This morning, at the very same time, NBC was reporting that the Japanese authorities were both dumping water from helicopters (with a video that even Matt Lauer had to comment looked pretty ineffectual) and using water cannons (designed for "crowd control" (oh really?)) to try and cool either the reactors or the spent fuel facility (the one thing both outlets agreed on was that they didn't really know what exactly the water was going on), NPR, on Morning Edition, was reporting that those very efforts had already failed and been abandoned.

Yet, when Diane Rehm came on immediately after morning edition, she went back to talking about the helicopter efforts. It's no wonder people have no faith in the information they are getting. It's one of the biggest problems with radiation exposure - you can't see it and to measure it you need instruments that most people don't have.

At this point, what the world could do for communities in Japan is to provide them with accurately calibrated radiation measuring devices - so-called "Geiger Counters." I don't see the world rushing to provide that, and short of that, there is going to be uncertainty and panic, whether justified or not.