Tag: Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station

Where’s next?

In Tech, we ask “what’s the next big thing?” Cloud computing, virtualization, localization, verticalization (BTW, when you can take the online world with you, the distinction between off-and-on line seems to be blurred).

But we have been warned by Nature: tsunami, Haiti, Chile and Japan.

I am glad shaky videos  by viewer-generated-content keep us informed  (can’t help referencing back to the Indonesian tsunami). The Death of Distance is finally here. I am sure with the same technology (Twitter and Facebook), we can mobilize rescue and relief efforts faster than earlier disasters (already out are the Gaga wristbands etc…).

My heart sank for the victims of those devastated townships.

Being ready for disaster was one thing.

Getting hit by what had always kept you up at night was quite another.

All the automobiles once ready for shipping now floating about like toy cars (courtesy of Japan TV).

All for one, one for all – on Space-Ship-Earth.

I was doing my school project (TV production) on Energy Conservation

(when there were long lines at the gas stations). Then I interned at WNEP-TV in PA when the story broke at Three-Mile-Island nuclear power plant. We camped out there for days, with high anxiety and trepidation

(when you drove in to town, seeing people fleeing after emptying out the ATM’s, it’s not a good sight).

Now, the citizens of Japan are going through similar  catastrophe (perhaps some survivors of WWII are still around to witness an encore ).

Let’s take this as a “teachable moment”. Where’s next?

There was a movie about “the things we lost in the fire”.

Maybe we should upload photos and documents up to the cloud for safekeeping.

Maybe we should smile at our neighbors, and hug our loved ones more often.

The Youngbloods had a line in “Get Together” “Come on people now, ….try to love one another right now.”.

It’s comforting to know no matter what language Nature tries to warn us next

(already French-Haiti, Japanese or Spanish-Chile ), we got each other.

America has been resilient through thick-and-thin. It will hold the torch one more time. Rise, baby, rise (to the occasion). Be that search light for the rescue.

We learned from Katrina of what not to do. Now is the time to go ahead and be that heroic “land of the free”.  Doesn’t matter where next is. We got each other.

Time to heal

Of the 5 stages of grief, the first one goes away the quickest (denial). The last stage, acceptance, takes the longest (not without some relapses). I wass at my parent’s graves this past Thanksgiving. A bit of acceptance there.

Trophies, college degrees and even old business cards showed our accomplishments. But they are not indicators of present success (there was PBS piece about an Ivy League graduate working as a clerk inputting license plate numbers of violators into the system – a job that could easily be automated).

We rushed from agricultural society to the information age, thinking that these flat screens will show larger bank balances. No they don’t. In fact, it shows less.

People who stay on the farm, hard as it is, hire more help right on site, not thousand of miles away. I remember a title “Acres of diamond”. Something about the value resides in each of us.

In the East, we have a similar story. It was about a mandarin who told his pulpit to keep dipping into the ink and copying down tons of books (no Google book-scan back then).

When the pulpit came back from earning his degrees (= lifetime job appointment), he asked his master where the diamond was (purported to be at the bottom of the ink vase). The diamond, as it turned out, had already been attached to the cap he was then wearing.

In fairy tales, input=output, Bond got the girl at the end.

We are living in a time when input might not equal output.

Put a coin in the vending machine, the coke comes out.

Ring the bell, shoppers will stop.

Many of us believed this mechanistic universe will never fail us (except for a few incidents such as the Challenger, Three Mile Island etc..whose cause were all “human”).

Put your money on “securitization”, then sit back . GE thought so as well, and joined the Maytag man to take a nap.

Hope 1.0, hope 2.0 etc….

The dream lives on with governor Moon Beam in California, but not else where. It’s all austerity in Greece and Spain.

Here in the US, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.  W have the Saints quarterback to lift us our of our Katrina dilemma.

Some wounds won’t heal completely. Most will take time. In a mechanistic universe,

when a production run is on and time is exactly what we cannot afford to lose. As of this edit, the market is bullish again.