Peter’s Blog

Nuke Power: The Future Is Coming Up Nukes

Nuclear power is the other alternative energy - cleaner than biomass, and less retarded than ethanol.

Best slogan ever!

Missile-ready China warns U.S. against plan to destroy spy satellite - International Herald Tribune

In response to a U.S. plan to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite, China has warned against threats to security in outer space, without mentioning its own successful anti-satellite missile test last year.

Pruned: Vaux-le-Vicomte in the DMZ

Has your village been flooded with landmines or is it now downwind from a nuclear meltdown?

Don’t panic. Let’s garden!

Fascinating.

A And the train arrived five days early, taking only 15 days. However, it’d be even faster if the containers didn’t have to be switched over to the Russian gauge and back again. If Russia switches their system, it’ll be even faster. And while herculean, it has been done before:

A similar break-of-gauge problem in the United States was solved in just 36 hours in 1886 by lining the entire rail network of the American South with tens of thousands of track workers and having them all heave one rail three inches closer to the other and spike it down again.

to the Bose magnetic suspension announced in 2006?

Apple sizes up Europe’s movie-rental market - International Herald Tribune:

After introducing a new online film rental service for American consumers last week, Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, said he was “dying” to expand the program to international markets, adding that this would happen later this year.

Such an extreme sacrifice will probably not be necessary; but in trying to establish European versions of the iTunes movie rental service, which allows users to rent films over the Internet and stream them to their computers or televisions, Jobs at times might feel as though he were banging his head against a brick wall.

Apple will have to confront legal and regulatory hurdles, copyright challenges, scheduling conflicts and technological issues that demonstrate that the European media landscape remains a patchwork of several dozen individual countries - not the single “internal market” that the European Commission envisions.

It might be a funny question to ask, but will Apple (and Commission push-back) be the one responsible for creating a true single market in media in the EU?

With rising concerns about carbon dioxide emissions, the first container ship assisted by a giant kite just set sail. However, the real news is that shipping companies are slowing down their boats:

“We’ve saved so much fuel that we added a ship to the route and still saved costs,” said Klaus Heims, press spokesman [for Hapag-Lloyd]. “Why didn’t we do this before?”

Hapag-Lloyd cut their speeds from 23.5 knots to 20 knots and are planning to go down to 16 knots on the Atlantic soon.

I wonder if this will have a subtle and long terms effect on how the global economy works, since ‘just-in-time’ shipping from overseas is so essential to manufacturing these days.

Note: This is based on the European January 19-25 edition.

p.14 I was surprised to read:

“It [America] has much to learn from Europe. Best of all, set a carbon tax, which is less susceptible to capture by business lobbies than a cap-and-trade system.”

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I thought The Economist preferred a cap-and-trade system. But, as they point out, the European system has been largely ineffective and is easier to game than a simple tax. Unfortunately for both them and the US, it’ll probably be a cold day in hell before an aggressive carbon tax gets real headway in Congress. Given that cap-in-trade was invented in the US, it has another thing in its favor.

p.23 I like the line, “ If Napoleon’s armies marched on their stomachs, American ones march on bandwidth.”

p.24 Wow:

“A single Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft flying over Afghanistan can eat up several times more satellite bandwidth than was used for the whole of the 1991 war against Iraq.”

The whole war!

p.41 Did I miss something? Apparently Obama’s admitted to doing cocaine. Bill Clinton, W, and now Obama (and I’m sure most of his fellow Presidential candidates): everyone’s ‘experimented’. It just goes to show that my friend smoking a joint while in Amsterdam and didn’t want their photo taken because of potential problems in the future has nothing to fear.

p. 71 According to research by Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatesh, “Prostitutes [in Chicago] are more likely to have sex with a police officer than to be arrested by one.”

p.78 A mystery indeed:

“Who knew that … the rarely seen $2 bill still accounts for 1% of all American notes printed? (Where do they all go?)”

Sony officially announces Skype on PSP - Engadget

This is awesome, except for the fact that it doesn’t work on the original PSP (ie the one I have). In other PSP news, Justine got me PaRappa The Rapper for Christmas.

BLDGBLOG has a really nice interview with Kim Stanley Robinson. A lot of the interview talks about utopian ideas and how he’s continually tried to rehabilitate them in his writing. Some early examples, and not mentioned in the interview, are the books in his Wild Shore trilogy. I read and enjoyed Pacific Edge, and the other two, The Gold Coast and The Wild Shore, also look good. Speaking of KSR, Escape From Kathmandu is also quite good.