AT Y-12, GETTING READY FOR THE BIG ONE. “There are eight operating procedures for the B53 dismantlement, according to the board memo. Based on the memo’s description, the procedures are apparently pretty complicated. According to the report, ‘one of the procedures includes 94 up-front precautions and another includes 53 up-front precautions and limitations.'” Be careful guys — I’m not sure I live 9 megatons away. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Sherard Anderson writes: “As a long time nuclear professional (commercial electricity division) I can tell you that the article should not be poo-pooing the Precautions and Limitations. These are THE most important parts of the procedure. The step by step instructions are important, but anything that could go wrong is addressed up front by the P&L. So there are 94 of them in one procedure. Probably because there is a lot of uncertainty regarding something designed in the 1950s that will be dismantled by people whose parents might not have even been born yet and that is wildly dangerous. If any of the people working to dismantle the B53 were to read this, my advice would be “Pay VERY close attention to those precautions and limitations”. For example, there will probably be one that addressing the area radiation monitors during the dismantling, with a radiation reading that will require them to stop work. Yeah, if that happens – DO IT.”

ARTIST BUILDS A SURVIVAL SHELTER, WITH A SHOTGUN-ARMED ROBOT, but SayUncle notes that Federal firearms laws may intervene. Isn’t that a First Amendment violation?

NANOTECHNOLOGY NOT GOING AS FAST AS YOU’D LIKE? Don’t blame Eric Drexler. Ah, I’d almost forgotten my exchange with Mark Modzelewski and the NanoBusiness Alliance.

TRAGEDY: Low gas prices pose a problem for efficient vehicles coming to market.

CNN POLL: GOP’s midterm advantage is growing. “According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday, the GOP leads the Democrats by 7 points on the ‘generic ballot’ question, 52 percent to 45 percent. That 7-point advantage is up from a 3-point margin last month.”

IN THE MAIL: Treat Me, Not My Age: A Doctor’s Guide to Getting the Best Care as You or a Loved One Gets Older.

A LABOR DAY INSTA-POLL:

STEVE CHAPMAN SAYS THIS IS NOT-ENOUGH-LABOR DAY: How The Government Is Destroying Jobs.

HISTORY THAT STEPHEN GREEN CAN APPRECIATE: The world’s first frozen margarita machine.

THE HILL: Businesses and unions to meet on possible pension disaster.

An August report by the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University found government pension programs in as many as 31 states are headed for financial disaster by 2030 and that taxpayers will likely wind up paying for unfunded liabilities.

“Even if states uniformly eliminated generous early retirement deals and raised the retirement age to 74, the unfunded liability for promises already made would still be more than $1 trillion,” Kellogg associate professor Joshua Rauh said in prepared remarks.

Read the whole thing.

DON SURBER ON JAMES LEE: What If He Were A Tea Partier?

ANNOUNCING the 2010 Hugo Awards.

HOPE, OR CHANGE? Future Jobs Mostly For The Highly Skilled. “Whenever companies start hiring freely again, job-seekers with specialized skills and education will have plenty of good opportunities. Others will face a choice: Take a job with low pay — or none at all. . . . That’s the sobering message American workers face as they celebrate Labor Day at a time of high unemployment, scant hiring and a widespread loss of job security.”

LOOKING FOR new weapons to kill bedbugs. “A common household pest for centuries, bedbugs were virtually eradicated in the 1940s and ’50s by the widespread use of DDT. That insecticide was banned in the 1970s, and the bugs developed resistance to chemicals that replaced it. . . . Getting rid of them, experts say, has become a complex political and social problem, not only because of modern concerns about pesticide use but also because of Americans’ mobile lifestyle.”

Related: Does your hotel have bedbugs? Check this registry. In New York, I hear they’re calling them “Bloombugs.”

HMM: Major Democratic Donors Shift Donations To The Right. “Employees of 126 businesses that had donated money to Senate Democrats in the 2008 campaign have switched all or most of their 2010 contributions to the Republicans, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission reports by the Houston Chronicle.”

UPDATE: Christian Science Monitor: How Bad Is It For Democrats?

Don’t get cocky, kid.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related item here.

BEER. IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Ancient Nubians Made Antibiotic Beer. “Chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Sudanese Nubians who lived nearly 2000 years ago shows they were ingesting the antibiotic tetracycline on a regular basis, likely from a special brew of beer. The find is the strongest yet that antibiotics were previously discovered by humans before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. . . . When and why the antibiotic beer secret was lost is a mystery. It is not the first technology to disappear with the disappearance of cultures.”

IF THEY’VE LOST the Prius owners . . . .

PUBLIC PENSIONS: A Tsunami Approaches: The Beginning of the Great Deconstruction.

At the state and local level, the Great Deconstruction has already begun albeit delayed by an infusion of federal stimulus dollars and grants in 2009 and 2010. The federal government must deconstruct as well. It must happen, if only because the revenue is no longer there to sustain all of these often well-intentioned programs. The federal government will not be immune from fiscal reality.

In this sense, the election in November will be a referendum on the very sustainability of our system of government. One party will continue to borrow and spend in order to maintain the 500 agencies in California and the abundance of federal programs. They have not said how long they will be able to borrow money to sustain their system. The other party will try to simply turn off the spigot – now. Either way, one day the money will run out and the inevitable deconstruction will occur.

Read the whole thing. And happy Labor Day!

NEW YORK TIMES: The End Of Tenure?

Plus, some higher education bubble thoughts from Roger Kimball.

The Australian philosopher David Stove, commenting on the Faculty of Arts at Sydney University, formulated a diagnosis that applies to the teaching of the humanities of most Western universities: It is, Stove wrote, a “disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle.”

There are incipient signs that a Great Recoiling from this intellectual disaster is beginning to form. It will be greatly aided by the economic disaster in which the institutional life of universities is embedded. “Why,” hard-working parents will ask themselves, “does it cost more than $50,000 a year to send Johnny to college.” Leave aside the question of what it is that Johnny is and isn’t learning in those ivy-covered walls. Why does his four-year furlough from the real world cost so much? One reason, of course, is that Johnny, assuming his parents are paying full freight, is paying not only for his own tuition: he is also helping to foot the bill for Ahmed, Juan, and Harriet down the hall. Colleges routinely boast about their generous financial aid packages, how they provide assistance for some large percentage of students, etc. What they don’t mention is the fact that parents who scrimp and save to come up with the tuition are in effect subsidizing the others. How do you suppose Johnny’s parents feel about that?

Not so happy now that they’re figuring things out. Plus, is this an analogy to the mortgage bubble?

Lasell College has agreed to pay students $191,000 to resolve complaints from the Massachusetts attorney general that the college improperly encouraged students to borrow funds from a lender that was giving the institution’s aid officials free trips, The Boston Globe reported. There were less expensive loans available at the time, and the college never revealed to students that its officials had ties to the lender they were sent to.

Happy Labor Day!