At the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, robots are finally heading in to gather vital data from areas too dangerous for human workers. That's a great step forward, right? Well, you'd think so – unless you're the kind of doltish chowderhead who can only digest such news in the most ridiculous terms possible: the stroking of idiotic national pride.
The April 14 issue of general-interest weekly Shukan Shincho (article not available online) opines:
Japan prides its cutting-edge technology in building robots -- yet it now faces an embarrassing situation where Japan must rely on the U.S. to provide robots to conduct work at the nuclear power plant -- how sad is that?... This embarrassing situation was caused to do blindingly believing that such incident would never occur.
Sad? Embarrassing? The disaster itself is horribly sad, and any errors made in response may be embarrassing – but do those words also describe people wisely using helpful technology to improve the situation? In the befuddled writer's world, we can't praise amazing technology that helps people cope with disaster until we know what's stamped on the passports of the people who created it. If the passports have this political entity's name stamped, then the technology is glorious and wonderful; if they have that political entity's name stamped, then it's all "sad" and "embarrassing".
Am I the only one who wonders when (or whether) humans will ever grow up?
Comments
Well who the hell do you think funded the robots?
Submitted by Skeptikai (not verified) on
Hi Traveler, thanks a lot for your warm regards on my site. And wow... I find it disconcerting that someone would write that. I mean seriously... Japan only got hit with the most destructive natural disaster the country has ever dealt with, killing tens of thousands of people, and they can't even send in their own remote-controlled radiation-detecting robots to avoid more human casualties? What a bunch of pussies. Right? Well, considering that Japan pays for about a tenth of the U.S. government's debt (around $800 billion) I'd say what's sad is the loss of life, and what's embarassing is that idiot's attempt at journalism. For a country like America that prides itself on being the world's largest economy, 47% of their debt is owed to foreign countries. So that seems to me like the sort of statement that would precede an apology, on par with the malaysian cartoonist and the family guy writer. But I won't hold my breath...
You're right
Submitted by Traveler on
True, Japan may have funded the robots' development in part, by shouldering US debt... Maybe that'd mollify the distressed journalist a bit. But really, it just leads back to the silliness of it all. In the end, some people here created something, and some people there benefited from it, and I still don't get why, for so many people, the absence or presence of a political boundary between the two groups changes the dynamics of everything. Oh well.
The article I quote is not a big deal. It's fairly harmless silliness, and I don't want to come across as strangely distraught. What happens is that I hear goofy stuff like this 99 times without making a reply, and upon hearing it the 100th time, lash out a bit strongly. Then all is well again (for a while : ).
Thanks for the comment!
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