to her chagrin. Being single was a major second obstacle.
In more than 50 interviews, she said, “they often acted like I’m not quite whole because I’m single,” questioning whether she could counsel couples or parents. At the same time, some also asked whether, if she did get married and have a family, she would be able to continue with a demanding job as a pastor.
Ms. Mark is now helping to start a new ministry for teenage mothers in a low-income area east of San Francisco — a project that has lifted her spirits, she said, after years of feeling hurt and betrayed.
Scott Cormode, professor of leadership development at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. — where Mr. Almlie received his master’s of divinity before he worked as an assistant pastor in California — said he did not believe that the bias against single pastors was as pervasive as Mr. Almlie contended. He noted that finding a position was always hard in a crowded field.
But Jackson W. Carroll, emeritus professor of religion at Duke Divinity School, suggested that the preference for marriage might have been hardened by the social upheavals of recent decades.
“Evangelicals are responding to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which they saw as a real threat to the family,” he said. “A pastor with a wife is less likely to be a homosexual and more likely to mirror the traditional image of a family.”
Matt Steen, 35, encountered concerns about the possibility of sexual misconduct during the year he fruitlessly sought a new position as a youth pastor. “I had some pretty candid conversations with churches,” he recalled of his interviews in 2006. “They’d say, ‘Tell me about your wife and kids,’ and I’d say, ‘I haven’t met them yet.’ ”
Many interviewers seemed to fear that he might “do something stupid, like get involved with a student,” he said. “I told them that I understand the concern, but that I’ve seen married pastors make the same mistakes.”
Mr. Steen later married and for family reasons moved to Long Island, ultimately leaving the ministry. He now markets accounting services to churches.
Some religion experts suggested a less charitable reason for the marriage requirement: the expectation that a pastor’s wife will provide unpaid labor, perhaps leading the choir or teaching Sunday school.
“Sometimes, parishioners have an unspoken preference for a happily married male with a wife who does not work outside the home,” Cynthia Woolever, research director at U.S. Congregations, wrote in a 2009 article. “She also volunteers at the church while raising ‘wholesome and polite children.’ ”
Mr. Almlie notes that during the first 1,500 years of Christianity, “singleness, not marriage, was lauded as next to godliness.” Martin Luther, in his break with Rome, preached against mandatory celibacy and got married himself.
As he searches for a job, Mr. Almlie is also looking for a life partner. He has tried Christian dating services and even eHarmony, but nothing has clicked. He says that he understands the desire to have a model family, but that he faces too many myths and fears.
“Ultimately, I do begrudge not being hired,” he said.
By ERIK ECKHOLMLike all too many Americans, Mark Almlie was laid off in the spring of 2009 when his workplace downsized. He has been searching for an appropriate position ever since, replying to more than 500 job postings without success.
But Mr. Almlie, despite a sterling education and years of experience, has faced an obstacle that does not exist in most professions: He is a single pastor, in a field where those doing the hiring overwhelmingly prefer married people and, especially, married men with children.
Mr. Almlie, 37, has been shocked, he says, at what he calls unfair discrimination, based mainly on irrational fears: that a single pastor cannot counsel a mostly married flock, that he might sow turmoil by flirting with a church member, or that he might be gay. If the job search is hard for single men, it is doubly so for single women who train for the ministry, in part because many evangelical denominations explicitly require a man to lead the congregation.
Mr. Almlie, an ordained evangelical minister who lives in Petaluma, Calif., has also had to contend with the argument, which he disputes with scriptural citations of his own, that the Bible calls for married leaders. “Prejudice against single pastors abounds,” Mr. Almlie wrote in articles he posted on a popular Christian blog site in January and February, setting off a wide-ranging debate online on a topic that many said has been largely ignored.
Some evangelical churches, in particular, openly exclude single candidates; a recent posting for a pastor by a church on Long Island said it was seeking “a family man whose family will be involved in the ministry life of the church.” Other churches convey the message through code words, like “seeking a Biblical man” (translation: a husband and a provider).
“I’ll get an e-mail saying ‘wonderful résumé,’ ” Mr. Almlie said in an interview. “Once I say I’m single, never married, I never hear back.”
Federal anti-discrimination law specifically exempts religious groups when they hire a person for religion-related activities, and courts have been loath to interfere in ministerial employment, said David Middlebrook, a lawyer and a specialist in religion law in Dallas and Fort Worth.
R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said it was unfair to accuse churches of discrimination because that word implied something “wrongful.”
“Both the logic of Scripture and the centrality of marriage in society,” he said, justify “the strong inclination of congregations to hire a man who is not only married but faithfully married.”
Mr. Mohler said he tells the students at his seminary that “if they remain single, they need to understand that there’s going to be a significant limitation on their ability to serve as a pastor.”
Women seeking positions in mainline Protestant denominations like Episcopal and Presbyterian have seen the doors widen: By 2009, 28 percent of senior pastors in mainline churches were female, according to a survey byU.S. Congregations, a nonprofit research group in Louisville, Ky. But a preference or firm requirement for male pastors persists among conservative churches (mainly evangelical), with fewer than 2 percent of senior positions held by women.
Single pastors remain uncommon, especially among conservative churches, where the figure is one in 20, according to the same survey. Among mainline Protestant denominations, roughly one in six senior pastors are single.
Amy Mark is, like Mr. Almlie, ordained by the Evangelical Covenant Church, and like him has searched widely in the evangelical world for a permanent position. After seven years with only some temporary pastoral stints, she finds herself working in a crafts shop to get by.
Her denomination’s policy of accepting women as leaders has not been taken to heart by many local churches, she discovered to her chagrin. Being single was a major second obstacle.
In more than 50 interviews, she said, “they often acted like I’m not quite whole because I’m single,” questioning whether she could counsel couples or parents. At the same time, some also asked whether, if she did get married and have a family, she would be able to continue with a demanding job as a pastor.
Ms. Mark is now helping to start a new ministry for teenage mothers in a low-income area east of San Francisco — a project that has lifted her spirits, she said, after years of feeling hurt and betrayed.
Scott Cormode, professor of leadership development at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. — where Mr. Almlie received his master’s of divinity before he worked as an assistant pastor in California — said he did not believe that the bias against single pastors was as pervasive as Mr. Almlie contended. He noted that finding a position was always hard in a crowded field.
But Jackson W. Carroll, emeritus professor of religion at Duke Divinity School, suggested that the preference for marriage might have been hardened by the social upheavals of recent decades.
“Evangelicals are responding to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which they saw as a real threat to the family,” he said. “A pastor with a wife is less likely to be a homosexual and more likely to mirror the traditional image of a family.”
Matt Steen, 35, encountered concerns about the possibility of sexual misconduct during the year he fruitlessly sought a new position as a youth pastor. “I had some pretty candid conversations with churches,” he recalled of his interviews in 2006. “They’d say, ‘Tell me about your wife and kids,’ and I’d say, ‘I haven’t met them yet.’ ”
Many interviewers seemed to fear that he might “do something stupid, like get involved with a student,” he said. “I told them that I understand the concern, but that I’ve seen married pastors make the same mistakes.”
Mr. Steen later married and for family reasons moved to Long Island, ultimately leaving the ministry. He now markets accounting services to churches.
Some religion experts suggested a less charitable reason for the marriage requirement: the expectation that a pastor’s wife will provide unpaid labor, perhaps leading the choir or teaching Sunday school.
“Sometimes, parishioners have an unspoken preference for a happily married male with a wife who does not work outside the home,” Cynthia Woolever, research director at U.S. Congregations, wrote in a 2009 article. “She also volunteers at the church while raising ‘wholesome and polite children.’ ”
Mr. Almlie notes that during the first 1,500 years of Christianity, “singleness, not marriage, was lauded as next to godliness.” Martin Luther, in his break with Rome, preached against mandatory celibacy and got married himself.
As he searches for a job, Mr. Almlie is also looking for a life partner. He has tried Christian dating services and even eHarmony, but nothing has clicked. He says that he understands the desire to have a model family, but that he faces too many myths and fears.
“Ultimately, I do begrudge not being hired,” he said.
Japan’s nuclear emergency
Damage at nuclear plants made leaking radiation the primary threat facing a country just beginning to grasp the scale of devastation from the earthquake and tsunami.
Japan’s catastrophe resonates at economic, regulatory and personal levels
By David Nakamura and Joel Achenbach, Monday, March 21, 5:00 PM
TOKYO — Japan’s catastrophe is resonating around the planet.
As technicians continued to struggle Monday to control a smoke-belching nuclear power plant in Japan, workers at a General Motors engine-manufacturing facility in Buffalo learned that they would be laid off temporarily as the shortage of Japanese-made parts roils the U.S. auto industry.
In Rockville, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission opened hearings on the safety of the country’s 104 nuclear reactors, many of them long in the tooth and now undergoing a critical reexamination.
And in Richmond, a family mourned. The U.S. Embassy in Japan informed the parents of Taylor Anderson, a 24-year-old American who had been teaching at a school in Japan, that her body had been identified in tsunami-battered Miyagi prefecture. Anderson reportedly helped parents pick up their children after the earthquake before she rode her bicycle home.
“Fittingly, she was last seen helping parents safely reunite with their children following the earthquake, an act which illustrates her dedication to her students and to the Japanese people she served,” said Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R).
Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, will face five years of rebuilding from the disaster, which could cost the nation up to $235 billion, according to the World Bank. By comparison, Hurricane Katrina caused $81.2 billion in damage in 2005, according to a widely cited study by the National Hurricane Center. Last year, the costs of natural disasters soared to a worldwide total of $109 billion, three times the total in 2009, according to the United Nations.
What makes Japan’s crisis so anguishing is the nuclear emergency that drags on day after day despite the efforts of hundreds of workers who are putting themselves in the line of atomic fire at the quake-crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The situation there continues to be two steps forward and one step back.
Emergency workers lost precious hours Monday in their ongoing battle to get the six-reactor complex under control when smoke billowed from two of the reactor units. The first cloud was spotted just before 4 p.m. coming out of the building that houses the unit 3 reactor. It tapered off after two hours. But then another cloud rose 20 minutes later near the unit 2 reactor.
No one was hurt, and the incidents were not as alarming as three previous explosions that damaged buildings housing reactors. But radiation levels spiked briefly, and the Tokyo Electric Power Co. evacuated about 700 workers.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said work resumed Tuesday morning on the reactors, even though smoke is still coming from the facility. He said that crews hope to finish hooking up the unit 2 reactor to an electrical power supply by Wednesday and that they are still working on reactors 1, 3 and 4.
