jaginsburg.com
  • home
  • journalism | science | tech
    • sci | tech
  • exhibitions
    • introduction
    • mickey pallas
    • News art
  • children's media
  • photography
    • photography
    • book covers
  • blogs
    • Medium
    • better
    • PechaKucha
    • TrackerNews (archive)
    • archived faves
  • DNG Archives
    • Fields

The Nuke Factor: How to Make Disasters Worse and the Implications for Humanitarian Aid

3/21/2011

0 Comments

 
masthead
On 400+ aging nuclear reactors, quake-prone countries, food chains, trade networks and what this means for first responders and social entrepreneurs

Let’s get right to the point: What happens the next time a nuclear reactor goes rogue in the wake of a natural disaster? Japan is a worst case scenario in a best case place.

But what if the earth were to quake in Iran, China, Italy or Turkey—all of which are pursuing nuclear-fueled futures? Or Pakistan, where the IEAE  and US just gave their respective stamps of approval for two new Chinese-built plants? Each of those seismically-rocking countries floats precariously at (tectonic) plates’ edge. In fact, one of two reactors planned for Turkey is just a few miles from a major fault line.

The assurances of political leaders such as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are somehow less than reassuring: “I don’t think there will be any serious problem…The security standards there are the standards of today. We have to take into account that the Japanese nuclear plants were built 40 years ago with the standards of yesterday.”

Forty years may seem like an eternity to a politician, but is, in fact, a blink in a time-scale defined by nuclear radiation (see Chernobyl). Inspections have a way of getting missed (see Japan). Human error happens (see Three Mile Island).

In the meantime, major earthquakes striking all of these countries sometime over the projected lifespans of their reactors is a sure thing.


Read More
0 Comments

Japan: The Big One

3/14/2011

0 Comments

 
masthead
On primal forces and perspective, how climate change may make nuclear an even more dicey option and better, smarter search & rescue bots 

The March 11 earthquake off the east coast of Japan was one for the record books. Now rated a 9.0 on the Richter scale by the Japanese Meteorological Society, up from what was still a rather gobsmacking 8.9 initial estimate, the temblor known locally as Great Earthquake of Eastern Japan is officially tied for fourth in the official record books.

But in many ways, this was an earthquake like no other.

Nearly 60 million people felt direct shaking. The breakdown as measured by theModified Mercalli Intensity scale, which is calibrated to measure surface impact rather than seismic energy: “2.14 million (VIII – Severe), 29.96 million (VII – Very Strong), 19.69 million (VI – Strong) and 7.07 million (V – Moderate).”

Then the tsunami hit, a 30-foot killer wave weaponized with debris, racing inland with pedal-to-the-metal speed, flattening buildings, drowning fields, swamping towns, shredding lives.

This being Japan, where all phones are smart and digital cameras abound, the catastrophe was documented in staggering detail. In near real-time, images raced across the planet even faster than the tsunami. We watched in collective global horror as dark water oozed across the land, snuffing out all signs of life and civilization in its path. From Tokyo came video of chandeliers shaking, computers tumbling, books falling. We felt people’s terror in the crazy angles of videotaped escapes. We cried out as shards of glass rained down on frightened office-workers.


Read More
0 Comments

Frack, Baby, Frack: The Insti-Environmental Nightmare

8/8/2010

0 Comments

 
masthead
How scheme sold as pro-energy independence & climate-friendly unleashed environmental disaster in 5 years; From U.S. to Australia, Poland & India; Clean water as legal casualty; Green lesson from Bangladesh

The devil really is in the details: Fine print can kill. In 2005, as part of Bush/Cheney Energy Bill, a then obscure natural gas mining technique -  hydraulic fracturing – was given an exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Corporations were now allowed to keep the chemical contents of fracking fluid, used to break up shale deposits, a proprietary trade secret. Since Halliburton, where Dick Cheney had been CEO prior to becoming vice president, was one of the few producers of fracking fluid, the exemption became known as the “Halliburton loophole.”

Freed of any legal constraints, the fracking gold rush was on. It didn’t matter how many dozens of carcinogenic, mutagenic and toxic compounds environmentalists discovered and documented in the “secret sauce,” the energy companies had the law on their side. Indeed, they had the law in the bag.

Read More
0 Comments

“TrackerNews: Haiti” – A Special Resources Page

1/26/2010

0 Comments

 
masthead
A special TrackerNews page with news, info and resources relevant to Haitian relief and reconstruction, prototype “sketch” for a personal aggregation tool; Hi-tech meets What-tech?, Haiti’s legacy  

At TrackerNews, we tell stories by collecting and connecting links. Unlike most aggregators  that are driven by by dateline or popularity, we are interested in context, mixing news stories and research papers, conference videos and book sites, archived articles and blog posts from the field. Typically, between 4 and 6 story groups about health (human / animal / eco), humanitarian work and technology are on the site at any given time, setting the stage for the alchemy of cross-disciplinary insight. Eventually, everything ends up in a searchable database. Day by day, link by link, a broadly defined beat becomes a richer archive, a deeper resource.

Very occasionally, major breaking news stories—a hurricane, disease outbreak, political unrest, climate conference—have taken over the entire site. But the Haitian earthquake stands apart with its mix of staggering devastation, technological hope, massive global response, cascading threats (disease, looting, hurricanes), ecological horror (the fertile skin of  the land has literally been stripped bare from deforestation) and the glimmering potential to right more than three centuries of unspeakable wrongs rooted in the slave trade.

For two weeks, dozens upon dozens of Haiti-related links have coursed through the TrackerNews columns. More have been tweeted via @TrackerNews. Now we have created a special permanent TrackerNews: Haiti resources page. (Ed. Note: the site was taken down after the TrackerNews Project wrapped) 





The Haiti Special Resources page was created with a prototype custom
aggregation tool. 

Read More
0 Comments

    background

    The TrackerNews Project was a demo aggregator I developed for InSTEDD, an independent spin-off of Google.org's humanitarian practice. It covered health issues, humanitarian work and technology.

    archives

    November 2013
    November 2011
    October 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    April 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    February 2009
    December 2008
    November 2008
    October 2008

    Categories

    All
    Agriculture
    Architecture
    Big Data
    China
    Climate Change
    Communications
    Conferences
    Cyber Security
    Deforestation
    Demographics
    Disease Surveillance
    Earthquake
    Energy
    Environment
    Food
    Food Aid
    Free Press
    Haiti
    Health
    Hunger
    Innovation
    Instedd
    Land Mines
    Lighting
    Microfinance
    Mining
    Nuclear
    Oceans
    Philanthropy
    Pollution
    Probiotics
    Recycling
    Sanitation
    Social Enterprise
    Solar
    Tech
    Terrorism
    Transportation
    Travel
    Trees
    Vaccines
    Water
    Water Borne Disease
    Water-borne Disease
    Weather

    •
introduction
Picture
sci / tech
blogs
children's media
Picture
exhibitions
photography
Website designed by 
J.A. Ginsburg