Tuesday, April 16, 2002

This war tells us more about Europe than the Middle East "The Europeans are scared of their Muslim populations, scared of what perceived slight might turn them from shooting up kosher butchers to shooting up targets of more, shall we say, concern to the general population. When the war with Iraq starts, we'll find out. No wonder Paris and Brussels are as keen to postpone it as Baghdad and Riyadh. The "whole world" is agreed that if anybody has to be blown up it might as well be the Israelis. Ah, those Jew troublemakers: why won't they just lie there and take it?" 11:01:07 AM  Google It!  comment  []

Huge hydrogen stores found below Earth's crust Discovery suggests near limitless supply of clean fuel " . . . formidable engineering problems remain to be overcome in abstracting the gas, the sheer volume of the Earth's crust means that such a high concentration would solve the world's energy problems." " . . . vast quantities of rock would have to be mined. . . . the extraction and crushing of rock to extract the trapped hydrogen is likely to be prohibitively expensive." "The most promising source of the hydrogen may be geological 'traps' similar to those now drilled for natural gas. . . . 'One of these natural hydrogen fields is already known to exist in North America, and extends from Canada to Kansas.'" 10:59:02 AM  Google It!  comment  []

S.&P. Lowers Credit Rating Again on Japan "Standard & Poor's lowered Japan's sovereign credit rating one notch yesterday, to AA-, saying that the Japanese government was moving too slowly in trying to overhaul the economy." "'The crisis isn't getting any better and is getting worse . . . The downgrades are coming pretty fast and furious now.'" "Japan, which had a triple-A credit rating a little more than a year ago, is now graded on the same level as the Czech Republic and Cyprus." 8:57:46 AM  Google It!  comment  []