Thursday's Quickie

Well, we have had the confirmation of Alito, and the first thing he does is deny an execution request. GOD! My civil liberties are being trampled! No, seriously people, we all need to get over this paranoia nonsense, its just silly that we go nuts over what really doesn't make that much of a difference.

Next issue was the State of the Union address. Of particular importance to me is the American Competitiveness Initiative. This is a very good thing for business but even more for my side of engineering because that is where the solutions to the problems being seen comes from. Hydrogen fuel cells, lower emissions, and all types of power consumption and conversion are dealt with by engineers, particularly Mechanical. So i like alot of this energy talk because its importance both domestically and internationally but also from a business stand point for me. Oh, I am really waiting to see proposals for new nuclear power plants come online. And before anyone makes silly comments about nuclear meltdown scenarios, lets review a few things. Nuclear reactors have had exactly one large safety incident, and that was in Russia. Yeah it was bad because there was zero containment in a heavy water reactor and they had no fail-safes. 3 Mile Island you say? Actualy there was an overheat in the reactor and its did what it was supposed to do and shut down. First fail-safe worked perfectly. No radiation leak, no danger of meltdown. There was several other fail-safes behind it as well that were all working. Now, its even safer as the entire reactors are shielded, and the technology is so different that there is no real way to have a meltdown because the reaction is never self sustaining. Thats a recent development. So i support it highly because its cheaper, more available, and safe.

In Science news, there is a 10th planent in the solar system. Kinda. Its under debate but its larger than Pluto so it can't really be a moon. Cool eh?

The new computer is up and running, though it has issues at the moment. The problem you ask? Freaking Windows XP x64. Sure the operating system is decent, but there are like no drivers for anything. I can't run my new TV card on it! Microsoft, you suck.

This is just disgusting

I think this is being blown out of proportion. Freedom of expression and speech mean that you will have to hear offensive things. Otherwise, if we are not allowed to be offended, all ideas have to be censored since everything will be considered to be offensive to someone.



Lastly, since the US, EU, and Israel are going to stop funding the Palestinian Authority (yes money goes to palestine from israel), Arab countries are saying they will pick up the slack. Excuse me if i am doubtful, but since more Arab countries are more than strapped for cash. These economies as a whole are in the toilet so any significant amount of money would be extremely hard to get. So i am saying, don't plan on it.

Two ways of looking at something

I read two articles today on the exact same subject. The first was in the LA Times, and the other was an update by Strategy Page. Its very interesting to see how they are different.

The LA Times sees the growing number of promotions of junior officers in the Army as a bad thing. They cite anonymous "experts" that think the quality of the officers is going down. They even found a retired general to quote "What we don't want to do is come out of [these wars] and lose what we lost after Vietnam." Reminds me of a quote i heard, that i can't recall who said, that said "The best thing a retired general can do it to shut up" The issue with this quote is that the majority opinion is that the officers that did stay in made the US Army so good. Stormin Norman was one of these and was the atypical example of those that stayed in to make the Army the one that showed up in Gulf War 1 and 2. So this is the LA Times view and how they choose to present it.

Next we have the other view. There view is that its not necessarily a new phenomanon since its been occuring for over a decade because of polices. They back up this idea with data by the way. Their point is that the people that stay in, the captains and LTs are going to have much more experience than most of the commanders right now. They are going to have more combat experience, which is essential. The marines have found this out that the best commanders are the ones that are near the front and know combat first hand. Cause they were the ones that were shot at 10 years ago directly. Their view is that the people that get out are the least qualified or least motivated to be in and the Army will be better for it.

It strikes me as odd to see how two different publications choose to present an issue.

Tuesday's Quickie

Alito filibuster is broken, badly... 72-25 with 3 members not voting. Man, that's gotta sting, I mean thats not even a show of force in the end by the democrats. Shit, the latest polls in the public are 2-1 for confirmation. Even more embarrassing that Kennedy and Kerry both said they are sure they are not going to win the filibuster but wanted to make a statement. The statement was that you got your ass kicked guys. Vote should be today I think, and Judge will be Justice.

Next issue we have to deal with is Iran. A few days ahead of the IAEA meeting, the 5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have agreed to recommend taking Iran to the Security Council. This is a big development for Iran because Russia was formerly helping them out and deflecting a good deal of problems. Now thats less of the case. Iran has called this the end of diplomacy if it happens according to CNN. Iran has been attempting to push this move off by threatening world oil prices, but strangely have stepped off this platform. This might be a tactically bad move since it loses their only good advantage, but strategically it might be good because that would force the world to react much faster.

Bush's State of the Union speech is tonite. Its said to be much more low key than last years. Probably a good idea since the social security reform idea was DOA. See this cool link here on the State of the Enemy. The only really important thing on the domestic side of the address for me he is going to touch on is energy. Since I am now taking a course in "Energy Sources and Utilization" this impacts me pretty good. I am hoping to hear about a concerted effort to put new nuclear power plants online and different options for transportation. Nuke power isn't really an option there, but natural gas as well as hydrogen, even more bio-diesel are all options I want to be explored a lot more. I would be thrilled to see the US cut its energy dependence of Petroleum in half in the next 10-20 years. We currently use 27 Quadrillion BTUs worth of energy from petroleum each year, and half of that is imported. If we get out of that market into a new source, that would do great things for environmental and political problems. Especially with India's and China's rising demand for it.

As we all know now, Hamas won the elections. Now comes the sticky problem. Funding. As in Palestine, most of the money comes in the form of aid. 900 million of that comes from the US and EU combined and additional comes from the United Nations and Russia for the primary amount. All 4 countries have said that funding will have to be review unless Hamas 1) Recognizes Israel's right to exist, and 2) Must renounce the use of violence against Israel. Both of these things are part of the founding charter of Hamas which has taken credit for several hundred deaths of Israeli citizens from suicide bombings. Hamas has come out and said they will "Not be blackmailed into making any changes or concessions." Further complicating issues is that the EU and US have designated Hamas a terrorist organization. That makes it pretty much illegal to send them any money at all and if the UN still wanted to, it might be illegal for the US to fund the UN. Very sticky and a lose of money there could have either really good (cause it will cause a total rethinking process of the Infitada) or really bad effects (lots of starvation and even more hatred of everyone else). Next few should be interesting.

So thats the big news for now, enjoy it, hate it, spit on it. It'll probably all change tomorrow!

Bush breaks 50%

I hope to have more up today even with my crazy schedule but here is a fun quick tidbit. Bush broke 50% in the polls. I still have lots of reservations about the man when it comes to alot of his policies, but considering his contempory challengers on the left and right, I think this is good news. And, as Instapundit notes, Bush hasn't done much lately and the people with the most face time in the past week are Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. Why does the democratic party let these people be their spokespeople? It would be like having Pat Robertson (even though he will never be elected anywhere) speaking for the Republicans. Its downright silly to me.