Chernobyl receives another burial.

Above: A ferris wheel on the outskirts of Chernobyl remains untouched
for over twenty years.

While we are all certainly thankful for the technology in our lives, we often forget the dangers posed by the world around us. Some of the readers of this blog may be too young to remember the terror inspired by the events at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the late 80s, while to many others the name "Chernobyl" conjures up nightmares of nuclear disaster.

For those unfamiliar with the horrific events of 1986, the events that unraveled at Chernobyl have forever changed the area of its impact into a barren wasteland. The failure of a nuclear reactor in late April of that year led to scores of people dying and to the radiation poisoning of several hundred thousand Ukrainians. To this day, much of the countryside remains deserted and infant mortality rates due to radiation are still high. More can be read here.

Above: An image from the abandoned neighboring city of Pripyat

An article posted Sunday on Yahoo! news chronicles the start of new construction Chernobyl. According to the article, titled "Doomed Chernobyl reactor to be buried in new coffin," states that a $505 million project maned by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has gone underway. The project aims to build a new shelter over the preexisting one encasing the reactor. The current shelter has been leaking radiation out for several years now and it is hoped that this new shelter will stop the issue of leakage once and for all.

It's important that people know about the horrors of Chernobyl. There are several websites which chronicle the event, but there is also a Discovery Channel documentary on the 1986 disaster. Hosted on YouTube.com, the documentary can be seen here.

A tiny slice of my childhood for you.

When I was a child, I was a real nerd - not that this should come as a surprise, mind you. I played chess, was likely the worst soccer goalie in the history of the sport, and read science fiction novels by the box-load. However, amongst the many tomes of fantasy and sci-fi novels I read was a series by Douglas Adams titled The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


Some of you are no doubt familiar with the title. Maybe some of you actually read the tongue-in-cheek comedy series when you were growing up. Perhaps a few of you saw the movie adaptation that came out about three years ago (which is not bad, honestly). Regardless of whether or not the novels are familiar to you, they have always had a real cult following through the years. Truth be told, there was even a video game adaptation created in 1988.


The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Video Game came around in the era of text-based adventures. Far before the Nintendo hit American shores and every five-year old was playing Mario/Duckhunt, fans of Douglas Adam's hit novels were playing an interactive version of the first book in the series. In the game, the player plays through the game by giving instructions to it. For example, in the first scene the player is in pitch black room. By typing in "turn on light," the player continues forward.

So why am I mentioning all this to you? Well, BBC Radio 4 has created a new version of the classic game in honor of the 20th anniversary of the first book. It's web based, so there's no downloading necessary. This version of the game even gives the player a visual representation of where they are in the game. I really recommend that you give it a try. Who knows, you might even have a chuckle or two.