It takes years of honing a trade or field of research into some tangible and provable result, that someone of conscience, who cares enough about their reputation, would stake their life's work on. Conveniently, most news outfits seem to have a large list of all the experts in any related catastrophe, and usually they are available for interviews only seconds into the reporting of some such event. Fancy that...
I sometimes think am an expert in Computers and Networking, but just before declaring so out loud some unimaginable thing happens beyond the scope of anything I could explain on-the-fly without taking several hours to investigate. So, I have chosen to leave Expert™ off of my business cards for the moment, besides, my field completely re-writes itself every few years so I may never truly become an expert™ in it.
With that said, I still tend to have days where I would sooner punch you in the face than answer questions about technology (free or paid). And I often do things like, sleep, poop, and other required human activities that incur not being available for on camera interviews immediately... Maybe I am much less the expert than I think I am since it would appear that being an expert™ means the flexibility to prostitute myself out at a moments notice.
Point in case: on September 11th 2001, before any buildings had fallen in New York city, CNN (or was it fox? can't recall) had an expert™ in counter terrorism who had already pinned the blame squarely on Osama bin Laden and his group of well trained al Qaeda. I don't know about you, but it takes me longer than that to find the name of the virus infecting a computer... and, as I've already claimed, this is something I am good at (almost an expert™, even). So, we are supposed to believe somebody who has presumably spent zero time investigating a very complex chain of events (because since the initial reporting on these events we can also presume he was commuting from wherever he was to the studio) that would take months to detangle and decipher, knows 'who done it'? -- Does the term 'road apples' mean anything to you?
Why then do we not have any experts talking about Fukushima for almost a week? Or maybe the better question to ask is what took so long for a 'renowned' Nuclear Physicist with experience in Boiling Water Reactors to be willing to go on camera? (Earthquake reported on March 11, 2011. First Arnie Gundersen analysis March 18. 2011, that's a week)
I believe there may be two types of experts™ in this world, those willing to sell themselves out, and those who are not. The funny thing here is that we have 2 things which are quite constant 'Nuclear' and 'Physics', and while our understanding of these may grow and even change slightly over time, the principles themselves don't change at all. We may in the future be able to control these to some degree as our understanding, and technology grow, but there will be some unbreakable rules that remain unbreakable.
That said, I can only presume it took a whole week to find an expert™ willing to say what the media wanted us to hear.
I have never met a Nuclear Physicist, but have encountered many Engineers, Chemists, Mathematicians, and Scientists and strangely enough they all have a similar stance in even entertaining an idea they know to be incorrect or even flawed: they will tell you that you are wrong, and, if they have the free time, they will explain or demonstrate how wrong you are. We are talking about a group of very meticulous, very 'detail oriented' people who get offended when confronted by stupid people who don't know what they are talking about, yet persist in talking about it.
Again, I can only presume that Nuclear Physicists fit into this mould as I have never met one.
So it really took a week to find someone who wouldn't cringe and flip-out on live television when confronted by one of the 'talking-heads' who often asks questions that could only have been written by a retarded 5 year old, but especially, one who would propagate the lies.
I am aware that I have not input many links to anything in this post. Most of it has been pure commentary. I will leave it to Jim Stone to keep naming names and researching the Fukushima disaster. I have not dedicated enough time on that myself, but thankfully I never called myself an expert™.
No comments:
Post a Comment