“Yesterday, there were some ups and downs,” he said. “That has currently settled down.”
The nuclear drama has drawn the attention of regulators around the world. At the Rockville hearing Monday, William Borchardt, the NRC’s executive director for operations, said the situation in Japan appeared to be stabilizing.
“The fact that off-site power is close to being available for use of plant equipment is perhaps the first optimistic sign that things could be turning around,” Borchardt said. “I would say optimistically things appear to be on the verge of stabilizing.”
Nothing that regulators have learned about the Japanese catastrophe indicated that any changes were warranted at U.S. nuclear plants, Borchardt said.
“We have found no reason to take any immediate regulatory action,” he said.
The commission will vote on a plan to conduct a 90-day study of the implications of the Japanese situation for the United States.
“We have a responsibility to the American people to undertake a systematic and methodical review of the safety of our own domestic nuclear facilities in light of the natural disaster and the resulting nuclear emergency in Japan,” NRC Chairman Gregory B. Jaczko said.
So far, 8,928 people have died and 12,664 are missing since the 9.0-magnitude quake struck off the coast near Sendai, Japan’s National Police Agency said. Nearly 350,000 others have been placed in shelters across the region and as far away as Tokyo.
(PHOTOS: Massive rescue, cleanup efforts underway in Japan)
Martin Faller, head of the East Asia delegation of the International Red Cross, said Monday that fuel is scarce and that many people are suffering in the cold weather. Food has become more plentiful, but many elderly people are running low on medicine.
“It was really cold in the operation shelters, logistics had broken down, fuel and kerosene were difficult to get,” Faller said in an interview.
Government authorities said they have banned the sale of raw milk and spinach from several prefectures after they were found to contain excessive levels of radiation. The officials said the amounts still did not pose a threat to people’s health if consumed. Government scientists are now examining fish and shellfish, said Yoshifumi Kaji, director of the inspection and safety division of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
The ministry called on local governments Monday to advise residents to stop giving babies water in forms such as baby formula if radioactive iodine is found at elevated levels in drinking water, the Kyodo news service reported.
“Babies can easily absorb radioactive iodine in their thyroid glands,” the agency quoted a ministry official as saying.
Greater amounts of radioactive iodine and cesium were found in rain, dust and particles in the air in some areas over a 24-hour period starting Sunday morning because of rainfall, the agency reported.
nakamurad@washpost.com
achenbachj@washpost.com
Achenbach reported from Washington. Staff writer Rob Stein in Washington contributed to this report.
TOKYO — Japan’s catastrophe is resonating around the planet.
As technicians continued to struggle Monday to control a smoke-belching nuclear power plant in Japan, workers at a General Motors engine-manufacturing facility in Buffalo learned that they would be laid off temporarily as the shortage of Japanese-made parts roils the U.S. auto industry.
In Rockville, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission opened hearings on the safety of the country’s 104 nuclear reactors, many of them long in the tooth and now undergoing a critical reexamination.
And in Richmond, a family mourned. The U.S. Embassy in Japan informed the parents of Taylor Anderson, a 24-year-old American who had been teaching at a school in Japan, that her body had been identified in tsunami-battered Miyagi prefecture. Anderson reportedly helped parents pick up their children after the earthquake before she rode her bicycle home.
“Fittingly, she was last seen helping parents safely reunite with their children following the earthquake, an act which illustrates her dedication to her students and to the Japanese people she served,” said Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R).
Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, will face five years of rebuilding from the disaster, which could cost the nation up to $235 billion, according to the World Bank. By comparison, Hurricane Katrina caused $81.2 billion in damage in 2005, according to a widely cited study by the National Hurricane Center. Last year, the costs of natural disasters soared to a worldwide total of $109 billion, three times the total in 2009, according to the United Nations.
What makes Japan’s crisis so anguishing is the nuclear emergency that drags on day after day despite the efforts of hundreds of workers who are putting themselves in the line of atomic fire at the quake-crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The situation there continues to be two steps forward and one step back.
Emergency workers lost precious hours Monday in their ongoing battle to get the six-reactor complex under control when smoke billowed from two of the reactor units. The first cloud was spotted just before 4 p.m. coming out of the building that houses the unit 3 reactor. It tapered off after two hours. But then another cloud rose 20 minutes later near the unit 2 reactor.
No one was hurt, and the incidents were not as alarming as three previous explosions that damaged buildings housing reactors. But radiation levels spiked briefly, and the Tokyo Electric Power Co. evacuated about 700 workers.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said work resumed Tuesday morning on the reactors, even though smoke is still coming from the facility. He said that crews hope to finish hooking up the unit 2 reactor to an electrical power supply by Wednesday and that they are still working on reactors 1, 3 and 4.
“Yesterday, there were some ups and downs,” he said. “That has currently settled down.”
The nuclear drama has drawn the attention of regulators around the world. At the Rockville hearing Monday, William Borchardt, the NRC’s executive director for operations, said the situation in Japan appeared to be stabilizing.
“The fact that off-site power is close to being available for use of plant equipment is perhaps the first optimistic sign that things could be turning around,” Borchardt said. “I would say optimistically things appear to be on the verge of stabilizing.”
Nothing that regulators have learned about the Japanese catastrophe indicated that any changes were warranted at U.S. nuclear plants, Borchardt said.
“We have found no reason to take any immediate regulatory action,” he said.
The commission will vote on a plan to conduct a 90-day study of the implications of the Japanese situation for the United States.
“We have a responsibility to the American people to undertake a systematic and methodical review of the safety of our own domestic nuclear facilities in light of the natural disaster and the resulting nuclear emergency in Japan,” NRC Chairman Gregory B. Jaczko said.
So far, 8,928 people have died and 12,664 are missing since the 9.0-magnitude quake struck off the coast near Sendai, Japan’s National Police Agency said. Nearly 350,000 others have been placed in shelters across the region and as far away as Tokyo.
(PHOTOS: Massive rescue, cleanup efforts underway in Japan)
Martin Faller, head of the East Asia delegation of the International Red Cross, said Monday that fuel is scarce and that many people are suffering in the cold weather. Food has become more plentiful, but many elderly people are running low on medicine.
“It was really cold in the operation shelters, logistics had broken down, fuel and kerosene were difficult to get,” Faller said in an interview.
Government authorities said they have banned the sale of raw milk and spinach from several prefectures after they were found to contain excessive levels of radiation. The officials said the amounts still did not pose a threat to people’s health if consumed. Government scientists are now examining fish and shellfish, said Yoshifumi Kaji, director of the inspection and safety division of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
The ministry called on local governments Monday to advise residents to stop giving babies water in forms such as baby formula if radioactive iodine is found at elevated levels in drinking water, the Kyodo news service reported.
“Babies can easily absorb radioactive iodine in their thyroid glands,” the agency quoted a ministry official as saying.
Greater amounts of radioactive iodine and cesium were found in rain, dust and particles in the air in some areas over a 24-hour period starting Sunday morning because of rainfall, the agency reported.
nakamurad@washpost.com
achenbachj@washpost.com
Achenbach reported from Washington. Staff writer Rob Stein in Washington contributed to this report.
19/03 ICANN chính thức thông qua tên miền .xxx
19/03/2011 12:00:19 PM
ICTnews - Tổ chức quản lý tên miền Internet quốc tế (ICANN) vừa chính thức tuyên bố sẽ thiết lập tên miền .xxx tại một cuộc họp ở San Francisco, với hy vọng sẽ nâng cao an ninh bảo mật cho thế giới Internet.
Nội dung khiêu dâm thường là một nội dung được những kẻ lừa đảo sử dụng để dụ người dùng Internet truy cập vào những website nguy hiểm hoặc gian lận. Bằng cách thiết lập tên miền .xxx, ICANN mong muốn mọi thứ sẽ tốt hơn.
Bất kỳ ai muốn đăng ký một tên miền .xxx đầu tiên sẽ phải thông qua các thủ tục đăng ký của International Foundation for Online Responsibility, một tổ chức quốc tế chịu trách nhiệm về các hoạt động trực tuyến. Quy trình này nhằm đảm bảo tên miền .xxx không bị lợi dụng vào những hành vi gian lận, khiêu dâm trẻ em hoặc những hành vi tệ hại khác. Đồng thời, việc có một tên miền riêng dành cho các website người lớn sẽ giúp người dùng dễ dàng chặn những trang web “không mong muốn” ra khỏi quá trình lướt web của họ.
Điều đó cũng mang lại cho người tiêu dùng sự đảm bảo “họ được bảo vệ nhiều hơn khỏi nguy cơ virus, ăn cắp thông tin cá nhân, thẻ tín dụng và những hiểm họa khác trên Internet”, ICANN nói.
Tuy nhiên, những người phản đối cho rằng các trang web khiêu dâm nổi tiếng sẽ không thể từ bỏ tên miền .com mà họ đã đăng ký, chỉ vì có thêm sự lựa chọn mới .xxx. Điều đó có nghĩa là việc lọc các website khiêu dâm sẽ không hoàn toàn hiệu quả. Ngoài ra, các website khiêu dâm hiện hành cũng sẽ không bị buộc phải chuyển sang tên miền .xxx và trải qua quá trình “sát hạch” mới.
ICANN đã băn khoăn với ý tưởng giới thiệu tên miền .xxx từ một thập kỷ nay. ICANN đã thông qua tên miền này từ hồi tháng Sáu, nhưng quyết định cuối cùng thì nay mới được đưa ra.
Công ty ICM Registry chuyên đăng ký tên miền cho biết họ đã nhận được các đơn xin đăng ký sẵn cho hơn 200.000 địa chỉ tên miền .xxx.
Bảo Bình
Theo Computer World
ICTnews - Tổ chức quản lý tên miền Internet quốc tế (ICANN) vừa chính thức tuyên bố sẽ thiết lập tên miền .xxx tại một cuộc họp ở San Francisco, với hy vọng sẽ nâng cao an ninh bảo mật cho thế giới Internet.
Nội dung khiêu dâm thường là một nội dung được những kẻ lừa đảo sử dụng để dụ người dùng Internet truy cập vào những website nguy hiểm hoặc gian lận. Bằng cách thiết lập tên miền .xxx, ICANN mong muốn mọi thứ sẽ tốt hơn.
Bất kỳ ai muốn đăng ký một tên miền .xxx đầu tiên sẽ phải thông qua các thủ tục đăng ký của International Foundation for Online Responsibility, một tổ chức quốc tế chịu trách nhiệm về các hoạt động trực tuyến. Quy trình này nhằm đảm bảo tên miền .xxx không bị lợi dụng vào những hành vi gian lận, khiêu dâm trẻ em hoặc những hành vi tệ hại khác. Đồng thời, việc có một tên miền riêng dành cho các website người lớn sẽ giúp người dùng dễ dàng chặn những trang web “không mong muốn” ra khỏi quá trình lướt web của họ.
