Ukraine joins the club of recovering highly-enriched-uranium addicts. Tanzania looks to begin mining and processing uranium, while Niger (which took the same path back in the 1960s, only to see its financial and political problems worsen) is getting “poisoned,” Greenpeace alleges, by the carelessness of the French state-owned company that mines there. A Japanese nuclear plant admits that some reactor components haven’t been checked since 1988. Japan, Ukraine, and South Korea are all considering a move to plutonium reprocessing, despite proliferation risks and the dismal record of longtime UK reprocessing location Sellafield.
Trying to adopt a Russian orphan? Not this week. Just once in a while politically-motivated murder in a Latin American country gets punished. We’re not getting along well with India at the moment. Yes we are too. A real-life Ellisonian Invisible Man gets a year in a Japanese prison (suspended, but still, that’s crazy). A hot April in India, which seems like a good time to mention that Climategate seems to have been mostly a fake scandal, and that that Skeptical Environmentalist guy was mostly lying.
I really want to think that the authors of this Charleston (WV) Daily Mail editorial were kidding, but nothing in the piece’s presentation suggests so, and neither do the comments. Their explicit argument: WV is incredibly poor (for which some of the thanks, as anyone with a ten-second memory knows, goes to the coal companies that destroyed the state’s natural resources and literally stole land out from under the farmers). Because of mining and clearcutting, we now have this nice flat space on which to build a prison, which will provide lots of jobs (not to mention free housing for all the West Virginians and Kentuckians who, thanks to growing up in raped states, have trouble measuring consequences or finding legal employment.) Therefore, mountaintop removal mining is awesome, and environmentalists suck. Next up from the Charleston Daily Mail editorial board: “If you hadn’t run me over with your car, I’d never have enjoyed these delicious and mysterious phantom limb tinglings. Riddle me that, safe-driving advocates.”
… And last of all, I just think this is cute: Noam Chomsky’s brother once directed a “Star Trek” episode. I think Noam Chomsky may be the one person for whom the Federation wouldn’t be left-wing enough.
love that Chomsky trivia. (What a great way to combine two of my nerdiest interests). I’m going to have to use that tidbit myself at some point.
The link does say it’s his cousin, however, not his brother.
Still a neat connection though.
I love these posts. I wish you’d do one every day.
How quickly the post-Chomsky commentary devolves into an argument over the “worst TOS episode ever”!
I was pleased to see your IT review posted at Powells ROTD. Congratulations!