Far more worrying are several radioactive chemicals released as particles about one-quarter the size of a grain of sand. These include iodine-131, strontium-90 and cesium-137.
Fang said that he had checked the Caltech alumni list and an online doctoral dissertation database, but had failed to locate Tang's name on either one of them.
Facebook admitted that it had hired Burson "to focus attention on this issue," and the company said it now realizes it should have handled the situation "in a serious and transparent way."
Far from signalling that the time has come to launch exit strategies, however, they also reveal that it would be madness to withdraw stimulus measures right now.
Faced with what looks from afar like a Hobbesian war of all against all, if not a descent into hell itself, the normal instinct of human beings to exercise their moral faculties grows numb.
Falling birth rates are also indicators of better educated and more autonomous women, which is one reason why sub-Saharan Africa's birthrate remains stubbornly high.
Face-to-face contact is by no means the only form of communication and during the last two hundred years the art of mass communication has become one of the dominating factors of contemporary society.
Fast forward three decades to Russia's summer 2008 invasion of Georgia when Russian tanks were rolling once again - this time along the Caucasus mountain valley towards US-leaning Tbilisi.