Điều đó cũng mang lại cho người tiêu dùng sự đảm bảo “họ được bảo vệ nhiều hơn khỏi nguy cơ virus, ăn cắp thông tin cá nhân, thẻ tín dụng và những hiểm họa khác trên Internet”, ICANN nói.
Tuy nhiên, những người phản đối cho rằng các trang web khiêu dâm nổi tiếng sẽ không thể từ bỏ tên miền .com mà họ đã đăng ký, chỉ vì có thêm sự lựa chọn mới .xxx. Điều đó có nghĩa là việc lọc các website khiêu dâm sẽ không hoàn toàn hiệu quả. Ngoài ra, các website khiêu dâm hiện hành cũng sẽ không bị buộc phải chuyển sang tên miền .xxx và trải qua quá trình “sát hạch” mới.
ICANN đã băn khoăn với ý tưởng giới thiệu tên miền .xxx từ một thập kỷ nay. ICANN đã thông qua tên miền này từ hồi tháng Sáu, nhưng quyết định cuối cùng thì nay mới được đưa ra.
Công ty ICM Registry chuyên đăng ký tên miền cho biết họ đã nhận được các đơn xin đăng ký sẵn cho hơn 200.000 địa chỉ tên miền .xxx.
Bảo Bình
Theo Computer World
22/03 Facebook xóa 200.000 tài khoản mỗi ngày
22/03/2011 11:16:27 AM
ICTnews - Mạng xã hội lớn nhất thế giới vừa tiết lộ, trung bình mỗi ngày họ phải khóa khoảng 200.000 tài khoản của những người dùng vị thành niên nhưng khai man tuổi thật của mình.
Mozelle Thompson, cố vấn cao cấp của Facebook về “quyền riêng tư” vừa giải trình trước Ủy ban An toàn mạng thuộc Quốc hội Australia: “Có nhiều người đã cố tình nói dối. Họ là những người dưới 13 tuổi nhưng vẫn cố tình khai man để tạo tài khoản trên Facebook. Trung bình mỗi ngày chúng tôi phải loại bỏ khoảng 200.000 tài khoản dạng này”.
Theo thỏa thuận về quyền lợi và trách nhiệm của nhà cung cấp dịch vụ (Facebook) và người dùng, Facebook sẽ không lưu trữ bất cứ thông tin gì của những người dưới 13 tuổi và nếu là người dùng chưa đến tuổi, mạng xã hội này đề nghị người đó không đăng ký tài khoản.
Trong trường hợp, Facebook phát hiện ra đó là những thông tin của một cá nhân dưới 13 tuổi, họ sẽ xóa sạch toàn bộ tài khoản.
Tuy nhiên, ông Thompson cũng thừa nhận rằng cơ chế tự động phát hiện nói dối của Facebook vẫn chưa hoàn hảo và trong thời gian tới mạng xã hội này sẽ tìm kiếm những chuyên gia về an toàn mạng để xử lý các vấn đề liên quan đến việc bảo vệ cá nhân người dùng và quan hệ với các nhà chức trách địa phương.
Lê Trí
Theo SMH
ICTnews - Mạng xã hội lớn nhất thế giới vừa tiết lộ, trung bình mỗi ngày họ phải khóa khoảng 200.000 tài khoản của những người dùng vị thành niên nhưng khai man tuổi thật của mình.
Mozelle Thompson, cố vấn cao cấp của Facebook về “quyền riêng tư” vừa giải trình trước Ủy ban An toàn mạng thuộc Quốc hội Australia: “Có nhiều người đã cố tình nói dối. Họ là những người dưới 13 tuổi nhưng vẫn cố tình khai man để tạo tài khoản trên Facebook. Trung bình mỗi ngày chúng tôi phải loại bỏ khoảng 200.000 tài khoản dạng này”.
Theo thỏa thuận về quyền lợi và trách nhiệm của nhà cung cấp dịch vụ (Facebook) và người dùng, Facebook sẽ không lưu trữ bất cứ thông tin gì của những người dưới 13 tuổi và nếu là người dùng chưa đến tuổi, mạng xã hội này đề nghị người đó không đăng ký tài khoản.
Trong trường hợp, Facebook phát hiện ra đó là những thông tin của một cá nhân dưới 13 tuổi, họ sẽ xóa sạch toàn bộ tài khoản.
Tuy nhiên, ông Thompson cũng thừa nhận rằng cơ chế tự động phát hiện nói dối của Facebook vẫn chưa hoàn hảo và trong thời gian tới mạng xã hội này sẽ tìm kiếm những chuyên gia về an toàn mạng để xử lý các vấn đề liên quan đến việc bảo vệ cá nhân người dùng và quan hệ với các nhà chức trách địa phương.
Lê Trí
Theo SMH
22/03 Twitter tròn 5 tuổi và 5 dấu ấn đáng nhớ
22/03/2011 07:30:51 AM
ICTnews – Bước ra thế giới Internet từ con số không tròn trĩnh nhưng tiểu blog Twitter đã nhanh chóng chứng minh rằng đời sống thế giới ngày nay không thể thiếu những tweet (thông điệp) của nó.
Không hề ngoa khi ai đó nói rằng Twitter đã phát triển với một tốc độ “điên rồ” khi chỉ sau 5 năm, dịch vụ tiểu blog này ngày nay đang truyền tải trung bình khoảng 140 triệu tweet mỗi ngày hay thậm chí đã có những kỷ lục được thiết lập như : tốc độ 7.000 tweet mỗi giây ngay sau khi trận động đất mạng 9 độ richter xảy ra ở Nhật Bản hôm 11/3 vừa qua.
Ngày 13/3/2006, 3 chàng trai trẻ là Dorsey, Biz Stone và Evan Williams bắt đầu cùng nhau viết code cho một loại công cụ giao tiếp hoàn toàn khác biệt nhưng thậm chí khi đó họ vẫn không biết nên gọi nó là gì.
Đúng 8 ngày sau, thông điệp đầu tiên của Twitter đã chính thức được khai sinh từ tài khoản của Dorsey mặc dù nó chỉ có 5 từ: “Just setting up my twttr”.
Ban đầu những nhà sáng lập của Twitter dự định đặt cho dịch vụ của mình nghe khá kỳ cục là “Twttr” (chỉ toàn gồm các phụ âm) nhưng hàm chứa một sự thuận tiện tối đa cho người dùng di động bởi nó tương ứng với chuỗi số 89887 trên bàn phím của chiếc điện thoại di động (T=8; W=9, R=7 – chuỗi số ít đòi hỏi di chuyển ngón tay nhất khi bấm máy). Đáng tiếc là chuỗi số này đã có tới 10 người đăng ký sử dụng. Sau đó, họ định dùng chuỗi số 40404 nhưng cũng không thành.
Mặc dù đã chào đời lúc 4h50 chiều ngày 21/3/2006 nhưng phải đến ngày 15/7/2006 dịch vụ Twitter mới chính thức được công bố rộng rãi ra toàn thế giới.
Để kỷ niệm sinh nhật lần thứ 5 của một trong những nền tảng mạng xã hội lớn nhất thế giới này, chúng ta hãy cùng điểm lại những dấu ấn đặc biệt mà nó đã ghi vào lịch sử thế giới trong suốt 5 năm qua.
Thông báo thắng cử của ông Obama: "Chúng ta vừa viết nên lịch sử. Tất cả những điều này xuất hiện vì các bạn đã dành thời gian, tài năng và sự đam mê (cho tôi). Tất cả những điều này dành cho các bạn. Xin cảm ơn"
1.Ngày 5/11/2008, ứng cử viên chạy đua chức Tổng thống Hoa Kỳ Barack Obama đã trở thành vị nguyên thủ quốc gia đầu tiên trên thế giới tuyên bố thắng cử trên Twitter. Khi đó, thay vì bước lên một bục diễn giả với chiếc micro và những ống kính máy quay của các đài truyền hình, ông Obama đã dùng ngay chiếc BlackBerry của mình để gửi lên Twitter một thông điệp dài 134 ký tự.
Có một chiếc máy bay trên sông Hudson. Tôi đang trên chuyến phà chạy ra vớt người. Thật điên rồ.
2. Ngày 15/1/2009, Janis Krums - một vị hành khách đang đi trên chuyến phà qua sông Hudson đã sử dụng Twitter để tường thuật trực tiếp những diễn biến đầu tiên của vụ tai nạn hàng không hy hữu khi chuyến bay số 1549 của hãng US Airways đang cố gắng tìm cách hạ cánh xuống dòng sông. Toàn bộ 155 hành khách trên chuyến bay đã được cứu thoát an toàn.
Twitter gửi từ không gian.
3. Ngày 22/1/2010, phi hành gia TJ Creamer đã gửi lời chào tới toàn bộ người dân trên trái đất bằng một tweet được gửi từ… không gian (cách trái đất 220 dặm).
Thông điệp của BP: "Tin vui: Người cá là có thực. Tin xấu: Tất cả bọn họ đều đã tuyệt chủng"
4. Ngày 24/5/2010, các nhân viên quan hệ công chúng (PR) của hãng dầu mỏ BP đã châm ngòi cho một cuộc khủng hoảng truyền thông tồi tệ nhất lịch sử hãng này khi gửi đi một thông điệp “rất không phải” khi nói về sự cố tràn dầu từ các dàn khoan của họ trên vùng biển Vịnh Mexico (Mỹ).
5. Ngày 2/3/2011, Charlie Sheen bắt đầu “cuộc đua điên rồ” nhất lịch sử Twitter khi quyết tâm đạt kỷ lục có 1 triệu người quan tâm (follower) chỉ trong vòng 24h và cuối cùng thì anh cũng đã thỏa ước nguyện.
Lê Trí
Tổng hợp
ICTnews – Bước ra thế giới Internet từ con số không tròn trĩnh nhưng tiểu blog Twitter đã nhanh chóng chứng minh rằng đời sống thế giới ngày nay không thể thiếu những tweet (thông điệp) của nó.
Không hề ngoa khi ai đó nói rằng Twitter đã phát triển với một tốc độ “điên rồ” khi chỉ sau 5 năm, dịch vụ tiểu blog này ngày nay đang truyền tải trung bình khoảng 140 triệu tweet mỗi ngày hay thậm chí đã có những kỷ lục được thiết lập như : tốc độ 7.000 tweet mỗi giây ngay sau khi trận động đất mạng 9 độ richter xảy ra ở Nhật Bản hôm 11/3 vừa qua.
