[jules' pics] Grand Tree

The park rangers go to some effort to artistically arrange dead trees round the rim of the Grand Canyon, so that, even when the canyon is invisible, the tourists will have something to look at.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 7/04/2011 01:06:00 PM

Ask them again in August!

There is a faction arguing for re-opening of the nuclear power stations that were shut down after the tsunami. I don't know to what extent safety measures have been improved in the interim, but there is obviously a large cost to the ongoing hiatus.

However, there has also been opposition, at least according to opinion polls. Also some fairly feeble and poorly-attended marches in Tokyo, though being in Japan that is probably about as revolting as the peasants ever get.

However.

Summer has barely started - in fact officially it hasn't started at all, but it clearly has. Following on from the hottest June day ever, we have also had the hottest late June in 50 years, and now we are into the summer power-saving/heatstroke season and air cons are being switched off, and there are various other power-saving measures, including the shutdown of some of our supercomputers at work.

It's all very spirit-of-the-blitz so far but I wonder how long it will last...

[jules' pics] Grand Canyon again

Grand Canyon, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

I didn't have much to show for all the colourful grandeur until this appeared in the roll of slide film. I might print it out to stick on the wall.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 7/02/2011 06:48:00 PM

[jules' pics] Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Nick Barnes said he found the GC disappointing after Utah. So did I the first time I saw it, in ~1978, so I'd warned James that it wasn't really up to much. Naturally with such low expectations, he was delighted and thought it was thoroughly grand. I enjoyed it more this time too, as I made the effort to appreciate the geology. The Colorado plateau rose up, and the Colorado river cut down (although quite how it did it on such a grand scale is not at all clear). In only 6 million years the river cut through layers of rock going back half the age of the earth. Wow! And here are all the layers. What a lot of different colours! The tilted red rocks near the river are special - they are the Grand Canyon Supergroup, and are not visible in very many places.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 7/01/2011 01:48:00 PM

[jules' pics] Grander is better

The Grand Canyon is Grand enough that trying to squeeze its essence into a square inch of pixels is too Grand a challenge for me. At least in terms of size, the food mirrors the canyon. After a hard day trekking in the canyon, the three of us headed to the bar of the El Tovar lodge (which is very near the edge of the South Rim), for light refreshments. We just about managed to squeeze this Grand starter meant for one person into our three tiny stomachs.

Yes, that's a prickly pear margarita!

Of course, Pa, not being Japanese like us, did have his pudding stomach to fall back on, and, incredibly, he effortlessly polished off this monstrosity.

I suppose one could argue that his trek had been harder work than ours, as he is not so used to climbing mountains...

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 6/30/2011 01:01:00 PM

[jules' pics] water and rock #2

Drowned Glen Canyon, now called Lake Powell, Arizona.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 6/29/2011 11:55:00 AM

More Fukushima

While I'm on the subject...

The situation up there seems to be meandering along with very limited progress. They installed some sort of filter in order to deal with the ever-increasing lake of polluted water but found the cartridge filled up in a matter of hours. No-one stated it openly, but I'm guessing the reason was that the water was a lot worse than they had let on. They are hoping to get it working again, but at the current rate of progress, Kan could plausibly plan to stay in office for the rest of the century, if not longer...

Of course, that's not to say there is any desperate or widespread threat. Fukushima has not caused a 35% increase in infant mortality in the USA, however much some kooks and crazies would like to claim it has :-)

I was pretty disgusted by the smug self-satistfied way in which Beddington recently whitewashed over the UK Govt's response to Fukushima. He gave a presentation in Japan about how wonderful the UK science advice system is. Summarised here as "Japan needs a Beddington", if you watch the video he is full of how sensible the UK advice was that there was no real risk. What he pointedly omits to mention is that the official advice was actually that UK citizens should avoid non-essential travel to the Tokyo area (thus voiding the travel insurance of those who made the rational decision that there was nothing to worry about) and that UK residents there should consider leaving! Advice that I challenged the Embassy to justify and was basically brushed off with platitudes. I realise that the UK advice was less panicked than many other countries, but that doesn't mean it was justified and certainly doesn't explain why they are trying to rewrite history. The ambassador was at that event, and Beddington is the UK Govt's Chief Scientist, so the discrepancy can't be simply explained away as a miscommunication or ignorance on his part. No, they got it wrong, and rather than admitting it just tried to bluster their way out of it. Unfortunately the event happened while I was in the USA or I would have been tempted to challenge him directly.

