Thursday, September 02, 2004

China Goes Nuclear. Rei writes "Wired reports that the People's Republic of China has announced plans to build 30 new nuclear reactors by the year 2020, and by 2050 have almost as much nuclear power as the entire world produces today. The reactors are to be pebble bed reactors, in which helium replaces radioactive, pressurized water. A Chinese research institution demonstrated the safety of their test reactor against meltdown by shutting off the coolant." [Slashdot] The concept of the pebble bed reactor has been around for years, but elsewhere the ecofreaks have been strong enough to keep it from being developed. It's ironic that this incredibly useful technology is finally being developed by a vicious dictatorship--which, as such, doesn't care what ecofreaks think. 8:11:47 PM    comment () It turns out that Thinkpads don't have Firewire, which unfortunately rules them out as potential alternatives to my flaky Powerbooks. Micron's laptops do have Firewire, and I've had generally good experiences with their desktop machines, but I'll have to do more research. Surprisingly, PC laptops are even more overpriced than Mac laptops! 1:17:37 PM    comment () The Republicans talk about Kerry flip-flops, okay, but can we look at their flip-flops? The big glaring one I keep thinking of was the Bush promise of No Nation Building, as if to imply that his administration, if elected, would only act at home, something lot of novice Presidents promise, before they get sucked into Middle East politics, as they all do. What about that great 60 Minutes interview when he didn't know the name of the President of Pakistan? Maybe we should ask that question again? Come on Dems, let's nail this bastard. He almost had me going with the cute daughters and stoic wife. The Zell Miller speech was a wakeup call. That wasn't an election speech, that was incitement to a lynch mob. Guess who's the guest of honor? Think about it. Why was the Miller speech so scary? Answer -- you're next. That's what Miller was saying. After this election we put on the brown shirts. I saw John McCain interviewed on NBC after the Miller speech. You could tell he was scared. They asked if he thought Kerry would make a good commander in chief, he said yes he would. That's the kind of candidate the Reps should nominate. Then after the election, win or lose, we won't have to have a civil war. [Scripting News] That's not the only example. As this guy points out, the Republicans have totally embraced liberal policies, with the result that conservatives are increasingly unhappy with Bush. 10:15:31 AM    comment () It turns out that the replacement hard drive I got for my TiBook in June is defective. Fortunately it's still under warranty, so I'll send it back to Hitachi for replacement. In the mean time, I'm back to using my Pismo. Just to keep things interesting, my Pismo started to suffer from the standard CPU ejection problem this morning, several months earlier than I expected it. The TiBook drive problem isn't Apple's fault, but it's still annoying that I have two different PowerBooks, and neither of them is entirely working at the moment. 9:47:17 AM    comment ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 2/15/2006; 2:02:53 PM.