Ngày 13/3/2006, 3 chàng trai trẻ là Dorsey, Biz Stone và Evan Williams bắt đầu cùng nhau viết code cho một loại công cụ giao tiếp hoàn toàn khác biệt nhưng thậm chí khi đó họ vẫn không biết nên gọi nó là gì.
Đúng 8 ngày sau, thông điệp đầu tiên của Twitter đã chính thức được khai sinh từ tài khoản của Dorsey mặc dù nó chỉ có 5 từ: “Just setting up my twttr”.
Ban đầu những nhà sáng lập của Twitter dự định đặt cho dịch vụ của mình nghe khá kỳ cục là “Twttr” (chỉ toàn gồm các phụ âm) nhưng hàm chứa một sự thuận tiện tối đa cho người dùng di động bởi nó tương ứng với chuỗi số 89887 trên bàn phím của chiếc điện thoại di động (T=8; W=9, R=7 – chuỗi số ít đòi hỏi di chuyển ngón tay nhất khi bấm máy). Đáng tiếc là chuỗi số này đã có tới 10 người đăng ký sử dụng. Sau đó, họ định dùng chuỗi số 40404 nhưng cũng không thành.
Mặc dù đã chào đời lúc 4h50 chiều ngày 21/3/2006 nhưng phải đến ngày 15/7/2006 dịch vụ Twitter mới chính thức được công bố rộng rãi ra toàn thế giới.
Để kỷ niệm sinh nhật lần thứ 5 của một trong những nền tảng mạng xã hội lớn nhất thế giới này, chúng ta hãy cùng điểm lại những dấu ấn đặc biệt mà nó đã ghi vào lịch sử thế giới trong suốt 5 năm qua.
Thông báo thắng cử của ông Obama: "Chúng ta vừa viết nên lịch sử. Tất cả những điều này xuất hiện vì các bạn đã dành thời gian, tài năng và sự đam mê (cho tôi). Tất cả những điều này dành cho các bạn. Xin cảm ơn"
1.Ngày 5/11/2008, ứng cử viên chạy đua chức Tổng thống Hoa Kỳ Barack Obama đã trở thành vị nguyên thủ quốc gia đầu tiên trên thế giới tuyên bố thắng cử trên Twitter. Khi đó, thay vì bước lên một bục diễn giả với chiếc micro và những ống kính máy quay của các đài truyền hình, ông Obama đã dùng ngay chiếc BlackBerry của mình để gửi lên Twitter một thông điệp dài 134 ký tự.
Có một chiếc máy bay trên sông Hudson. Tôi đang trên chuyến phà chạy ra vớt người. Thật điên rồ.
2. Ngày 15/1/2009, Janis Krums - một vị hành khách đang đi trên chuyến phà qua sông Hudson đã sử dụng Twitter để tường thuật trực tiếp những diễn biến đầu tiên của vụ tai nạn hàng không hy hữu khi chuyến bay số 1549 của hãng US Airways đang cố gắng tìm cách hạ cánh xuống dòng sông. Toàn bộ 155 hành khách trên chuyến bay đã được cứu thoát an toàn.
Twitter gửi từ không gian.
3. Ngày 22/1/2010, phi hành gia TJ Creamer đã gửi lời chào tới toàn bộ người dân trên trái đất bằng một tweet được gửi từ… không gian (cách trái đất 220 dặm).
Thông điệp của BP: "Tin vui: Người cá là có thực. Tin xấu: Tất cả bọn họ đều đã tuyệt chủng"
4. Ngày 24/5/2010, các nhân viên quan hệ công chúng (PR) của hãng dầu mỏ BP đã châm ngòi cho một cuộc khủng hoảng truyền thông tồi tệ nhất lịch sử hãng này khi gửi đi một thông điệp “rất không phải” khi nói về sự cố tràn dầu từ các dàn khoan của họ trên vùng biển Vịnh Mexico (Mỹ).
5. Ngày 2/3/2011, Charlie Sheen bắt đầu “cuộc đua điên rồ” nhất lịch sử Twitter khi quyết tâm đạt kỷ lục có 1 triệu người quan tâm (follower) chỉ trong vòng 24h và cuối cùng thì anh cũng đã thỏa ước nguyện.
Lê Trí
Tổng hợp
15/03 Tài liệu về phóng xạ và nhiễm xạ
Thứ ba, ngày 15 tháng ba năm 2011
Trước sự cố nổ các lò phản ứng ở Nhà máy điện nguyên tử Fukushima 1 và nguy cơ rò rỉ phóng xạ ra môi trường, ảnh hưởng trực tiếp đến con người, Hội những nhà khoa học trẻ Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản (COVYS) xin giới thiệu tài liệu “Sơ lược các ảnh hưởng của phóng xạ và cách phòng chống nhiễm xạ“, do các thành viên COVYS và một số cộng tác viên tổng hợp, biên soạn.
Hy vọng với nội dung gói gọn trong 11 trang, tài liệu này sẽ cung cấp cho bạn đọc một lượng thông tin súc tích, khái quát nhất về các khái niệm liên quan đến phóng xạ, cũng như các cách đề phòng nhiễm xạ hiệu quả nhất. Ngoài ra, do tài liệu được biên soạn trong thời gian gấp rút, không thể tránh khỏi một số thiếu sót ngoài ý muốn, rất mong bạn đọc bỏ qua.
LINK XEM TÀI LIỆỤ “Sơ lược các ảnh hưởng của phóng xạ và cách phòng chống nhiễm xạ“
Trích dẫn phần Phụ lục 1 của tài liệu, nói về “Phản ứng nhanh khi có một vụ nổ hạt nhân” trên website của COVYS
Được đăng bởi VYSA vào lúc 13:10 Gửi Email Bài đăng Này BlogThis! Chia sẻ lên Twitter Chia sẻ lên Facebook Chia sẻ lên Google Buzz
Trước sự cố nổ các lò phản ứng ở Nhà máy điện nguyên tử Fukushima 1 và nguy cơ rò rỉ phóng xạ ra môi trường, ảnh hưởng trực tiếp đến con người, Hội những nhà khoa học trẻ Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản (COVYS) xin giới thiệu tài liệu “Sơ lược các ảnh hưởng của phóng xạ và cách phòng chống nhiễm xạ“, do các thành viên COVYS và một số cộng tác viên tổng hợp, biên soạn.
Hy vọng với nội dung gói gọn trong 11 trang, tài liệu này sẽ cung cấp cho bạn đọc một lượng thông tin súc tích, khái quát nhất về các khái niệm liên quan đến phóng xạ, cũng như các cách đề phòng nhiễm xạ hiệu quả nhất. Ngoài ra, do tài liệu được biên soạn trong thời gian gấp rút, không thể tránh khỏi một số thiếu sót ngoài ý muốn, rất mong bạn đọc bỏ qua.
LINK XEM TÀI LIỆỤ “Sơ lược các ảnh hưởng của phóng xạ và cách phòng chống nhiễm xạ“
Trích dẫn phần Phụ lục 1 của tài liệu, nói về “Phản ứng nhanh khi có một vụ nổ hạt nhân” trên website của COVYS
Được đăng bởi VYSA vào lúc 13:10 Gửi Email Bài đăng Này BlogThis! Chia sẻ lên Twitter Chia sẻ lên Facebook Chia sẻ lên Google Buzz
22/03 ở VN bạn có thể gọi cho người thân ở NB miển phí bằng dtdd Mobiphone
Mobiphone đã khởi động chương trình "CLoser to Japan", Mobiphone cho biết nhà cung cấp dịch vụ điện thoại di động này sẻ miển phí 2 phút đầu tiên cho khách hàng của MobiFone gọi cho thân nhân ở Nhật bản.
21/03 モビフォン、日本への通話、最初の2分を無料化
2011/03/21 18:20 JST
＊関連記事:
>> モビフォンの会長がVNPTの副社長に任命 (11/02/11)
>> 携帯大手3社、テトのサービス需要増に準備万端 (11/01/25)
大手携帯電話通信サービスのモビフォンは17日、日本への通話サポートを目的とする「Closer to Japan」プログラムを開始した。17日付ティンモイが報じた。
これにより、同社のサービス利用者は日本に無料でショートメッセージサービス(SMS)の送信が可能となり、通話料も最初の2分間が無料となる。このサービスは日本在住の親族・友人・取引相手がいる人を対象に始められたもので、15日、地震に見舞われた日本との連絡手段としても寄与する。サービスの期間は18日から31日まで。
＊関連記事:
>> モビフォンの会長がVNPTの副社長に任命 (11/02/11)
>> 携帯大手3社、テトのサービス需要増に準備万端 (11/01/25)
[Minh Tuan, VNMedia, Tin moi, 20:44 GMT+7, 17/3/2011 Usa]
© Viet-jo.com 2002-2011 All Rights Reserved
＊関連記事:
>> モビフォンの会長がVNPTの副社長に任命 (11/02/11)
>> 携帯大手3社、テトのサービス需要増に準備万端 (11/01/25)
大手携帯電話通信サービスのモビフォンは17日、日本への通話サポートを目的とする「Closer to Japan」プログラムを開始した。17日付ティンモイが報じた。
これにより、同社のサービス利用者は日本に無料でショートメッセージサービス(SMS)の送信が可能となり、通話料も最初の2分間が無料となる。このサービスは日本在住の親族・友人・取引相手がいる人を対象に始められたもので、15日、地震に見舞われた日本との連絡手段としても寄与する。サービスの期間は18日から31日まで。
＊関連記事:
>> モビフォンの会長がVNPTの副社長に任命 (11/02/11)
>> 携帯大手3社、テトのサービス需要増に準備万端 (11/01/25)
[Minh Tuan, VNMedia, Tin moi, 20:44 GMT+7, 17/3/2011 Usa]
© Viet-jo.com 2002-2011 All Rights Reserved
18/03 在日大使館、ベトナム人救援隊を派遣
2011/03/18 15:10 JST
＊関連記事:
>> 地震発生の日本、1,8万人の越人労働者の無事確認 (11/03/16)
>> 在日ベトナム大使館、連絡用の情報チャンネル設置 (11/03/15)
在日ベトナム大使館は15日、東北関東太平洋沖地震で被災した地域にいたとみられるベトナム人の救援に向かうべく、救援隊を結成した。15日付ラオドン紙(電子版)が報じた。
同救援隊は同日、被災地である宮城県と福島県に向かい、東北大学病院と福島空港を訪れ、救援活動を行った。
ベトナム大使館及び在大阪ベトナム領事館は現在、在日ベトナム人の救援・保護のため、窓口を設けている。
大使館窓口
電話番号
＊労働者担当窓口 (0081)80-3001-3193
＊留学生担当窓口 (0081)80-4006-0234 または Email：vnembassyjp＠gmail.com
領事館窓口
＊緊急時ホットライン
電話番号 午前9時～午後5時 072-221-6602 または 072-221-6607
上記時間外 090-7346-6668 または Email：tlsqvn.osaka@mofa.gov.vn
＊関連記事:
>> 地震発生の日本、1,8万人の越人労働者の無事確認 (11/03/16)
>> 在日ベトナム大使館、連絡用の情報チャンネル設置 (11/03/15)
[D.Hải 15.3.2011 22:33 (GMT + 7) Usa]
© Viet-jo.com 2002-2011 All Rights Reserved.
