Thursday, March 17, 2011

Beware the Ides of March

Were it not for Julius Cesar by William Shakespeare I wouldn’t know what the Ides of March was. 

It has been a few months since I added to my blog and I’m long overdue. There have been so many tragedies the first few months of 2011; it’s hard to know where to begin. In January a lunatic shot congress woman Gabriele Giffords in the head at point blank range. In February, the Middle East was smitten with a revolt by people who decided to take matters into their own hands with the help of social media, overthrowing the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt; and still trying in several other Middle Eastern and North African countries as of this writing. Then March 11th Japan endured a 9.0 earthquake, massive Tsunami and multiple nuclear power plant melt downs. This has been Apocalyptic.

Some folks predict the position of the lunar orbit on March 19th will cause more catastrophes. Like we haven’t had enough already?

Looking back to an archived post, I predicted the economic downturn and severe unemployment when I suggested we would all have to figure out how to get along with less but no way did I see these disasters coming. The magnitudes of the crisis in Japan exceeded everyone’s worst-case scenarios.  Our own reactors are built to withstand a 7.0 earthquake. We didn’t foresee a 9.0 and we are in trouble as well if we get one that big. Tsunamis are fairly rare but we have seen two devastating occurrences of these tidal waves in 7 years. 

Even the anti-nuke folks never imagined multiple power plants failing simultaneously which might result in uninhabitable regions of the Japanese island nation for all eternity. Who knows, Japan could become its own solar generator. The events are almost unfathomable. I thought last year’s BP gulf oil spill was the worst catastrophe of the modern era but these events eclipse even that. 

Natural disasters, like other miracles in our lives, are always difficult to understand.