I was reading The Corner and came across a post about the future of nuclear waste management in the US. A quick bit of history first: Currently, the United States has something like 100 nuclear power plants in the US, almost all at least 30 years old. While there is now a surge of interest in building of new plants, after the Three-Mile accident in 1979 growth in the nuclear industry ground to a halt. With a peak in public concern about hazard of nuclear waste following the accident, in 1982 the government passed legislation creating a plan for the disposal of nuclear waste of the existing sites – a plan that has (almost) culminated with Yucca Mountain over twenty-five years later. With nuclear power seemingly having reached a plateau (and even seemingly in the decline) when the legislation passed, the plans were drawn up with a fairly certain ceiling on the amount of waste being produced. Once the predetermined amount of waste had accumulated, the vault would be filled in and sealed to prevent possible contamination thousands (in actuality, the legislation called for protection for a million) years in the future.
However, twenty-five years, billions of dollars and 30 possible new reactors in our lifetime, the plan seems to be in a slow-motion train-wreck. We have nothing for the money and time spent, and the current plan could result in filling up the facility in just three years. But there is a hope to salvage a decent system from this boondoggle. (more…)
With the recent unrest in Tibet, one looks back on the past decades of Chinese occupation and the resulting dissent, and wonders what China sees in the remote region that makes it worth all the grief they get for owning it. I suppose that it could be simple nationalism – they took it because they considered it “theirs”, and certainly that plays into it. More fundamentally, however, owning it secures them geo-politically in the southwest. While China did fight a war with India, the rugged nature of the theater made it logistically staggering to engage in anything other than border skirmishes. Additionally all it takes is to look at a map of Tibet to realize that if Tibet were outside of the control of China, the security situation changes dramatically. Instead of crossing some of the tallest mountains in the world, a potential aggressor has multiple avenues of attack into the heart of China. That isn’t to say that China is worried about the Tibetans invading China, but they are worried about any friends that an independent Tibet might invite over.
A useful historical analogy is Ireland. For centuries, attempts to invade England were launched from Ireland, but rarely by the Irish themselves. Ireland was a never the prize of English politics, only the tool. Most famously, the Stuarts would frequently try to leverage the Irish into maintaining or reclaiming their English crowns, and just as famously was the retribution on the Irish of those who fought the Stuarts (namely, Oliver Cromwell). The Irish suffered centuries of oppression because the English felt they could not afford to let the Irish become fertile ground for their opponents. It was only with the relatively recent “pacifying” of continental politics that the English have let loose of the reins they held on Ireland.
It is the same calculation, then, that drives the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The politics of the region are far less settled than they are in Europe, and China dares not let the reins of Tibet go lest a hostile power use Tibet as a springboard into the heart of China. China is surrounded by Russia, India, Pakistan, Japan, South Korea and America. While none of these nations seem to be interested in getting into a war with China at the moment, they are all strong strategic competitors in the region, and what’s more, three are in a strong military alliance with additionally Pakistan and India being on very good terms with the US. China might be paranoid, but it’s not without reason.
Just discovered this – Apache 2.2 includes a mechanism for storing authentication information in *any* database – mod_auth_db. Drivers are compiled at the same time as the rest of Apache. I’ve always worried about race-conditions with the Apache password file, and having a database backend will be great.
UPDATE: I’ve been using this for a little while now, and it’s been great. All you do is give it a query that needs to return (so you can search by name and group if you want to restrict access to a group of people). The problem was actually compiling the darned drivers. You had to go into srclibs/apr-utils and compile them separately.
Samantha Powers is a “senior foreign policy adviser” to Barack Obama, and a perfect example of the reason for William F. Buckley’s contempt of academia, as well as the vacuous nature of Obama’s policies in general. He’s hit Hillary Clinton hard about her vote to authorize force in Iraq, but in 2002 his presumptive Secretary of State advised an even more ambitious adventure – imposing a military solution on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Martin Kramer gives a detailed account of what she said and the context in which it was said at his blog. Powers, when confront with it, simply says it doesn’t make any sense to her now, and doesn’t even remember saying it.
Remember, this is from the campaign that has repeatedly said it’s not experience but the ability to make the right decisions that should be the criteria for choosing a President. Maybe Obama isn’t as infallible as he thinks he is.
UPDATE: Powers *was* a senior foreign-policy advisor to Obama. Apparently advocating the invasion of a long-term ally isn’t in the same league as calling the opposing campaign names (oh, wait – it’s Obama we’re talking about here. He’s all for attacking allies). If there is something this nation will not stand for, it’s for calling someone else a doody-head.
I’ve been reading through more of Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism, and as I went through the chapter on FDR’s New Deal, and it’s resemblance to Hitler’s Nazism, a major point of the book began to become clearer in my mind – that nationalism isn’t inherently right-wing. (more…)
Sarah Palin has been floated as an “outside-the-box” possibility as veep for McCain. She’s had a meteoric rise in the conservative world – a reputation she earned by cleaning up the notoriously corrupt Alaskan Republican party (only Ohio was in worse shape). She took on and defeated the sitting Governor, Frank Murkowski, in the primary, and has proceeded to become the most popular governor in the Union, with a 84%/5% approval/disapproval rating in 2007. That is very impressive in a year that saw a marked backlash against Republicans. (more…)