＊関連記事:
>> 地震発生の日本、1,8万人の越人労働者の無事確認 (11/03/16)
>> 在日ベトナム大使館、連絡用の情報チャンネル設置 (11/03/15)
在日ベトナム大使館は15日、東北関東太平洋沖地震で被災した地域にいたとみられるベトナム人の救援に向かうべく、救援隊を結成した。15日付ラオドン紙(電子版)が報じた。
同救援隊は同日、被災地である宮城県と福島県に向かい、東北大学病院と福島空港を訪れ、救援活動を行った。
ベトナム大使館及び在大阪ベトナム領事館は現在、在日ベトナム人の救援・保護のため、窓口を設けている。
大使館窓口
電話番号
＊労働者担当窓口 (0081)80-3001-3193
＊留学生担当窓口 (0081)80-4006-0234 または Email：vnembassyjp＠gmail.com
領事館窓口
＊緊急時ホットライン
電話番号 午前9時～午後5時 072-221-6602 または 072-221-6607
上記時間外 090-7346-6668 または Email：tlsqvn.osaka@mofa.gov.vn
＊関連記事:
>> 地震発生の日本、1,8万人の越人労働者の無事確認 (11/03/16)
>> 在日ベトナム大使館、連絡用の情報チャンネル設置 (11/03/15)
[D.Hải 15.3.2011 22:33 (GMT + 7) Usa]
© Viet-jo.com 2002-2011 All Rights Reserved.
21/03 男女産み分け推奨の書籍・ウェブサイトを摘発
2011/03/21 04:39 JST
＊関連記事:
>> ハノイの男女出生比率、女児100人：男児120人 (10/12/07)
>> ベトナムの人工中絶率、東南アジアで最も高く (10/11/22)
>> 男女出生比、女児100人：男児110.6人 (10/10/29)
>> 人口の「質」に問題、当局が警告 (09/08/25)
人口・家族計画化総局は関連当局と協力し、男女の産み分け方法を紹介・推奨しているウェブサイトの運営及び書籍の出版・販売活動に対する監査を行った。16日付サイゴンザイフォン紙(電子版)が報じた。
今回の監査は、国内でも特に新生児男女比率の偏りが顕著な、▽タインホア省(北中部)、▽ハイズオン省(紅河デルタ地方)、▽ランソン省(東北部)、▽ドンナイ省(東南部)、▽ハイフォン市、▽ハノイ市、▽ホーチミン市――で実施された。
同局は今回の監査で、男女の産み分け方法に関連する情報を掲載した書籍40種が合計4万2000冊、ウェブサイト13件を摘発した。また、同局はこのうち書籍32種の出版元に対し書籍の回収、ウェブサイト13件に対し男女産み分けに関する情報をサイト上から削除するよう指導した。
＊関連記事:
>> ハノイの男女出生比率、女児100人：男児120人 (10/12/07)
>> ベトナムの人工中絶率、東南アジアで最も高く (10/11/22)
>> 男女出生比、女児100人：男児110.6人 (10/10/29)
>> 人口の「質」に問題、当局が警告 (09/08/25)
[Nguyen Quoc, sggp.org.vn, 16/3/2011, 11:41 (GMT+7), T]
© Viet-jo.com 2002-2011 All Rights Reserved
＊関連記事:
>> ハノイの男女出生比率、女児100人：男児120人 (10/12/07)
>> ベトナムの人工中絶率、東南アジアで最も高く (10/11/22)
>> 男女出生比、女児100人：男児110.6人 (10/10/29)
>> 人口の「質」に問題、当局が警告 (09/08/25)
人口・家族計画化総局は関連当局と協力し、男女の産み分け方法を紹介・推奨しているウェブサイトの運営及び書籍の出版・販売活動に対する監査を行った。16日付サイゴンザイフォン紙(電子版)が報じた。
今回の監査は、国内でも特に新生児男女比率の偏りが顕著な、▽タインホア省(北中部)、▽ハイズオン省(紅河デルタ地方)、▽ランソン省(東北部)、▽ドンナイ省(東南部)、▽ハイフォン市、▽ハノイ市、▽ホーチミン市――で実施された。
同局は今回の監査で、男女の産み分け方法に関連する情報を掲載した書籍40種が合計4万2000冊、ウェブサイト13件を摘発した。また、同局はこのうち書籍32種の出版元に対し書籍の回収、ウェブサイト13件に対し男女産み分けに関する情報をサイト上から削除するよう指導した。
＊関連記事:
>> ハノイの男女出生比率、女児100人：男児120人 (10/12/07)
>> ベトナムの人工中絶率、東南アジアで最も高く (10/11/22)
>> 男女出生比、女児100人：男児110.6人 (10/10/29)
>> 人口の「質」に問題、当局が警告 (09/08/25)
[Nguyen Quoc, sggp.org.vn, 16/3/2011, 11:41 (GMT+7), T]
© Viet-jo.com 2002-2011 All Rights Reserved
18/03 越国営グループ、日本の地震被災者に支援の手
2011/03/18 16:20 JST
＊関連記事:
>> 在日越学生青年協会、地震被災者の義援金募る (11/03/16)
>> 越赤十字社、日本の地震被災者に5万ドル支援 (11/03/16)
>> ベトナム国家主席、日本に対し哀悼の声明を発表 (11/03/14)
グエン・タン・ズン首相は15日、ベトナム赤十字社を通じて、同日から1か月間にわたり、東北関東太平洋沖地震の被災者と遺族に対する義援金を募ると発表した。これを受け、ベトナム郵便通信グループ(VNPT)とベトナム郵便労働組合連合会は、日本に哀悼の声明を発表すると同時に、1万ドル(約79万円)の義援金を贈った。17日付ザンチーが報じた。
また、17日付ザンチーによると、ペトロベトナムグループ（PVN）は16日、在ベトナム日本国大使館を通じて、同地震の被災者と遺族に対して10万ドル(約790万円)の義援金を贈った。
これに対して、谷崎泰明駐ベトナム国大使は、PVNをはじめとするベトナムの支援に感謝の意を示し、被害者と遺族に早期に義援金を送ると述べた。
＊関連記事:
>> 在日越学生青年協会、地震被災者の義援金募る (11/03/16)
>> 越赤十字社、日本の地震被災者に5万ドル支援 (11/03/16)
>> ベトナム国家主席、日本に対し哀悼の声明を発表 (11/03/14)
[Nguyen Kim Anh, Vietnam+ 14:57 (GMT+7) 17/3/2011,PThanh, Vietnam+ 17:40 (GMT+7) 16/3/2011 Usa]
© Viet-jo.com 2002-2011 All Rights Reserved.
＊関連記事:
>> 在日越学生青年協会、地震被災者の義援金募る (11/03/16)
>> 越赤十字社、日本の地震被災者に5万ドル支援 (11/03/16)
>> ベトナム国家主席、日本に対し哀悼の声明を発表 (11/03/14)
グエン・タン・ズン首相は15日、ベトナム赤十字社を通じて、同日から1か月間にわたり、東北関東太平洋沖地震の被災者と遺族に対する義援金を募ると発表した。これを受け、ベトナム郵便通信グループ(VNPT)とベトナム郵便労働組合連合会は、日本に哀悼の声明を発表すると同時に、1万ドル(約79万円)の義援金を贈った。17日付ザンチーが報じた。
また、17日付ザンチーによると、ペトロベトナムグループ（PVN）は16日、在ベトナム日本国大使館を通じて、同地震の被災者と遺族に対して10万ドル(約790万円)の義援金を贈った。
これに対して、谷崎泰明駐ベトナム国大使は、PVNをはじめとするベトナムの支援に感謝の意を示し、被害者と遺族に早期に義援金を送ると述べた。
＊関連記事:
>> 在日越学生青年協会、地震被災者の義援金募る (11/03/16)
>> 越赤十字社、日本の地震被災者に5万ドル支援 (11/03/16)
>> ベトナム国家主席、日本に対し哀悼の声明を発表 (11/03/14)
[Nguyen Kim Anh, Vietnam+ 14:57 (GMT+7) 17/3/2011,PThanh, Vietnam+ 17:40 (GMT+7) 16/3/2011 Usa]
© Viet-jo.com 2002-2011 All Rights Reserved.
