March 28, 2011

A Quick Note: Upcoming Interviews with My Dad, a Nuclear Engineer, and Lulu Book

Posted by Evelyn Mervine

Some Quick Announcements:


1. Upcoming Interviews:

While my dad and I wish we could stop doing our interview updates, the situation at Fukushima remains serious. We will discuss this more in our interview tonight, but keep in mind that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima will not be resolved in a matter of days; there are many long months and years of work ahead, especially since some of the reactors have been badly damaged by the earthquake, flooding (from the tsunami), and subsequent explosions. To fully clean-up the Fukushima site will require decades.

We probably won’t continue doing these interviews for decades, but we will continue them awhile longer.

This week we will be conducting interviews on Monday (3/28, later this evening), Tuesday (3/29), and Friday (4/1). Please send any questions or comments to georne[email protected]. You can also follow me on twitter @GeoEvelyn.

2. Lulu Book:

I just wanted to let you know that sometime soon (sometime in April, hopefully) I plan to self-publish a book titled “Conversations with My Dad, a Nuclear Engineer, about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Disater in Japan” on Lulu. In this book, I will compile all of the interview transcripts (which I will clean-up and check for errors) and also write brief summaries of the content in each interview. I will also include a chapter with some background on my father and I, including some pictures of us over the years, and a chapter with some of the many, many emails and comments we have received in response to these interviews. For the emails and comments, I will only use first names (or anonymous if the person did not give a name) and will avoid any personal details.

My father and I will donate 25% of the profits of each book to charities supporting Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster relief. If you have any interest in buying a book, let me know in a comment below or by email so that I have a rough idea of how many books might be ordered.

The interviews and audio files will remain freely available here always; I just thought that some people might like to have all of the interviews compiled in an easier-to-read book form. As I mentioned, I will try to have the book published sometime in April; I have a long plane flight to South Africa coming up in a few weeks when I can work on this. Depending on the situation at Fukushima, we may continue to do these interviews on a regular basis for some time. So, it’s possible that the book will need to be updated at some point if we continue interviews past April.

3. More Thank-Yous

Thanks again to all of the transcribers and audio helpers. I mailed pretty rocks to the volunteer helpers below (except Gerald– send me your address if you want a rock) earlier today. Rocks are heavy, so I mailed them parcel post, but they should arrive sometime in the not-too-distant future.

-Skype PR Representative
-Michelle, Gregg, Kirsten, Sophie, Chris, & Maria (transcription)
-Brandon (vimeo & audio help)
-Mike (audio help)
-Brad (YouTube help)
-Gerald (audio file hosting)