Strange Fruit

What you’re looking at is what some believe to be radioactive produce from Fukushima.

Photos are making the rounds online and fear is likely spreading with each click of the “share” button. Probably not so great for the businesses trying to revive Fukushima’s manufacturing centers. Once a major producer for Japan’s agricultural and fisheries industry, Fukushima is a long way from recovery in those sectors.

Even if clean-up and recovery efforts are successful, it will probably be several generations before the fear of contamination disappates. Volunteer-led efforts to inform and empower the public (like Safecast) continue, refusing to wait for the powers-that-be to call all the shots about the coast being clear.

In more local news (for this particular Robot), radiation contamination scares persist in the Gobi Desert, where herders living near uranium mines have reported births of two-headed goats and baby camels born without eyes. It rallied a handful of nationalists fond of Nazi fashion to call for more monitoring of mining sites, and government action, but the eccentric dressers have gained more global attention than the environmental concerns they’ve tried to raise.

Two headed peaches and mutant baby goats. They make great memes, but at some point – hopefully before we’re all sprouting extra appendages – they probably warrant a closer look beyond the Reddit hits.