22/03 越僑男性歌手が作曲した歌、米映画のサントラに
2011/03/22 08:41 JST
＊関連記事:
>> ハリウッド御用達のテーラー タム・グエン (10/01/17)
オーディション番組「オーストラリアン・アイドル2008」でトップ8に入ったことのあるオーストラリア越僑の男性歌手タイン・ブイが、バンド「Artisans」のメンバー(Alf Touhey)と共作した歌曲「What is all about」が米ハリウッド映画「Every Day」のサウンドトラックとして採用されている。15日付ダットベト紙電子版などが報じた。
この映画はリチャード・レビン監督の2010年の作品で、平凡な日常の中で起きる家族の出来事を描いているヒューマンドラマ。主役には男優リーブ・シュレイバーと女優ヘレン・ハントが起用されている。現在DVDが発売されている。
「What is all about」は2007年に作られた歌曲で、家族の死に直面した人が感じた人生の意義への悩みを表しているという。iTunesで販売される予定になっている。
＊関連記事:
>> ハリウッド御用達のテーラー タム・グエン (10/01/17)
[Dat Viet online, 8:46 AM, 15/03/2011, O]
© Viet-jo.com 2002-2011 All Rights Reserved
＊関連記事:
>> ハリウッド御用達のテーラー タム・グエン (10/01/17)
オーディション番組「オーストラリアン・アイドル2008」でトップ8に入ったことのあるオーストラリア越僑の男性歌手タイン・ブイが、バンド「Artisans」のメンバー(Alf Touhey)と共作した歌曲「What is all about」が米ハリウッド映画「Every Day」のサウンドトラックとして採用されている。15日付ダットベト紙電子版などが報じた。
この映画はリチャード・レビン監督の2010年の作品で、平凡な日常の中で起きる家族の出来事を描いているヒューマンドラマ。主役には男優リーブ・シュレイバーと女優ヘレン・ハントが起用されている。現在DVDが発売されている。
「What is all about」は2007年に作られた歌曲で、家族の死に直面した人が感じた人生の意義への悩みを表しているという。iTunesで販売される予定になっている。
＊関連記事:
>> ハリウッド御用達のテーラー タム・グエン (10/01/17)
[Dat Viet online, 8:46 AM, 15/03/2011, O]
© Viet-jo.com 2002-2011 All Rights Reserved
22/03 「元気だった？」「何してた？」 気仙沼、小学校再開
2011年3月22日12時37分
再開した学校でうれしそうにおしゃべりを続ける子どもたち＝２２日午前９時４７分、宮城県気仙沼市の小原木小学校、高橋正徳撮影
宮城県気仙沼市唐桑町の市立小原木小学校（児童６７人）に２２日、子どもたちの元気な声や足音が戻った。震災後は休校していたが、児童にいつもの生活リズムを取り戻させてあげたい、と再開された。
２年の小松史乃さんは２２日朝、集合場所になっていた学校近くのガソリンスタンド跡地で友だちの亀谷碧海（まりん）さんを見つけ、思わず叫んだ。
「まりんちゃん！」
手を取り合って跳びはねる。地震の翌日以来の再会。「何してた？」「元気だった？」。２人のかけ合う声がいつまでも響いた。
海から３００メートルほど離れた高台に学校はある。地震の後、保護者が子どもを迎えに集まってきたが、地震の大きさに異変を感じた熊谷洋子校長らが「校庭で様子を見ましょう」と呼びかけた。直後、海側に広がる集落を、津波が襲った。学校に通う児童の２０世帯が津波で流された。幸い子どもたちと保護者は無事だったが、多くが避難所に身を寄せている。
子どもたちはこの日、集合場所から先生に連れられて学校へ。体育館で海の方を向いて黙祷（もくとう）し、熊谷校長が「たくさんの人から援助をもらっています。みんなで頑張りましょう」と語りかけた。炊き出しの給食を食べ、午後には授業も受ける。
家が流された６年の梶川裕登さんは親戚の家に身を寄せる。「学校に来て友だちの顔を見て安心した」と話した。
再開の見通しが立たない学校が多い中、避難生活を送る生徒らを集めて「超短縮授業」を開く中学校もある。
宮城県南三陸町の志津川中学校では１６日から、教室でプリント学習や読書活動を始めた。中学校に避難している生徒らが参加し、声がかかれば炊き出しや物資の運搬も手伝いながらの勉強だ。
同県女川町の女川第一中学校でも、「数学検定」の問題を解いたり、歌を歌ったりする活動を始めた。大内俊吾校長は願う。「学校の外を見れば、見たくなくても悲惨な風景が広がっている。わずかな時間だけでもリフレッシュしてほしい」
宮城県教育委員会によると、県内では少なくとも小学校４２２校、中学校２００校が震災の影響で休校した。（山本奈朱香、丸山ひかり）
.
再開した学校でうれしそうにおしゃべりを続ける子どもたち＝２２日午前９時４７分、宮城県気仙沼市の小原木小学校、高橋正徳撮影宮城県気仙沼市唐桑町の市立小原木小学校（児童６７人）に２２日、子どもたちの元気な声や足音が戻った。震災後は休校していたが、児童にいつもの生活リズムを取り戻させてあげたい、と再開された。
２年の小松史乃さんは２２日朝、集合場所になっていた学校近くのガソリンスタンド跡地で友だちの亀谷碧海（まりん）さんを見つけ、思わず叫んだ。
「まりんちゃん！」
手を取り合って跳びはねる。地震の翌日以来の再会。「何してた？」「元気だった？」。２人のかけ合う声がいつまでも響いた。
海から３００メートルほど離れた高台に学校はある。地震の後、保護者が子どもを迎えに集まってきたが、地震の大きさに異変を感じた熊谷洋子校長らが「校庭で様子を見ましょう」と呼びかけた。直後、海側に広がる集落を、津波が襲った。学校に通う児童の２０世帯が津波で流された。幸い子どもたちと保護者は無事だったが、多くが避難所に身を寄せている。
子どもたちはこの日、集合場所から先生に連れられて学校へ。体育館で海の方を向いて黙祷（もくとう）し、熊谷校長が「たくさんの人から援助をもらっています。みんなで頑張りましょう」と語りかけた。炊き出しの給食を食べ、午後には授業も受ける。
家が流された６年の梶川裕登さんは親戚の家に身を寄せる。「学校に来て友だちの顔を見て安心した」と話した。
再開の見通しが立たない学校が多い中、避難生活を送る生徒らを集めて「超短縮授業」を開く中学校もある。
宮城県南三陸町の志津川中学校では１６日から、教室でプリント学習や読書活動を始めた。中学校に避難している生徒らが参加し、声がかかれば炊き出しや物資の運搬も手伝いながらの勉強だ。
同県女川町の女川第一中学校でも、「数学検定」の問題を解いたり、歌を歌ったりする活動を始めた。大内俊吾校長は願う。「学校の外を見れば、見たくなくても悲惨な風景が広がっている。わずかな時間だけでもリフレッシュしてほしい」
宮城県教育委員会によると、県内では少なくとも小学校４２２校、中学校２００校が震災の影響で休校した。（山本奈朱香、丸山ひかり）
.
22/03 nhật ký: Gia đình tôi trong tuần vừa rồi
Tôi ở Nhật trên 40 năm rồi, nhiều lần có bàn với vợ thôi năm nào đó về Việt nam vì từ khi kinh tế Nhật bản suy thoái, kinh tế bọt bất động sản ở Nhật đã vở hơn mười mấy năm trước. Chần chừ mãi, vợ chẳng chịu nghe. Thế rồi trận động đất kinh hoàng đến. Rồi những lời tán thưởng về tinh thần, đạo đức của người Nhật ... động viên những người dân đang sinh sống ở đây, kể cả tôi. Nhưng rồi ... cái ám ảnh phóng xạ của nhà máy hạt nhân Fukushima ... hiện lên như bóng ma. Cái kinh hoàng của bóng ma nầy thật khủng khiếp. Với tôi, thì nó chẳng là cái gì cả, tôi nghỉ vì mình là đương sự tại hiện trường, dù là ở Yokohama cách cái lò nguyên tử hơn 200 cây số đường chim bay, mình cũng có kiến thức, nhất là các thông tin về nhà máy hạt nhân được phổ biến nhiều trong tuần vừa qua. Sự thật về tai họa mang đến cho nhà máy, lò hạt nhân có thể melt down (bây giờ thì tôi hiểu melt down có nghĩa là mấy trăm thanh nguyên liệu hạt nhân bị cháy vỏ kim loại, cũng có thể nhiệt độ phản ứng phân hủy hạch nhân có thể làm chảy lũng nồi) chớ không có cái nổ như bom nguyên tử hay là phản ứng nổ như trên thái dương hệ. Đàng nào thì nhiên liệu cháy cũng hết rồi. Thanh nhiên liệu trong nồi lại không có gấy tác hại đáng lo sợ bằng các thanh nhiên liệu đã sử dụng và hiện đang được làm nguội trong bể nước.
Phóng xạ chỉ phát ra từ các thanh nhiên liệu đã được sử dụng hết trong quá trình làm nguội nếu không được làm lạnh trong nước (đại khái là như thế). Giả dụ người ta không bơm nước để làm nguội các thanh nhiên liệu này thì nó sẻ phát phóng xạ (như là thanh củi đước nóng đỏ được lấy ra khỏi bếp và để bên ngoài, thanh củi đó sẻ nguội tụ nhiên bằng cách thải nhiệt như là một loại phóng xạ vô hại). Tôi chỉ muốn biết thế thì cho các thanh này thải hết phóng xạ đi và biến thành tro, thì bao nhiêu phóng xạ đã thoát ra bên ngoài. Nghe chừng đâu thì phân nữa đã biến thành tro rồi. Vậy thì theo tôi, nếu thế, xui xẻo lắm, nhiên liệu trong 4 lò hóa thành tro hết, Tokyo và Yokohama vẫn có thể trong an toàn ở mức có thể chấp nhận được. Nhưng tôi tin là các nhân viên, chức trách sẻ giải quyết tốt, tình huống sẻ được cải thiện hơn dù có phải hy sinh nhiều về mọi mặt.
Phóng xạ chỉ phát ra từ các thanh nhiên liệu đã được sử dụng hết trong quá trình làm nguội nếu không được làm lạnh trong nước (đại khái là như thế). Giả dụ người ta không bơm nước để làm nguội các thanh nhiên liệu này thì nó sẻ phát phóng xạ (như là thanh củi đước nóng đỏ được lấy ra khỏi bếp và để bên ngoài, thanh củi đó sẻ nguội tụ nhiên bằng cách thải nhiệt như là một loại phóng xạ vô hại). Tôi chỉ muốn biết thế thì cho các thanh này thải hết phóng xạ đi và biến thành tro, thì bao nhiêu phóng xạ đã thoát ra bên ngoài. Nghe chừng đâu thì phân nữa đã biến thành tro rồi. Vậy thì theo tôi, nếu thế, xui xẻo lắm, nhiên liệu trong 4 lò hóa thành tro hết, Tokyo và Yokohama vẫn có thể trong an toàn ở mức có thể chấp nhận được. Nhưng tôi tin là các nhân viên, chức trách sẻ giải quyết tốt, tình huống sẻ được cải thiện hơn dù có phải hy sinh nhiều về mọi mặt.
22/03 福島県知事、東電の「おわび訪問」断る
2011年3月22日11時2分
福島県の佐藤雄平知事は２２日午前の災害対策本部会議で、東京電力側から社長のおわび訪問を打診されたが断った、と明らかにした。
佐藤知事は理由について「県民の不安と憤りを察するに、おわびを受ける状況じゃない。東京電力は死力を尽くして事態の収拾にあたるべきだ」と話した。
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福島県の佐藤雄平知事は２２日午前の災害対策本部会議で、東京電力側から社長のおわび訪問を打診されたが断った、と明らかにした。
佐藤知事は理由について「県民の不安と憤りを察するに、おわびを受ける状況じゃない。東京電力は死力を尽くして事態の収拾にあたるべきだ」と話した。
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18/03 Trung Quốc: Đổ xô mua muối i-ốt, giá tăng gấp 10 lần
Thứ Sáu, 18/03/2011 06:57
Lo sợ phóng xạ từ Nhật sẽ lan sang, người dân Trung Quốc đang lên cơn sốt đổ xô mua muối i-ốt về dự trữ chống phơi nhiễm phóng xạ.
