GOOD FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Administration to Push for Small ‘Modular’ Reactors. “The longer-term goal is to foster assembly-line production of the small reactors at a far lower cost than construction of conventional reactors. The reactors could even replace old coal-fired power plants that are threatened by new federal emissions rules and sit on sites that already have grid connections and cooling water.” And beyond that, there are many other applications. Faster, please. Some early efforts may be in my neck of the woods: “The Tennessee Valley Authority has publicly discussed the idea of placing several small modular reactors on a site adjacent to the Clinch River just outside Oak Ridge, Tenn., where 30 years ago the government tried to build a breeder reactor, which would have produced more fuel than it consumes. That site could supply power to the government’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, some experts say.” Good. But we should have built that breeder reactor.
Archive for 2011
February 13, 2011
FOOD PRICE INFLATION UPDATE: Sysco declares force majeure, raises grocery prices.
Food inflation driven by freezing weather in Florida during December and in Mexico during February, is hitting the US supermarkets in the coming day’s. Sysco sent out an alert that announced an “Act of God”, to address their contracted supply issues.
The cold of the Superbowl weekend in Texas, has had a more lasting impact than on just the game plans for lots of travelers. The deep cold sank into the produce fields of northern Mexico, destroying fresh produce crops. This is the biggest page 16 story, about to hit a headline, that you have seen in a while. Your restaurants will be low on fresh produces for weeks. They will have to raise prices significantly or cut the produce out of the menu.
Worst freeze since 1957.
UPDATE: M. Simon suggests this book, and some seeds.
A SMALL METAPHOR: The end of Nancy Pelosi’s “Green Capitol Initiative.” Which didn’t extend so far as her forgoing the Gulfstream or anything. . . . But note this:
It turns out that the composting program not only cost the House an estimated $475,000 a year (according to the House inspector general) but actually increased energy consumption in the form of “additional energy for the pulping process and the increased hauling distance to the composting facility,” according to a news release from Lungren.
As far as carbon emissions were concerned, Lungren concluded that the reduction was the “nominal … equivalent to removing one car from the road each year.” He plans to switch the House to an alternate waste-management system recommended by the Architect of the Capitol, in which dining-service trash would be incinerated and the heat energy captured.
“Composting releases methane,” said Lungren’s spokesman, Brian Kaveney, and methane gas, as even the most warming-conscious among us have to admit, traps atmospheric heat far more efficiently than carbon dioxide, the usual bugaboo of the climate-change crowd.
Lungren’s stick-a-biodegradable-fork-in-it (if you can) stance toward a linchpin of Pelosi’s grand green plan marks the latest skirmish in a lifestyle war that may on its surface seem purely partisan: GOP global-warming skeptics versus a Gaia-worshipping Democratic Party. But I’d say the battle lines are really between an elite determined to impose upon a captive populace its notions of what is good for it — cost be damned — and the populace itself, which would rather not be coerced.
As I said before, I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis. Pelosi could have saved a lot more energy/greenhouse gas by flying commercial, but that was never on the table.
MORE FOOD-PRICE-DRIVEN POLITICAL INSTABILITY: Bolivian President Evo Morales flees town ahead of speech after angry miners throw dynamite in protest at food shortages. Morales’s solution: more socialism!
THE BLOGFATHER? All hail the ‘Blog-Father’: Waiting for trial in 6 murders, ‘Tommy Shots’ takes to Web.
Sorry, dude, but there’s only one BlogFather:
Cool photoshop by Sarah Hoyt’s cool son Robert.
SHOULDN’T THIS BE BIGGER NEWS? San Diego Port Director Claims WMD Found in U.S. Video at the link.
UPDATE: C.J. Burch emails: “It would explain all the duck and cover stuff wouldn’t it?”
JENNIFER RUBIN: What Did We Learn From CPAC?
WELL, THE DISCOVERY PROCESS SHOULD BE FUN: Breitbart sued by Shirley Sherrod.
WITNESSING the redistribution of wealth.
RETAIL HISTORY at DeadMalls.com.
MARKDOWNS ON Weber Genesis Gas Grills. Every year I think I’ll replace the Kenmore Premium (I didn’t spring for the “Elite”) gas grill I bought with my Bush tax cut check back in 2004, but it just keeps going and going. I haven’t even had to replace a burner.
UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!
WEAK TEA: The Hill: Obama budget falls far short of debt commission savings plan. Which was itself inadequate.
Related: Rep. Ryan rips Obama budget before its release: ‘Small on spending discipline.’
ANN ALTHOUSE: Why do some people presume the best of the Egyptian protesters and the worst of the Tea Party protesters? Because the Tea Party protesters threaten their power, their profits, or their self-regard. And the Egyptians don’t.
ENTITLED AUTHORS: Colby Cosh writes: “Anyone who has read an interview with children’s author/grumpy village atheist Philip Pullman will surely have sensed that he was a bit of an a-hole. He proved the hypothesis, with the cataclysmic decisiveness of a Shaq slam-dunk, in a January 20 address concerning austerity-driven public-library closures in the UK. It is the speech of someone who believes every jot and tittle ever put to paper about his infallible genius.”
I might be tempted to believe every jot and tittle about my infallible genius, too — if anybody ever, you know, wrote about that. Couldn’t I get a jot or two? Hell, I’d settle for a tittle. . . .
SALENA ZITO: Our New Jeffersonian Era. “Today we are in the midst of a cultural U-turn away from a Hamiltonian meritocratic-elitist, centralized-power society to a more Jeffersonian Main Street focus, with state and local governments as the primary powerbrokers”
TODAY ONLY: Leave It To Beaver: The Complete Series on sale.
RACIAL INSENSITIVITY ALIVE IN THE MEDIA: 25-Year-Old White Boy From Harvard Disses Herman Cain. Obviously, he’s just threatened by the thought of a black President. These Ivy Leaguers, bitterly clinging to their credentials and their privileged opinion perches. . . .
ORBITING ROBOTS will gauge lunar gravity.
MAX BOOT: Don’t drop the ball on Iraq. Given the way that the Administration’s foreign initiatives have been working, I fear that “inattention” may be the best we can hope for . . . .
FORGET GAY MARRIAGE, now they’re attacking robot marriage.
I’ll bet the robophobes like Matt Yglesias are having a field day with this one. There are already books about it. And hey, I’m already married to a cyborg, and it’s pretty great . . . .
KEEPING THE RIGHT TO ARMS ALIVE IN THE HEART OF EUROPE: Swiss Vote To Keep Their Guns. The story says “soldiers,” but in Switzerland that includes pretty much everybody. For fascinating background, I recommend John McPhee’s excellent La Place De La Concorde Suisse.
Being armed, of course, should be regarded as an international human right.
UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails: “Your post reminded me that the McPhee book also includes a good discussion of the Swiss civil defense and nuclear shelter system. He points out that the extensive Swiss nuclear shelter system, which everybody considers to be typically characteristic of Germanic precision and thoroughness, was designed by taking American civil defense plans and implementing them. Of course, I suppose you could say it is Germanic thoroughness to take what Americans design and, unlike us, actually implement it.”