We don't report, so you can't decide

Among the things our media do poorly is establishing a reasonable sense of perspective. A few hours ago, when Japan temporarily pulled its damage control troops from the plants, AP panicked. It even quoted a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists who said Japan had virtually "thrown in the towel."

At that same point in this frantic news cycle, Reuters was reporting somewhat more calmly that the work suspension was temporary with the nearby workers preparing to resume the fight. It may or may not have been the Reuters restraint which moved the other wire service to zip the OMG report down the memory hole.

But that is a relatively small thing, and I can understand it as a matter of on-the-ground reporter/editor fatigue and the vagaries of reporting a hugely complex batch of simultaneously breaking stories under nearly impossible circumstances. The reporters slogging around in the mud and debris along with the front-line editors and rewrite drones are as much to be pitied as mocked.

The greater failures happen in the home offices -- and I'm talking about you, you high-level thinkers back in your comfy editorial digs at the headquarters of our great newspapers in New York, Washington, Los Angeles.

For instance, I have yet to see reports comparing the current danger to that of 1945-62 when we and the Russians were popping nukes in the atmosphere like a bunch of Chinese kids celebrating the new year. In that period we exploded more than 300 bombs in the open air of the Pacific, Nevada, and the South Atlantic. God knows how many Moscow set off.  (Before bomb testing officially ended in 1992, and counting underground tests, the U.S. exploded at least 1,054 nuclear "devices.")

We don't know in detail the public health consequences of those dirty blasts, mostly because the  governments decided they'd rather not.

But, Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you The World; still intact three generations after Manhattan; still spawning new and healthy human beings at a frightening rate; still a place where we strive to live out our  lives with the lights on and the thermostats responsive.

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There's some Pollyanna here, which I would regret if it were not for the need to establish a small counterweight to the prevailing mediasphere  view that, yep, the Mayans had it all figured out.

Ono gets another 15 minutes

Hi. I am CNN and I am here to help you understand. After the break.Yoko Ono.

(commercial)

(Yoko emotes -- from here --  about how bad things are over there. {Thank you. We didn't know.} She concludes  the current earthquake- tsunami - nuclear disaster is "the same as World War Two.")

Yoko, your trip to India seeking enlightenment didn't work. You might want to return and hustle up a better guru. Maybe one who has at least a rudimentary grasp of the events of 1944/45.

Welles AAR

Not much, folks.

It may come to pass that I'll consider it a mistake to have left the 1970s Winchester M70 (in the magnificent .30-06) on the table, its $400 price tag intact. The condition was okay, not counting a stock ding here and there, but (a) I didn't value the Bushnell 3x9 as highly as the seller did, and he wouldn't split the package and (b) I spent the entire day in one of those overly frugal moods which are harmful to the spirit of modern loopholing.

Only a handful of cheap Ireland-made pocket knives and three and one-half bricks of .22s  came home.

As to general pricing, the only things that caught my eye were the EBRs.They seem to be getting noticeably cheaper.

The Limits of Technology

Departing cold fronts often produce a little snow in these lattitudes, and the National Weather Service guys thought they saw some on their electric radar sets. Only problem was that folks on the ground kept saying, "Snow? Don't know nothin' 'bout no snow here. Ain't none I see."

Upon further reflection, the NWS publishes:

"(There are) SOME MORE INTERESTING RETURNS CLOSER TO SIOUX FALLS...AND WHEN COMPARING TO PILOT REPORTS...ARE LIKELY SEEING LARGE FLOCKS OF GEESE."