Người dân thành phố Lan Châu, tỉnh Cam Túc ở phía tây bắc Trung Quốc chen lấn nhau tại một siêu thị để muối i-ốt nhằm tránh nhiễm xạ hạt nhân!
Trong ngày thứ năm 17.3, các siêu thị ở Bắc Kinh, Thượng Hải và các thành phố duyên hải chật cứng người chen nhau mua muối i-ốt vì họ tin rằng muối i-ốt chống được phóng xạ hạt nhân.
Tin đồn này đang được lan truyền chóng mặt trên tin nhắn điện thoại lẫn mạng internet. Vài ngày qua, các siêu thị ở các thành phố lớn cháy mặt hàng muối i-ốt. Nhiều nơi giá muối tăng cao vẫn không đủ bán. Tại tỉnh Quảng Đông, giá muối i-ốt tăng từ 5 – 10 lần, theo mạng sina.com.
Tại Thượng Hải, ông Dong Linhua, công nhân, 57 tuổi than rằng ông chỉ muốn mua 1 kg muối nhưng không thể kiếm được nơi nào còn hàng.
Ngày 17.3, tổng công ty công nghiệp muối quốc gia Trung Quốc ra thông báo rằng nguồn cung muối còn rất nhiều, người dân đổ xô mua và tích trữ muối là không cần thiết. Còn bộ Y tế thông tin trên website của bộ rằng dùng muối theo nhu cầu hàng ngày không thể ngừa nhiễm xạ. Nếu muốn ngừa được nhiễm xạ, một người lớn phải dùng đến 3kg muối một lúc!
Theo các chuyên gia y tế, chỉ có viên thuốc i-ốt mới có thể giúp ngừa nhiễm xạ gây ung thư tuyến giáp, còn muối ăn bình thường mà chúng ta dùng hàng ngày là không thể chống nhiễm xạ vì lượng i-ốt đưa vào cơ thể quá ít.
Trong ngày 17.3, phát ngôn viên bộ Ngoại giao trung Quốc, bà Jiang Yu cũng nói rằng: “Tôi thấy không cần thiết phải hoảng sợ”.
Uỷ ban cải cách và phát triển quốc gia ra thông báo khẩn yêu cầu cơ quan chức năng giám sát chặt giá cả thị trường và có biện pháp xử lý những hành động phi pháp như tung tin đồn. Còn chính quyền tỉnh Quảng Đông và Hải Nam tuyên bố phạt 2 triệu nhân dân tệ (304.000USD) cho doanh nghiệp nào bị phát hiện tăng giá bán muối.
H.S (Theo AP, LAT)
Sài Gòn Tiếp thị
Lo sợ phóng xạ từ Nhật sẽ lan sang, người dân Trung Quốc đang lên cơn sốt đổ xô mua muối i-ốt về dự trữ chống phơi nhiễm phóng xạ. Người dân thành phố Lan Châu, tỉnh Cam Túc ở phía tây bắc Trung Quốc chen lấn nhau tại một siêu thị để muối i-ốt nhằm tránh nhiễm xạ hạt nhân!
Trong ngày thứ năm 17.3, các siêu thị ở Bắc Kinh, Thượng Hải và các thành phố duyên hải chật cứng người chen nhau mua muối i-ốt vì họ tin rằng muối i-ốt chống được phóng xạ hạt nhân.
Tin đồn này đang được lan truyền chóng mặt trên tin nhắn điện thoại lẫn mạng internet. Vài ngày qua, các siêu thị ở các thành phố lớn cháy mặt hàng muối i-ốt. Nhiều nơi giá muối tăng cao vẫn không đủ bán. Tại tỉnh Quảng Đông, giá muối i-ốt tăng từ 5 – 10 lần, theo mạng sina.com.
Tại Thượng Hải, ông Dong Linhua, công nhân, 57 tuổi than rằng ông chỉ muốn mua 1 kg muối nhưng không thể kiếm được nơi nào còn hàng.
Ngày 17.3, tổng công ty công nghiệp muối quốc gia Trung Quốc ra thông báo rằng nguồn cung muối còn rất nhiều, người dân đổ xô mua và tích trữ muối là không cần thiết. Còn bộ Y tế thông tin trên website của bộ rằng dùng muối theo nhu cầu hàng ngày không thể ngừa nhiễm xạ. Nếu muốn ngừa được nhiễm xạ, một người lớn phải dùng đến 3kg muối một lúc!
Theo các chuyên gia y tế, chỉ có viên thuốc i-ốt mới có thể giúp ngừa nhiễm xạ gây ung thư tuyến giáp, còn muối ăn bình thường mà chúng ta dùng hàng ngày là không thể chống nhiễm xạ vì lượng i-ốt đưa vào cơ thể quá ít.
Trong ngày 17.3, phát ngôn viên bộ Ngoại giao trung Quốc, bà Jiang Yu cũng nói rằng: “Tôi thấy không cần thiết phải hoảng sợ”.
Uỷ ban cải cách và phát triển quốc gia ra thông báo khẩn yêu cầu cơ quan chức năng giám sát chặt giá cả thị trường và có biện pháp xử lý những hành động phi pháp như tung tin đồn. Còn chính quyền tỉnh Quảng Đông và Hải Nam tuyên bố phạt 2 triệu nhân dân tệ (304.000USD) cho doanh nghiệp nào bị phát hiện tăng giá bán muối.
H.S (Theo AP, LAT)
Sài Gòn Tiếp thị
19/03 飲用水、１都５県で放射性ヨウ素検出 すべて規制値以下
2011年3月19日23時48分
. 文部科学省は１９日、全国の上水道の放射能検査結果を公表した。１８日に採取した水から栃木、群馬、埼玉、千葉、東京、新潟の１都５県で放射性のヨウ素１３１が検出された。一番高い宇都宮市で１キロあたり７７ベクレルと、すべて規制値より低かった。放射性のセシウム１３７も栃木県で規制値より低い同１．６ベクレル、群馬県で同０．２２ベクレルが検出された。宮城県と茨城県は断水などの影響で調査されていない。飲料水に設けられた摂取制限の規制値は放射性ヨウ素で１キロあたり３００ベクレル、放射性セシウムで同２００ベクレル。
厚生労働省は１９日、上水道の調査結果が規制値を超え、摂取制限が指示された場合、飲用を控えるように広報することを、各都道府県に対して通知した。
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. 文部科学省は１９日、全国の上水道の放射能検査結果を公表した。１８日に採取した水から栃木、群馬、埼玉、千葉、東京、新潟の１都５県で放射性のヨウ素１３１が検出された。一番高い宇都宮市で１キロあたり７７ベクレルと、すべて規制値より低かった。放射性のセシウム１３７も栃木県で規制値より低い同１．６ベクレル、群馬県で同０．２２ベクレルが検出された。宮城県と茨城県は断水などの影響で調査されていない。飲料水に設けられた摂取制限の規制値は放射性ヨウ素で１キロあたり３００ベクレル、放射性セシウムで同２００ベクレル。
厚生労働省は１９日、上水道の調査結果が規制値を超え、摂取制限が指示された場合、飲用を控えるように広報することを、各都道府県に対して通知した。
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22/03 搾りたて生乳６トン、無念の廃棄処分 被災で出荷滞る
2011年3月22日8時1分
タンクに満載された約６トンの搾りたて生乳は畑にまかれ廃棄処分された＝２０日、茨城県小美玉市
搾乳機を使い１５分ほどかけて乳を吸い出す。１日で一頭あたり平均３０キロほどの生乳がとれる＝茨城県小美玉市
震災の影響で茨城県内の酪農家が搾った生乳を出荷できず、廃棄処分を余儀なくされている。牛乳メーカーの工場や貯蔵施設が被災して集乳が滞っているためだ。２１日までに主なメーカーの半数が操業を再開。県内の酪農組合も農家からの集乳を始めつつあるが、通常の生産量にはほど遠い。放射能汚染の風評被害への不安も広がっている。
わずか２時間前に搾ったばかりの生乳が、車の６トンタンクから勢いよく畑にまかれていく。３分ほどでタンクは空になり、ほのかに甘いミルクの香りが漂ってきた。
生乳を廃棄処分していたのは、同県小美玉市の美野里地区で、祖父の代から酪農業を営む男性（３８）だ。「仕事ができるだけでも幸せなのかもしれません。でも、やっとの思いで搾った生乳を捨てなければならず、本当に悔しい」
この農場では乳牛４００頭を飼育。１日あたり１２トンの生乳を生産している。震災で出荷ができなくても、毎日２回は機械で搾乳する。乳がはり炎症を起こす「乳房炎」から乳牛を守るためだ。
震災直後、停電で機械が動かず、発電機を稼働させるまで丸１日搾乳できなかった。牛舎に入ると、うなり声が響いた。「早く搾って」と言わんばかりに多くの乳牛が近寄ってきて、怖いくらいだったという。
搾った生乳は、県内３カ所にある貯蔵施設「クーラーステーション（ＣＳ）」に一時的に集められる。その後、県内の乳業メーカー７社を中心に配送される。
だが、メーカーは軒並み被災。約３００トンを保管できる県央ＣＳ（笠間市）が操業停止になり、集乳はストップ。搾っても自分の畑に廃棄処分せざるを得なかった。
震災から１０日が経ち、この農場の損失は１２００万円を超えた。「収入ゼロなのに、人件費などの出費はかさむ。借金をしないとしのげない……」とため息をつく。
被災したメーカー工場では、徐々に操業が再開されている。だが、通常の生産量には遠く及ばないのが実情だ。
県央地域のメーカーは１８日から再開したが、生産量は通常の１５％ほど。紙パック工場が被災したため容器が足りず、配送車の燃料不足で販売店に卸す予定が立たない。担当者は「通常の体制になるまでに時間はかかる」と話す。
一部メーカーの再開を受けて、県内の多くの酪農組合でも２１日から集乳が本格的に始まった。が、メーカー側に、全量を受け入れる体制は整っていないため、ＣＳがいっぱいになると、再び廃棄処分せざるを得なくなる可能性があるという。「メーカーの早い復帰を待つしかない」と県酪農業協同組合連合会。
男性の農場でも出荷が始まったが、地震のストレスやエサ不足で乳量が落ちている。「昨夏の猛暑の影響がやっと薄れてきたところだった。エサを増やしても、通常の量に戻るのに数カ月はかかるだろう……」
福島第一原発の事故による風評被害も心配だ。
政府は１９日、福島県内の生乳から基準を超える放射能が検出されたと発表。２１日、同県に出荷停止を指示した。
男性は「ただでさえ、牛乳の消費量は年々減っている。風評被害を長引かせないためにも、政府は安全性をもっと強調してほしい」と願う。（東郷隆、今直也）
タンクに満載された約６トンの搾りたて生乳は畑にまかれ廃棄処分された＝２０日、茨城県小美玉市
搾乳機を使い１５分ほどかけて乳を吸い出す。１日で一頭あたり平均３０キロほどの生乳がとれる＝茨城県小美玉市震災の影響で茨城県内の酪農家が搾った生乳を出荷できず、廃棄処分を余儀なくされている。牛乳メーカーの工場や貯蔵施設が被災して集乳が滞っているためだ。２１日までに主なメーカーの半数が操業を再開。県内の酪農組合も農家からの集乳を始めつつあるが、通常の生産量にはほど遠い。放射能汚染の風評被害への不安も広がっている。
わずか２時間前に搾ったばかりの生乳が、車の６トンタンクから勢いよく畑にまかれていく。３分ほどでタンクは空になり、ほのかに甘いミルクの香りが漂ってきた。
生乳を廃棄処分していたのは、同県小美玉市の美野里地区で、祖父の代から酪農業を営む男性（３８）だ。「仕事ができるだけでも幸せなのかもしれません。でも、やっとの思いで搾った生乳を捨てなければならず、本当に悔しい」
この農場では乳牛４００頭を飼育。１日あたり１２トンの生乳を生産している。震災で出荷ができなくても、毎日２回は機械で搾乳する。乳がはり炎症を起こす「乳房炎」から乳牛を守るためだ。
震災直後、停電で機械が動かず、発電機を稼働させるまで丸１日搾乳できなかった。牛舎に入ると、うなり声が響いた。「早く搾って」と言わんばかりに多くの乳牛が近寄ってきて、怖いくらいだったという。
搾った生乳は、県内３カ所にある貯蔵施設「クーラーステーション（ＣＳ）」に一時的に集められる。その後、県内の乳業メーカー７社を中心に配送される。
だが、メーカーは軒並み被災。約３００トンを保管できる県央ＣＳ（笠間市）が操業停止になり、集乳はストップ。搾っても自分の畑に廃棄処分せざるを得なかった。
震災から１０日が経ち、この農場の損失は１２００万円を超えた。「収入ゼロなのに、人件費などの出費はかさむ。借金をしないとしのげない……」とため息をつく。
被災したメーカー工場では、徐々に操業が再開されている。だが、通常の生産量には遠く及ばないのが実情だ。
県央地域のメーカーは１８日から再開したが、生産量は通常の１５％ほど。紙パック工場が被災したため容器が足りず、配送車の燃料不足で販売店に卸す予定が立たない。担当者は「通常の体制になるまでに時間はかかる」と話す。
一部メーカーの再開を受けて、県内の多くの酪農組合でも２１日から集乳が本格的に始まった。が、メーカー側に、全量を受け入れる体制は整っていないため、ＣＳがいっぱいになると、再び廃棄処分せざるを得なくなる可能性があるという。「メーカーの早い復帰を待つしかない」と県酪農業協同組合連合会。
男性の農場でも出荷が始まったが、地震のストレスやエサ不足で乳量が落ちている。「昨夏の猛暑の影響がやっと薄れてきたところだった。エサを増やしても、通常の量に戻るのに数カ月はかかるだろう……」
福島第一原発の事故による風評被害も心配だ。
政府は１９日、福島県内の生乳から基準を超える放射能が検出されたと発表。２１日、同県に出荷停止を指示した。
男性は「ただでさえ、牛乳の消費量は年々減っている。風評被害を長引かせないためにも、政府は安全性をもっと強調してほしい」と願う。（東郷隆、今直也）
22/03 Rescue after nine days brings hope for more survivors
2011/03/22
Editor's note: We will update our earthquake news as frequently as possible on AJW's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/AJW.Asahi. Please check the latest developments in this disaster. From Toshio Jo, managing editor, International Division, The Asahi Shimbun.
* * *
