Anonymous,

Most of your points have been taken up pretty well by others, but let me add a little more data from Consumer

reports. Consumer Reports also organizes their reliability data by brand, and that data is what I was going off of.

Here's a quote from CR:

"Still, when comparing new cars by nationality, one trend still stands out: The Japanese and South Koreans continue to make the most reliable vehicles,with 11 problems per 100 vehicles on average.U.S. automakers follow, with 16 problems per 100. European manufacturers continue to lag, with 19 problems per 100."

So, yes Japanese cars are more reliable, but you pay for that reliability up front. If you want to rule out American cars, fine, but don't pretend like there is no emotion involved with that decision. As others have said, if you are worried about reliability, you really should research individual models.

The coupling (which engineers took from physicists) of financial markets seems likely to be highly non-linear. The interconnections won't look like a simple chain, or chainmail, but more like multi-dimensional matrix or web. If you tried to graph the interconnectedness of the markets, you would not see markets that were just connected to nearest neighbors. You would see far-flung connections, with some areas relatively isolated, and some having connections all over the place.

There is a reason that a lot of math PhDs end up on Wall Street.

While this research sounds like a good idea, having a separate bill authorizing it is not a good idea. While not quite pork, this is the sort of micro-managing that Congress should not do. Just give NIH the money in their normal budget, and possibly include a reference to this sort of work in the usual NIH bill. It is inefficient for Congress and for scientific research in general to have these sorts of bills.

Tancredo came off as much less wacky than I would have guessed. Yes, he seems to have bought the right wing malarky about there being good evidence on both sides of global warming, but he still came off as fairly rational.

Ms. Little didn't push him hard enough on nuclear power, though. I am still waiting for her to ask someone about reprocessing nuclear waste, since that would solve 90% of the nuclear waste problem.

Nuclear power should be a part of any environmentally conscious candidates energy platform. Nuclear power is the most realistic way to reduce our use of oil, natural gas, and coal plants, since wind and solar cannot be relied on for baseload power. If your really want to reduce carbon emissions, you have to focus on electric power production.

Nuclear waste is unlikely to be the problem with nuclear power for Senegal. I am sure that French companies will be happy to reprocess the Senegalese spent nuclear fuel. In fact, my guess would be that the international community would prefer if France took care of the fuel. Or maybe they will end with ties to the South Africans. I don't pretend to know enough of African politics to hazard a guess on which is more likely.

Regardless, from what little I know of Senegal, dealing with nuclear waste won't be their biggest problem. Developing and importing technical know-how are bigger issues, but if the price is right I am sure they can find people willing to it.

Coal may be cheap in the USA, but even here shipping that coal is a huge fraction of the cost the coal. This is why, for example, there is currently a push underway for Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern Railroad (which is merging with Canadian Pacific) to get government subsidies to expand it lines connecting Wyoming coal mines with the Eastern US.

For a country with no coal reserves, building coal plants may not make any sense. Though I agree with other that Senegal should probably be looking into solar power, nuclear power may make sense as well. Uranium prices may be rising, but the cost of uranium is a relatively small part of the cost of a nuclear power plant.

Nuclear waste is not really the problem that some here make it out to be. Over 90% of the waste would be dealt with if we just went back to reprocessing our spent nuclear fuel. Reprocessing is safe and environmentally friendly. After reprocessing, most of the spent fuel can be used again and some of the other isotopes can be set aside for medical and research uses. The waste remaining after reprocessing has shorter or lived radioactivity, as well as a much smaller volume, so it is much easier to deal with.

Most other countries reprocess their spent nuclear fuel. Jimmy Carter shutdown reprocessing in the US in order to try to cut down on nuclear proliferation, but no other countries followed his lead. Concerns about plutonium from reprocessing are being dealt with by new processes which keep the plutonium mixed with other elements, so that the plutonium cannot be used in a weapon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Nuclear_Energy_Partnership).

As for those who say that wind or solar power are cheaper, I would like to see some data. Everything that I have seen says that nuclear is still cheaper, though costs are falling for wind and solar. (These numbers are a bit dated for oil and gas, but it was the best comparison data I could find - http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/comparative_costs-v1.html).

As some have already alluded to, the biggest problem with wind and solar is that you cannot count on them for base load power. The Sun goes down and the wind doesn't blow, but we still need power. Work is being done on power storage technologies, but they are just not ready yet. So though wind and solar should be an increasing part of our energy portfolio, we still need other sources.