The blogger known as Kite String and Key thinks Matt Groening is partly to blame for U.S. opposition to nuclear power:
For almost 20 years, Matt Groening has perpetuated the fear of nuclear generation in the United States.
Also, I think, our disdain for fat white guys. And rascally kids. Groening’s very likely to blame there as well.
What Dave said.
It’s just sport, just a game, completely meaningless as compared to the plague of development on Albuquerque’s west side or that Darfur thing. But there it is, unfolding like a gut-gripping soap opera that you know is playing out in real time with no safety net.
So Vinokourov must be dead to me (but a tragic figure?) and Rasmussen, he was in “Italy.” And the poor boys on the ITV podcast last night were beside themselves with the hurt to their sport.
And then today, there is Axel Merckx, as iconic a figure as you’ll find in the peloton, getting away in a four-man breakaway, on the verge of retirement from the sport, speeding down the roads of France past little knots of cheering fans. And on his shoulder, Michael Boogerd, sharing the pace making. If there is a victim of Rasmussen’s evil in this soap opera, it is Boogerd, the faithful assistant who banged his way up mountain slopes for a team leader who has turned in the public eye to a disgraced, dirty cheat. The work, the work, for nothing. And then Sandy Casar, his hip bloodied by a crash, pulling away at the finish line.
If I were the soap opera’s writer, with my own grasp of story arc, it would have been Merckx or Boogerd taking the stage, but the ending – Casar’s bloody ass pulling away 500 meters from the line – was so epic that the writers did just fine, thank you very much. And there was Merckx after the stage, tears behind his sunglasses, talking about what it meant to ride all day past those cheering fans, about to leave the sport he grew up in, the sport he loves.
I’m still on the steep lower slopes of the learning curve regarding the relationship between development and water, so I don’t have much to say about this except to say that it’s fascinating:
Development of the 6,500-acre Quail Ranch is dead, at least for the time being.
Sandia Properties has dropped plans to develop the giant master-planned community on the far West Side.
“We’re getting out of the business of large, long-term projects,” said Bob Murphy, president of Sandia Properties and an established developer in the Albuquerque metro area.
The company has had the 6,500-acre tract under contract for more than three years, during which time it has worked on lining up the financing and utilities.
Water was a key issue in the decision to drop the project, Murphy said.
The relationship between water and this project is complicated, but I’m not aware of any other major project dropped in this same way over water issues.
Romance and bike racing scandals both just sound better in French:
Tour de France – Dopage
RASMUSSEN QUITTE LE TOUR !
I stopped a couple of weeks back to take a picture of one of these sculptures, which are being installed at Tingley Beach. A guy riding by on his bike said to me, “Pretty hideous, isn’t it?”
Well no, not so much. I quite like ’em.
There are several different ways I ride my bike. One is all spandex and zooming fast, which I love. But the best way is to wander, making a series of random decisions that take me all over the place. Riding with friends Saturday on one of those rides, we ended up in a sort of random block-circling exercise in Albuquerque’s Country Club neighborhood, on account of we kept seeing lovely flowers in people’s yards we had to stop and look at.
One in particular deserved a second look, so Lissa and I drove over this evening. You don’t often see hibiscus in the desert. Water and all. No scale on the picture, but these things are big as dinner plates.
I don’t normally double-post, but there are issues involved in this that are of relevance here as well as at the Journal.
Reporters depend on smart people to explain things to them. That generally means people who are intimately involved in the subject at hand. When the subject matter is an issue of controversy, that dependence comes with a price – the most knowledgeable people are most often partisans in the debate. So while they understand their own side of the argument intimately, they are often dismissive of the other side. For reporters, the real treasures are those who, while they may be partisans, are smart enough to understand where the other side is coming from, and are able and willing to have thoughtful conversations across the divide.
University of New Mexico history professor Tim Moy, who died Sunday in Hawaii, was such a treasure. Tim’s specialty was the history of science, especially the history of the nuclear era. Over the years, I had occasion to lean on Tim’s insights many times in two areas – the arguments over evolution and its alternatives, and things nuclear. Among the subjects I cover, I can think of none more polarizing than those two. A frustrating characteristic of both debates, for me, is the way the disputants talk past one another, each assuming the other is venal, or stupid, or both. Tim, while he had his own views, was smarter than that. His insights into the nature of those debates, their cultural underpinnings, showed a respect for the participants that I hope we could all emulate.
My thoughts go out to his family, to those in the UNM community who surrounded him, and to his many friends.
From Plastic Manzikert:
Nuclear Power is not the only option, but it is a valid option. There are flaws, of course – it’s more expensive than carbon dioxide emitting power generators. That’s an economic problem, and as the world moves away from fossil fuels, that disadvantage will go down.
Farmers have threatened to protest unless they receive more government help in coping with a prolonged drought that has destroyed millions of hectares (acres) of crops.
The drought has cost Romania €1.5 billion (US$2 billion) in damages and has affected more than a third of the country’s arable land, an agriculture official said Saturday.
Some 2.6 million hectares (6.42 million acres) of crops have been damaged by the arid spell, 36 percent of the country’s total arable land, Agriculture Ministry official Gheorghe Albu said.