Sunday's rescue of an 80-year-old woman and her 16-year-old grandson after nine days trapped in debris has raised hopes in the disaster zone that more survivors may be found.
Officials said the two, Sumi Abe and her grandson Jin Abe, survived by rationing the meager undamaged foodstuffs in a tsunami-wrecked house in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, and by encouraging one another to stay alive.
Both were conscious when rescuers found them, although Sumi appeared to be suffering from mild dehydration. Jin appeared to have minor frostbite in his feet.
Both were recovering at a hospital in Ishinomaki.
Speaking before reporters, Jin Abe's father Akira expressed gratitude to the rescue team's perseverance.
"I always trusted that they would be found alive. I am grateful that they were rescued. I believe that this will remind people of the importance of not giving up," he said.
An official at the internal affairs ministry's Fire and Disaster Management Agency said, "While we are not sure how long this will continue, as long as we are in the disaster area, rescue activities will continue."
According to police, the two were found in what used to be the second floor of the two-story house amidst debris that was strewn across an area about 1.5 kilometers south of JR Ishinomaki Station.
A police team patrolling the area on Sunday noticed a weak call for help from the house, which at first glance looked like a one-story home that had been crushed. When they looked up, they saw Jin sitting on the roof.
The boy, who was dressed in a track suit and had bath towels wrapped around his body, told police that his grandmother was trapped inside. He told police that he smashed a hole in the ceiling and climbed to the roof earlier that day.
A police officer who crawled through the debris found the grandmother lying on a toppled closet and wrapped in futon.
Police said she whispered "thank god" and started to cry when the police officer looked her in the eyes.
According to Jin's family, the boy, who lived with his father in Sendai, was visiting his grandmother during an exam break at his school, when the quake and tsunami hit.
The two were eating lunch in the second-floor kitchen when the tsunami flooded the house. Water reached the second floor. The cupboard toppled over, and the two found themselves stuck in a narrow space.
The day after the quake, Jin's brother managed to reach them by calling Sumi's cellphone and they spoke for about 50 seconds. Jin told his brother that he and his grandmother were fine.
The father requested police search the area where the grandmother's house was located, but could not find anything as the house had been carried dozens of meters away by the tsunami, officials said.
Meantime, they lost contact with Sumi's cellphone.
On the third day after the quake, Jin managed to find his way to the room next to the kitchen and pull out dry blankets and futon, with which the two wrapped themselves.
They retrieved the contents of the refrigerator. They subsided on yogurt, cola and water, along with bread, nori dried seaweed and frozen food, judging from empty wrappers that were scattered around their bedding.
According to Michio Kobayashi, a doctor who is treating the two at the Ishinomaki Red Cross Hospital, the two are in good condition.
"The fact that they miraculously were able to eat food, keep warm with blankets and they could encourage one another was what allowed them to survive," Kobayashi said.
Rescuers assist 80-year-old Sumi Abe from her ruined home in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, on Sunday. (Photo by Kota Takeda)
Jin Abe, 16, is airlifted to a hospital after being rescued with his grandmother in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, on Sunday. (Photo by Yasuhiro Sugimoto)
Akira Abe, the father of Jin Abe, breaks into a smile as he responds to reporters'
questions in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, on Sunday. (Photo by Erina Ito)
Editor's note: We will update our earthquake news as frequently as possible on AJW's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/AJW.Asahi. Please check the latest developments in this disaster. From Toshio Jo, managing editor, International Division, The Asahi Shimbun.
* * *
Sunday's rescue of an 80-year-old woman and her 16-year-old grandson after nine days trapped in debris has raised hopes in the disaster zone that more survivors may be found.
Officials said the two, Sumi Abe and her grandson Jin Abe, survived by rationing the meager undamaged foodstuffs in a tsunami-wrecked house in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, and by encouraging one another to stay alive.
Both were conscious when rescuers found them, although Sumi appeared to be suffering from mild dehydration. Jin appeared to have minor frostbite in his feet.
Both were recovering at a hospital in Ishinomaki.
Speaking before reporters, Jin Abe's father Akira expressed gratitude to the rescue team's perseverance.
"I always trusted that they would be found alive. I am grateful that they were rescued. I believe that this will remind people of the importance of not giving up," he said.
An official at the internal affairs ministry's Fire and Disaster Management Agency said, "While we are not sure how long this will continue, as long as we are in the disaster area, rescue activities will continue."
According to police, the two were found in what used to be the second floor of the two-story house amidst debris that was strewn across an area about 1.5 kilometers south of JR Ishinomaki Station.
A police team patrolling the area on Sunday noticed a weak call for help from the house, which at first glance looked like a one-story home that had been crushed. When they looked up, they saw Jin sitting on the roof.
The boy, who was dressed in a track suit and had bath towels wrapped around his body, told police that his grandmother was trapped inside. He told police that he smashed a hole in the ceiling and climbed to the roof earlier that day.
A police officer who crawled through the debris found the grandmother lying on a toppled closet and wrapped in futon.
Police said she whispered "thank god" and started to cry when the police officer looked her in the eyes.
According to Jin's family, the boy, who lived with his father in Sendai, was visiting his grandmother during an exam break at his school, when the quake and tsunami hit.
The two were eating lunch in the second-floor kitchen when the tsunami flooded the house. Water reached the second floor. The cupboard toppled over, and the two found themselves stuck in a narrow space.
The day after the quake, Jin's brother managed to reach them by calling Sumi's cellphone and they spoke for about 50 seconds. Jin told his brother that he and his grandmother were fine.
The father requested police search the area where the grandmother's house was located, but could not find anything as the house had been carried dozens of meters away by the tsunami, officials said.
Meantime, they lost contact with Sumi's cellphone.
On the third day after the quake, Jin managed to find his way to the room next to the kitchen and pull out dry blankets and futon, with which the two wrapped themselves.
They retrieved the contents of the refrigerator. They subsided on yogurt, cola and water, along with bread, nori dried seaweed and frozen food, judging from empty wrappers that were scattered around their bedding.
According to Michio Kobayashi, a doctor who is treating the two at the Ishinomaki Red Cross Hospital, the two are in good condition.
"The fact that they miraculously were able to eat food, keep warm with blankets and they could encourage one another was what allowed them to survive," Kobayashi said.
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