Sunday Linkfest!

[jhameia]

Thin on the links today. I have grading to do.

Japan:
ABC News: Before and after shots
NYT: How government regulation in Japan made things less worse than it could have been (and a perspective on it linking to anti-government sentiment in the US)
Vancouver Sun: Entire Japan coast shifted 2.4 metres, earth axis moves ten inches

Call for, uh, Classifieds: "Chimurenga Magazine’s next publishing project is The Chimurenga Chronicle – a once-off, one-day-only edition of a speculative, future-forward newspaper that travels back in time to re-imagine the present."

Restructure: Paternalistic Academic-Industrial Complex of Feminism

Racialicious's Latoya Peterson: On Being Feminism's Ms. Nigga (Tokenism in white mainstream feminism)

Old but still relevant: Open Letter to White Anti-Racists

Inside Higher Ed: New research provides evidence that female instructors may be key to encouraging talented female STEM students to stay in those disciplines. (AKA shit we knew but is now OFFICIALLY SCIENCE!)

Kith.org: Describing characters of color (Again, old, but good)

Creators of A:TLA speak a little about Korra

New Disabled Muslim Superhero Comic

Our Magical Honky Neil Gaiman to write script adapting Chinese epic Journey to the West

Scott Westerfeld's Goliath cover is out.

And because you have time, a wikipedia article on English words with uncommon properties.

Comments

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Seeing some of the things that survived - or even survived wholly intact - over there the past couple of days, I'd say less "exemplary" and more "completely staggering." A whole lot of architects and engineers over there deserve permanent pat-on-the-backs for some of that.

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

Completely agree. Thing is, architects and engineers are problem-solvers, but the problems must be correctly defined for the specialists to work on.

In Japan, for many years, the architects have been obsessed with seismic safety (and living well in small places), and because money and governmental support have been flowing in that direction, the architects and engineers came up with amazing solutions.

My mother's team (working in the late Soviet Union) designed safe homes for permafrost areas. It is amazing how much more energy-conserving these buildings were, compared to most US buildings - and I am quite sure that these buildings will stand while many wood-framed US homes will fall apart (I can talk at length about problems with US homes, but it's a tangent).

My mother first told me about seismically safe codes when the Spitak earthquake hit in Armenia. It was 6.9 Richter; about 25 thousand people perished. Schools collapsed on their students. My mom told me there were ways to build seismically safe structures, but if these things are not in the codes, and not paid for, it would be almost impossible to effectively implement them. It's true for many things that are not cost-effective short-term but are incredible long-term: solar panels/clean energy and green building in general, seismic safety, energy conservation, disability access, toxicity of materials, etc. There are SO MANY building codes that control even things like the maximum height of stairs (this is a good thing). It would be amazing how much less comfortable (not to mention dangerous) our lives will become, and how very quickly, if these building codes go.