Incidentally, this is perhaps the most panicked and self-destructive behaviour I've heard of due to radiation paranoia. I suppose I could be grateful it's not another article about the "flyjin", but mostly I'm just sad that people managed to get themselves worked up into such a state of hysteria.

The govt is starting to think about plans for rebuilding, but it's not at all clear how things will work out. Much of the damaged area was already in decline, with the younger generation leaving for Tokyo and other cities. So there are emergency shelters full of the elderly, who want to go back to their home towns just as they used to be...which is hardly realistic. But no-one is going to stand up and say that's not possible, so things will probably just meander along with the refugees dying in large quantities and slowly giving up.

Planned power outages have just re-appeared in my calendar. There has been nothing in the news yet that I've seen, and I don't think any cuts have actually happened, but as the temperature increases so does the prospect of a shortage. We actually had a new all-time June record temp of 39.8C (a full degree and a half above the previous record, no less) somewhere a couple of days ago. It's still rainy season, not even summer! I did see (here) that TEPCO was up to 92% of current capacity on Friday, but many of the planned power savings haven't kicked in yet (eg our computers are still running normally, they are scheduled for a throttling-back) and I think that TEPCO has some more power reserves planned to come on-line for the summer. The Govt has upgraded the annual "cool biz" campaign to "Super cool biz", ie jeans and t-shirts (Jeans? In 30C+? Cool?). I'm already on ultra-cool biz for the summer, and am pleased to report that more than one company doesn't object to shorts and sandals (and unlike Mizuno, I don't have to wear JAMSTEC-branded goods).

Meanwhile, I'm relieved not to be back in the UK (yet), where apparently they are in the middle of a deadly heatwave that threatens civilisation. Or, as we say in Celsius, "28 degrees".

[jules' pics] Antelope Canyon

Luckily, the un-Native Americans failed to spot the touristic potential of the slot canyons, and consequently, some Navajos are apparently quite happily employed leading tours. This involves an exciting ride in a big tired gas-guzzler across the sands, and then about an hour or so walking gently through the canyon. I had heard about these canyons over the photography internets, and they were a newly opened attraction since Pa's last visit to the area, so we were keen to see what all the fuss was about. Being Japanese, we were not at all put off by the so called "crowds", which I'd over-heard photographers complaining about. There was plenty of personal space for us! It was very pleasant and interesting, but I'm not sure why photographers get quite so excited about it... it is after all, just rock.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 6/27/2011 11:49:00 AM

Kan he or can't he?

The soap opera of Japanese politics continues to provide mild amusement. The current PM is called Kan (though many people don't know that). A few weeks ago, lots of Important People decided he ought to resign, because, Fukushima. At least, that seems to be the gist of their argument. It's not clear to me how much responsibility he has for the tsunami and nuclear problem, or even if he has dealt with it poorly. The Japanese parliament is split, with Kan's DPJ running the lower house but not having a majority in the upper house. And after decades of LDP rule and the dominance of the long-established bureaucracy (including, but by no means limited to, TEPCO's incompetence and mismanagement), it is hardly credible to think that it could have been turned round in a matter of weeks. But still, Fukushima, so he has to go. Anyway, he's been there a year, so it's someone else's turn.

Rather than meekly stepping down, however, Kan started playing the "time for national unity" card. So a vote of no confidence was arranged. At this point, Kan said that he would resign once the current crisis was over. This persuaded lots of supposed enemies to abstain and the vote failed dismally. At which point Kan said "and of course, this crisis may run and run..." :-) Or words to that effect. The vote having failed, another one cannot be held. So lots of people are wailing impotently that Kan promised to resign in the next week or two, but he's insisting that he will plough on regardless to the end of the summer at least. A week may be a long time in normal politics, but a month is a pretty substantial career here, so the discrepancy is no small beer.

One silver lining: in the interim, the hated Ozawa has actually been suspended from the DPJ as part of a long-running corruption investigation. So if Kan resigns during this interval, it's possible that his influence in the resulting anointment will be moderated.

Unfortunately, in the midst of all the post-Fukushima chaos our lab is trying to renew a major project to run from the end of the current block of funding which ends next March. The national budget and Govt ministries appear to be in complete meltdown and as a result a lot of jobs are at risk. Including ours.

[jules' pics] rock and water

If you go boating on the drowned Glen Canyon, you get strange views like this. Horseshoe Bend is a short way downstream of the dam.

[Antelope Canyon, Lake Powell, photo by James]

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 6/24/2011 10:01:00 AM